by Ace Gray
But, of course, she’s going to bulldoze unlucky thirteen. Her favorite number, my least. I still remember those little things, those little quirks about her, even now.
Cam Collins is seared into my brain.
The bar stops when she walks in. Well, barrels in. She’s still a total klutz but otherwise, Cam’s earned her high school superlative of Most Changed.
Whatever she does these days, she’s successful. And damn it, money suits her. She doesn’t wear it like gaudy jewelry. She opts for a thick rich coat with leather patches on the elbows, jeans that could be painted on and stilettos with crimson bottoms that are as devilishly sexy as her crimson lips.
I hate her.
Mike’s following her around like a puppy dog and I’ve never wanted to kick a puppy until now. He takes her heavy coat, revealing a chunky knit sweater underneath that somehow hugs her tits and shows off her midriff all at once. She’s grown into her other superlative as well, the unofficial one the guys gave her in the locker room, Best Tits.
I hate Mike, too.
Cam’s shy smile hasn’t changed. Of all the things I imagined her to be now, shy isn’t one of them. The Cam Collins I’ve envisioned is a fearless, globetrotting snob. Certain of everything and unwilling to compromise. She started cultivating that persona when she shredded my heart to confetti. I’ve spent the past thirteen years convincing myself that somehow I’d missed all the warning signs.
My stomach twists because that smile, the one I knew intimately, has me questioning myself. She’s nervous. Here, in The Barn. At one of the most unassuming bars you can imagine, filled with the people that know her best, she’s got her hands digging in her sweater sleeves.
The urge to hug her wells in my chest and radiates out to my fingertips. She’s well on her way to wobbly-kneed, teeth-chattering nerves that are just as likely to cause her physical pain as they are me. I’m taken off guard and utterly unsettled. The last time I saw her that nervous…
But thinking about that day claws at me. While we didn’t break up that day, the day I put her on a plane to Edinburgh was the day I lost her. A wave of hatred surges and barrels through me replacing any desire to touch her or talk to her. This is a familiar wave, one that I ride as it consumes me. One I’ve ridden many times with each recollection of her kicking me metaphorically in the balls.
I really am trying to rip my eyes away when Trigg hugs her over the bar. Cam’s sweater sneaks up revealing a tattoo. Subtle black and gray shading weaves up her right side. Whatever it is, starts below her denim waistband and travels up, disappearing under the white of her sweater. The sweater that her black bra pokes through. A whole other feeling claws through me.
I walk away.
Shoving through the backdoor, I take a deep breath. Such frigid cold air rushes into my lungs that I choke. It’s well below freezing on the patio, and now, inside my ribs. But frosty insides make me forget about the tumult of the bar, the ruckus of Cam. Since it’s colder than a witch’s tit out here I can’t think about anything besides hypothermia.
“Jay.” An attempt at a sultry purr weaves from the corner of the fenced in patio, making my nickname sound dirty and wrong.
There’s no accompanying face, just shadow buried under a faux fur hood.
“Who is that?” My whole face pinches and my eyelids sting the frozen parts of my eyeballs.
As the shadow of a body materializes into a full-figured woman, she shoves off her hood and I figure it out. Georgia is the only ginger in town. I should have known it was her because of the cheap matted fur of her coat. That and she’s been hitting on me for the past four years.
“Hey Georgia. How are you?” I sigh as I hunch my shoulders, digging my hands deeper into my pockets.
“Why are you out here freezing your ass off?” She throws her arms around me and stale cigarette smoke puffs out of her jacket.
Well because Cam is inside being Cam—you know a flawless, gorgeous, unassuming heartbreaking bitch.
“Just needed some fresh air.” That’s much more acceptable than admitting I’m waffling between fantasizing about kissing and killing Cam.
“I’m glad to have the company, but it’s freezing.” She’s still stroking my arms and it’s taking everything in me not to push back gracelessly. “Can I buy you a drink?” She not-so-subtly presses her chest to mine.
And my first thought is maybe that will make Cam jealous. My second is that I hate being so damned twisted up.
