It might have sounded funny, but it was anything but. My heart didn’t want to beat just talking about it. I’d never told anyone outside of my therapist about my anxiety attacks. I let everyone else think I was just having some sort of irrational reaction to the situation. Let them file it away under Poor Daisy. Lost her husband, lost her mind. But Cam needed to know. If it was a barrier to me being able to be with him, I couldn’t not tell him.
“It’s not always like this. It’s because of the accident,” Cam said. “Before that, people were actually getting pretty cool around here, now that I’m not a novelty anymore. And sometimes, it’s kind of nice to have a complete stranger profess their love for you.” He shrugged. “When you’re having a really shitty day, it reminds you of why you keep going. Some days, that’s all it takes. When the rest of the world tells you no, that one yes makes it all worthwhile.”
“I know you just want to be a successful singer, and if you’re successful, you need those people. I can’t ask you to not be what you are to make me happy. That’s not fair.” I tipped my head back and closed my eyes. “That sounded so much better when I explained it to my mom.”
Cam chuckled. “I know what you mean. Yeah, the attention sucks when it’s for something you don’t want. Like Ashley. Like when Jordan died. It makes you relive that moment all over again when you just wanted to go get groceries. No one wants that. But when ten thousand people are singing your song as soon as you play the first chord, or when someone tells you that words you scribbled down on the back of a paper menu helped them through a really shitty time in their lives, that’s the kind of high you can’t buy anywhere.”
His whole face lit up when he said it. This was Cam. “I never thought of that part of it.”
“What was the first thing we did when we went up into your bedroom with Bree the other day?” he asked.
“We made a playlist for Ev.” Music was a part of Ev for so long, it was almost like having there in the room.
“Did it make you feel better?”
“I was listening to it again tonight.”
“Someone had to write those songs and sing them. It’s therapy for me to be able to write them, and maybe I can make someone else smile, too. That’s why I do it.” He ran his finger ever so lightly on top of mine. I shivered at his touch. “For the same reason that you listen to them.”
I sighed. He understood without me really even having to tell him. “My parents think I’m being too hard on you.”
“Karen and Ed are very smart people.” Cam smiled, he knew I was coming around. “I have to agree with them.”
“When I was talking to my mom, I was finally able to put words to what’s holding me back.”
Cam tipped his head. “What are you talking about?”
“I blame Ashley for all of our problems. But I’m to blame, too. Even though I’m forcing myself to move forward, I still feel like I’m cheating on Jordan.” I pulled back from the truck. “I know it’s irrational, but when it came out of my mouth, being able to put actual words to the feeling made me feel…better.”
Cam pulled me back to the door. “It’s not irrational. It’s hard, moving on. I protected Ashley way longer than I should have. Those feelings don’t just go away.”
Instead of fighting with him about it, I understood. I finally did.
I looked in to the cab of the truck. “What have you been doing out here, all of this time?”
“I’ve been listening to the Sox game on the radio, thinking that your dad must be pissed off since the Yankees are handing their asses to them.” He picked a plastic cup out of the center console. “And drinking one of your mom’s shakes.”
“Oh my God, she gave you a Lifedrink?” I thought she was on his side.
“Yeah.” Cam looked down at the mostly empty cup. “She wanted to make me a sandwich, but I refused. She insisted I take something, and she wouldn’t take this back.” He stopped to let me snicker.
“How was it?”
“You’ve never had one of your mother’s drinks? How’d that happen? She’s very persuasive, you know.”
“I’ve had one. It was green. That’s all I remember. The green.” I shuddered. It tasted like grass clippings. I couldn’t get the taste out of my mouth for hours.
“This was actually pretty good. It was supposed to be salted caramel, which I would call a loose interpretation, but I didn’t regret my time with it.”
Our eyes caught, the magnets had finally been turned around to the way they belonged, and neither of us could look away. We could only move closer until our lips met, shyly at first, but as the forces collided, I was barely still on my tip toes outside of the truck as I was pulled deeper into Cam.
