Creatures Of Habit

10 {James} 10

As far as hangovers went, the one I had on Sunday was probably in my top five most debilitating. Mom forced me into my Sunday best, which consisted of joggers, a hoodie, and a baseball cap to hide from the glare of the auditorium lights. Sorry Pastor Luke, whatever you said was lost in the constant whirring of the chainsaw my brain had developed overnight. I got the gist of it at least. Moral of the story, as it always was: love above all else. Whatever that actually meant. I hadn't known anyone to really love anything except themselves in my eighteen years of life thus far and though I was young, I knew enough to know that nothing ever trumps self-interest. Which was why it was so easy for me to meet Amelia for coffee and break up with her for Clark. Of course, she didn't know I was the one meeting with her otherwise she never would have agreed to see me. Instead, Clark texted her the location.

We met at a little coffee house about a fifteen minute drive away from my house. Not a lot of people knew about it but I liked it; it was cozy, and a good place to speak privately. As soon as she saw me sitting at one of the little tables close to the back, she narrowed her eyes suspiciously. Amelia was smart as a whip; almost nothing evaded her, and this was probably no different.

"Where's Clark?" she demanded without preamble. She was dressed in a loose sweater without any makeup on. She looked different, tired, but still beautiful.

I sighed into my coffee mug which was steaming, and smelled like it could cure my throbbing headache. "He isn't coming," I confessed. I tried to make my voice apologetic, but that was kind of hard to do through the pain pulsating in my brain.

Amelia hesitated for a minute and then, with a huff, she turned and walked towards the door. "Whoa, hey!" I chased after her, which was hard to do as my vision turned to black static when I got up, but I managed to stop her before she made it outside. The barista looked at us warily, ready to save the damsel in distress, but I shot him a mollifying smile.

"Let go, James." She pulled free of my hand on her arm and I felt a pang. Amelia was Venus in the shell and I was only the ground she'd crush under her bare feet. But man, if I didn't like the crush.

"If Clark isn't man enough to tell me himself then I don't want to hear it," she cut into my headache with a sharp voice. She really was intuitive, but then again, Clark had been ignoring a lot of her texts, so it probably wasn't hard to put two and two together.

"Look, you're right. Clark's an idiot, and he should be here. But would you rather him just ghost you?"

"Isn't that exactly what he's doing?" she asked, hands on her hips.

"No, no. I think he's just afraid that he won't be able to let you be free, you know what I mean?" I laid it on thick, butter on bread.

"Let me be free? I'm not his captive, I'm his girlfriend." I managed to steer her back to the table, and my coffee, and sit her down across from me.
"Look, Clark cares about you, but he's afraid he won't give you the time you deserve now that he's focused on college and that scholarship he needs. And then he's going to go off to school, probably an Ivy League, and he doesn't want to hold you back and force you to wait." Most of the time, when I was trying to pacify someone, what I said was pretty much a load of bull. It was one of my more distasteful talents. I was a good liar. And Amelia, as smart as she was, seemed to eat it all up. "He just wants you to be happy," I said. He just wants to get rid of you, I wished I could say. Not really so bluntly, but seeing the belief, even the hope in her face, kind of made me feel like a piece of crap. I wished I could just tell her the truth, but if Clark found out, I'd be in for it.

"Is that true, or are you just saying that?" she asked. Her big blue eyes suddenly got watery and I felt even worse.

"I mean it."