“Sure,” I answer before I allow myself to fall further down the wormhole that’s opened up with the crimson lips of my ex.
The moment we walk back into the bar, I slyly check whether Cam’s watching. She’s not. Trigg is though. With a cocked eyebrow. My hand naturally moves to Georgia’s back to guide her to the bar.
“Trigg, give me a Pabst.” Georgia pounds her fist on the bar and my skin crawls.
I didn’t think it was possible, but Trigg’s eyebrow arches further as she pulls and cracks a can. She slides it as she asks for three dollars.
“I’m buying AJ a drink.” Georgia somehow swigs beer while she speaks.
I try not to notice that Cam twists on her stool. Or that her neck arches gracefully as she looks up from under her eyelashes. When I’m sure she’s not scanning the creaky weathered floorboards, I throw my arm around Georgia’s shoulder. Cam’s head snaps back toward the pool table and Georgia leans into me.
“I’m buying AJ a drink.” Trigg’s snarl pulls me back to the bar. “Don’t be an idiot,” she adds to me under her breath.
Trigg slams a glass of whiskey on the bar all the same and pushes it toward me. I roll my eyes then snatch it while it’s still sliding. She and I face off over the top of the glass, seeing who can shoot more vicious daggers until Georgia starts pulling.
I let her drag me over to where her brothers are posted up by Golden Tee. The video game glows on the faces of the twins I played hockey with freshman year of high school. They’re not the group of people I’d like to be hanging out with tonight, but I’ve worked myself into this corner—literally.
I console myself with a sip of the amber booze in my hand. Smoke hits me hard and the harsh, tart burn of bourbon plays in my throat and nostrils. I was expecting Jack or Jameson, not this. Never this. It’s exceptional. There is something oaky, bitter, earthy and undeniably sweet coating my tongue. And there’s another flavor, something I can’t place, but it’s homey, beautiful and complex.
It tastes like the memory of Cam.
While I’m sipping it, nodding aimlessly at Georgia, the pool table gets taken over. Mike, Janie, and Jimmy are standing up, milling about. Every fiber of my being is praying that Cam isn’t their fourth player. I don’t think I can take watching her play pool.
“Your turn, Jay,” Georgia’s throaty voice turns my stomach almost as bad as the memories assaulting me.
I make sure to take it out on the video game, slamming the white rollerball far more violently than necessary. But by some miracle, I do well. Georgia is draped around me and I’m so fixated on the pixelated screen, I don’t brush her off. For a while, I’m actually on that course in Palm Springs, launching golf balls, and blissfully unaware of my past.
“Damn,” I yell when I screw up the perfect putt. Georgia squeals with disappointment and punches my shoulder harder than is absolutely necessary. Since it’s Bo’s turn, I decide to take a piss and get a refill.
Worst. Idea. Ever.
I should have stayed in my desert oasis whatever the cost in shimmering coins. Barely behind me, Cam is bent over the pool table, angling at a difficult shot. Those painted on jeans accentuate curves I don’t remember her having. Curves I want to paw. Then there’s the mysterious tattoo. It cuts across cream colored skin and I want to lick it—lick her—despite everything between us.
To make matters worse, she makes the near-impossible shot. The Cam Collins I know is three things: uncoordinated, callous and the world’s worst pool player. I’d had to help her with every shot sh
e ever took, my body wrapped completely around hers, my hands guiding her every movement. Almost every time she’d look over at me rather than the ball.
But she’s well on her way to running the table.
How long has she had these skills? Did she develop them because I wasn’t there? My heart twists at the thought.
Or, worse, could she always do this, her mind so accustomed to angles and trajectories, but wanted my hands on her?
Fuck.
I don’t know why I’ve thought of the possibility, but it’s the most dangerous one yet because it sucks me back to that warm summer night when we’d played the best game of pool of my life. I’d helped her with each shot. She’d wiggled her ass up against my crotch too many times to count. Just when I thought I was going to have to take her home then jerk off, she’d grabbed my hand and pulled me out to the 13th green behind Molly Merithew’s house.