“I love you,” I whispered. “But I’m scared.”
“I’m scared, too. But it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.” Cam placed tiny kisses on both of my cheekbones. “Get in the truck, Daisy.”
I laughed. “That didn’t sound creepy at all.”
I got in the truck.
Every breath caught in my chest the whole way back to the condo. I’d made a decision, even though I’d already made it once, something seemed different. We’d been tested, and Cam passed with flying colors while I could only grade my performance as needs improvement.
No one seemed to care but me.
“Hey,” Cam ran his hands from my shoulders down my arms. He’d crawled up behind me from his side of the bed. I’d gone straight upstairs, exhausted. “I’m glad your home.”
I turned around, my soul hungry for him, pushed him down on the bed and climbed on top of him before my brain could even process what I was doing. I shut it down, I didn’t want to think anymore tonight. Cam swallowed hard just after his head hit the pillow, he didn’t expect it either, but I could tell just by the rise and fall of his chest it was the good kind of surprise. I pulled my shirt up over my head, it caught on my fingers before it fell beside me. Cam’s eyes were locked on mine. I leaned forward, running my fingers along the curve of his cheek.
Jordan’s dog tags dangled between us, as I lowered my body, they rested on Cam’s chest. I didn’t feel so self-conscious about doing things with Cam while wearing them anymore. I needed Jordan’s strength sometimes to move on. Instead of a ghost, he was my mascot. If he couldn’t be here to make me happy, he’d want someone else to do it. Cam was never going to take his place, but he didn’t have to be in the same place. He had his own place now. There was room in my heart for both of them.
Electricity jolted through my veins when my lips brushed against his, not quite a kiss. My thighs twitched and Cam groaned. I tried to sit back, my plan was to pull his shirt off of him and then tease him with my fingers on his chest, but Cam had other plans.
Almost mirroring the move I’d just pulled on him, Cam reached up and flipped me down on to my back, spinning up on top of me almost like two cats in a fight. I half laughed, half squealed when I landed on my back. Cam didn’t want to tease, he didn’t want to go slow. He just wanted to go.
His shirt was gone already, and he unhooked my bra as he sucked on my neck, my arching back making his work easier. I pushed off my own shorts. Cam’s hands were otherwise occupied with my breasts, and I didn’t want to insinuate I wanted him to stop. His intensity lit a fire in me that I wasn’t sure had even been fully reignited in me when we’d been together before. When the heat deep in my belly threatened to burn us both alive, I grabbed handfuls of his hair, coaxing his mouth to mine, so he could ride the waves of the flames inside me. Drenched in sweat and struggling to breathe, Cam collapsed on top of me. I wrapped my arms around him, never wanting to let him go.
Why had I wanted to push him away? Whatever I was thinking just hours before didn’t even make sense to me anymore.
Cam started chuckling. At first he tried to keep it in, his shoulders shaking made the whole bed move.
“What’s funny?” Had he lost his mind?
He rolled over, so he lay beside me. I turned to face him, and tried
not to be unnerved by his shit eating grin. He wrapped his finger around of unruly strand of my hair, his eyes following the path of his finger as he pulled it away from my face.
“Are you going to tell me?” I pushed at him playfully.
“If I have to.” Mischievous light danced in his eyes.
My heart skipped a beat. “You’re not exactly inspiring confidence.”
That shook him back to seriousness. “Oh, no. Jesus. I’m laughing because that’s how it should be. Wild abandon, pulling, pushing, biting, tearing, all the good stuff. I’ve been handling you with kid gloves because I knew you needed something else.” The grin was back. “But maybe I was wrong.”
My mouth dropped. “Kid gloves? I wouldn’t exactly call screwing around in a parking lot full of people reserved. If that blanket had come off, we would have ended our, what, second date, in jail. Or your extracurriculars at the office. Should I be worried? Are there cameras in here or something?”
