Serial Bad Decisions

A short piece I know. It was supposed to gone on longer, but the idea's I had seemed to be merely tacked on, so I left it.

********

I was walking home in the cold drizzle when the car pulled over a short way ahead of me, the engine stuttering. The driver, who I could just about make out in the evening gloom as a woman, got out and opened up the bonnet, peering in at the engine. As she looked over the recalcitrant motor I heard her speak.

"Oh you silly cow Carla, you didn't do the radiator cap up properly." She breathed.

The name 'Carla' hit me like it always did: The name of the girl I'd grown up with, the girl I'd fallen in love with but couldn't tell, the girl I'd stupidly left in France with my supposed best friend over twenty years ago.

* * *

The three of us, Carla, Mark, and me, had grown up together, walked to the same schools together, and generally just hung around together. Not that surprising you might think; we were all roughly the same age and lived close to one another. What was surprising to me, at least in retrospect was that Carla continued to enjoy being with us even after she began to develop as a young woman; a beautiful young woman who could have garnered the company of any guy in town if she'd wanted. Being around Mark I could understand; he was a sporty athletic type with a dazzling smile and a hearty laugh, but me? I got tongue-tied talking to shop assistants and could have made a Tuxedo look scruffy. I suspected that Mark kept me around because it made him look good and he wasn't threatened by my presence, but Carla? What could she possibly see in me? She had no real reason to keep me around other than our long standing friendship. But she did. She made sure I got invited to all the parties she did and I went along because it was her asking me, even if I did feel like a fish out of water most of the time.

As we finished our final term at school I was totally devoted to Carla, but never said a thing. And I was beginning to feel like an extra wheel when the three of us were together. I was so in love with her that I couldn't bring myself to turn down the invite to tour Europe that summer with the two of them. I knew they weren't the 'item' that Mark pretended to everyone else, so I thought that one last blast for the three of us would be a laugh. And that had been when I lost her through my own stupid thinking.

* * *

I came back to the present, before the litany of similar bad decisions on my part could begin to play through my head again, and instead began to wonder if this 'Carla' could be 'MY' Carla, a ridiculous hope I knew. I pushed it from my mind and hunched up my shoulders as I walked past the stranded motorist.

"Excuse me?" The woman called out as she saw me. I looked up, it wasn't Carla. "I was wondering if you knew where I could get some water, my flatmate topped up the radiator yesterday but didn't tighten the cap properly and now poor Lizzie here is overheating." She waved her hand over the car. Much as I didn't want to get involved I couldn't bring myself to ignore her.

"Errrm, sure. I, errr, live just round the, errr, corner. I can get you some water." I blushed. I just couldn't talk to women without feeling foolish.

"Thank you. You're a sweetie." She smiled.

"Errr, s'all right." I gave a quick smile and then found myself frowning.

"What's the matter?" The girl asked.

"Nothing, I was just trying to think of a way to ask if you wanted a cup of coffee that didn't sound like a come-on or a trap that made you report me to the police." I said with a sad smile.

"Oh, it's too late for that," she grinned, "I am the police."

"A pretty girl like you?" I said in surprise.

She gave me a hard stare.

"Are you suggesting that in some way some of my sister officers do not possess womanly charms."

"Errrrrr, no. Not at all in fact. And if I did, I didn't mean too." I said in a bit of a panic.

She laughed.

"Only teasing. Some of them can seem a bit butch. Lead me to the coffee." She held out her hand. "I'm Tina by the way."

"Dave." I said, shaking her proffered hand.

Tina sipped at her coffee after I had handed her the mug.

"Mmmm, that tastes familiar." She said.

"It's only the Instant that I've drunk since I was a boy." I shrugged.

"I think it's the same stuff Carla likes though."

A little bell went off in the back of my mind. My Carla had always liked the same coffee as me; the stuff our mothers had given us when we were kids. Was it actually possible...? I shook myself.

"You seem to think a lot of Carla?" I said.

"I do. She took me under her wing when I was sent here. I owe her a lot."

Again that sounded like my friend.

"In what way?" I asked.

"The usual. If I was doubting myself she'd give me confidence; If I was down she'd cheer me up with some story about her travels on her own in Europe after she'd left school."

It sounded more and more to me that Tina was talking about my Carla.

"So, she and Mark split up?" It slipped out. I cursed myself silently.

