Shark Out of Water (Grab Your Pole, #3) (26 page)

“Nothin’ big. It was more the thought, you know?”

It wasn’t a lie in any respect because part of what I said can be interpreted two different ways. The literal way being that what’s contained in said box isn’t big in size, which is the truth, and it’s just the thought behind giving a gift that counts, which, again, is true. You know, because sometimes the gifts that are small or not worth much monetarily speaking mean more than the ones that cost a bazillion dollars. But the flip side to the second part of what I’d said is that Camie’s
thought
was to hurt me when she threw it away, and the truth is, she really did succeed in doing more damage to me than what I let her see in my reactions to her then and since.

You see, I didn’t have a single problem being completely whipped by Camie. In fact, I was thrilled. The problem I have now however, is that I’m leashed by a girl who, from what I can tell, has slipped the leash I had on her and who really doesn’t have the same feelings for me anymore. So, the second she opens that box, she’ll know the whole truth about how vulnerable I am to her. It’s not exactly a prospect I care to face without knowing for certain where she stands. Because if she’s really moving on, and it looks like she wants to if her room is any clue, I’m pretty much fucked. She can knowingly make my life a living hell and keeping her quick lighting temper in mind, I honestly wouldn’t put it past her to do.
But
, if she still loves me even a little and is struggling with being apart like I am, then her seeing what’s in that box would be a very good thing.

Huh. Looking at it that way, I’m actually glad she hasn’t opened it yet because if she already had, she didn’t react to it in any way which means I could pretty much call it game over right now. But she hasn’t opened it, so, that in turn means there’s a chance she still wants to play. This conclusion is also why I was able to give an honest and straightforward answer to Jillian’s next question.

“It is indeed the thought behind what we do that counts…so, does it bother you then that she hasn’t opened it?”

“Nope. Not one bit.”

She cocked her to the side just slightly and recognizing that I’d told her the complete truth, she said, “Interesting.”

Of course, I neglected to say how much it bothers me that Camie hasn’t kept a single fucking photo or memento of me aside from an unopened box, which she’s probably only holding onto because of the guilt trip her sister sent her on. And you know, it’s not even me being absent here that’s disturbing…it’s
us
. It’s like she’s trying to say “we” don’t exist anymore…like the goddamned dinosaurs.

“Hey, where is everyone?” I asked, changing the subject as I picked up the suitcase to set it on the bed.

“Camie’s at Brenna’s studying for their Geometry class and my mom was feeling really good today so my dad took her over to Karen’s and Brett’s for lunch.”

“Oh, sweet! I bet they’re both ecstatic to finally be able to get a change of scenery. Oh, hey, that reminds me, when did all this happen?” I asked and gestured to the room while I unpacked my kids’ stuff.

“Oh, ah last weekend mostly. She’s been wanting to re-do her room for a while now so when our settlement checks came in, she talked Derek into taking her to do a little shopping with his truck…I gave her the mirror though. I called it a belated birthday present, but I was still being a tad unkind in proving my point so it was my way of forcing her to look at herself everyday. I think it works well in here though, plus, she’s not being nearly as self-centered as she was before, so that’s a bonus.”

I was tossing cat toys on the floor and nodding like I was listening, and I heard what she was saying, but it was mostly background noise after she said Camie’s been wanting to re-do her room for a while. I didn’t know that. Shouldn’t I have known that? I knew about the decent chunk of dough the lawyers got out of the insurance company after the accident for all three of the girls who were actually in it, and I just found out they even got Jeff a nice wad for the pain and suffering of losing their Lima Bean…and I also knew Camie wanted to get her car a new paint job and possibly some new interior with the money and that she was planning on banking the rest because she and I had talked about all that shortly before I pulled the rug out from under the both of us, but she never said one word about her room. Why wouldn’t she have ever mentioned re-doing her room? It’s not like wanting to redecorate your room is a state secret. And okay, yeah, I’m now officially obsessing…but so what? It’s not about fuckin’ interior design, it’s about not knowing the goddamned person you’re in love with as well as you
think
you fuckin’ do. I mean, what else don’t I know about her? Admittedly, her room renovation is a minor thing, but still, it makes you think, you know?

Shit. I gotta get out of here…this room thing is starting to make me depressed after all, if not slightly paranoid.