“No, Daisy, that stuff is just fun. Taking the chance gives it that edge. The mind is the most active sexual organ, you know.” He stole a quick kiss. “I mean, we could just have boring prude sex, if that’s what you’d prefer.”
“No.” I wanted Cam to push all my limits. I was becoming addicted to the rush.
He rolled on to his back, his smile huge. “Good. Because I don’t want to have boring prude sex with you, Daisy.” He laughed at his own declaration, propping himself up by his elbow. His hair was wild from sweat and passion, still sticking in the tufts that I’d grabbed in handfuls. I ran my tongue over my bottom lip, just watching him watch me whet my passion all over again. But at the same time, I was lost in some spell. I couldn’t move. I could only observe.
“I know no one ever wants to hear about someone’s ex when they’re in bed,” Cam continued, and he had never been more right about anything than he was at that moment. Talk about killing the mood. I raised an eyebrow, skeptical, because he was treading on thin fucking ice. I might like to find adventurous ways to satisfy my Cam cravings, but my ego was made of eggshell. “But Ashley sucked in bed. Sucked. Now that I’m with someone who enjoys sex and that isn’t afraid of their body, I feel like a new person.”
Wasn’t afraid of my body? It’s funny sometimes, the difference between what you think and what you project. Sometimes I didn’t even feel naked, instead I felt like I was wearing a fat suit. But Cam thought I owned it. Or maybe he just saw what he wanted to see. This weight, pardon the pun, lifted from me when he said that. Cam thought I was beautiful. For the first time in a long time, I believed him.
And he knew it. He rested his free hand on my cheek, leaning in to kiss me, slowly, nipping at the bottom lip he’d just watched me wet. “Thank you,” he said when he pulled away. “I really needed this.”
“I did too.” I’d had no idea how much.
Cam was still sound asleep when I woke up. I could tell by the way the sun lit up the skylight it was still really early. But I was up. And I felt good. Usually I needed multiple cups of coffee to function like a respectable human being. I took my walk, and I thought about the future the entire way.
I’d never done that before. I’d always been trapped in the past. Let me tell you, the future is a fucking exciting place to let your mind wander to. Nothing’s gone wrong there yet. And if it does, you just change it to what you want it to be. The choose your own adventure book otherwise known as life.
Once I got back to the condo, I still didn’t need coffee. I’d planned on going to visit JR today, but there was no point in going too early. Too many other days, he’d been taken away with the doctors, to some deep scary place in the hospital that we weren’t allowed to go with him. They’d blame germs or radiation or something. Whatever they made him go through alone, JR couldn’t tell us yet.
Now that his eyes were starting to open, he looked like Ev.
I knew he was going to have her smile.
I was going to make damn sure he had her spirit and her soul.
Before I headed to the hospital, I went to the bookstore and got some books. Not picture books made for little kids learning to read, because even though JR was destined to be the smartest, funniest, handsomest, and all around best kid ever, he wasn’t even supposed to be born yet. There’s only so long you can talk to yourself before you start to feel a little crazy. Reading to him in the sing song rhythm those books forced wasn’t going to make me feel any saner. Even though I was technically speaking to someone, JR couldn’t respond and he didn’t understand.
“You’re reading him Harry Potter?” Mom found my choice of book amusing when she got to the NICU ward. “You girls loved those books so much.”
“Might as well start him early, right?” I closed the book and stretched. I couldn’t wait to be able to bring JR outside, to have Bree’s boys play with him. Who was I kidding, I just wanted to hold him. Smell him. Give him a real kiss. Babies needed to be touched. The nurses said it would be soon.
I didn’t know how much longer I could be patient.
