by Ace Gray
AJ flinches. Away from me and into me all at the same time.
“Your mom…”
My heart is going to jackhammer out of my chest. My pulse throbs in my freshly minted stitches.
“I hadn’t made up my mind,” he says, his voice betraying his desperation. He’s figured out what I’m going to say next.
“You told her you had.”
“I was eighteen. She told me I had to pick you or my family.” Something is wavering in his voice, something I’ve only heard falter once.
“She said that you could pick anything. Anything Jay. You just had to pick. With your dad sick, you couldn’t have college and the ranch. You could be there, wherever there was, or here.” I swallowed a large lump. “She told you Edinburg wasn’t the place for you. That I wasn’t the girl for you. And to think long and hard about whether something likely to fail was worth something guaranteed to succeed.”
In my memory, his mom’s voice was as crisp as it had been through the door that day.
“I died that day. Died, AJ. And I don’t think anything has been quite right since. Do you remember your answer?”
He’s nodding a sad, slow, nod, his chin grazing my forehead.
“Of course I pick you, Mom. I pick here. Easy. No one meets their soulmate in high school,” I answer for him with the words seared into my brain.
Headlights pull into the parking lot and shine a bright spotlight on the two of us. Somehow, it’s our flaws lit up rather than our outlines.
“Cam, that wasn’t the end of it. I swear. What else was I supposed to say to my mother? I was going to talk to you, figure things out.”
“So why didn’t you? I gave you time.” I’d given him four months before I couldn’t take it anymore. Before I was sure I’d be driven insane waiting for the guillotine courtesy of some bullshit breakup line.
“I…I…” He grabs my shoulders and twists me to look directly into my eyes.
“I admit it was selfish...” My tears have started to fall. “...but I couldn’t live through that twice. I don’t know that I lived through it once.”
“Burning House” Cam
Cam Collins has gutted me three times.
The revelation that she heard everything eats at my insides the way acid eats flesh in bad nineties movies.
I can recall every single conversation I’ve ever had with or about Cam. I’d spent the first two years after our breakup willing each one into some permanent wall in my brain. At first, I was desperate to find answers. Then I had to fortify myself against feeling ever again.
That conversation, the one that’s become this gulf between Cam and I, isn’t one of the most vivid. I’d discounted it the second it was over. The words had just spit out of my mouth anyway. The second I left the room and found Cam braiding her hair at my dad’s bedside, I was sure of the truth. I was leaving Willow Creek and traipsing around on the wind with her. I’d work, she’d study and I’d get her patched up at any hospital she needed along the way.
I never said anything because I didn’t need to. I was just waiting for her to tell me what was next. It makes me sound weak and spineless but she set my soul on fire, a fire that wavered even when she disappeared into the next room. Weak and spineless was a small price to pay.
Rage bubbles inside me. Fury at the fact that she’d never let me explain. She’d never confronted me, she didn’t even scream and shout about betrayal. Instead she probably sat on Trigg’s couch, rehearsing conversation after conversation that we’d never actually had.
I would yell at Cam but she silently slinks to her mother’s passenger seat. After hearing the fracture in her voice, how deeply she was hurt, I can’t find the words to call her back. She’d really and truly been heartbroken over me. I’d really and truly been heartbroken over her. Some sort of engineering marvel was needed to fix the gap between us.
But back then, Trigg could have been a fucking bridge.
Motherfucker.
They had to have talked about this, about us. Cam rehearsed everything—everything—even her pizza orders when I wouldn’t place them. She had to say those words to Trigg at least once before she said them to me. And after Cam left, how many fucking words had I said back? A hundred? Thousand? A million?
I start walking, my feet hitting the pavement hard enough to jar my skeleton. As soon as I round the gray brick of the hospital I take off. I have so much energy, so much emotion pent up inside me that I have to run the ten blocks to the bar. The cold air reaches into my lungs and squeezes, it whips and buffets against my face, stinging my eyes. My boots are the worst kind to run in, they rub and blister my feet, but the Cam-shaped hole in my heart propels me.
