by Drew Hayes
“I know, but if we hadn’t pressured you—”
“Mary, I know you mean well, but please stop. I don’t need another person in my life doing this,” Camille interrupted. Mary, for her part, blinked in surprise. She couldn’t have imagined Camille interrupting someone before actually seeing it happen. “I know I’m anxious in social settings, I know I’m not the bravest person in our class, and I know I seem like I need people to look after me. And because I know all that, I purposely do things like come to bars, enroll in the program, and make myself uncomfortable. I push myself because I want to be stronger. We’re all doing it; this is just the area I’m battling in. So don’t ever feel like you’ve made me do anything. I’m the one shoving myself into these awkward situations, and there’s no one else to blame.”
“I . . . that honestly hadn’t occurred to me,” Mary replied, after a moment of consideration. “My apologies.”
“It’s okay. Most people don’t think being around lots of other people is something that requires effort and training. I am getting better, though. I mean, look at Vince. Freshman year, I was barely able to talk to him. Now, I can actually spend time with him as a friend without constantly blushing.”
“You have made some impressive strides in that regard.”
“I have, haven’t I?” Camille slowly moved herself down from the stool, happy to see that her sense of movement had somewhat stabilized. “Hey, Mary, I want you to know that this is my decision too, and it’s not the alcohol making me do it.”
“What are you doing?”
“Taking your advice,” Camille replied, turning toward the table where a young man who’d been staring at her suddenly glanced away in embarrassment, “and pushing myself.”
28.
“Yo, Chad, let me get a glass of water and an empty beer bottle, mine is full,” Angela said as she walked up, sliding a brown bottle sloshing with a myriad of spit-back shots across the smooth countertop. Chad plucked it from the bar as it danced near the edge, dropping it in the trashcan while pulling up one of the empties he’d set aside. Angela had let him in on the shot girl’s trick and requested he have a few empty bottles saved for change-outs when needed. With his other hand, Chad grabbed a glass, then filled it with ice and water, sliding it back across the bar.
“Thanks, hot stuff,” she said, grabbing a seat at a stool adjacent to Vince. “I’m sweating like a whore in church out there. Thank the heavens I’m sexy enough to pull it off.” To illustrate this fact, she grabbed a napkin and dabbed her cleavage pointedly, the coy grin on her face making it clear that she was purposely drawing attention to this part of her body.
Vince made a point of looking away, which is when he noticed Camille stepping onto the dance floor with another man. Roy checked out Angela’s breasts, because he was Roy and they were quite nice breasts. Chad, on the other hand, coughed in surprise, nearly dropped the bottle opener he was holding, and suddenly found something in the ice bin that demanded his full attention.
It was the last reaction that Angela took note of. In the year or so that she’d befriended and been shamelessly flirting around Chad, she’d come to know his reactions well. To a simple stunt like this, she would have expected disinterest, or, at best, academic appreciation of her physiology. What he’d done was way out of character. That was the behavior of a man who was smitten, or maybe at least interested. It didn’t fit, and Angela wasn’t the top of her class because she wasn’t perceptive enough to pick up on changes like that. She decided to push it and see what happened.
“I swear, lugging bottles and shots around in these boots is hell on my back,” Angela declared, stretching her chest out and pulling her back in so significantly that the crackling of vertebrae could be heard, provided one could discern the sound over the music. This had the additional effect of making her chest all the more visible, and redoubling Chad’s intent focus on the ice bin. “Chad, when we get off, maybe you can give me a back rub? You’ve got all that strength in your hands, so I bet you can really go in deep and work the tissue.”
“I do not believe I will have time for that this evening,” Chad replied stiffly, refusing to turn his gaze up toward her. He wasn’t blushing, and his tone and breathing were still the same, but that didn’t really mean shit for a guy with his powers. He could hide the physical tells well, but not the behavioral ones. Normally, Chad would have at least talked over the idea with her, seen about finding a time. He’d have taken a request for a massage as just that, a proven method of physical therapy to provide relief and increased performance. The sexual implications would have gone right by him, or at least he’d have pretended they did. Something was definitely off. Angela was certain of it now.
Without any showmanship, she dropped the napkin and straightened her back. Messing with Chad was fun because he never gave her any response. Now that he was reacting, it somehow felt mean-spirited. She’d need to get a handle on this new situation, and then determine the appropriate plan of attack. Besides, she was a professional first and foremost, and the shots weren’t going to sell themselves.
“Thanks again for the water,” Angela said. This time, Chad dared to glance at her. She turned her own gaze away from her prey, and realized the stool next to her was now empty.
“Hey, where’d Vince go?”
* * *
“I’m impressed. I don’t know how you did it, but I’m impressed,” Vince said, taking his former seat next to Mary. Though he spoke to his friend, his eyes never left the dance floor, save for necessary navigational tasks.
“I don’t really think I had much to do with it,” Mary replied. “Camille doesn’t need us to push her along. She’s pretty much got that task well in hand.”
