Being Not Good: as opposed to being bad

by Elizabeth Stevens

  I’d kept myself busy with my friends and the formal plans and trying not to suck at the new material in Maths. I threw out basically every lesson Davin taught me in an effort to keep up the charade. All except one. I was suddenly very easily annoyed and had no trouble calling people out when they treated me or anyone else poorly. Otherwise, I was Avery.

  In the school hallway, when all I got from him was a vague nod in passing, I’d made sure to plaster that warm smile to my face. Not that he’d ever seemed to look at me long enough to see it anyway. And I’d held onto that smile while my throat tightened and my eyes got hot. I kept it firmly in place until my cheeks stopped fighting it.

  He’d stalked the school corridor with zero cares and his storm cloud of disdain for everyone around him. Mrs Mack could be heard yelling at him constantly from almost any corner of the school. He talked back to teachers with more contempt than usual. He skipped more lessons than usual. The real difference between Davin from before we were dating to after was the fact that he didn’t prank anyone. No pictures were spread around the school, no fire alarms were pulled, there wasn’t a single screaming goat to be seen anywhere.

  For a moment, I’d wondered if maybe he missed me, too. But then I realised that I’d probably just ruined his little jokes for him.

  Blair had given me the space I’d needed to try to get over it while also remaining stoically by my side, showering me in love and support. Even Ebony had been an unexpected force of support and cheer, although I knew she missed Davin too. Dad was awkward in his showing he cared about the break up, but at least he cared. And Mum surprised me totally by telling me she was never sure I should have rushed into anything so soon after Miles anyway. Once I’d explained to her what Davin and I had been doing and that I’d ended up falling for him, she’d changed her tune; she’d told me that she had actually warmed to him eventually and she was sorry it was over and I was hurting.

  I’d spent a month hiding behind Little Miss Goody-Two-Shoes and her eternal optimism, pretending I was okay and I didn’t feel sick every time I saw him and knew he didn’t feel any more for me than a temporary alleviation of his boredom.

  Only now it seemed like I wasn’t just a temporary alleviation of his boredom and I’d spent a month squashing down the pain and the tears for nothing. Which gave me some very conflicting feelings, the strongest of which at the moment was indignant outrage.

  “This is not the place to be doing this…” I muttered.

  “What?” he asked.

  I looked at him, annoyed and exasperated. “The school fair is not the place to be doing this. Okay. Let me just… Damn it.”

  I looked around to see what I could do with this blind-siding moment.

  I was supposed to be manning the stall now with Blair, Kate and Trina. But I really wanted to get Davin alone and find out what the hell he was playing at.

  I held a hand out to the unrealistically tall boy with a horrible sense of timing. “Stay there. I need to make sure the stall is under control and then we are going to discuss why you think this something you just get to come out with. Okay?”

  Davin nodded quickly, his lips pressed together like he knew exactly what I’d do to him if he opened them again.

  I huffed at him and went over to the stall.

  “Everything okay?” Blair asked, peering around me to look at Davin.

  “I have you to thank for this?” I accused.

  “What? For getting…” She petered to a stop and nodded. “When I saw Miles coming and I saw that look on his face, I might have gone to find Davin.”

  “Why?” I whispered sharply as Trina and Kate served people behind us.

  Blair shrugged. “I don’t know. I just know you’ve been miserable without him and he’s been miserable, too–”

  “Davin Ambrose has resting miserable face, Blair. That’s just what he looks like!” I hissed.

  “So he followed me?” Blair said, shrugging. “So what?”

  “So he just told me he loves me!”

  Blair squealed, but realised quite quickly that squealing was not the appropriate response and cleared her throat. “That’s good isn’t it?”

  “It seems awfully convenient,” I mumbled, then told her, “Whatever it is, I need to deal with it.” I looked around. “Louise!” I yelled as I saw her walk past and she turned quickly.

  “Yeah?” she asked and I waved her over. “What’s up?”

  “I need you to cover for my stall shift, please,” I said.

  Louise looked humorously surprised. “Um…why?”

  I had no time for kind, nice or polite Avery. “Because Davin’s just told me he loves me and I need to go and talk to him about it, okay? So can you please just do me this one favour? I will cover your emcee shift at the formal if it will make you do it.”

  Well if I’d wondered before, I knew now. That was respect in Louise’s eyes. “You had me at love. Go. We’ll work out if the favour needs repaying later.”

  I nodded as I picked up my bag and slung it over my body. “Thanks.”

  “No problem.”

  “Blair?”

  “Yes?”

  “If Mum and Dad come passed…?”

  She nodded. “I will let them know you’ll check in later.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Go get him!” Blair cheered quietly and I glared at her. “Don’t go get him?”

  I crossed through the meandering people to the huddled figure of Davin waiting for me.

  I grabbed his hand and dragged him to the stairs that led from the school oval to the rest of the school.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Where’s your car?”

  “Usual spot. Why?”

  “Your dad’s at work?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “We’re going to your house.”

  “We are? Why?”

  “Because that is going to give us the most privacy for whatever this is going to be. Okay?”

  “Sure.”

