Super Powereds: Year 3 (17 page)

“Uh-oh,” Camille muttered, setting her eyes back on the table.

“You okay?” Alice asked, breaking off her conversation with Mary.

“I’m good,” Camille said immediately, her innate desire not to cause trouble overtaking her actual concern.

“No, she’s not. She thinks she might have had too much too fast,” Mary informed Alice. “Could you go get her some water?”

“Not a problem,” Alice replied, immediately darting through the crowd toward the bar.

Mary patted Camille carefully on the hand and gave her a reassuring smile. “I’m glad you noticed it on your own. I was about to say something if you took another shot.”

“They didn’t seem very strong,” Camille said, illustrating her own lack of bar knowledge.

“It’s my understanding that they never do,” Mary told her. “I’m sorry, this is my fault. I know how much you dislike giant crowds, and I still let you come along.”

“It’s not your fault,” Camille replied, shaking her head once before realizing that action only reminded her of the growing drunk sensation. “I made the choice to come here.”

“I know, but if we hadn’t pressured you—”

“Mary, I know you mean well, but please stop. I don’t need another person in my life doing this,” Camille interrupted. Mary, for her part, blinked in surprise. She couldn’t have imagined Camille interrupting someone before actually seeing it happen. “I know I’m anxious in social settings, I know I’m not the bravest person in our class, and I know I seem like I need people to look after me. And because I know all that, I purposely do things like come to bars, enroll in the program, and make myself uncomfortable. I push myself because I want to be stronger. We’re all doing it; this is just the area I’m battling in. So don’t ever feel like you’ve
made
me do anything. I’m the one shoving myself into these awkward situations, and there’s no one else to blame.”

“I . . . that honestly hadn’t occurred to me,” Mary replied, after a moment of consideration. “My apologies.”

“It’s okay. Most people don’t think being around lots of other people is something that requires effort and training. I am getting better, though. I mean, look at Vince. Freshman year, I was barely able to talk to him. Now, I can actually spend time with him as a friend without constantly blushing.”

“You have made some impressive strides in that regard.”

“I have, haven’t I?” Camille slowly moved herself down from the stool, happy to see that her sense of movement had somewhat stabilized. “Hey, Mary, I want you to know that this is my decision too, and it’s not the alcohol making me do it.”

“What are you doing?”

“Taking your advice,” Camille replied, turning toward the table where a young man who’d been staring at her suddenly glanced away in embarrassment, “and pushing myself.”

28.

“Yo, Chad, let me get a glass of water and an empty beer bottle, mine is full,” Angela said as she walked up, sliding a brown bottle sloshing with a myriad of spit-back shots across the smooth countertop. Chad plucked it from the bar as it danced near the edge, dropping it in the trashcan while pulling up one of the empties he’d set aside. Angela had let him in on the shot girl’s trick and requested he have a few empty bottles saved for change-outs when needed. With his other hand, Chad grabbed a glass, then filled it with ice and water, sliding it back across the bar.

“Thanks, hot stuff,” she said, grabbing a seat at a stool adjacent to Vince. “I’m sweating like a whore in church out there. Thank the heavens I’m sexy enough to pull it off.” To illustrate this fact, she grabbed a napkin and dabbed her cleavage pointedly, the coy grin on her face making it clear that she was purposely drawing attention to this part of her body.

Vince made a point of looking away, which is when he noticed Camille stepping onto the dance floor with another man. Roy checked out Angela’s breasts, because he was Roy and they were quite nice breasts. Chad, on the other hand, coughed in surprise, nearly dropped the bottle opener he was holding, and suddenly found something in the ice bin that demanded his full attention.

It was the last reaction that Angela took note of. In the year or so that she’d befriended and been shamelessly flirting around Chad, she’d come to know his reactions well. To a simple stunt like this, she would have expected disinterest, or, at best, academic appreciation of her physiology. What he’d done was way out of character. That was the behavior of a man who was smitten, or maybe at least interested. It didn’t fit, and Angela wasn’t the top of her class because she wasn’t perceptive enough to pick up on changes like that. She decided to push it and see what happened.

“I swear, lugging bottles and shots around in these boots is hell on my back,” Angela declared, stretching her chest out and pulling her back in so significantly that the crackling of vertebrae could be heard, provided one could discern the sound over the music. This had the additional effect of making her chest all the more visible, and redoubling Chad’s intent focus on the ice bin. “Chad, when we get off, maybe you can give me a back rub? You’ve got all that strength in your hands, so I bet you can really go in deep and work the tissue.”

“I do not believe I will have time for that this evening,” Chad replied stiffly, refusing to turn his gaze up toward her. He wasn’t blushing, and his tone and breathing were still the same, but that didn’t really mean shit for a guy with his powers. He could hide the physical tells well, but not the behavioral ones. Normally, Chad would have at least talked over the idea with her, seen about finding a time. He’d have taken a request for a massage as just that, a proven method of physical therapy to provide relief and increased performance. The sexual implications would have gone right by him, or at least he’d have pretended they did. Something was definitely off. Angela was certain of it now.

Without any showmanship, she dropped the napkin and straightened her back. Messing with Chad was fun because he never gave her any response. Now that he was reacting, it somehow felt mean-spirited. She’d need to get a handle on this new situation, and then determine the appropriate plan of attack. Besides, she was a professional first and foremost, and the shots weren’t going to sell themselves.

“Thanks again for the water,” Angela said. This time, Chad dared to glance at her. She turned her own gaze away from her prey, and realized the stool next to her was now empty.

“Hey, where’d Vince go?”