It’s close to closing but everyone from the hill is still huddled around the bar. I don’t give a damn that they all look brilliantly happy framed in those soft white Christmas lights. I stiff arm the door and it shoots open, slamming into the wall with a wild thump and making everyone jump.
“You knew?” I level my gaze at Trigg as I bellow. “All along, you knew?”
She doesn’t answer, instead cowering behind Cass and the bar. Not only does she understand what I’m talking about, but she’s guilty. She did know everything.
“You could have told me. If not then, then any time over the past thirteen years, Trigg.” My shoulders are heaving.
“I was mad at her too, AJ, so don’t even...” She finds some of her bark but not an ounce of bite. “She left me too. She wanted a new life with or without me too.”
“I would’ve married her,” I shout excruciatingly loud and there’s a collective gasp, though whether it’s at my tone or my words, I don’t know.
I don’t wait long enough to find out. I spin out of the bar, letting the door bang against the frame on the way out as well.
The street is silent enough that my heaving breaths and ragged heartbeats echo off the buildings. It’s too much. Those buildings are too close. This town is too small. Or too stagnant. It’s constricting my chest. So are the words I just yelled at the bar.
They were so deeply entrenched in my heart, I hadn’t seen them coming. I hadn’t known they were true. But I do now. If Cam had told me she overheard all that, that she was leaving me because she couldn’t bear to break in two, I would have told her it wasn’t true, it couldn’t be true, because she was the only way to keep me whole.
What have I done?
The guttural cry that leaves my throat is agonized. I almost fall over as I kick a snowbank. Pain shoots through me as if I had.
This could have been prevented.
I trudge home but she haunts me there. The memory of her on my couch, in my kitchen. The smile she flashed and delectable coffee she made for me. And the blanket still haphazardly tossed over the back of my couch.
Over the years I’ve gotten lost in memories and dreams of Cam. I’ve masturbated more often than I care to admit. I’ve worried about walking into a bar and seeing her there at Christmas. But I haven’t cried since the day she did it.
Until now.
Water pools at the corner of my eyes and I shove my fists into my eyes and rub. The sadness is still thick in my throat and tight on my chest. I lay down and stare up at the ceiling hoping sleep will swallow me. Instead, I catch the stars twinkling outside my window. They remind me of the summer stars the way they looked after I stole her cherry.
I’ve never told anyone that I go out to the thirteenth green on July 13th every year and study the sky. I don’t necessarily imagine her next to me, it’s more a habit. For a while. I’ve seen it as a search for the puzzle piece that will make the whole debacle make sense. Now I know I never found my answers because I could never see my own hand in it.
I shove up and sit on my elbows, staring into the dark of my house. It’s three a.m. and there is nothing—literally nothing—to do in this town. This town that is crumbling to dust before my eyes. When I see it for its decimated ruins, I realize there is only ever one person who saw this same sight. She’s probably lyi
ng in bed, crying, too.
Normally I would go to my shop and bang around on the wood and steel, losing my frustration on something that looked decidedly unlike a bourbon barrel, but Trigg might notice the light on.
I curse her name for a few minutes before reality hits me squarely across my jaw. This isn’t Trigg’s fault any more than it is mine or Cam’s. We’re all culpable, but mostly for not being honest. Or open.
I curse myself this time as I spring from the bed, grab a sweater and flip off the lights. As soon as I’m in the truck, it roars to life and I start driving. At this point, I haven’t been drinking for hours so I’m comfortable aimlessly meandering through town. I try incredibly hard not to think about going to this place with Cam or that one with my dad. Everywhere is colored with a thousand memories.
An empty mind is all I can handle so I keep driving.
Around sunrise, I find a spot on the hills overlooking town. I turn off the engine and force myself to breathe deeply. It’s painfully pretty but even smaller and more insignificant from up here. No wonder she wanted out. No wonder it slaughtered her that I wanted to stay. Or she thought I wanted to stay. I sigh.
