Sins & Needles (The Artists Trilogy #1) (10 page)

Soon my hunger won out over my pity party and I threw on some clothes and shuffled into the kitchen. Uncle Jim was scooping a batch of baked beans onto a plate and pursed his lips as soon as he saw me.

“Thought this would get you up,” he said, handing me the plate and a fork. “You came home late last night.”

I had to smile at his parent-like interrogation and slid onto the bar stool. “Oh, it wasn’t that late. I hope you weren’t waiting up for me.”

From the way he shrugged I could tell he was. He slid into the seat next to me and started pouring an obscene amount of hot sauce on his eggs. I chose Worcester sauce instead and drizzled it all over my plate.

“So how was it?”

I sighed. “It was really nice, actually. But I don’t think it went too well on his end.”

“No?”

“I don’t know. He just dropped me off. No kiss goodnight, no plans for the next days.”

He chuckled as he delicately sliced his eggs with a knife. “You mean you wait for the men to kiss you, Ellie? Boy, I thought your mother raised you differently.”

“Well, we know she barely raised me at all.”

He looked at me sharply then said softly, “She did the best she could. You were her number one priority.”

“Until…”

“Until…she made a mistake.”

“Sounds like you’re the one who’s coming around, Uncle Jim. Whatever happened to forever punishing us?”

“You’re here, aren’t you?”

I speared a few beans with my fork and ate them before my appetite totally disappeared. “Not for long.”

We sat in silence for a while, drinking our coffees and staring out the kitchen window at the sunny palm groves outside. When I lived up north for a bit, I often thought back to California and wondered how people could ever be sad in such constant sunshine. But the truth is, sadness and anger aren’t vampiric. If you let them, they’ll follow you around the world, sunshine and stakes be damned.

“I’m sorry your date didn’t go well,” he finally said after clearing his throat. “It’s probably for the best. There’s been some rumors about that boy anyway and you don’t want to get roped up in that.”

Now that caught my attention. “Rumors? Still?”

He let out a deep breath and shrugged, putting his elbows on the table. “I don’t know. I remember that boy being all queer and funny when you were young but now it’s something else. He hangs out with…bad people.”

I twisted in my seat and looked him square in the face. “
I’m
bad people.”

“Not like you, Ellie. I mean
bad
people. City people. I like to pretend that you have morals somewhere in your skinny little chest. These people don’t.”

I narrowed my eyes in thought. “How do you know all of this?”

“I hear things. It’s a small town still, people talk. Got nothing better to do. And it’s probably nothing, maybe he just knows some of the people his daddy arrests. But if you want to give something a reason, maybe it’s best that he broke things off like that. You don’t need to get dragged into anything.”

“I don’t think Camden is like that,” I mused. Then again, I didn’t really know Camden anymore.

“Maybe not,” he said, collecting our plates and taking them to the sink. “I’m just trying to make you feel better. Guess it didn’t work.”

I shot him a smile of gratitude and offered to do the dishes. When he refused, I then excused myself. I went up to my room, shut the door, and started Googling the crap out of Camden McQueen on my phone.

I found nothing. Well, nothing “bad.” Just things that reiterated what he’d already told me. He was a talented tattoo artist, he really was on Kat Von D’s reality TV show, and his shop in LA did quite well. Other than that, there was nothing. Only a few pictures that made me feel all quivery inside.

Ugh.

I sat on the bed and hugged my knees and tried to think. I didn’t have many options. Since I was already in Palm Valley, I could go back into town and do some serious job hunting. Maybe get a gig at a bar or something like that since the barista thing wasn’t going to happen.

I perked up a bit. Maybe I could get a legitimately great job. And maybe if I did, Uncle Jim would let me stay a bit longer, seeing that I was serious. But then I’d be stuck in Palm Valley, in the same town as Camden, and things could get pretty awkward. I mean, it’s not like things ended on bad terms but…well, I usually left when places and people got weird.

And that was still an option. Maybe I could barter for a place to stay in another town and get some employment there. Work on a farm for room and board? I’d done stranger things before.

I wondered if there was anyone I knew that could help me out. I wasn’t one for charity but there were plenty of people out there who I’d done a favor for and who owed me big time.  Jeez, I was getting desperate.

I opened up my email account on my phone.

My heart thumped up into my throat. There was an email from Camden with the subject line
Guano Padano albums
.

How the hell did he get my email?

With a shaking finger I pressed the touchscreen to open it.

Hey Ellie, thanks for coming to the show last night. Hope you had fun. I’ve attached some zip files of the two Guano Padano albums, in case you wanted to listen to them. I realized last night that I never got your phone number (derp), so if you see this email in time, perhaps you’d like to come with me to the driving range, hit a few balls, and drink a few beers? It’s what all the cool kids are doing.

PS if this isn’t the fantastic Ellie Watt of Palm Valley fame, please disregard this email. But you can keep the music.

He had his tattoo shop logo and information in his signature, along with his cell phone number.

I felt a sick sense of relief. I say sick because now that I knew he did like me after all, now that I knew I was back in the game, I was getting a little wary of the actual game. It didn’t help what my uncle said about the company he kept.

Still, I couldn’t imagine Camden hanging out with
bad
people. What was with the older generations thinking everyone that had tattoos and piercings had to be gang members or criminals? Okay, so I had tattoos and piercings (a nipple ring, if you must know), but someone had to start the stereotype, right?

I decided my uncle was too quick to judge and if Camden was going to be associated with anyone unsavory, it might as well be me. With fingers that were still shaking, I dialed his number.

CHAPTER SIX

“Can you hold my balls for a sec?”