Crickets chirped, punctuating her labored breathing. There was the slightest warm breeze tickling my skin. I never asked if it was the breeze or me that peaked her nipples when she shimmied out of her white eyelet linen top. I couldn’t really ask anything as Cam stripped naked behind the willow trees and let me have her for the first time, bathed in moonlight. When we snuggled under the stars she wore nothing but my flannel.
I never got that shirt back. I’d sworn off anything remotely related to vanilla, too—that’s what Cam tasted like.
Shit.
That’s what the hidden taste in the bourbon was.
Fuck pool. Fuck this delicious bourbon. And fuck Cam Collins.
“AJ, room.” Mike taps my hip with his pool cue.
“Yeah, man. Sorry.” I snap out of summer so many years ago and turn on my heel for the bar.
“Same?” Trigg asks evaluating the set of my jaw as if it’s a riddle she’s determined to solve.
“No,” I snap before reining in my temper. “Tequila.”
I almost miss it, but Trigg’s eyes dart over to Cam. We both know how miserable tequila makes her. We both know that’s why I’m drinking it.
“I don’t think you really want tequila, AJ. I think you want more of that bourbon.” She shoots me a skeptical face.
“No. I don’t want that trash ever again. What’s it called so I can avoid it at all costs?”
She purses her lips and once more her gaze flits to Cam. This time I can’t figure out why.
“It’s called Thirteen, AJ.” She sighs and hauls Sauza up onto the bar, pouring before I can say anything else.
Thirteen. Bastard-ass Thirteen. Of course.
“Never again, you hear me?” I slam the shot she poured and grab a highball across the bar, despite the fact that Trigg tries to smack me. “Tequila.”
Trigg and I are close so she knows exactly what I’m asking for. With an extraordinarily heavy hand, she fills the highball and sneaks two limes onto the rim just in time for me to steal it and turn away in a huff.
After far too many drinks and a brooding tantrum over my golf game, I’ve succeeded in chasing Georgia away, losing track of Cam, and closing the bar.
As soon as I step outside sobriety hits me like a ton of bricks. Below freezing temperatures will do that. The street is utterly abandoned except for the plow that’s a good three blocks down the only highway that runs through town. Most of the lights around have dimmed or gone out completely, leaving me with a few streetlights, the stars and the soft Christmas lights from the window.
I take a deep breath, relishing my town, and feeling more like myself than I have all night.
“Fuuuuuuck,” a voice to my right drags out the curse, exasperated.
All I can see is telltale red-bottomed heels. I sigh. Cam is draped over a city bench much the way she always insisted lounging on couches—feet up, head down. I take a moment to drink in her legs once again. There is something about how foreign and dangerous those heels actually are that makes them even sexier. She swears again and kicks them loosely over the green metal back of the bench.
Before I can hesitate, I turn back toward the bar. Trigg can deal with this. But just as I reach for the door, all the lights of The Barn flip off including the Christmas lights casting reflections on Cam’s legs. I yank on the door anyway, hoping Trigg will hear and come to check things out, but I’ve been here once, or twice, or seventeen times at this hour, and know the master switch is the last thing she flips before the lock.
The world-weary sigh that escapes my lips even overshadows the plow finally rolling past. I stay still while it rolls by, hoping it will scoop her up and drag her away. While it grates and grinds past us, my eyes flip between the machine and the tiny speck of crimson that is her shoes. I want to leave her. Frostbite is as close as I can get to making her feel what I felt.
Snow crunches beneath my boots as I cross the small strip of sidewalk but she doesn’t pay attention. As I get closer, soft, sweet notes of something she’s humming punctuate her digging through her pockets. I shuffle to a wider stance, my arms crossed over my chest as I settle in to stand over her. It takes at least a minute before she opens her eyes, haunting hazel fixing right on me.
“What are you doing, Cam?” I say, harsher than is strictly necessary.
Her mouth opens and closes once or twice but she doesn’t find words.
“Cam?” Worry pools in my stomach when it dawns on me how drunk she has to be to lay upside down on a snowy bench.
