All Tangled Up

by Caitlin Ricci

  Chapter Eight

  Gavin

  Having a weekend off felt amazing, but it was only a weekend away from working in my store. I still had plenty to do with my sheep, which was the whole reason I’d asked Kyle to cover the store on Saturday to begin with. It wasn’t open Sundays, so he only had to cover the six hours between ten and four. I tried not to worry about him or the store while I was gone. It wasn’t easy. Maybe I was a natural worrier or something. Maybe having a kid had made me that way.

  I focused on the sheep instead. They needed so much care when it came time to shear them. I normally had my family over, but they were all busy. The only person who had been free for a few hours was Asher, one of my cousins. He’d been a screw-up for a few years with his drinking, but he was supposed to be doing better now. I wasn’t so sure about that. I wanted to believe him, but I saw how often he went to the club where Cal stripped, and I knew they had a two-drink minimum there. Still, I was hopeful. I never wanted to see any of the people I cared about in the hospital for a serious car accident again.

  Asher didn’t say much when we were together, which was fine by me. Everyone else talked too much at times, in my opinion. He helped move the sheep around with big metal cattle panels, separating them as I needed. “I’m only doing the wethers today,” I called to him as he tried to bring me a ewe.

  “Sorry,” Asher said as he put her back with the others I wasn’t shearing today. She was more than happy to go munch on hay with the rest of the ewes. “I’m not exactly checking underneath them before I bring them over to you.”

  I laughed and wrestled a wether into position for an easy clip. I liked shearing them by hand instead of using an electric shearer on them, but it did take longer. Still, I enjoyed the closeness it gave me to the sheep as I moved the blades over their skin to leave them with a little of their wool, but not very much.

  “I can’t believe you can turn these dirty animals into yarn that people actually want to buy,” Asher called out.

  Snorting, I shook my head. He didn’t see the long process of cleaning the raw wool, of washing it multiple times in the sink and then leaving it out to dry only to have to rewash it because I missed a spot of dirt in a brown patch of wool. He didn’t know the hours that I spent working that clean wool between my tools and over my spinner to eventually turn it into the beautiful yarn I knew it could be. He only saw the dirty sheep that I needed his help sorting. He saw the fifty-pound bags of feed I’d had his help unloading over the years. He knew their expense and the effort that I’d put into them, but he didn’t know the final result and the sense of pride that I felt in being able to take something so raw that it was still attached to my animals and turn it into something someone could use to make something beautiful for themselves or someone they loved.

  And that was okay, because I liked apples, and I ate them regularly, but I didn’t get the same sense of peace from walking in his orchard that he did. I didn’t know all of the different types of apples that he grew and what they were best used for. I couldn’t tell someone what to go pick to make the best apple pie they’d ever had in their lives, but he could. I was glad we all had our own little farms, because it meant we weren’t stepping on each other’s toes, but also because we each got what we needed out of them. He needed his quiet, his peace, and he got that with his apples.

  “So Dillon tells me that you’re dating Cal’s ex.”

  Asher brought it up so casually, I wondered how long he’d been hanging onto that question before deciding to ask it.

  “News really does travel fast in this family.” I’d always known that, and had been part of it more than once. It had been all kinds of a scandal within the family when I’d become an unmarried teenage father, and plenty of people had given me their opinions one what the best thing for me to do would have been.

  Asher pushed another wether toward me. “So it’s true then?”

  “We’ve gone on one date. I kind of doubt that’s considered dating.”

  Asher shrugged. “Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. I guess it depends on how much you like him, and also what the date actually was. A walk through the zoo at sunset can be pretty freaking romantic, and I’d call that a date.”

  He did have a point there. “Coffee and a trip to a bookshop after?”

  “Maybe. Really depends there. I haven’t gone on a lot of dates lately, so I’m probably not the best person to ask that.”

  It had felt like a date to me. I sighed and went back to focusing on the sheep. We had a dozen or so more to get through.

  “Aren’t you ever tempted to hire someone for this? Get them all done at once kind of thing? I hire some guys every year to help me harvest the apples when they really start falling.”

  Asher’s idea was a good one, and one I’d considered more than once. But...”I’m picky about who works with my sheep. And besides, I’ve got enough family with all of you that I shouldn’t have to.”

  Asher rolled his eyes. “As much as we like to help each other out, not all of us are willing to get dirty with a bunch of smelly sheep. That’s your thing.”

  If I’d had some wool that wasn’t heavy and filthy lying around, I would have thrown it at him, but since I didn’t, I threw some hay at him instead. He ducked, the bastard. And I wasn’t fast enough to avoid the dirt he tossed at me. Laughing, I brushed myself off, then I got back to work. There were plenty of sheep to shear, and that wasn’t even the end of my chores for the day. There were more animals to feed, the barn to clean, and I wanted to get all the wool I was getting off the sheep hung in the garage before sunset. I didn’t have a lot of time to be playing around or talking about my dating life, but the break had felt good.

  “Do you really think you can handle dating someone you know cheated on a person he claimed to love?” Asher asked me after we were done with the chores. He’d stuck around to help, and I appreciated that, but now that he’d broken his silence with that question.