*              *              *

“I’m impressed. I don’t know how you did it, but I’m impressed,” Vince said, taking his former seat next to Mary. Though he spoke to his friend, his eyes never left the dance floor, save for necessary navigational tasks.

“I don’t really think I had much to do with it,” Mary replied. “Camille doesn’t need us to push her along. She’s pretty much got that task well in hand.”

“So I’ve noticed,” Vince said, still looking at the awkwardly shuffling figures trying to keep time and two-step. “It’s actually kind of amazing how brave she is, the way she’s always throwing herself out of her comfort zone. I don’t think I could do it, honestly.”

Mary glanced at her friend and opened up her ability a bit. It was hard to hear over the constant thud of the music and the flurry of hormone-amplified thoughts, but all her training hadn’t been for nothing. She was able to locate Vince’s mind through the chaos and hone in on it. What she found surprised her: Vince was genuinely happy Camille was dancing with the other man. It shocked her so much, in fact, that she let slip an audible reaction.

“What the hell?”

Vince glanced away from floor and toward her. “What the hell what?”

A quick parade of potential lies darted through Mary’s head, but then she decided that since she was already on the precipice of the subject, she might as well just dive on in.

“What the hell is with you and Camille? I know you like her, Vince. Even if I wasn’t a mind reader, it’s obvious you look at her differently than you do other women. And not even you can be so dense as to not realize that she’s got some feelings for you too. So why are you happy seeing her dance with another man?”

“Because I want her to be happy,” Vince said, finally turning fully away from the dance floor. “Yes, I did begin to suspect that she had a small crush on me, and that’s why I’m glad she’s looking at other guys. They can give her what I can’t.”

“That’s idiotic,” Mary snapped. Her words might have been more forceful, but she’d spent most of her verbal energy trying not to snort audibly when Vince had said the words “small crush” to her. “If you know you both like each other, what’s stopping you?”

“The same reason I turned down Sasha when she wanted to get together at the beach house last year,” Vince said. “I’ve got some issues relating to a girl I met when I was sixteen. The thoughts and memories of her haunted my relationship with Sasha. Until I let go or move past it, it’s not fair for me to give half of myself to someone else. Especially not someone as important to me as Camille.”

Mary pressed her fingers to her temples in a vain attempt to fight back a momentary headache. “Your heart and intentions are in the right place, Vince, I’ll give you that. But you’re also a moron. Whether Camille wants to be with someone in your situation should be her choice, not yours to make for her.”

“Maybe so,” Vince agreed. “But all I’m doing is not making a move. If Camille wanted something, couldn’t she have brought it up just as easily? To me, for right now, I’d say she’s making the choice.”

To that point, Mary didn’t have a ready response.

29.

Asking someone to dance had been surprisingly easy. Whether it was the alcohol or the adrenaline Camille was uncertain, but the whole event had flown by in a series of pointed looks and a single question which yielded an immediate response. Initiating the dance had been easy; it was actually completing the act that was proving difficult.

The first hurdle was the height difference, which had her reasonably tall partner slouching as gracefully as he could to somewhat close the gap between them. The second was the dance style itself. Camille did have rhythm and grace; her mother had forced her to take ballet as one of many ultimately failed attempts at getting her to open up socially. What she didn’t have was any practice two-stepping. Even that hurdle might have been surmountable, though, if not for the fact that her partner had no experience either, and unlike her, he lacked both inborn talent and training. The combined result of these issues was a duet of blundering across the dance floor and trying in vain to avoid running into other dancers.

None of this helped Camille’s growing sense of embarrassment, nor did the sight of Vince watching from their table. She loathed every minute of this, however, she refused to yield. If she ran away from this moment, who knew when she might gather up the courage to try again.

“Do you go to Lander?”

The voice took her so much by surprise that she nearly tripped on her next step, recovering only because of reflexes honed by years of training. After a moment, she realized the question had come from her dance partner, who was looking down at her quizzically, clearly awaiting a response. Inwardly, she cursed the fact that this place kept the music low enough to allow conversation, dearly wishing she could feign not hearing and continue their bumbling silence.

“Yes,” she said eventually, more to get him to focus on dancing and stop staring than anything else.

“Me too! I’m a Communications major. My name is Ross.”

“Camille,” Camille replied softly. Despite her love of not talking, etiquette compelled her to respond.

“What’s your major, Camille?”

For the barest of moments, she almost blurted out that she was in the HCP, but at the last second, she remembered the major written on her transcript and kept her secret preserved.

“Biology.”

“Nice. You want to be a doctor or something?”

“Or something. I haven’t really picked a field yet.”

“Not me, I’m going to be a television reporter and work my way up to anchor,” Ross informed her, flashing a cheesy grin that likely would have looked in place on a man with tightly gelled hair sitting behind a news desk.”

At that moment, several other couples danced by, forcing them to maneuver away and cutting the conversation short. Camille breathed a momentary sigh of relief with the fleeting hope that the interruption of verbal momentum would finish off their talk. That hope was quickly extinguished, however, once the last of the dancers went by.

“So, Camille, what year are you?”

“Junior,” she said, slightly louder than usual, because the only thing worse than talking was having to repeat herself.

“Get out of town. I’m a senior myself, though I’d have pegged you as a sophomore.”

“Thank you?”

“Sorry, didn’t mean that in an unkind way. Heck, most women I know are always fretting about looking older than they are, so I guess I meant it as a compliment.”

“I appreciate it,” Camille said. As she spoke, the song finally came to an end and a slower one began to play. Ross showed no signs of letting go, but she took a few steps back and broke their embrace. Three regular songs had pushed her limits; a slow one was well beyond what she could currently handle.