by Jenn Faulk
~Cammie~
The man on the elevator was sweaty.
It had been a full morning for Camille as she’d led a breakout session on short-term opportunities for a group of about two hundred teenagers. She’d talked about the different continents where she’d served, talked about the kind of work she’d done, and talked about how there were opportunities, even now, for them as teenagers to go and do summer trips, semester trips during college, and beyond.
Of the two hundred students there, three-fourths were guys. But she’d directed most of her message to the small percentage of girls there, knowing the ratios for the mission field, knowing that they were the ones who would likely end up going. Reality was that women went and men didn’t, because men, who held the great majority of the church jobs stateside, were always given greater ministry opportunities closer to home. And clearly because men? Just weren’t as spiritual as women.
Okay, so maybe she was a little unfairly biased about this.
She felt her unfair bias affirmed when most of the men present kept looking at her chest and her legs as she stood before them in a perfectly modest outfit, nearly none of her words likely even making it to their heads. Their big heads on their shoulders, that is.
She’d seen it before. Every place she went abroad she went to work with youth, and in every place, it had been the same. Boys. Always boys, wanting to hear what the pretty foreign woman had to say. And while she’d seen some lives changed in her work, even amongst those boys, it had been the girls who’d come with them whose lives she’d invested in most deeply, as was appropriate, of course. And it had been the girls who had been changed, who had found significance in Christ, who had become who He was calling them to be.
Her love for youth ministry had shifted to a love for girls’ ministry, a calling to reach and disciple young women for the wonderful calling God had for them.
She’d been thinking about the young ladies she’d talked to after the session when she got on the elevator, hoping to make it up to her room in time to change clothes to something more casual for the time she’d be manning one of the missions tables during break time. She’d been looking through the list of names she’d gotten to pass along to the board when the sweaty man stepped onto the elevator behind her.
Seriously. He was disgusting.
Camille watched him from the corner of her eyes, wondering at how he’d managed to get himself so gross and disgusting, even as he rolled his neck from side to side, stretching… and humming a hymn underneath his breath in a deep, rich voice. As he continued on, unaware of the audience he had, she caught herself looking at the shape of his shoulders, the muscles in his arms, the way his tight abs constricted as he raised up part of his shirt to wipe the sweat from his face, still humming that hymn.
Not so gross and disgusting after all.
She snapped her eyes forward again. She was leaving for a new assignment in two weeks. Checking out random men on the elevator wasn’t helpful. And how stupid was this anyway? She was as bad as those hormonal boys who kept looking at her chest even as she tried to share truths with them about the great purposes of God.
She moved away slightly and vowed to keep her eyes on the prize, so to speak. No sweaty, smelly men.
Except now the random man was looking at her. She glanced over at him. Then directed her eyes forward again. Another glance over at him.
Sure enough, he was grinning at her. Wow. Nice smile. Amazing eyes. And –
Not helpful, Camille.
The gorgeous stranger took a breath. “Well,” he said slowly, his voice deep and full, an obvious twang to the way he drew out the word slowly. “Cammie.”
She blinked at the name. She hadn’t gone by Cammie since high school. “It’s Camille,” she said. A pause as he continued watching her, smiling. “I’m sorry… do we know each other?”
“Yeah,” he nodded, grinning. “We do.”
She waited for an explanation. He offered none, seeming to enjoy himself in this as he crossed his very built arms over his sweaty t-shirt. “What’s up, Cammie?”
“Okay, so clearly you know me,” she said a little impatiently. “But I don’t think I’ve ever even met you.”
“Oh, yeah, you have,” he said, laughing. “But you don’t recognize me. There’s some sweet justice for you.”
“What?” There was something familiar about him. She just couldn’t place it…
“Imagine me a foot shorter. Seventy pounds lighter. Youth camp...” He raised his eyebrows at this.