  I dragged him to his car and got in. The car was silent on the way to his house. I wasn’t quite so angry as to open my mouth and risk any ensuing argument turning into a crash. And the master of reticence was characteristically quiet.

  Davin pulled into his driveway and I almost made it to his front door before him. I stormed down to his room, threw my bag on the floor and turned to him.

  “Okay. What have you got for me?” I asked him, waving my hands.

  “Wh-what?” he stammered.

  “You said you loved me. And yet you didn’t feel the need to say anything a month ago when we broke up. What’s that about?”

  “I thought you were done with me a month ago.”

  “So you say you love me but you didn’t think to check?”

  “I didn’t know I loved you then!”

  “Convenient.”

  “Sorry. But since when do you not just blither your stream of consciousness? I had assumed if you were amenable to our continued arrangement, you might have been more forthcoming.”

  “You weren’t exactly telling me you wanted to be with me.”

  “I’m trying to tell you now!”

  My confused and heightened emotions were ramping up my agitation, but I didn’t know what his excuse was for yelling. All I knew what that it also fed my tension. “I’m not following.”

  He took a deep breath and seemed to come up with a speech pretty darned quickly. “I don’t want to be your mistake anymore, Avery. I can’t…” He huffed. “You might look back on this in ten years and realise it was a mistake. But I can’t do it anymore.”

  “What does that mean, Davin?”

  “I’m saying that I can’t stand your incessant optimism ninety per cent of the time. It drives me crazy and I haven’t been able to even look at sugar in months, but it’s also one of the reasons I love you. I hate being around anyone, but when I’m not with you everything feels wrong. I’d rather be with you and
unreasonably annoyed, than alone and uncomfortably relaxed. So, I can’t be your mistake anymore, Avery.”

  I looked at him and it was the first time I’d really seen uncertainty in his eyes. I’d seen him ready to be rejected. I’d seen him uncomfortable in a social interaction. But I’d never seen him looking like he didn’t know what was going to happen, like he didn’t have control of the situation.

  I’d never thought he could fall in love with me. I couldn’t have said if I was in love with him – I hadn’t looked too closely at how I felt for him because I hadn’t wanted to know I loved him when I was convinced he could never feel the same. I hadn’t wanted to wonder what the future was like when I we didn’t have one. I’d just enjoyed living in the moment with him.

  But, as I looked at him, I wondered if this – what I felt for him – was what love really was. Not the Disney version or the Netflix teen movie version; the kind you got swept up in and swooned over – which I’d had plenty of with Davin as well. But the real life kind, the long-term kind. Because Davin wasn’t perfect. Anyone who met him would think I was crazy and I was wondering that myself. He was moody, he was rude, he was sarcastic and he was still a regular in detention. But despite that, I had this desire to be around him. Despite that, I’d missed him this last month.

  Despite his terrible attitude and his hatred for everything I loved, I wanted to be with him. He made me smile – although, I don’t think he was trying most of the time – and he made me feel safe and comfortable. My life had always been busy – I liked noise and colour and people – but Davin gave me some enforced quiet time and I was starting to appreciate the smaller things in life.

  But I didn’t get a chance to tell him all that because just as I opened my mouth he shook his head.

  “I just… I don’t want to just be your mistake, Avery…”

  “I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future…” I started. I wished I could, but I couldn’t.

  “I know. And I don’t expect you to. But if all I will ever be is just your mistake, I need to know. I feel like I’m helplessly falling more for you every day, and I just need to know if there’s a chance you could ever feel the same. I don’t expect you to love me, too. I don’t even expect an answer now. I just… Can you think about it for me? If there’s any chance I can be more than a mistake to you? And, if not, that’s fine. But I need to know before I’m completely lost to you.”

  Right, well…

  The heart flutters and ridiculous smile that elicited aside, I felt like if I just told him now that he was already more than a mistake to me that he’d feel like I was just placating him. But I had to say something.

  I dropped onto his bed as I tried to work out what to say.

  Davin walked over to me slowly and dropped into a crouch in front of me. He looked at me carefully, like he knew I needed a minute. I just wish it didn’t feel like it was going to take far longer to piece together the jumble of words on the tip of my tongue.

  Twenty-Six: Davin

  I’d fallen victim to my own love story. I’d found myself the male lead in a romance novel with no control over what happened to him. And it was absolutely terrifying.

  I tell you, “Writers should not be allowed to do this to you.”

  Anyone who tells you that falling in love is magic and rainbows and the most wonderful thing to ever happen to you is shitting themselves. It’s horrible. Suddenly you can’t imagine your life without this person and, while your chest gets all warm and tingly over that feeling, you’re busy freaking the fuck out because you have no idea if they feel the same or if it will last.

  Avery was looking at me like maybe she did feel the same, but she didn’t say anything. She did lean towards me and kiss me, so I had to hold out hope she just knew me well enough by now that she knew how I’d react if she lay her heart out there.

  If there was a heart to lay out there.

  Because the chances that this tiny tornado of happiness could ever fall in love with me were beyond low. They were non-existent. I’d done just what she’d said; I’d been my normal grumpy self, I hadn’t tried to be charming, I wasn’t sure I remembered how to be polite, and I hadn’t stopped up breaking up. I couldn’t think of a single thing to recommend me.