"Right after the other guy left." Tina nodded. "Mark had got annoyed when she said it wouldn't be the same without Dave, I think she said his name was, so she ditched him." I thought for a moment Tina hadn't spotted the connection, but then realisation spread across her face. "It's you isn't it? You're the guy who did the vanishing act?"

I went red and bowed my head.

"Yes, that was me. I thought I was helping, doing the right thing, but from what you say, the one decision that I thought I'd got right was as wrong as all the others I've ever made. I'm bloody useless." I sighed deeply. "Could you tell Carla I'm sorry?"

"No." I looked up in surprise. "No, I think you'd do better to tell her yourself." Tina grinned.

"Will she even want to see me after I just upped and left?"

"You'd be surprised. She talks about you a lot." She smirked. "Come on, tidy yourself up and I'll take you home."

"Home?"

"Flatmates remember?"

"Oh, yeah, right."

"Hey Carla, I've brought someone to see you." Tina called out as she opened the front door to her flat.

"It's not one of your strange university mates is it?" A voice that I'd missed hearing for twenty years called back from the kitchen.

"Nope," Tina laughed, "just some lost soul who claims to know you."

"Someone who knows me?" Carla said, coming out into the small hallway while drying her hands with a tea-towel. As she saw me she stopped and stared, the colour draining from her face in shock.

"Hello Carla," I said quietly, "long time, no see." I gave her a watery, apologetic smile, worried that despite Tina's confidence she was wrong and Carla didn't want to see me.

The huge and much-missed smile that spread across her features proved my fears groundless. Carla dropped the tea-towel and threw her arms around me, hugging me in the way she'd always used to.

* * * *

We'd had a fun day in Paris; taking in all the usual sights and amusing the Parisians with our faltering attempts to speak their language. In the evening all three of us had imbibed perhaps one glass of wine too many and consequently were all a bit giggly as we got back to the cheap hotel on the outskirts of the city, making a bit too much noise on the landing as Carla went to her own room and Mark and I went to ours. He pulled a couple of cans of lager we'd bought on the ferry from his backpack and passed one over to me. We sat down and sipped at the cans in silence for a while and then Mark spoke.

"I gotta tell you Dave, I'm getting a bit fed up with waiting for her to make up her mind." He declared with a little slur.

"Who? About what?" I replied, mystified by his statement.

"Carla of course. About us." He'd definitely had one too many.

"What 'us'? You and me?" I asked, more confused than before about what he meant.

"No, me and her. I've been asking her out for two years now, but, but it's always got to be all three of us she says." He tipped back his can. "I dunno if she don't trust me, or she don't wanna upset you, but I can't get her alone for more than ten minutes." Mark sighed and drained his lager.

Suddenly that extra wheel feeling came back to me; I was getting in the way of my friends.

"Sorry mate." I mumbled.

"Iss not your fault." He muttered.

"Why not say something to Carla?" I suggested, hating the idea.

"Maybe t'morrow. Get her to decide."

"Yeah. Sleep on it."

"Yeah. Thanks Dave." Mark said, rolling up in the blanket.

He was soon asleep, a release I could not find forthcoming. I tossed and turned for two or three hours until I came to a conclusion: I couldn't, wouldn't, make Carla choose, so I'd make it easy and leave them to it. They were my friends and they deserved the chance to be alone. As I made my decision I acted on it. I rose quietly and gathered my gear together, stuffing it into my pack before slipping out and down to the front desk. After I'd paid my part of the bill I headed for the central railway station. I knew we had been planning on going to Germany and Italy, so I used my rail pass to board a train going the other way, south to Spain.

* * *

" So you just gave up and left?" Carla said, a glimmer of annoyance in her eyes.

"Mark had as good as told me I was getting in the way." I shrugged, reddening under her glare. "It seemed to be the best solution."

"You were both drunk."

"It still seemed to be the right thing to do."

"Mark was an idiot who thought all he had to do was smile at a girl to make her go weak at the knees." She snapped, her eyes again blazing momentarily.

"It looked like it worked most of the time." I replied, remembering how easy Mark had made picking up girls seem.

"And you're no better." She gave me another glare. "You didn't once think about how I might feel."

"I promise I did Carla," I said as soothingly as I could, "I thought that a clean break you could do nothing about would be easiest all round. For everybody." I stood up. "I think I should go now. It looks like I'm raking up things you would rather forget, messing things up as per bloody usual." As I turned to go, Carla reached out and grabbed my wrist.