There will never be a way to erase her from my mind. For the first time, I don’t know that I want to.
The sun lights the snow first to a purple, then a golden yellow and finally it glows white, crystal cracking in every direction. My heart calms a little. And there’s only one thing it wants.
I start the car and drive.
It’s been years but I don’t have to think about directions. My body is following the well-worn path on reflex alone. Left at the stoplight, right just past the creek, follow the bend, left into the log cabin peppered neighborhood, right at the blue garage door, third house on the right.
The Collins have a few extra cars in their driveway and the roof is a different shade of green than I remember, but it’s every bit my home as Mom’s place.
But pulling into the driveway pulls my nerve from me. She was devastated last night. She was reliving the pain, sifting through the same age-old yet barely sealed scars as me. How can I stitch that kind of wound up? How can I heal her this time? I’m lost in her and me and her-and-me for who knows how long. A soft knock at my window pulls me from memories leaden with what-ifs.
I click the keys and roll down the window. “Hi, Mrs. Collins.”
“Hi, sweetheart.” She smiles warmly. “You’ve been sitting out here for over an hour. Would you like to come in? I’m making breakfast.”
“I don’t know…” And I really don’t. If she knew everything, she’d slap me, not feed me.
“AJ, honey, she told me everything, and it’s okay.” She reaches in and squeezes my shoulder.
“How can you say that?” I certainly can’t agree.
“Because you were young, because you were both foolish and made mistakes. But the world is built on forgiveness, AJ. Or it should be.” She sighs but it’s not an exasperated sound like I expect. “You were young. But now, you’re not. The only reason things stay broken is because you let them.”
Mrs. Collins pulls on my door, not even giving me a choice. And I take it. With the blind confidence I found last night when I picked up Cam for the first tube ride, I roll up my window, turn off the car and follow Cam’s mom inside.
“She’s in her room.” Mrs. Collins jerks her head toward the hallway I know all too well while she grabs another place setting.
Cam’s hallway is inviting, familiar, but I can’t help but think I’m on a death march. I pause at the door, not sure whether to knock. If she says go away, I’ll listen, but then what? We have it out at breakfast in front of the family? Or she orders me out of the house altogether?
I can’t face that. This time, I have to face her.
I push open the door to find a pile of comforters. Only once did I get to sleep with Cam in an actual bed and she had insisted on extra blankets. I’d rolled my eyes but my heart warmed when she burrowed down deep. I’m tempted to roll my eyes again now.
“Go away,” the mound speaks.
“Cam, can I talk to you?” I ask hesitantly as I shut the door.
There’s no verbal response, just a tornado of blankets as she whirls up to face me.
In that moment, I’m sure there has never been a more gorgeous woman on the planet. Her hair is half wavy, half frizzy, but it’s one-hundred percent beautiful. Her cheeks are flushed and her eyes glow. And she’s wearing a sheer T-shirt. I can’t help but notice that Cam’s body has gotten significantly better.
All rational thought leaves my brain. It’s an empty tin can except for a primal urge I can’t battle anymore. I want to kiss her.
No, need to kiss her.
I take the two steps to her bedside and grab her. She’ll likely slap me—she should slap me—but I can’t make myself care about the possible sting of her hand against my jaw. In less than a heartbeat, she’s up off her knees and flattened against my chest as my lips crash down to hers.
I’m waiting for the shove, the smack. Sort of. Mostly I’m drinking in how delectable she tastes. The vanilla never went away, it aged like the bourbon she creates. That other scent I’ve been trying to place is the smokiness of burnt wood. It lingers on her lips.
And what’s better is her lips dance against mine. Her tongue too. It takes me a moment to realize she’s kissing me back. Hard. Matching me move for move. Her hand is curling into my jacket, far too busy pulling me in to be opening up for a swat.