She thought back to youth camp and could vaguely remember some idiot boy she’d had a crush on and had followed around the whole time, only to find him kissing some other girl their last night there…
Wow. Life was totally and completely unfair if that jerk had grown up to look this good.
“I followed you around youth camp,” the gorgeous stranger kept on, waiting for her to recognize him.
Well. He wasn’t that idiot boy, then. She’d been the one following that jerk around.
Had someone followed her that summer, though?
She looked at the stranger blankly.
“Wow, Cammie,” he continued on. “How many of us followed you around that summer?”
She opened her mouth to respond to this… then shut it without offering an excuse.
“David Connor,” he said with just a trace of disbelief. “I’m David Connor.”
She could see him, short and pitiful looking in his basketball shorts and his ratty shirt, finding her crying just outside the worship center on the last night of camp. She could see him saying, Aww, Cammie, I’m sorry. But you deserve better than that putz. She could see him telling her really dumb jokes to make her laugh, until the worship service let out and she went back to her cabin, reaching out to mess up his hair as she passed by him, just like she’d done a thousand other times when they were kids.
David Connor. Glory. This was David Connor.
And just as the dots connected in her head, the elevator dinged.
“David,” she barely managed.
“Cammie,” he said.
“Camille,” she offered weakly, surprised to find herself very flustered as he watched her.
“Camille,” he nodded. A quick glance to her left hand. “Still Camille Evans, right?”
“Oh,” she swallowed. “Yeah. Camille Evans.” A pause. “And you’re still David Connor?”
Oh, good grief, Cammie. Really?
He grinned at this and held up his left hand. No ring. “Yep. Still David Connor.”
“Well,” she said, beyond mortified, stepping off the elevator. “Good seeing you.”
He took a step out with her. “You, too.”
She began walking briskly to her room… and paused once she realized he was following her. He stopped when she stopped. She turned to face him, and he smiled at her.
“Hey… David,” she muttered.
“Hey… Camille.”
“Are you following me?”
He tried to suppress a grin. “Uh, no. Just trying to get back to my own room so that I can shower. But yeah, I can see why you’d think that since I spent most of my childhood following you around.”
And how. As far as annoying little brothers went, David was the worst. Charity and Hope had called Camille their third twin, which had made David every bit her little brother as theirs.
Except he wasn’t so little anymore. And he wasn’t, she noted as her eyes trailed over him again, her brother.
Praise God.
Good grief. What was she even thinking?
“You just came from rec time, then, huh?” she asked, trying to think of anything but how good he looked all these years later.
Time had been very kind to David Connor.
“Yeah,” he said. “Those teenagers are really showing me my age out there. I’m worn out.”
“Oh, please,” she said. “You’re only… what? Twenty-two?”
“Twenty-five.”
“So young,” she sighed
. “I remember twenty-five.”
“As well you should,” David said. “Since it was only a couple of years ago.”
She frowned slightly at this. “And just how would you know that?”
“Charity and Hope,” he said. “You all three celebrated birthdays together. Late August. And I’ve had to listen to them bemoan every single year since twenty-one.”
“Hmm,” Camille murmured, thinking of how long it had been since she’d celebrated much of anything with the twins. They’d gone on to college, all at different universities, then she’d gone off into the world. She’d missed them. “Are Charity and Hope here this week?”
He grinned. “No. Why would they be?”
“Well, if you’re here with the rec team from your dad’s church, maybe they came, too. A family affair and all.”
A shadow fell over his face. “I guess I can see why you’d think that. That I’m working for my dad and all.” And he continued walking down the hall.
She fell into step behind him, searching for her own room number, wondering at the change in his demeanor. And before she could question it too much, he stopped in front of the door on their right… which was across from her room on the left.
They both turned to each other to say goodbye, saw where they were each headed, and looked back at one another.
“Well,” David said, grinning. “Looks like we’re right across the hall from each other.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Guess that means I’ll… probably see you again at some point this week.”
He grinned even more. “Oh, yeah. I’ll be seeing you again.”