  But all that was suddenly paling into insignificance as I realised I’d been crouching for-bloody-ever and my legs were suddenly not shy about whinging about it.

  Not that that lasted long, because they just gave way under me, sending me sprawling and making Avery fall into my lap. She laughed and – all right, fine – I liked it. Okay? I liked it and while it was still my life’s purpose to make her frown as often as possible – she needed someone to moderate her – I also wanted to hear her laugh as often as possible.

  “So I fell for you,” she giggled.

  I rolled my eyes. “God, really?” I muttered, but that smile was tugging at my lips.

  Her laughter faded and she was looking at me intently. It was like I was supposed to have understood something, and obviously didn’t.

  “No?” she asked and I felt thoroughly confused.

  “What am I missing?” Do you know?

  She took my face in both her stupidly small hands and the only description I had for what happened in my chest was that my heart skipped a beat. I had half a mind just to leave and be done with it. No girl was worth all these aggravating emotions, surely? But it was my house, so leaving would be a little weird.

  “Oh, screw it,” she muttered and that was the second time that day she’d sworn. Colour me impressed. “There’s no way I can do this anymore without you overthinking and overanalysing. So now’s as good a time as any.”

  She paused and I didn’t care for it. Then she licked her lip and took a deep breath.

  “Davin, you are nothing a girl looks for in a boyfriend. But you’re everything I need. I don’t think we have anything in common, but I want to be around you. If I’m not already in love with you, then I’m definitely halfway there. You haven’t been just my mistake for a while now, I just didn’t think you could ever actually like the annoying gnat of positivity.”

  She was smiling, but I knew enough about this shit to feel a little guilty. I wrapped my arms around her and shook my head. “Me, either. But I started falling the moment you kissed me as though I wasn’t just that guy and I don’t think I’ll ever stop.”

  “I don’t think I want you to.”

  “No?”

  She shook her head. “No. Because what if you stopped and I didn’t?”

  I related to that. “That’s the worst part about this.”

  “As well as the best?”

  “Fuck, no.”

  “What’s the best part, then?” she asked softly.

  “You.”

  She smiled so warmly that I felt it in my heart. I don’t want to be quite so wanky as to say I felt that cold exterior of my heart cracking. But the slight cracking sound – similar to ice caps melting – perhaps did a better job of suggesting that.

  “Is now when I offer you my watch or my ring or my Year 12 jumper or something?” I asked her.

  She giggled. “If you want.”

  I grabbed my jumper and pulled it over her head. And she got completely lost in it past the point of adorable.

  “Fuck it,” I said, pulling the chunky silver ring off the middle finger of my right hand – “Which I had conveniently actually been wearing this whole time, don’t you know.” – and took her hand. “Where do you think it will fit?” I asked her.

  She grinned and held up her pointer finger. I slipped the ring on. There was a little wiggle room but, when she held her hand upside down and shook it, it didn’t fall off.

  “Perfect,” she said, smiling up at me.

  “That you are, baby,” I said and kissed her again.

  A thought suddenly occurred to me.

  “So we are dating again, yes?” I asked and she nodded. “This means I still have to go to t
he formal, I suppose.”

  She laughed. “Yeah. I’m afraid so.”

  I just took a breath in. “Yay.”

  ****

  “So, I can’t pretend I’m doing this entirely under protest and against my better judgement,” I tell you two weeks later as I pulled on my tux jacket and dragged my hair a little off my face.

  Avery still drove me insane more often than not. She exasperated me with her constant carpe diem and joie de vivre and I needed a nap after spending any time with her as much from the mental exhaustion as the physical exhaustion.

  “If you get my drift.” I wink.

  But it was undeniably true – I would prefer to be annoyed by her every second of every day than go through another one without her. It was sheer and utter madness and I still didn’t know what the hell I saw in her, but I was completely in love with everything she was. Especially the parts I hated.

  Dating Avery with no impending finish hanging above my head was daunting. Identifying neither of us were waiting for one of us to get bored anymore, but comprehending that either of us still could, was terrifying. It was one thing to fall in love with her and know that we were just doing this until it could be over. It was another to know she loved me but that could change.

  I’d lost people – person – before and I’d spent most of the wake of that too scarred by the experience to feel anything more than a guilty hatred for what happened. By the time my feelings had numbed to it, I’d had nothing left with which to grieve and I kept myself in a position to never go through anything remotely similar. So the idea of losing Avery was filled with more foreboding unknowns than I had ever let myself experience. A single month of losing her had given me enough of a taste to be suitably petrified of what forever could look like.

  “Still, a boy likes to be jilted in love now and then. Right?”

  I straightened my tie in the mirror and looked myself over one last time.

  “That’s right, we’re doing the mirror bit.”

  I was in a full and proper tuxedo. It was as per Avery’s request as much as for if I was doing this thing then I was going to do it properly – I’m a recluse not a vagrant, and I’m perfectly aware that there is a time and place to be proud of one’s appearance.