“Jay,” she breathes my nickname and I swear it’s the oxygen rattling through my lungs.
“No one calls me Jay anymore.” I sigh. It’s not completely true, but no one makes me feel the things she does when she says it. “You’re sleeping on a bench, you know that right?”
“I wasn’t sleeping. I was cursing the universe, thank you very much.” She makes zero effort to sit up like a human being.
And she’s hooked me, despite everything.
“What did the universe do?” At least I manage to keep my smile from splitting my face.
“Took my cell. Can’t call my folks for a ride.”
I pull out my phone and start to dial. I remember the number as if it’s carved into my heart. It’s ringing when I hand it over. We sit in silence with only the chill of the wind to keep us company as she calls a few times. When her next expletive splits the peace of the night, she swirls to sit normally on the bench.
“Thanks.” She shoves my phone toward me, missing my hand completely, then kicks her feet for a few moments, snow flying beneath her perfect pointy toes.
“You can sleep on my couch.” I reach for her to help her feet.
When she stumbles like the Cam I know and love to hate, I pick her up, cradle her to my chest and start toward my house. Feeling her body against mine brings the slightest bit of tequila back up in my throat.
“You can put me down.” She slurs her words as if to remind me exactly how well her ankles will work, so I ignore her.
But I can’t ignore the feel of her. She’s strong and supple beneath all the wool. And her smell? She’s added delicious cherry to her intoxicating vanilla scent. Then there’s something I can’t put my finger on, something warm and homey.
I debate dropping her back in the snowbank I found her in.
“Never Gonna Change” Broods
Before last night’s memories even crash down around me, I know where I am. It’s the blanket wrapped around me that gives it away. How many times was I wrapped in this blanket at hockey games, bonfires or after we…
It smells like AJ, and when I bury my face further in, I convince myself it still smells like us. My heart twinges. When I finally pull the patchwork from my face I take the time to look around. It must be a signature Colorado bluebird day because the white walls of AJ’s place practically glow. Living in the Pacific Northwest, I’ve forgotten about this kind of light, the kind that ricochets off snowbanks for a truly blinding effect.
There’s barely any artwork on his walls and nothing but beer cans and video game jackets on his coffee table. AJ must be a bac
helor. Girls in Willow Creek will put up with a lot to hook up with a decent guy, but even they won’t live in the midst of this. The thought is surprisingly reassuring.
The fact that there is a full bookcase behind the couch I’m curled on is too. I was always so sure that deep down AJ had wanted to explore. It’s why I included him in my wild and roving future back then. It was why I was so devastated when I found out he was choosing Willow Creek over me. But maybe that bookshelf, those titles, mean he still dreams of adventure.
I blow out a deep breath and last night slowly filters in. I made it through an evening at The Barn, something I didn’t think I could do. Though I’d drank too much of my bourbon to do it. I smile at the fact that Trigg stocked it, though.
But as soon as I smile, I choke on panic. The reason I’m here is because I couldn’t find my phone. And without my phone, I’m lost. I shove the quilt out of the way, along with any twisted delight at being in AJ’s house, and start digging around in the pockets of my jacket where it’s slung over the back of a recliner.
Nothing.
As futile as it is, I check my jean pockets. They’re so tight that I can barely dig out the credit card I’d slipped in. I remember the fabric of AJ’s jacket, not because I can picture him in it but because I hope I remember the feel of his chest against my cheek for the foreseeable future.
Idiot.
I roll my eyes at myself as I scan the room. The sleek black ski jacket is hanging by the door and I rummage those pockets too, praying.
“Shit,” I swear quietly then take a deep breath.
I’ve learned panic does me zero favors but coffee always does me about a thousand. I can problem solve if I just get a cup in me.
I tiptoe toward the kitchen, trying not to creak the floorboards beneath me. When one groans all the same, I freeze completely and my shoulders shoot up to my ears. AJ’s been kind giving me a place to sleep, too kind really. Kind and gorgeous—well, flat out hot actually—just like the boy who waved goodbye at the international terminal of DIA. At the memory, the whole flood of them, I almost topple in his hallway.