Instead of going back to the condo, I stopped at The Lonely Heart. Other catastrophes overshadowed our story now, and the reporters were nowhere to be found. Cam was working behind the bar, something I didn’t usually see him do. I climbed up on a stool, not bothering him. The Sox had an early game, so there was a pretty good crowd in the bar. I checked the score and cringed. At home, Dad was probably losing his shit, the season was winding down and every game was important. Cam winked at me while he talked to some other customers. I’d been getting into the book when my mom showed up, it had been a while since I’d read it, so I pulled it out of my purse and went back to reading.
“Want a beer?” Cam startled me when he approached.
That was even a question? “Have we met?”
“Ha.” He put a napkin in front of me. “Bottle or draught?”
“Blueberry,” I looked up over the book. “On tap.”
“Reading instead of baseball, huh?” Apparently he hadn’t seen the score. Cam spilled a little of the beer on the napkin when he put it down, and the glass had way too much foam. Amateur. But he’d earned points back by floating actual blueberries in the beer. “I didn’t think people read actual books anymore.”
My eyes narrowed. “Do they read hypothetical books? Kids these days.”
“You know what I mean.” He smirked. “I thought everyone had one of those machines that was full of dirty books.”
“I don’t need dirty books, mister. I actually do dirty things.” I dog-eared my page and set the book down away from the beer puddle. “So I can be proud to read my books out in the open.”
Cam leaned forward on his arms. A couple sat down next to me. “Enough with the books. Tell me about these dirty things.”
My cheeks burned. The guy next to me had his head buried in his menu, deep in contemplation. Someone hit a home run, and the bar went wild. Still, just to make sure, I stood on the rung of the stool so only Cam could hear me. “I don’t have to. You were there.”
“Doesn’t mean I don’t like hearing about it.” Heat rolled off him in waves. I sat back down before I got carried away. “I’ll be done in a few minutes. Shauna’s running a little late.”
August was a funny month. You expected it to be blazing hot, but sometimes it would throw you a day that you’d swear was October. Like today. The air felt crisp when we left the restaurant.
Cam laced his fingers between mine. “Have you ever walked out on that rock thing?”
“The jetty?” According to my dad, who was an authority on useless Plymouth historical facts, to give people jobs during the Great Depression, they build a stone walkway that jutted out into the ocean. It might have been a breakwater, because it sheltered a dock, but otherwise, it was just this uneven rock walkway that stopped abruptly. Because it was weird, it was pretty cool. “Not since I was a kid.”
“Let’s do it.” Cam pulled me towards the crosswalk.
Tons of people were out tonight, eating dinner, har
assing the seagulls who vied for their leftovers, fishing, or like us, walking the jetty. It was almost impossible to walk side by side, the rocks had warn away unevenly, dipping down or gaping when you least expected it. Long strides were required to go from rock to rock. Cam had to wait for me to catch up more than once.
“Look at that.” I pointed down at one of the rocks. “Someone spray painted Elvis here.”
“You’re right.” Cam did a double take. “And it’s Fat Elvis. That’s not cool.”
“You’d think if they were going to pay respect to The King, it would have been Young Elvis.” Cam shook his head and then took my hand. “Wise men say, only fools rush in...” Cam sang in the deepest voice he could manage and while I turned bright red. “But I can’t help falling in love with you.”
People who passed us on the way back did double takes, they might not have placed the face but they knew the voice. But they just nodded and kept going, not intruding on our moment. I turned back to watch them walk way, they’d already forgotten about their celebrity sighting. Maybe Cam was right. It wasn’t always so bad to be him.
We continued out to the end. “So that’s it.” I shrugged. The wind ripped at our clothes, and I rubbed my arms to keep warm. I wished I had a sweatshirt.
Cam pulled me into his chest and I felt a little warmer. I watched him as he took it all in. “Maybe I should get a boat.”
“Oh yeah?” I’d thought the same thing many times while gazing out at the ocean.
“Yeah. We could just take sail off to that tropical island over there, live off of the coconuts.” He pointed at the land mass off in the distance. “We’ll make you a coconut bra and grass skirt. But clothing is totally optional on Cam Island.”
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