Page 54 of Subscriber Wars

She levels me with a look. “Text him to come back.”

Ugh. Reluctantly, I pull out my phone. Scarlett looks at me with half-open eyes.

“I know,” I tell her. “He’s going to make things awkward.” And annoying.

“No, he won’t.” Vee laughs, coming to sit with me and Scarlett on the grass. “We need to shoot anyway. My uncle said he and his wife would be home in a couple of hours. They were meeting a new dog.”

I rub Scarlett again and her eyes close. “The dogs seem really happy here,” I muse.

“They are.”

Vee nuzzles one of the dogs who comes up and flops down in her lap. “It’s good therapy, right?”

I cock my head to the side. “Therapy?”

“Yeah.” She kisses the top of the dog’s head. “When my mind is messed up and all chaotic, I can come here and somehow everything just becomes so still.”

She looks up and her mouth tips down into a frown. “After… you know, what happened between us, this was the only place I felt…welcome.”

Her eyes flick up at me, and I feel this ache in my chest that spreads out, weaving its pain around my ribs.

“I didn’t mean to make you feel like you didn’t belong at your own home,” I admit.

“You didn’t,” she clarifies. “I mean, sure, the hateful looks you gave me when I passed you in the parking lot were tense, but I did it to myself. I think I was ashamed.”

She was ashamed.

Wow.

“Why would you feel ashamed? We were playing a game.” I shrug like her last prank was no big deal. “We had a prank war. You won. There’s no reason to feel ashamed.”

She lowers her gaze back to the dog in her lap. “I took it too far.”

Heaven help me. “I deserved it.”

It’s the truth. I did deserve it. I forced her into one-upping me over and over again. I challenged her wits every day until she showed me just how brilliant she was. Even if she pissed me off and shit all over our entire relationship, she has no reason to be ashamed.

“You did deserve it,” she finally agrees with a grin. “But I still shouldn’t have done that to you. It was wrong.”

I shrug. I don’t know that I would classify what she did as wrong. Maybe a little devious, but that’s how you win a prank war.

“Oh look, there’s Brick,” she says, moving the dog and standing, still holding its collar. “Hold Scarlett while I get the others.”

I look down at Scarlett as she cracks an eyelid. “Brick’s an easy target,” I tell her. “You won’t have any trouble getting him down should he get on your nerves.”

Scarlett acts like she understands me and closes her eyes, ignoring the six other barking dogs. I knew she was the cool one. She isn’t threatened at all by the Ed Sheeran looking filmmaker.

“I’m going to give Brick a tour around the grounds,” Vee says. “You going to be okay here?”

I nod, and then glare at Brick. “But I’m getting hungry so try not to shoot the grass and the tubs of dog food.”

Vee rolls her eyes. “Your Midol wore off I see.”

I could argue and say Brick puts me in a shitty ass mood, but I don’t, because that would show spending the day with Vee didn’t put me in a shitty mood and that’s a big fucking problem.

University CamFlix Competition Submission

Entry Number: 75

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