I finished unpacking the girls’ stuff, threw some food in their bowl and put their bed in the usual spot, not that they’ll use it. Right now they’ve both taken over the new chair and they usually sleep with Camie anyway when they live here. Lucky cats. Then I went to put their suitcase under the bed where it goes and found myself a cardboard box full of what I’m gonna try to think of as hope. Now see, I wouldn’t have paid any attention to it, but when I slid the suitcase under the bed, the box got jostled and something fell out of it, so, naturally, I picked it up with the intention of tucking it back into the box. But then I looked at it. It was a napkin we’d played tic-tac-toe on from a place we had ice cream floats at when we went to Julian for the tail end of their Apple Days the Sunday after Halloween.

The weather was perfect that day…we had the floats, wandered around the farmer’s market and all the little stores, and while drinking the best apple cider known to mankind, we watched some pretty funny historical comedy skits. Then after we had our picnic, we picked apples for Jeff who inevitably turned them into a decent pie later that evening, which Camie refused to eat the crust of by wrinkling up her nose when I tried feeding her a bite. That was how I learned she can’t stand pie crust, unless of course it’s a graham cracker crust or cookie dough crust. She ended up eating all the filling and left a perfect triangle of crust on her plate…it was a truly great day.

I pulled the box out from under the bed and stared into it. It was fairly bursting with the “us” and “we” that she’d eradicated from sight. I sighed and shook my head as my eyes traveled over more than three months of photos and little shit that chronicled the time my baby and I spent falling in love with each other that she’d effectively given last rights to by burying it all inside a box like a coffin and then placing it in the mausoleum underneath her bed.

Fuck.
I mean really, what the fuck am I supposed to do about all this? At least she hasn’t actually rid herself of me permanently so I guess I can focus on that as a positive…

“She packed everything up and completely cleared the room out so she could paint. She, ah, hasn’t gotten around to unpacking that particular box yet,” Jillian told me quietly.

“
Humph.
Clearly… Okay, well, as fun as this is, I gotta get goin’,” I said, checking my watch and then I slid the box back under the bed and stood up, said goodbye to the cats and started to leave. I’d made it to the stairs when Jillian asked for more truth.

“You know, she’ll be home anytime now…if you didn’t wanna see her, why’d you cut it so close?”

I stopped at the top of the stairs and chuckled at her. She’s either hunting for more information or she got something wrong. It
is
possible you know. Jillian doesn’t know everything as she would have you believe, but, she’s damned good at making just about everyone think she does. It doesn’t hurt that she
is
actually right ninety percent of the time either. But this time, I don’t see where giving her the truth matters one way or the other.

“I’m not avoiding her, Jillian, I was actually surprised no one was home, but now I have about thirty minutes to get down to the beach for work, so I really do have to get goin’,” I answered and started down the stairs.

I looked back at her when, with what looked to me to be a suspiciously self-satisfied grin, she said, “Good, because if you were trying to avoid her, it’s too late.”

And then when she went into her room and closed the door just as I heard the front door being shut, I realized she wasn’t actually hunting for information at all, she was waylaying me. You see? There’s a reason why I called her a terrorist…

At least I was apprised of Camie’s arrival and was able to get myself out of the close confines of the stairway before she started going up. We did, however, end up doing that awkward dance thing when two people go to step around each other and end up stepping to the same side. I hate that. It always either looks lame, planned, or both. I
never
plan looking lame. Sadly though, as several moments today have illustrated, it does spontaneously happen from time to time.

“Sorry,” we both said at the same time. She laughed a little. I didn’t.

“I was just dropping the girls off,” I told her and tried to inhale as much of the Camie smell as I could without being obvious about it. God, I love that smell…

“Oh, good. I miss them,” she said and smiled up at the staircase, like she could see Phineas and Ferb from down here. Then it dawned on her that I’d been upstairs in her room and as she shifted on her feet uncomfortably and refused to meet my eyes, she said, “Oh…ahh, so I guess you saw it then.”

“Mm-hm, it’s nice…the girls already took over the chair.” What was I gonna say? I’d love your new room even more if you’d acknowledge you still have feelings for me by unpacking that fuckin’ box you’ve got stashed under your bed before a goddamned dust bunny colony decides to call it home? Yeah, not gonna happen.