“So I’ve noticed,” Vince said, still looking at the awkwardly shuffling figures trying to keep time and two-step. “It’s actually kind of amazing how brave she is, the way she’s always throwing herself out of her comfort zone. I don’t think I could do it, honestly.”
Mary glanced at her friend and opened up her ability a bit. It was hard to hear over the constant thud of the music and the flurry of hormone-amplified thoughts, but all her training hadn’t been for nothing. She was able to locate Vince’s mind through the chaos and hone in on it. What she found surprised her: Vince was genuinely happy Camille was dancing with the other man. It shocked her so much, in fact, that she let slip an audible reaction.
“What the hell?”
Vince glanced away from floor and toward her. “What the hell what?”
A quick parade of potential lies darted through Mary’s head, but then she decided that since she was already on the precipice of the subject, she might as well just dive on in.
“What the hell is with you and Camille? I know you like her, Vince. Even if I wasn’t a mind reader, it’s obvious you look at her differently than you do other women. And not even you can be so dense as to not realize that she’s got some feelings for you too. So why are you happy seeing her dance with another man?”
“Because I want her to be happy,” Vince said, finally turning fully away from the dance floor. “Yes, I did begin to suspect that she had a small crush on me, and that’s why I’m glad she’s looking at other guys. They can give her what I can’t.”
“That’s idiotic,” Mary snapped. Her words might have been more forceful, but she’d spent most of her verbal energy trying not to snort audibly when Vince had said the words “small crush” to her. “If you know you both like each other, what’s stopping you?”
“The same reason I turned down Sasha when she wanted to get together at the beach house last year,” Vince said. “I’ve got some issues relating to a girl I met when I was sixteen. The thoughts and memories of her haunted my relationship with Sasha. Until I let go or move past it, it’s not fair for me to give half of myself to someone else. Especially not someone as important to me as Camille.”
Mary pressed her fingers to her temples in a vain attempt to fight back a momentary headache. “Your heart and in
tentions are in the right place, Vince, I’ll give you that. But you’re also a moron. Whether Camille wants to be with someone in your situation should be her choice, not yours to make for her.”
“Maybe so,” Vince agreed. “But all I’m doing is not making a move. If Camille wanted something, couldn’t she have brought it up just as easily? To me, for right now, I’d say she’s making the choice.”
To that point, Mary didn’t have a ready response.
29.
Asking someone to dance had been surprisingly easy. Whether it was the alcohol or the adrenaline Camille was uncertain, but the whole event had flown by in a series of pointed looks and a single question which yielded an immediate response. Initiating the dance had been easy; it was actually completing the act that was proving difficult.
The first hurdle was the height difference, which had her reasonably tall partner slouching as gracefully as he could to somewhat close the gap between them. The second was the dance style itself. Camille did have rhythm and grace; her mother had forced her to take ballet as one of many ultimately failed attempts at getting her to open up socially. What she didn’t have was any practice two-stepping. Even that hurdle might have been surmountable, though, if not for the fact that her partner had no experience either, and unlike her, he lacked both inborn talent and training. The combined result of these issues was a duet of blundering across the dance floor and trying in vain to avoid running into other dancers.
None of this helped Camille’s growing sense of embarrassment, nor did the sight of Vince watching from their table. She loathed every minute of this, however, she refused to yield. If she ran away from this moment, who knew when she might gather up the courage to try again.
“Do you go to Lander?”
The voice took her so much by surprise that she nearly tripped on her next step, recovering only because of reflexes honed by years of training. After a moment, she realized the question had come from her dance partner, who was looking down at her quizzically, clearly awaiting a response. Inwardly, she cursed the fact that this place kept the music low enough to allow conversation, dearly wishing she could feign not hearing and continue their bumbling silence.
“Yes,” she said eventually, more to get him to focus on dancing and stop staring than anything else.
“Me too! I’m a Communications major. My name is Ross.”
“Camille,” Camille replied softly. Despite her love of not talking, etiquette compelled her to respond.
“What’s your major, Camille?”
For the barest of moments, she almost blurted out that she was in the HCP, but at the last second, she remembered the major written on her transcript and kept her secret preserved.
“Biology.”
“Nice. You want to be a doctor or something?”
“Or something. I haven’t really picked a field yet.”
“Not me, I’m going to be a television reporter and work my way up to anchor,” Ross informed her, flashing a cheesy grin that likely would have looked in place on a man with tightly gelled hair sitting behind a news desk.”
At that moment, several other couples danced by, forcing them to maneuver away and cutting the conversation short. Camille breathed a momentary sigh of relief with the fleeting hope that the interruption of verbal momentum would finish off their talk. That hope was quickly extinguished, however, once the last of the dancers went by.
“So, Camille, what year are you?”
“Junior,” she said, slightly louder than usual, because the only thing worse than talking was having to repeat herself.
“Get out of town. I’m a senior myself, though I’d have pegged you as a sophomore.”
“Thank you?”
“Sorry, didn’t mean that in an unkind way. Heck, most women I know are always fretting about looking older than they are, so I guess I meant it as a compliment.”