  Sighing, I led us toward the house, and the waiting iced tea inside. I needed a shower, but I settled for washing fom my fingertips up to my elbows and then getting us the tea while he got cleaned up as well.

  “I don’t know,” I quietly admitted as we sat there on my back deck looking out at the pastures and the grazing sheep. “I wish he was just someone I’d met sometime. Like at a coffee shop or at a fiber convention or something. This would be so much easier if he didn’t have a very intimate, and also recent, history with the guy my baby cousin is dating.”

  Asher cringed, probably at me calling Dillon a baby. It was an old habit, and not one I was likely to break anytime soon.

  “Do you expect that he would cheat again, though? Like say you finally got an employee, and he was some cute guy, and you two spent a lot of time together because of course you had to. Would you be afraid that he’d cheat just to get back at you for cheating in his own mind like he did with Cal?”

  I hated his question. I even hated him a little bit for asking it. Because he was right, I would be worried about that. “Maybe he’s learned his lesson.” I didn’t believe that though. Not really. “It’s probably best that I don’t see him again.”

  Asher shrugged. “That’s your call. For me, personally, I wouldn’t date someone who I knew had cheated. See, but that’s the thing too. There’s degrees of cheating. There’s hey, I got drunk and I didn’t know what I was doing and I couldn’t really consent but I think I had sex with someone kind of cheating, and then if they try to stay sober from there on out then... yeah I’d probably forgive them because in that situation all they did was get drunk. Everything else was done to them.”

  I knew where he was going with this, and it didn’t make Travis look good at all. “He wasn’t drunk, and it wasn’t a one-time thing. I don’t know all the details, but I know enough to know that it continued.”

  “Did he come clean and tell Cal what happened or did Cal find out on his own? Because that matters too.”

  I sipped
my tea and wished I had the answers. I wished that I didn’t have to either ask Travis point blank to find out what I wanted to know. I could ask Cal, but that seemed so personal. I could have called Dillon and bothered him about it, but that bordered on wrong, too. “I wish there was an easy answer for this.”

  “There is,” Asher assured me.

  “Which is?”

  He didn’t look happy about it as he sipped his tea. “Don’t date the guy who you know cheated on his ex.”

  My brain was definitely listening to Asher. My heart though...my heart liked Travis. I liked him. I’d enjoyed kissing him. Was that so wrong? I sighed again and sat back in the chair. “Do you think it would be a really bad move to call Cal and ask him how he found out? Is it really that important to know whether or not Travis came clean to him before they broke up?”

  Asher turned and looked at me like I was crazy. “Of course it matters if Cal knew or if Travis told him. One shows remorse. The other... The other is just wrong as hell.”

  He was right. Of course he was. And yet I definitely didn’t want to know the answer to that question. Still, hours after Asher had left, well past Kyle’s bedtime even, I called Cal.

  “Gavin? Everything okay?” he answered me right away.

  I heard loud music in the background, so I knew he was at work. It was Friday and I’d taken a chance, so I was glad to know I’d guessed right that he’d be working and not on a date with Dillon or asleep or something. It was also pretty good that I’d caught him on a break. “I have a really dumb, really bad question that I probably shouldn’t even be asking to begin with.” It was a mistake even to call him. I should have just never dialed, or I should have hung up right away, but now that I’d opened my mouth I couldn’t really stop it.

  “What’s the question? If it’s about me and Dillon, he’s going to be pissed if you ask something ridiculous.”

  At least he didn’t sound so worried anymore. He sounded almost amused, which was weird. I’d expected him to be closer to annoyed with me. I was trying not to be the overprotective cousin where Dillon was concerned anymore, but it was really hard to do sometimes. “No, it’s a question about you and Travis. About how you broke up.”

  “Oh. Okay then. You two are thinking about dating, so feel free to ask I guess. I’ll tell you what I can. It’s not like I’ve tried to hide any of this from anyone.”

  I appreciated that. I really did. Only now that I was ready to ask him, I hoped that I actually wanted the answer. I hoped that I could handle it once I got it. “Did he come clean with the cheating and tell you, or did you catch him? It matters, I guess. To me. And whether or not I want to do try dating him.”

  I waited, not so patiently either, as Cal took his time answering me.

  “I found out,” he said after a few quiet moments. “He didn’t deny it—not like he could have, anyway, but it would have been nice to have been told right away. It would have been nice if he had thought it was a mistake at all. I don’t think that came until after, not until he realized I was serious about ending things with him.”

  It was pretty much the worst thing I could have heard. “Shit.”

  “Yeah. It sucked. Have I turned you away from dating him?”

  He probably had, actually. “I think so. He seems nice but...” The truth was that I didn’t want to find my boyfriend cheating on me one day like Cal had.

  “He is nice. But yeah, he did cheat, and that’s not going away. I don’t blame you for not wanting to give him a chance. I don’t think anyone would blame you.”

  I sat in my bed and played with my sheets and wondered what I was supposed to say next. “Is, uh...is work good?” I really didn’t care, but I thought it would have been rude to just jump off the phone after asking him about something that was probably a pretty horrible memory.

