Dirty Scoundrel(8)

I'm still reeling from Clay's reappearance and what this means. I have  to bounce this off of someone. I immediately pull up my best friend's  number and text her. Lexi's the only one I still keep tabs with-we  became friends a few years ago when she moved here and visited the  museum. I think she's the only person this small town finds weirder than  me.

NAT: You are not going to believe this.

LEXI: Elvis stopped by the museum?

NAT: Almost. It was Clay Price.         

     



 

LEXI: . . .

LEXI: I am shrieking at my phone over here. No Namaste on this end.

NAT: Ooops, did I call during class?

LEXI: It's okay. I've lost my Zen . . . and my night appts canceled on me. Give me deets!

I feel a twinge of guilt-Lexi's as permanently broke as I am because she  has a small yoga studio, and because it's such a small town, she  doesn't get that many clients. I shouldn't interrupt her when she's  working, but I'm rattled enough to be relieved that she answered anyhow.

NAT: He showed up here at the museum. I looked up and there he was. He  overheard a customer call me ‘fat bitch' too. As if my day wasn't bad  enough.

LEXI: omg

LEXI: Did you punch that woman?

NAT: I let it go. People are dicks. It makes me more upset that he heard her tho!

NAT: I need to know of a way to lose weight overnight because he's coming back tomorrow.

LEXI: !!!

LEXI: I am missing so many details here! Start over!

LEXI: Clay Price showed up. He say why?

NAT: No. Just boom. I nearly fell over. One of his brothers was with him, I think.

NAT: He didn't say much. Just asked me if this place was a museum. And  then he said he was going to be back tomorrow with a proposal for me.

LEXI: Like . . . a romantic proposal?

NAT: I don't think so? He said it just like that-‘a proposal for you'. Maybe business?

LEXI: Er okay. He a big fan of ur dad or something?

NAT: I don't think so? I think he kinda hates Dad.

LEXI: Weird!!!

NAT: I've never talked to him since he left. Never even Googled him.

LEXI: Omg never?!?

LEXI: Facebook? Anything?

NAT: No. I didn't want to know what happened to him. If I went on his  Facebook and there were pics of him with the wife and kids, I think I'd  die inside.

LEXI: Ur still in love with him, aren't u?

NAT: I don't have any right to be. I was the one that drove him off . . .

LEXI: Don't beat urself up. He didn't want u to go to college remember?

NAT: But I said the shittiest things.

LEXI: U were hurt.

NAT: I guess. I still should have texted him to talk, and I never did.

LEXI: U were occupied w/ ur dad. Stop beating urself up!

NAT: Easy for you to say-he didn't spend 7 years hating you!

LEXI: U don't know he hates u either.

NAT: True.

LEXI: Well I Googled him & it won't make u feel better, so probably good u didn't . . .

A sick feeling crawls into my gut. He's got to be married. I put my  phone down, feeling suddenly light-headed at the thought. Clay Price,  married. Clay Price, unavailable forever.

I had my chance with him and I threw it away. He wanted to marry me and I laughed in his face.

Oh god.

I lie back on my bed and press my hands to my face, determined not to cry.

Try as I might to forget, I know the exact moment my life turned to shit. It was that night that Clay Price and I broke up.

Not that my life has ever been perfect or even normal. The fact that my  father was sixty-two years old when I was born starts things off on a  weird foot, and my mom died when I was five. After that, my father  married wife number five and she proceeded to spend my father's fortune,  give me a complex about how much I eat, and basically made me and my  father miserable. She left when I was sixteen and my father decided he'd  had enough of Hollywood, so he took me and the new girlfriend (who was  only four years older than me) to Luka, Texas, to restore the ranch he'd  bought so many years ago after making his first movie. I hadn't known  anyone, and everyone at school hated me. They thought I was a rich  Hollywood snob. No one talked to me. No one was my friend.

No one except Clay Price, a football player and a boy from the wrong  side of the tracks. Everyone loved Clay almost as much as they hated me.

It felt like fate bringing us together. The moment we met, we were hot  and heavy. At least, he was. I thought he was teasing me by showing  interest, and so I pushed him away for an entire semester before he was  able to make his move. One night I was at a party with a bunch of  popular kids, seated on a couch in the corner and wishing I was far  away. A guy had come up and started harassing me, and Clay moved in and  put his arm around my shoulders, and that was that.