“I appreciate it,” Camille said. As she spoke, the song finally came to an end and a slower one began to play. Ross showed no signs of letting go, but she took a few steps back and broke their embrace. Three regular songs had pushed her limits; a slow one was well beyond what she could currently handle.
“Thank you for the dance,” she said hurriedly, then rushed off the dance floor and back to her table. Only after arriving did she remember that he would be sitting only a few feet away, but there was nothing she could do about it without making everyone move—an act which would be unnecessarily hurtful.
“Hey there,” Vince said as she sat down. “How was your dance?”
“Lovely,” Camille lied. It wasn’t completely untrue—the music had been nice and her company had been cordial. It had only been terrible because of her own shyness. That, and the fact that Ross, while sweet, wasn’t Vince.
“Are you feeling okay?” Mary asked.
It took Camille a minute to remember that she’d been moving toward drunkenness before she left. The indications she’d been seeing were suppressed by the tremendous amount of fear-induced adrenaline that surged through her veins while on the dance floor. As she sat still and her heart rate slowed, she did notice a light sensation of relaxation beginning to fill her head.
“I think I’m okay,” Camille said. “Probably best that I stopped when I did.”
“No kidding,” Vince said. “The last thing you want to do is pull a me at Thomas’s party and get sick. Thank goodness I had you there to help.” At those words, he patted her shoulder, and the mellow calm in Camille’s head took a noticeable turn toward her usual embarrassment. Somewhere along the way it got lost, though, and no creeping blush ran across her cheeks. That was strange. She wondered if perhaps she was underestimating the impact of Alice’s shots, but then dismissed the worry. It was hard to stay worried about anything at the moment.
* * *
“Those two are strange, don’t you think?” Roy said, busting several now empty boxes and jamming them to the back of the bar until they could be disposed of.
“What two?” Chad asked.
“Camille and Vince. That girl couldn’t be any more into him without literally burrowing into his chest, and he seems to be giving her some glances too.”
“Attraction is not strange among two people of similar personalities and comeliness,” Chad said.
“No, I mean it’s strange that they like each other, yet neither seems to be making a move. It seems like, if you want something, you should go after it, don’t you agree?” Roy knew he was sticking his nose in where it didn’t belong, and that his advice was unlikely to yield results, but all the same, he couldn’t help himself. He liked Chad, and obviously Angela did too, albeit in a much different way. There probably weren’t many women who would look past his weird, detached mental state, and it seemed a shame for him to miss his shot with a hottie that clearly fit that criteria.
“Sometimes, things are more complicated than mere desire,” Chad replied.
“People say that, but in my experience, all those complications are usually just people making excuses because they’re afraid. They might be scared of different things: commitment, rejection, betrayal, but in the end, it just means they’re always too afraid to swing at a ball they want to hit.”
“She’s my best friend’s sister,” Chad pointed out.
“Seems like it would be really easy to bring it up with him, then,” Roy countered. “All I’m saying is this: at the end of their lives, I don’t imagine many people lay in their deathbeds and say ‘Damn, I wish I had gone for less things I genuinely wanted.’ Just think about it.”
Chad gave a non-committal nod, which Roy chose to interpret as agreement, and then went back to work.
30.
Vince hefted Camille up the steps to Violet’s room, a task made easier by his frequent training and her relatively light weight. They’d gotten through the rest of the night without incident, even made it over to Roy and Chad’s bar for Camille and Mary to greet them; however, the late hour and undeniable effects of alcohol had begun to take a toll on a
ll of them, though Camille got it the worst. She’d managed to avoid full-blown intoxication, however, halfway home, the soothing song of inebriation had lulled her into resting her head against the window and falling asleep. Neither being heavy drinkers, they called Violet to see if there was anything Camille might need, and the fellow Super had demanded they bring her over immediately.
“You sure she’s okay?” Violet asked, her rare motherly impulses actively engaged. She’d worried since their call, and was none too pleased to see her friend sleeping in Vince’s arms.
“She should be fine,” Mary assured her. “As soon as we left, she healed her liver; now, it’s just a matter of sleeping it all off.”
“I’m not that surprised she went down. The girl usually goes to bed long before now,” Violet said.
“Hopefully she’ll feel better in the morning,” Vince said, bumping the door open with his hip as he carried her inside. Once Camille was deposited on Violet’s bed, he took a trashcan from the restroom and set it on the floor beside her. While he did that, Violet produced an extra-large bottle of water and set it on the nightstand.
“I doubt she’ll need this stuff—her healing always takes away my hangovers—but I’ll still sleep better knowing she has it,” Violet said as she pulled back the covers and yanked off Camille’s shoes. The small girl awoke at her feet being exposed, blinking sleepily as she adjusted to the surroundings.
“Where’m I?” Camille mumbled groggily.
“Vince and Mary brought you over after you fell asleep,” Violet explained, sweeping the covers over her friend.
“I went to sleep?” Her confusion was broken up by a loud yawn that escaped her mouth before it could be stifled. Only after it concluded did she speak again. “I’m sorry about that.”
“Don’t be, Mary and I are pretty tired too,” Vince reassured her. “You did what we all wanted to do. You just got there first. Sleep well.”