“Did you ever date a bad boy?”
Caroline raised her eyebrows questioningly and smiled. “Should I know something I don’t?”
Avery blushed and shook her head. “No, just hypothetical.”
“Yeah right. How bad are we talkin’?” Her New York accent thickened with the query.
“Well what do you consider a bad boy?”
Caroline gave her a look but conceded the question. “I dunno. A bum. A cheat. A drug addict. An alcoholic. Abusive. Lazy. A commitment-phobe who pretends to be otherwise. A thief. A criminal… should I go on?”
Those were all the obvious, weren’t they? Avery stiffened, turning her back on Caroline as she pulled on her stilettoes. “What about… different?”
“Different? Different how?”
She shrugged, turning back around but not really looking at her. She fiddled with her earring nervously. “Maybe a little older?”
“How much older?” Caroline snapped up, showing a little of her old energy.
Avery grinned. “Not that much older. Early twenties.”
Caroline frowned. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“What if he had money? A lot of it.”
“Depends how he came by it.”
“Commercialism.”
Caroline grunted, “Honest or not?”
“Honest.”
“Well it’s not the best but it’s not a crime. Unless you like him for his money, then we have a problem.”
“No, no. No. But what if your friends thought he was kind of creepy because… he might not be the best looking guy in the world. What if he seemed kind of harsh and cold but he wasn’t always like that?”
Her aunt was watching her with narrowed, perceptive eyes. “What is he like?”
“Kind. Warm. Funny. Loving. Imperfect. Arrogant. Superior. But right…”
Caroline smiled slowly, her eyes suspiciously bright and shiny. “Then I’d tell my friends to go to hell.”
Avery felt the breath whoosh out of her body. “You would?”
“Avery… stop asking me what I would do.” Caroline shook her head. “I’m not going to be here, sweetheart, and you need to make your own mind up about things. Important things. And you need to do that without fearing something bad is going happen because it was your decision.”
Her aunt might as well have shot a steel pipe into her backbone. Avery stiffened and instead of crying like she thought she would, she felt heat. The heat of relief.
“I’d tell them to go to hell too,” she whispered.
Her aunt’s answer was a triumphant grin.
***
Now that her mind was made up, Avery couldn’t wait to get to the club. Surely Brennus would turn up this time. He had to be missing her as much as she missed him. And it wasn’t just him she missed. It was his weird, abstract world. It was fragmented. She was fragmented. But somehow it fit. She liked who she was in that world.
Sarah and Jemima kept tugging on her and asking her what was bugging her as she drew on to her tiptoes and tried to see over the crowds. She wanted to tell them but the truth was she knew they would never understand. Maybe they were still too young. Maybe life needed to happen to them more. Shrugging them off with a soft mysterious smile, Avery pushed through the dancing throng on the floor and swept the room for Brennus. Surely she would feel him if he was here. God, she wished he’d come. She wanted to dance with him so badly.