“Yeah, I figured they’d claim it. Umm…so how was that, ah…party last night?” She asked politely but with something akin to fear, like she just wanted to hear what I’d done there from me before she heard it from half the school.

The party she’s referring to is the kind that inevitably ends up being the breeding ground for multiple rumors and scandals, which are almost always largely based in truth, and since I’d skipped out on it to sleep because I knew she hadn’t gone either, I decided to put her mind at ease. So with a chuckle and a grin I said, “I didn’t go…I went to Gary’s son’s birthday party for a little bit and I uh…you know, ended up spending the rest of the night in bed.” I added a wink afterwards too…just for fun. Ninety-eight percent of the time I get a smile out of her when I get a little cocky like that, but, it seemed like my answer did less to reassure her and went more to troubling her. Seriously, I didn’t get it.

“Y—you went to
Joey’s
birthday party?” She asked as I turned and opened the front door.

Well, technically I did. I showed up early though and only stayed long enough to give Joey his present and then I hightailed it out of there before the rest of the family arrived and I got stuck talking to Wayne’s mom. Honestly, she’s a nice lady, but fuck. She has no clue what personal space is, she
loves
me, she thinks her daughter and I are perfect for each other, which is just ridiculously laughable in the extreme, and she can’t comprehend why on earth Mia and I never got together. You know, aside from the little fact that Mia was graduating high school when I was graduating fuckin’ eighth grade. I honestly wouldn’t blame Mia if that were why she left the state last year. Any time she and I are within a thirty foot radius of her mom, her mom ascends on us like a fucking harpy and incessantly points out what the merits of Mia and me being a couple would be and tries to talk us into “going out.”

Oh, what that woman doesn’t know…

“Yeah,” I answered and then looked at my watch again before saying, “Hey, I gotta run, I’m guarding a kid’s swim party down at The Plunge in like twenty-five minutes. I’ll see you at school.”

“Oh, yeah, okay…” Camie followed me out onto the porch and just as I opened my car door and was about to get in she asked hesitantly, “Um, Tristan? Why um…why didn’t you vote for me?”

Aw fuck.

I knew it. Didn’t I say that was gonna come back to bite me in the ass? I would love to know what asshole told her about that and then show him or her how much I appreciate it, but right at this minute, I don’t have time to get into it. I do, however, have just enough time to take another shot at reassuring Camie on this one thing…if I dare.

I leaned against my car with my arms folded and looked first at the sky and then at my baby, trying to make up my mind between giving her the truth or fiction. Taking a breath, I told her the truth, “You know why.”

By the way, it was more than worth being late to work to see Camie’s forehead wrinkle in confusion and then the small smile she gave herself when she got my meaning right before she turned and went back into her house.

Fourteen

Monday, Week Three

Sic ‘em, girl! ~ Jeff

Kicking off a Monday morning by arguing with your girl bites and really wasn’t quite what I was going for…

“Katy, please, I’m begging you…leave it alone,” I said for the umpteenth time since late Friday night while I rolled onto my back, giving up my attempt to put my morning wood to good use. Seriously, I love her more than life, but she’s like a Pit-bull with a bone and, sadly, it’s not my bone she’s interested in chewing on at the moment.

“Well, I can’t help it, Jeff! I understand you’re keeping your mouth shut so Tristan will trust you again, but honestly, babe, you can’t expect me to stop trying to figure this whole thing out! I mean seriously, what’s his freaking deal?! He breaks up with her, ignores her for a week, then he practically took her virginity with
one freaking
look
while we were all standing there watching, then he snaps at her for days after that,
then
he tells her she’ll do great trying out for cheer like he was saying I love you instead, then he
doesn’t
vote for her and doesn’t show up to the party for hours, but when he gets there he practically shouts a declaration to anyone who was paying attention that he’s off limits to everyone except Camie who he essentially offered to strip for, and then he leaves not ten minutes later! Does he want her back or something? Because if he does, he’s not going about it very well! Oh! And guess what? Last night Camie told me that he went to Joey’s birthday party Saturday night and he ended up spending the rest of the night “in bed,” which totally has me going back to my theory that he broke up with Camie because he cheated on her…Mia was already back in town and it would’ve been a classic Tristan thi—”