Page 10 of You're So Vine
ChapterFour
CAM
Ihad a girlfriend in high school. She wanted to stay my girlfriend when I enlisted but I told her it wasn’t fair to her. What I meant was I didn’t love her enough to want her to wait. She knew that. We were talking in my pick-up, and she got out and walked home. Never spoke to me again.
Army took seven years of my life. Been in Flora Valley almost ten. I’m not going to lie and say I’ve been a monk, but sex is one thing, a relationship is another. I’ve not had a girlfriend since the last one quite rightly dumped my ass and left me sitting alone in my ’71 Chevy pick-up. I’d bought it cheap with the aim of fixing it up but never did because I was a teenager and an idiot. When I drove home that evening and slammed the driver’s side door shut, it fell off. Hinges had rusted through, and I hadn’t noticed. Still drove it, doorless, for the whole month before I left for Fort Benning. See previous point about being an idiot.
Not paying attention to the signs—to anything, period—means that when the reckoning comes, it comes hard. People with experience had told me what the army would be like. I ignored them. People told me I shouldn’t try to fix myself, that I should get professional help. I ignored them. Lee Armstrong told me I needed to find something to do that made me feel like my life had value. I ignored her. But she persisted until, finally, I listened. Until I saw exactly how much my idiot stubbornness had cost me.
That was a tough moment, seeing how much pain had been down to me and my choices, my actions. I was bitter at Lee for forcing me to shine the spotlight on myself. So much easier to blame others or circumstance, black cats or loaded dice, anything that isn’t you. But I came through it, stayed on this Earth. Realized how much I had to be grateful for. Lee Armstrong being top of that list.
Thought then that I’d learned some important lessons about personal responsibility. Now it seems I still have a way to go. Because even though I know it’s entirely my fault that I was too slow to recognize how I feel about Ava, I’m focusing all my resentment on Jackson Armstrong.
Jackson. Lee and Billy’s oldest. First met him almost ten years ago when he came back from college. He was twenty-two and your typical frat boy, into beer, sport, and goofing around. Kind of guy who gets laughs by crushing beer cans on his forehead. More genial than asshole, but sometimes out of control. Thinking it’s a hoot to hang out the window of a speeding car. Or to bellyflop drunk into the local swimming hole.
Sure, I’m hardly one to judge. I was an idiot, too. I’m just bringing this up because, right now, I don’t want to think good thoughts about Jackson Armstrong. I want to run him down, mash his face into the ground, and drag him along in the dust for a spell.
He and Ava are dancing. Well, she’s dancing. He’s … I don’t know, imitating a seal flapping on a beach? Demonstrating how hard it would be for a gorilla to walk in heels?
Again, not one to judge. I don’t dance at all. Did once, long time ago. Last time was at my sister’s wedding.
Weddings have a lot to answer for. If Shelby and Nate hadn’t got married, Jackson and Ava would never have met.
And with that thought, I have officially scraped the bottom of the barrel.
“It’s your fault.”
For a second, I think it’s the voice of my subconscious. Lucky for me—or maybe not—it’s a real person. Shelby’s one-of-two best friends of all time, Chiara. Her stiletto heels make us the two tallest people in the room.
“My fault?”
Chiara nods at Ava and Jackson. “You had your chance. You blew it.”
Does she mean at the crush when I turned Ava down? Or has she got some secret intel about tonight? I totally did miss my chance, owing to being painfully slow to work out how I felt. But no one knows that except me. Do they?
“Ava asked you to get mulled wine with her because she wanted to bridge the gap between you two,” says Chiara. “Not in a I-want-to-bone-you-at-the-earliest-opportunity way. More in a I-was-too-hasty-before-so-how-about-we-get-to-know-each-other-and-see-how-it-goes way.”
She gestures to the couple on the dance floor.
“Now you’re here and she’s there with another guy. I don’t know what you did, and I don’t really care. What matters is that it was not the right thing. You blew it.”
Shelby thinks Chiara has witchy superpowers. I’m beginning to see what she means. I also ignore her criticism and single out the one spark of hope in her little speech.
“You’re saying Ava still likes me?”
“Of course. Unless what you did was so wrong it cannot be forgiven.”
Again, I ignore that last part. “How come you’re so sure?”
“Pfft, please.” Chiara turns scorn into a high art. “When it comes to the human psyche, I know everything.”
She looks me in the eye. Only person in the room who can do it near enough straight on.
“I know you’re lurking in the darkest corner of the barn for the sole reason that you don’t want Ava to see you. You want to leave but you’ve become rooted to the spot with jealousy watching Jackson and Ava dance. Bet you’re dredging up all the times Jackson was thoughtless and stupid just to make yourself feel better. Next step is to get irrationally annoyed that Shelby married Nate and gave Jackson and Ava an opportunity to meet.”
How does she do that?
“So … why exactly are you scolding me?” I ask.