"Stay." She said softly, all annoyance gone from her voice. "Please, this time, stay."

I sat down, clasping her hand in mine.

"Tell me what to do to make things right." I said. "I'll do anything for you, I always would."

"I know you would." She gave me a watery smile. I gave her a little grin in return.

We sat in silence for a while, just holding hands, until Tina passed into the room, evidently on her way out somewhere. She looked at the two of us and rolled her eyes.

"Good grief! Hasn't he guessed yet?" Carla shook her head. "And you still haven't told him?" Carla shook her head again.

"Told me what?" I asked, more than a little puzzled.

Tina went to open her mouth but Carla spoke first.

"No Tina, I'll do it my way."

"Do what?" I asked, now thoroughly bemused.

"Tell you the reason why I wanted to keep us as a trio."

"It wasn't some sex thing was it?" I said jokingly. Tina sniggered eliciting a glare for both of us from Carla.

"Dave, I'm being serious here. I liked having you around; you made me laugh and treated me like a real person."

"You are a real person." I interrupted, but Carla carried on.

"Mark, in those last four years, seemed to think I was some sort of trophy, something to be won and then paraded around."

"But you were, you still are, astonishingly beautiful." I said, feeling some need to explain my former best buddy.

"Thank you," Carla blushed. I'd forgotten how red she could go. "but that didn't mean that I was some sort of prize; I still had feelings; I wasn't some dumb bimbo desperate to win popularity by any means. But that was how Mark saw me, how he treated me."

"I'm sorry, I didn't realise. I thought that you and he were mutually attracted; in love in fact."

"Maybe we were, sort of, at the beginning."

"I knew I wasn't completely wrong." I said thankfully. "What happened?"

Tina was shaking her head.

"I thought YOU were going out?" Carla said to her pointedly.

"I was, but this is getting interesting." The younger girl grinned.

"Just go Tina please; You're putting me off." Carla sighed.

"Spoilsport." Tina grinned, poking her tongue out as she left.

A pregnant silence fell on the room after Tina left. Carla obviously wanted to tell me something but didn't know how. Equally obviously she was hoping that I would guess what it was; but I was drawing a blank. Whatever it was wasn't as obvious to me as she thought. To break the deepening quiet I asked a question.

"When we were at school you never mentioned wanting to be a rozz.... a police officer." I hurriedly corrected myself.

"At school I didn't," Carla smiled, "it developed at university. I wanted to make a difference to society. I haven't the patience to be a nurse so I became a cop." She grinned at 'cop'. "What about you? What are you up too?"

"Well, when I went to Spain I found myself a job at one of the British bars in Malaga; found I had an strange aptitude for it. I worked there for about five years and then came back home. I work the bar at the big hotel outside of town now, plus some handyman work. You know the sort of thing, painting, gardening, other repairs, you know the sort of thing." I wasn't proud of what I did; there were no qualifications needed other than I could do it. Being a police officer seemed much more responsible. At least I had a job I told myself every day.

"A man of many talents then?" Carla grinned.

"Not really," I grinned back, "I'm just about adequate at the things I need to be."

"Surely that's a talent in itself?" Carla said reproachfully. "You do yourself down Dave, you always did."

"Carla, dear Carla," I shook my head, "the only thing I'm good at is making bad decisions. If you don't know what to do, ask me, and then do the opposite of what I would." I smiled although I wasn't really joking.

"You seem happy enough about it though?"

"Happiness is relative. I've not been truly happy since that one day we had in Paris."

"Not even now?" Carla asked.

"Sorry, not even now. The thought that both you and Tina, who I hardly know, both think that there's something I should have realised makes me feel more than a little foolish."

"You shouldn't be."

"But you're still not going to tell me what it is?"

"Nope!" Carla laughed. "Even with your gloomy outlook I reckon you'll work it out for yourself, and I'm prepared to wait."

"Don't be so sure: I've got bugger all right for the past twenty years." I warned her.

"Oh, I don't know. Coming here to see me wasn't a bad idea."

"Not entirely my idea I must say: Even then it was a bit touch and go early on I thought." I gave her a grin. I had grinned more in the past twenty minutes, genuine grins, than I had for the previous twenty years.

"It was a bit wasn't it?" Carla said, pecking me on the cheek.

We lapsed into silence again for a short while until I felt the need to speak.