  “Things are good. Dillon bought me a bright red thong to wear when I dance. I think it clashes with my hair, but the tips have been good since I showed it off. You could always come down. I know you came the one time, but that wasn’t really a visit. I could give you my schedule for next week so you could stop by on a day I’m not here, if that would make it easier for you.”

  I cringed. None of that sounded good to me. I liked that he was trying to be considerate of me, but a gay strip club really wasn’t my thing. I was movies and pizza on the couch with my kid, not pushing singles in a thong until midnight. “Thanks, but I’m not really one for clubs. I like the quiet life.”

  Cal chuckled. “I get that. Am I still invited to game night tomorrow?”

  It was after midnight, so game night was today but yeah, he’d always be invited as long as he was with Dillon. “Yep. You’re dating Dillon. You’re invited. No reason to ask. See you tonight. Thanks for the info.”

  “No problem. Sorry it wasn’t better news. Goodnight.” He hung up, and I did too.

  It sucked, but now at least I knew what I had to do.

  Chapter Nine

  Travis

  I didn’t really expect to have Gavin calling me early in the morning, but I was definitely happy to see his number pop up on my phone. “Hey.” I was smiling as I answered his call.

  “Hey. Do you have a minute to talk?”

  He didn’t sound happy about calling me. I instantly knew that something was up and that I wasn’t going to like it one bit. I took a seat on my couch. It wasn’t comfortable like the one in Cal’s house had been, but at least this one was all mine. “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to go out again. You’re welcome at the shop anytime.”

  I had no idea where this turn was coming from, but I really wanted to know. I thought that we’d had fun together. We had, hadn’t we? “What’s bringing this on? Is it just too weird to date someone that is the ex of someone you know?”

  “It would be the easy answer to just tell you that’s the reason, but it wouldn’t be the truth.” He sighed deeply. “No. I can’t get over how you cheated on him.”

  I pursed my lips. Was I never going to live this down? “What does that have to do with us?” I figured he probably had some kind of excuse, and that it was probably pretty ridiculous. But I still wanted to hear it. I wanted him to tell me why the mistake I made while dating Cal mattered at all to him. Gavin wasn’t Cal, and yet I was still being punished for what I’d done with him. It didn’t make any sense and, maybe by his silence, Gavin knew that too.

  “You loved him, right? And you cheated on him so easily. You barely know me. What’s to say that you won’t cheat on me the first chance you get?”

  I wanted to hang up on him. No, I wanted to throw my phone across the room. “It wasn’t easy for me to cheat on him,” I ground out. I was trying to keep my cool. I didn’t want to fight about this. Not with him, and not with anyone else. I already felt like enough crap about it.

  “Then why did you?” he asked.

  I sighed. I was tired of trying to explain this, but I hadn’t explained it to him yet so maybe that was something he needed to know. I’d said a little, sure, but maybe not enough. Or maybe he needed to hear it again. Either way, I decided to tell him the truth. “I thought Cal was cheating all the time. I thought that if I cheated on him, and he got hurt, then he would realize how much he was hurting me. He refused to stop working. I thought he liked being with other guys. I’m pretty sure, now, that he never cheated on me. But that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t like the attention, and I know he does more in his job than I would ever be comfortable with another person I was dating doing again.”

  Gavin was quiet for a long time after that. But then he said, “I get it. I think I do, anyway. I still think you should have left him instead of cheating, though.”

  “I wish I had, too. I should have done a lot of things differently. But I thought I was doing the right thing at the time. At least, I did at first. Clearly by the end of it, I was wrong.” I sighed deeply. I didn’t feel any better about telling Gavin. The next
person I went out on a date with I probably wouldn’t give this much detail to. I’d tell them I was with someone for five years and it didn’t work out. Maybe I’d tell them that I’d cheated, but probably not. It brought up far too many questions, which I was finding out now. It wasn’t that I wished that I had lied to Gavin, but it would have been so much easier. I hadn’t even been given the chance, thanks to Dillon. I hated having to explain all of this and feel like crap about it all over again every time I got asked.

  “I believe you. That you feel bad for cheating.”

  I snorted. That was big of him. Of course I felt bad about it. I’d lost a great guy in the process. We would have been over either way, since he wouldn’t quit his job, but I’d hurt him, and myself, in the process and that hadn’t needed to happen. “You’re still telling me that there will never be another date though, aren’t you?”

  “I am. I’m sorry. It’s just—”

  “Don’t worry about it.” I didn’t want to hear his reasons. They wouldn’t change anything. “Bye.” I hung up on him. I was upset and I just wanted the conversation to be over.

  I wanted to call Cal. I needed someone to talk to. But talking to him wouldn’t do any good, and I didn’t want to ask him to comfort me right now. He wasn’t responsible for my happiness, and he didn’t deserve to have my crap pushed off on him. We weren’t dating anymore. He didn’t need to hear about my life at all anymore. We were friends, and shaky friends at that. This seemed like it would be an awkward conversation, and one I didn’t want to dump on him, so I didn’t call him. I ate some ice cream and felt miserable about myself instead.