By the end of the evening, we were necking.

By the end of the week, I was his girlfriend.

For the next year and a half of school, we were inseparable. I was  Clay's girlfriend, and he made me so incredibly happy. I didn't care  that he drove an absolute beater of a car. I didn't care that his family  lived in a trailer or that his four brothers were all from different  mothers. Who was I to judge? My dad was old enough to be my grandfather,  Hollywood weird, and wife number six was barely older than me. I kept  Clay and my dad separated, though, because I knew my dad wouldn't  understand him. Chap Weston had been in Hollywood for so long that he  was a snob. Didn't matter that we were living in the middle of nowhere,  Texas. He still had champagne taste, and that extended to people.         

     



 

Things came to a head after graduation.

I still think of that night with a sick knot in my stomach. At the time,  I was madly in love with Clay Price, and I'd intended on giving up my  virginity to him very soon. We'd fooled around for months-lots and lots  of fooling around-but had always kept it above the belt. I needed to be  sure of everything before I went further, I'd told him, and he'd been  content to wait, though it'd been more difficult for both of us lately.  Our phone calls had gotten dirty, and our kissing had taken on a new  intensity that both scared and excited me.

It all went to hell that night. I watched the light die in his eyes and he turned his back on me.

Even now, seven years later, I feel like puking just thinking about it.  That had been the worst moment in my life. And I knew it was a mistake  and I still did it.

I haven't loved anyone since then. I've been alone and lonely and  missing Clay. It's been seven years of misery without him, and I'd give  anything to go turn back time. To send a text the next morning and tell  him we need to talk, no matter how crazy my life was with my father's  stroke. To go even further back and stop the awful, stupid argument we  had before it ever started.

But I can't go back. And since I can't, I don't want to go forward,  either. It's why I've never looked Clay up online, never decided to hunt  him down and apologize. I'm ashamed of how we split, and I don't want  to see what he's been up to.

I don't want to move on. I still want him. And it hurts.

I press my palms to my eyes, trying to will back the tears that  threaten. If I didn't know what happened to him, in a sense, he was  still mine. Knowing that he's moved on to someone else means that he's  gone for good. I feel . . . gutted.

My phone buzzes with an incoming text. Then another. Then another. I'm  sure Lexi's thinking I've died, so I dash away the tears that slipped  out and pick up my phone again.

LEXI: $$$$$$$$$

LEXI: $$$$$$$$$$$$

LEXI: $$$$$$

Huh?

NAT: Is your key stuck?

LEXI: No dumbass

LEXI: He rich yo

LEXI: Silly rich

LEXI: Go google him. I'll wait.

Not . . . married? He might be, and maybe she just didn't mention it.  Even though my stomach feels like it's in a knot, I pull up the browser  on my phone and type in Clay's name and "Texas." I'm a little startled  when a full page of links appears. And even more startled when a lot of  them lead back to money and investing articles. I click on one, skimming  it. I see Price Brothers Oil mentioned several times, and then a side  business Clay's working on financing called IntelligentCamo. There's a  Forbes article showing all five brothers, and a bunch of pictures of  them on oil rigs or wearing hard hats.

I . . . I don't understand. I thought Clay went to go work roughnecking  on a rig. How did he become an oil tycoon? He's only twenty-five.

It explains the limo they drove off in, though.

I Google again, this time looking for a different sort of answer-"Clay Price" and "wife."

No names pop up.

He's not married. Never has been.

Some small part of him is still mine.

I'm overwhelmed at how much sheer joy courses through me at that small  realization. To think that Clay hasn't married after all this time. To  think that he's returned . . . and he's coming back to the museum  tomorrow. I switch back to the text window.

NAT: He's not married!

LEXI: Did you miss the part where he's rich?

NAT: I don't care about that. Now tell me how I can lose five pounds  overnight so he's not grossed out how fat I got after high school.

LEXI: Wrap your body in Saran wrap and sweat all night.

NAT: What??

LEXI: You asked! Now tell me what you're going to wear tomorrow for when he shows up again.





Chapter Five