I force her body flush to mine, I’d fold it into mine if it was possible. And maybe it is for us because the lines of reality have already blurred. She bows perfectly against my body and, for a moment, I think about pushing her down to the mattress so I can follow. But something tells my body to slow down, to tread carefully, or I’ll ruin the whole damn thing.
So I keep kissing her. Passionately. As if my life depends on it. And when she slinks her tongue into my mouth and lets my hand wander into her hair and pull, my life does depend on it. My entire world hinges on the soft moan that escapes her mouth.
Then, just like a dream that slips through memory’s fingers, it’s gone. Cam pulls back, her eyes as wide as saucers.
“You can’t kiss me like that,” she says with equal parts shock, delight and outrage. Her fingers come up to trace the lips I’ve just devoured.
“You can’t kiss me back like that,” I answer with a deep and purposefully husky voice.
Then mercifully she smiles as she sags back onto her heels.
“You wanted to talk?”
How she remembers anything before that kiss, I’m not sure. I’m pretty sure the moment my lips touched hers was my own personal Big Bang. Suddenly I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to dwell on all the shit in the past. I want a future. I want to kiss her again. So I start with the only thing I can think of.
“Cam, spend the day with me.”
“Fall in Love” Phantogram
What in the hell am I doing?
What have I been doing all day? First breakfast with my family where I seriously considered sitting on AJ’s lap as we ate. Then ice skating with my niece. Had he always been that cute with kids? When he showed me the fire station, he put one of his passions on display and I went weak-kneed. That was why I’d let him talk me into dinner and a movie up at the ski area.
Well, that and the kiss.
That freaking idiotic kiss.
The one I’d give my left arm—and probably right, come to think of it—to have on repeat for the rest of my life. But he hasn’t tried to kiss me again. He’s been sweet, and painfully respectful. I find myself aching for his touch.
He’s everything I fell in love with. Hell, he’s so much more. So much in fact, that I could tumble head over heels in a matter of moments if I let myself. Or if he kisses me again.
Inwardly, I groan. I have no business falling for AJ Jenkins. What good could ever come from it? We’re still at the impasse of him living here, choosing here, and me not.
&nb
sp; Good Christ, he’s going to kill me.
Because that kiss, that eat-your-heart-out-Nicholas-Sparks kiss, said everything we didn’t know how to. I would have let it lead to a hell of a lot more than kissing, too. And judging by the way AJ grabbed my hair and pulled, he’s a hell of a lot better at that whole, more-than-kissing thing then he was in high school.
“Cam, what’s barreling through that pretty little head of yours?” he asks from the driver’s seat where we’re parked.
“Uhhh…” He catches me off guard and I stutter almost as hard as I blush. I hope he can’t see in the dark.
But there’s this rolling boil beneath my skin, flowing from head to toe and back again. In the faint dash lights, I catch his eyes raking over me, probably the cause of the heat, and I turn an even more brilliant shade of scarlet than I was before. Judging by the smirk that pries on his left cheek, and the way his eyes fall away only for him to look back up from under his eyelashes, he’s figured out where my mind went. And he’s proud.
I can’t help but think he should be. Kissing someone like that takes talent.
“You asked why I never said anything. Sort of. You told me last night you couldn’t wait around for me to swing the knife…?” His voice turns up in question, wanting me to confirm his assessment.
For a moment, I can’t think. I can’t breathe. Going from my wayward thoughts to the breakup is bone jarring. Like he’s slammed on my internal brakes and given me whiplash.
“That’s why we’re not together right, Cam?” he asks again, his voice so soft and gentle.
“Yes,” I barely manage a whisper.
His shoulders slump as he leans down to rest his forehead against the steering wheel. “I never said anything because the moment I walked out of that room with my mom, I walked into the room with you and my dad. Everything inside me shifted. I knew I’d lied to my mom. And that what I really wanted was to follow you to the ends of the earth, the ranch be damned.”