Sins & Needles(25)

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.