It seems that as soon as the sun comes out the clothes go in. Already Auriana has seen three casually shirtless men strolling down the road, bright red beer bellies proudly on display like some animalistic attraction technique, turn on it’s head. In the park earlier, there had been a girl who had clearly decided that the heat was too much, who had simply taken off her top.
There had been an old lady in a bikini.
Was everywhere like this or was it just London?
Either way, Aurianna strongly disapproved, and she did not disapprove of much.
She trudged through the heat- herself dressed in a silk maxi skirt and cotton shirt- chic, conservative and it kept her just as cool as shorts and a vest top.
The conservatism was for the benefit of her boyfriend’s parents, who she was meeting for the first time.
They were rich- lived in Maida Vale, sent their boy to UCS- and they had Views. Riley had not been specific on how severe these views were but Aurianna wasn’t willing to take any chances.
Aurianna had met Riley when walking home from a party. She had gotten drunker than she had intended, danced with more strangers than she had wanted and stayed out later than she had planned.
At the best of times, South Tottenham is not exactly the place to be. At three thirty seven, when it’s raining and the buzz from the (quite frankly disgusting) amount of alcohol you had consumed is wearing off and leaving a distinctly nauseous feeling in its place well… it’s not very nice at all.
She met him as she was stumbling her way up towards West Green Road. At first she figured he was one of those crazy junkies who always stood round the entrance to Tesco’s asking for money.
It took a while for her to figure out that he was asking if she was okay- clearly not. He offered to walk her to the bus stop and she’d assented although, on reflection, that had been a stupid thing to do.
Luckily, he had turned out not to be a crazy junkie, or a stray gang member or anything more awful than an almost terminal optimist and celibate.
He’d asked for her number but, with a thought to self-preservation, she’d given him her e-mail instead.
She’d pretty much forgotten about him by the time she received his e-mail the next evening, a testament to just how drunk she had been because Riley was nothing if not breathtakingly beautiful. Since, he’d managed to burn his visage into her mind for good. The darkness behind her eyelids had been replace by the image of him.
She was, at present, seventy-nine per cent sure that she was in love with him.
He met her at Maida Vale tube, and they walked down the wide, leafy roads with their beautiful redbrick houses to his parent’s house.
It was jaw-droppingly large. Auriana thought that she had seen large before, but Riley’s parent’s house was something else entirely. The atrium alone looked to be the size of her living room.
They sat in the living room a little awkwardly after introductions had been made.
“So, Auriana,” Mrs Julietta Clifton-Riley said, after a pause of the aching variety. “That’s an interesting name. What does it mean?”
“I’m not sure. I think my mum made it up,” Auriana admitted.
“Julietta’s something of an etymologist,” Mr Harold Riley said with a chuckle.
Auriana nodded and smiled.
“Auriana dabbles a bit too,” Riley returned, the pride in his voice unmistakable.
“Oh, do you dear?” Julietta asked.
“Yeah,” Auriana nodded, incomprehensibly shy all of a sudden. “Names, mostly. So it’s a bit of a sore spot for me, not knowing what my own name means.”
Light chuckles ensued, and very slowly the awkward atmosphere melted into something rather more relaxed.
Dinner was delicious, if not a little bland for Auriana’s tastes.
*
“They loved you,” Riley assured her later on. They’d decided to take a walk through the Heath.
Their walk was hampered by the fact that Riley had to keep pulling her into these lovely, bone-crushing, breath-stealing hugs.
“I liked them too,” Auriana replied, and was promptly hugged once again.
This hug resulted in the two of them taking a painful but happy fall to the ground.
“I’m so happy. This is great,” Riley sighed, rolling onto his back in the grass so as to better enjoy the splendour of the evening.
“How should we celebrate then?” Auriana asked, only half seriously, stretching out of her front so as to better watch the strollers, the dog-walkers and the joggers. A pretty Asian girl jogged past, talking animatedly to a ginger male who must have been taller than her by half.
Auriana smiled at the cute couple, and moved closer to Riley.
“Cheese and wine,” he said. “My treat.”
“Damn well better be your treat otherwise it’s gonna be Lambrini and Tesco’s value cheddar for us,” she giggled. Her comparative poverty was a subject of amusement to her.
“Exactly. It’s gotta be the best for you my darling.”
“Chocolates?” Auriana teased. The sun began to sink below the horizon very, very slowly. Neither Auriana nor Riley noticed, although it was incredibly picturesque, incredibly romantic.
“Yeah. Flowers too. And strawberries, before you ask.”
“You know me too well, my love. What about oysters?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Oysters?”
“Oh, yes,” Auriana nodded. “I hear they’re very nutritious. Provide vitamins, give you stamina. Very helpful.”
“Is that so?” he asked, his eyebrow arching further up his brow.
Auriana nodded and giggled. This was the cue for Riley to pounce on her, tickling and kissing until breathing became difficult.
“You’re the most beautiful woman in the world,” Riley whispered a little later, when three thirds of the sun had dipped into the netherworld.
“Even more beautiful than that Asian girl who jogged by earlier?” Auriana asked jokingly.
“You always ask the difficult questions,” Riley complained after pausing for thought, but the corners of his mouth were turned up, and Auriana could only slap him playfully and kiss his beautiful smile.
*
They walked back through the village-y beauty of Highgate, admiring the greenery, and down through Crouch End, past all the boutiques and artisan bakeries to Auriana’s road of mix’n’match houses.
Just down the road are estates where the kids sat on the front steps all day long, blasting music and pissing off motorists. It wasn’t awful, as estates go, but it wasn’t exactly great either.
Round the corner were and through an alleyway are three-storey giants, wide, deep and with large gardens to boot.
The ladder of roads on which Auriana’s house sits occupies a sort of tentative, awkward middle ground between the two.
Auriana’s house itself reaches into the lower scales, thanks to myriad unfinished DIY projects.
It is always either very noisy or very quiet. That evening was the latter kind, and Auriana and Riley were glad for it.
They enscombed themselves in her room and had an intimate moment on her bed with the curtains wide open and the streetlamp outside of her window illuminating them.
Afterwards, they cuddled up and watched Despicable Me with wine pilfered from Auriana’s parents drinks cabinet, and they drank to themselves and to each other and to Riley’s parents and fickle little London town with it’s hordes of naked people; and in Auriana’s head she was eighty per cent sure that she loved him; and in Riley’s head he was making up his mind to marry her.
