“Knew what?” I asked. Hot. Coffee was way too hot.
He grinned at me as if he’d just solved a Rubik’s cube, and I felt myself get a weird flutter in my stomach. I knew I should have eaten more than beef jerky.
“You’re Ellie Watt.”
Oh fudgeknuckles.
I turned back around and slapped a lid on my cup with shaking hands.
He knew me. Hot tattoo dude knew me and I didn’t know him. This wasn’t good.
I turned back to face him and shot him my biggest smile.
“I have to go,” I said. When in doubt, just go. My parents had taught me that, along with “never underestimate your mark” and “emotions don’t win the game.” It’s too bad they were as hypocritical as I was.
I took a step to leave, my eyes newly focused on the door, but he reached out, grabbing my free arm. I flinched, expecting another spark to flow through me, but it was just his warm, strong hand.
“Wait,” he said, lowering his voice and coming a step closer. He smelled peculiar. It wasn’t bad—actually it was quite a sensual smell, but it was something I couldn’t put my finger on. Earthy and industrial. Cinnamon and…ink?
I dared to meet his eyes. He was so close I could see the contact ring around his baby blues.
“Don’t you remember me?” he asked. His eyes flashed between expectation and edginess. Like if I didn’t remember who he was, he wouldn’t be smiling for long.
Unfortunately, I had no idea who this guy was. And I felt like kicking myself for it. My luck usually had me running into ass**les, not hot guys I wanted to lick from head to toe (though they often were one and the same).
He took his hand off of me and I relaxed. I tried to look as apologetic as possible. “I’m sorry, you’d think I’d remember someone like you but I don’t. I have a bad memory, don’t take it personally.”
“Somehow I doubt that,” he said under his breath. I eyed him quizzically. Was that to the bad memory remark (which wasn’t true) or to the—
“Camden McQueen,” he said quickly. The name ran along the length of my brain like rain on hardened soil before really sinking in.
I felt guilt before anything else.
His gaze narrowed on my face, still beautiful but dark. “Oh, so you do remember me.”
The Camden McQueen I pulled up from my memory banks did not look like the tattooed and pierced sex on a stick I had standing before me. The Camden McQueen I remembered was tall, yes, but gawky. Awkward. Back when he was a teenager, his broad-shouldered build had gone to waste. That Camden had gross, long black hair down to his mid-back. He was a fan of dog collars and black lipstick and lace gloves with the fingers cut out. He wore black all the time. He always had mysterious bandages on his arms, something you’d see if he wasn’t wearing his trademark long black trench coat. He wore that thing in the middle of the summer when seniors were dying from the heat. He loved music and art and spent long hours in the darkroom. Everyone called him The Dark Queen, and there were a few vicious rumors running around that he was g*y, or into bestiality, and that he carried a gun to class. He was the most bullied, most tortured kid in the whole of Palm Valley High School.
“Hi,” I said softly, trying to match up the Camden I had known to the Camden I saw now. “You look different.”
His face relaxed and went back to looking all model-like. “So do you. Your hair…”
He reached forward and brushed a piece of hair away from my face. My body froze at his touch and my eyes widened.
“It’s nice,” he said, taking his hand away. “I always thought the long blonde hair was a bit too Barbie on someone as…tough…as you.”
“Is tough supposed to be a synonym for bitch?” I asked.
He laughed and that hadn’t changed at all. It was one of those laughs that made you believe the joke was always on him. “Well, I was going to say angry but I suppose that’s kind of redundant, isn’t it? So what are you doing here? I haven’t seen you since high school.”
“Oh, just paying a visit to my uncle. Just passing through.”
He raised his brow. “Just passing through and you’re applying for jobs at a coffee shop?”
Right. That whole thing.
I shrugged and looked around the store with a stupid smile stretched on my lips. “It’s nice here. I was surprised how much it’s changed.”
“Maybe you’re the one who’s changed?” he questioned. His eyes were still clear and bright, jovial enough, but I detected something off-putting in his tone. He was testing me. And he was right to do it. We hadn’t exactly ended on good terms.
I punched his arm lightly with my free hand. So, so awkward. “You’re the one who’s changed, Camden. Wow.” I almost said “What happened to you?” but thought that was a bit patronizing. “What, uh, what’s new?”
He looked behind him at an empty table near the giggling tube-top girls who were now tight-lipped tube-top girls. They had been watching him with googly eyes and quickly averted them as soon as he looked their way.
Now, with his face coming back to mine, he looked hopeful. That was the look I recognized.
“Do you have to be somewhere? Do you want to catch up over some coffee?” he asked.
I almost said no. I almost told him I actually did have somewhere to be, even though I had nowhere to go and would just end up driving aimlessly for hours. But he smiled and the combination of those white teeth, the septum ring, and that messy hair made my heart beat against my chest, shrugging off the pills like a heavy coat.
So I said yes.
Then
The girl had somehow survived her first week of high school, though as she walked down the dust-heavy road that led to her uncle’s house, she felt that was as triumphant as surviving military boot camp. Already she’d earned the nicknames “Sir-Limps-A-Lot” (which didn’t make much sense considering her gender), “The Gimp,” and “Crippled Cow.” The cow part, of course, was for the fact that she’d gained a bit of weight since the accident. Something that was somewhat inevitable when you combined the burgeoning hormones of a thirteen-year-old and her limited ability.
To add insult to her injury, her uncle hadn’t been able to pick her up from school that Friday. To her, there was nothing as humiliating as walking along the side of a road. People had no choice but to stare at her as she went past, and she could almost hear what they were all thinking. “I wonder what happened to her. Why does she walk so funny? Why is she wearing jeans when it’s one hundred degrees outside?” She could see their curious stares as they drove past, see them forming the judgements in their heads.