*
Pulling into her driveway, Avery was distracted by the sight of her mother asleep on the front lawn in a chair and ended up once again running over her sister’s pink bicycle. Grumbling, she hopped out to see what was going on. Candice dozed in a lawn chair in front of an empty table she must’ve dragged out from inside. Avery couldn’t imagine a more perplexing sight.
“Mom, what the heck are you doing out here?” she hollered, making Candice twitch and awaken. She squinted at her daughter, annoyed at being woken up.
“I’ve got bills to pay, you know, so I’m trying to earn a little money. That’s more than I can say for you!” she snapped, erasing exactly none of Avery’s bewilderment.
“Making money? How? Do you really expect people to pay you for passing out on the front lawn?”
“Can’t you see I’m having a yard sale?” Candice corrected her. Avery glanced back at the empty table. It didn’t have a crumb on it and looked like it never did. Candice finally rolled her head over to look as well, and she slapped her hand to her face when she saw the empty space in front of her.
“You fell asleep and people stole everything you were selling in the yard sale?” Avery gasped. “How much of our stuff did you drag out here?”
Candice, slinking down in her chair a bit more, didn’t appear all that repentant for her mistake.
“It wasn’t anything that important, just some junk from upstairs like an old lamp, your baby blankets, photos, and your social security card.”
At that very moment, Avery decided the defining feeling of her life was that of crushing disappointment. Nothing would ever work out the way she wanted, whether it was a stable family or the boyfriend she desperately wanted. She might as well resign herself to life pulling a plow in an Amish community.
Her phone rung in her pocket to the tune of “Get Low,” jarring her visibly because it meant only one person could be calling. Snatching her phone and flipping it open, it was indeed Carter trying to reach her. Trembling, she accepted the call and tried to contain her excitement.
“Hello, this is Avery speaking. Oh, hi! You do? Really? Yeah, we can meet somewhere. The spot sounds great. In an hour then.”
Avery could barely hold off the sudden flood of joy long enough to end the conversation. Her legs gave out and she dropped to her knees, laughing hysterically and rolling around on the grass. She smiled so wide her cheeks hurt, but she kept smiling anyway because she knew she could finally have him back.
The place they referred to as “the spot” was actually the bedroom display in a local JC Penney’s. She had planned to be fifteen minutes late, but she could only hold out for ten. Then she strolled into the store and past the ladies’ lingerie—letting her fingers graze the soft fabric—on her way to her destiny.
There he was, right where he was supposed to be. Carter Thomson reclined on the velvet display loveseat beside a fluffy, frilly display bed in a corner between two aisles. He got to his feet as soon as he saw her, forcing Avery to take a deep breath and compose herself. No mistakes, she promised herself, there couldn’t be a single one.
“Thanks for coming,” he said, traces of penitence and embarrassment on his slightly flushed face.
“No problem. So what’s going on?” she said casually, swinging her hair back over her shoulder and leaning against a tall maroon chair. As Carter struggled to begin, their still figures seemed just like manikins to the people walking by.
“Oh, you know, lately I’ve been thinking about us a little bit.”
“Really? Because from what I hear you’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about Ms. Downing,” she accused.
“No, no, it wasn’t really like that. You see, I didn’t know what to do after I lost you.”
The nice thing to say would’ve been that he’d never really lost her. She could just ignore that he’d broken up with her and then threw her to the curb outside of a McDonald’s, which would allow her to take him back immediately, but she couldn’t do that.
“You lost me?” Avery gasped. “That’s garbage and you know it! More like you threw me off a cliff and latched onto the closest piece of ass you could find. Just admit that you’d follow Ms. Dumplings and her melons around wherever she goes because you’re a shallow, scum-sucker of a person!”
“Hey!” Carter interrupted, growing defensive and raising his voice. He took a strong step forward, close enough for her to set her hands on his chest, which she yearned desperately to do. “Don’t talk about me like I’m a bad person. What about you? I heard about your plan to start hitting on teachers and when it didn’t work out you got two of them fired!”