I almost did a quite unsexy snort-laugh and took the bucket of balls out of Camden’s hands while he bent over and tied up his Converse. Not exactly golf club attire, but Palm Valley’s Public Golf Course seemed to attract all the golfers who didn’t have the deeply-lined pockets to play at the private clubs. And that meant a few golfers wearing clothes that just squeaked under the regulations.

Luckily for me, this meant I could keep my jeans on. I didn’t have any other type of pants and Lord knows I wouldn’t wear shorts with the scars I had. Camden looked devilishly handsome with grey Chucks, knee-length black shorts, and a black and white checkered polo shirt. Though his glasses were missing from his face, his hair was spiked up a bit in the front. If anyone could own the trend “golf punk” it would be him.

After I had done my nervous phone call to Camden, he swung by Uncle Jim’s and picked me up. He was out in the groves at the time, thank goodness, so I just left him a note saying I had gone out job hunting. It was kind of the truth.

Camden made no mention of the vague way things ended last night and was back to being his friendly self which made me feel like a moronic, crush-bound girl. One nice date and I’m overanalyzing shit, dissecting every word and look, trying to figure out what it really meant. He probably didn’t want to make any false promises at the end of a date and decided to take things as they came. I used to have a guy mentality like that and I wondered where it had gone. Being Ellie Watt seemed to bring about a lot of regression.

“So, are you ready to start Camden and Ellie’s Day of Fun?” he asked, taking the bucket back from me. Back in high school we used to have these days, usually on Saturdays. All the cool kids would hang out and do their parties and shit like that, so we just decided to create days where we did anything we wanted, preferably weird and random stuff like raiding thrift stores and making the other person buy an outfit of our choosing, taking his dad’s guns and shooting our failed art projects out in the desert, or pretending one of our teachers was a spy and trailing them all over town. For the year that Camden and Ellie’s Day of Fun lasted, it became our favorite day of the week. And yes, being that it was the late ‘90s, we totally ripped that phrase off from our favorite show,
Friends
.

“I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,” I told him as we walked out of the shop and down the way to our spot. I’d been golfing a few times before, but I was terrible. People with anger management issues and impatience do not a good golfer make. I swing at the ball way before I’m ready and then I throw my club and scream. A driving range would be a lot easier since we wouldn’t be holding anyone up, but still. If I had been in charge of our day of fun, this wouldn’t have been the first choice.

He put his hand on my shoulder for a moment and gave a warm squeeze that reached all the way into my chest.

“Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. This isn’t about getting the ball as far as it can go.”

“No?” I asked, trying to hide the disappointment in my face as he took his hand away.

He shook his head. “Nope. This is about taking control. It’s about controlling yourself, getting into that tiny moment in which you can make things happen. It’s hard to channel everything you have into Titleist, but when you do, you get…I don’t know…Zen.”

“I didn’t know you were such a golfer, Camden.”

“I’m a lot of things, but a golfer isn’t one of them,” he said with a laugh. “I just like swinging the club. When you take the pressure off and just go for it, it does wonders for your anger.”

I chewed on my lip. “You have anger? You’re like steady as a rock.”

He laughed again but it didn’t reach his eyes. He ran his hand through the sides of his hair and looked away. “I’m glad it seems that way. You kind of need to be as steady as something when you have my job.” He mimicked holding a shaking tattoo needle.

We took our spot at the range a few sections down from the other golfers like troublemakers who sat at the back of the classroom. I told him he was swinging first, and he responded by taking two cold beers out of his backpack.

“First things first,” he said, handing me a beer. “In order to get into the Zen zone, you have to be calm. Beer always helps.”

We clinked the bottles together and then quickly hid them when a curious golfer looked our way. I stepped closer to him to get out of the golfer’s range of sight, and by doing so, my head was almost at Camden’s chest. I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply.

Crap. I hope I was subtle about that creeper move.

Camden lowered his head and I was too afraid to look up. I could feel his lips burning just inches away from the top of my head.

I cleared my throat and spoke into his pecs. “Well now that beer is involved, it looks like this will be Camden and Ellie’s Day of Fun after all.”

“What was it before?” he murmured. His words ruffled my hair, causing the skin on my scalp to tighten pleasurably.

“Camden and Ellie’s Day of Assault with a Golf Club.”

I could feel him smile. “Once a spazz, always a spazz.”

I put my hand on his chest and pushed myself away from him, ignoring how hard it was beneath my fingers, how I could feel his heart thumping hard. I gave him a wry look and took a long sip of my drink.

“I’ll have you know I only spazz when it’s called for. And if any game calls for it, it’s golf.”

He raised his brows and said smoothly, “Well then you better drink faster.”

He didn’t have to tell me twice.

I was as bad as I thought I’d be. The first few swings were a little rough. I mean, I totally missed the ball. Not even close. And that’s when I could feel the waves of anger pushing up through my limbs, wanting some form of release.

I tightened the grip on the club and bit hard on my lip. I briefly shot Camden an embarrassed look and he slowly shook his head.

“Aren’t you going to tell me to be the ball or something?” I asked, trying to push the frustration away. Christ, I was a spazz, wasn’t I? I wished I could take some of the Kava pills I had in my bag without looking like a total junkie.

“Just…stop caring what I think,” he said.

I grunted and looked down at the ball, trying to line my club up properly. “I don’t care what you think.”

“You do. You’re trying to impress me.”

Okay, that did it. I faced him and leaned with one arm on the end of the club. “I am not trying to impress you.”

A small smile tugged at his lips. It was borderline smug and I wanted to wipe it off his face. “Yes you are. You don’t want to look weaker than you seem. You want to look like you’ve got everything figured out, everything under control, even your swing.”