"Carla, can I ask you something? You don't have to tell me if you don't want to, I'll understand."

"Try me." She replied.

I took a deep breath.

"What happened after I left in Paris? Between you and Mark I mean?" It obviously wasn't the question she was expecting as she gave me a surprised look. "You don't have to tell me." I added hurriedly.

"No, it's okay. I'll tell you." She sighed and looked away for a moment before turning back to face me. " I woke up that morning feeling full of beans; I was out on a big adventure, away from parental control for the first time. And suddenly you weren't there; one of the props of my life was gone and everything felt wrong." She paused for a moment. "When Mark suggested maybe it was for the best and he and I could be alone together at last I freaked; I called him all sorts of horrible names; told him that I was never going to go out with him. I grabbed my stuff and stormed off to the railway station on my own, catching the first train out and finding myself in Switzerland." Carla looked down at the ground. "I was really mean to poor Mark. I blamed him for messing up my carefully nurtured plan, even though I soon realised most of it was your fault, you idiot." She thumped me on the arm.

"What happened to him?" I asked. "I never found out, even after I came back."

"I'm not really sure what he did in Paris. I have seen him about a couple of times since, in the distance. I think he owns a car showroom, BMW's, a couple of towns away."

"Perhaps I should go and find out?"

"That's up to you. I never felt the urge to find him myself."

"That's something. How come I've never seen you around before. You know, out and about on the beat so to speak?"

"When I was a beat copper I was stationed somewhere else. After I was promoted I wangled a posting back here as a desk sergeant, so unless you'd come into the station we had no chance of bumping into each other." She flashed me another grin. "Won't be there much longer though."

"Oh?"

"I'm packing it in. Too many cheeky young devils on the force now. I've got it all planned out."

I missed her implied invitation to ask what she was going to do as another, more important question occurred to me.

"Carla, I have to ask; how come you never looked for me? I mean, I thought that you were with Mark, so I never tried to find either of you."

"I went around to your Mom's house when I got back from Europe, but they didn't know what you were up to, and then I went to uni. I never forgot you, but I had no idea about where to look."

"Of course. I should have realised, sorry." I looked down and then back up, catching sight of the clock. "Carla, I have to go. I have to be at work in less than an hour. Can I come back and see you again?"

"Of course you can," She smiled, "but not in the mornings please; I'm on duty until six."

"The graveyard shift?"

"You got it. Ten til six for a month."

"I'm glad you're not still mad at me." I said.

"I'm just happy to see you again; at least at the moment." She laughed.

I held out my hand at the door. Carla looked at it in amusement for a second and then grasped it as if to shake it. Instead she pulled me towards her and then planted a kiss firmly on my lips.

"See what you missed." She smirked mischievously as we broke apart. I couldn't think of a coherent reply I was so confused.

I was still confused later, behind the bar, when I saw a grinning Tina ordering a round of drinks.

"Hiya Dave. She tell you yet?"

I shook my head no.

"She wants me to work it out for myself it seems."

"Maybe I could give you a clue?"

"I'd appreciate it Tina. I have no idea what I'm supposed to be working out."

"Okay then." She paused for a moment to think. "Okay. Think about what she doesn't say rather than what she does say: And her reactions rather than her actions." I gave her a bemused look that said she wasn't really helping much. "Sorry if that seems a bit cryptic, but you'll work it out. Carla says you're not as stupid as you like to pretend." With that she took her drinks and disappeared into the crowd.

I mused over Tina's 'hint' whenever I got a slack moment, which wasn't that often as we were busy that night. It wasn't until after we'd closed and I was cleaning up alone that I could really put my mind to the issue. I pondered on Carla's words and actions earlier and things began to click into place. The way she'd held my hand to stop me leaving; the way she seemed to prefer my company to Mark; her description of 'freaking' in Paris when she found I'd gone; and finally, and most tellingly, the kiss she'd planted on me as I'd left her flat. Carla seemed to be telling me she loved me. My first instinct was one of denial; there was no way on this earth that Carla had ever, would ever, be in love with me. My deductions were wrong, they had to be. But the more I thought about it, the more I went over what had happened, the more sense everything she had said and done made. It all fitted together so neatly. I nearly dropped the tray of glasses I was putting away when I suddenly realised what I had done, what I had thrown away. I had to see her; I had to see Carla now! Locking up quickly, I hurried to the police station where she had said she would be on duty tonight.