Eri. As happy as Avery was that Eri betrayed her and told Carter what she was doing, the girl would still have to pay for it. But right now, Avery had more important things to do, scream at a boy she liked inside of a crowded department store.
“No, it’s my turn to be angry! I begged you to come back and then you go flirting in gym class right in front of me. Have you even stopped sleeping around?” she howled, throwing one of the perfectly placed display pillows at him. “And what on earth were you doing with my sister?”
Carter wiped all of the anger from his face and touched her on the arm in that gentle, comforting way he does that seems to make everything all right. That’s how she knew to take him seriously, and she immediately looked into his blue eyes, where she found nothing but heartfelt emotion.
“I want you back, Avery. I’m done looking for a girl who’s perfectly good, or has the perfect body, or is intelligent. I’m ready to settle for you. If you’ll take me back, I think we can find a way to be happy together.”
Avery felt as though she were walking on air. Everything she wanted was right within her reach, and it would just be so easy to capture it and hold onto it forever. Carter made all of the bad parts of her life vanish, and there were so many bad parts she’d be happy if he did away with right now. All she had to do was say yes.
“No! You’ve got another thing coming if you think I’m going to forgive you so easily for all the shit you put me through. You don’t deserve a girlfriend; you deserve a psychologist to help you sort through all your complexes. I certainly can’t be responsible for it. Face it, Carter, until you learn how to treat a woman the way she deserves, you’re going to be spending the rest of your life alone.”
If he wanted her back, he would have to work for it. Avery stormed out, stealing a bath towel for good measure and leaving Carter standing there alone amongst all the staring shoppers. All the next day, she waited for him to put together some big surprise to show her how much he really cared. Every time she opened her locker, she expected to find a present. Her phone was deader than Elvis. And he just gave her sheepish looks in the classes they had together.
Finally, after lunch, she put her hands on her face and realized he hadn’t gotten the message. Why can’t boys ever understand what girls mean? That’s why they have Y-chromosomes. Everything they do just makes you ask yourself, “why?” Avery thought. To put things back on track, she told Eri to tell Carter that she did still want to be with him and for him to meet her today at the same place and same time that they did yesterday. But this time a security guard was there to meet them as well, and they were forced to pick up near a cell phone kiosk in the mall.
“Why didn’t you realize I expected you to do something?” she snapped at him, her arms out in the air.
“I got you a pretzel,” he offered, holding out the piece of dough in a little white bag. Avery realized her hopes of being swept off her feet by some big romantic gesture had no chance. Disappointed, she pleasured herself with the knowledge she would at least be having regular sex again. It’d been so long she wondered if everything still worked down there. In her mind, she could be getting her rocks off in ten minutes, but first she had to cave.
“Alright, fine,” she leveled. “I miss you and I want you back too. But things have to be different this time. You’ve got to be a little more forgiving of me. Less ju
dgmental too. I don’t want to be having the same problems we were having last time.”
She leaned forward to kiss him, anxious for the taste of his soft lips once again, but he pulled back a bit and smiled nervously.
“Exactly,” he agreed, smiling uncomfortably. “We should take it slow. Go on some dates.”
“You want to…date?” Avery cringed, completely perplexed. As far as she knew, they’d never been on a date before, and all of a sudden that’s what he wanted to do? The Y-chromosome strikes again, she concluded. Fortunately, she was also confident that hearing “take it slow” from a man at most could only mean “until the next time I’m horny,” which couldn’t take more than a day.
Even as Carter sidled away, Avery began to feel optimistic about waiting until tomorrow for sex. It would give her just enough time to enjoy anticipating it. She already wanted it badly enough to start stripping in the middle of the mall, so she could only imagine what kind of a wonderful relief it would be when the next day finally came.
Loose Lips Sink Ships Page 14
