Chapter Twelve West #2
She nods, just as serious. If I was a meaner person or had any dreams of ruining Cam’s potential future in politics, I would absolutely be filming the off-and-on conversation we’ve been having since I put the rest of her things in my backpack, pulled her up off the library floor, and corralled her into the kitchen for a let’s-try-to-keep-you-from-vomiting snack.
I hope she remembers every absurd thing she said when she wakes up tomorrow. I should at least write some down. Cross-stitch them onto a pillow, maybe.
“West,” she says abruptly a few minutes later, like there is absolutely anything else occupying my attention right now.
“Cammie,” I say back just as urgently.
“Do you think I could have actually, like, scorched my throat drinking that limoncello? Because I swear it still feels like it’s burning.”
I fight the smile that threatens to tip up my lips with everything I have.
“No, I really don’t think you did,” I assure her. “That should go away soon, especially if you keep shoveling in bread to chase it.”
She seems to accept this as truth, even though it’s coming from someone with barely any more drinking experience than she has, from what I can tell.
My freshman year experiments with alcohol consisted of forcing myself to drink a majority of one can of beer any time I met up with the guys for studying or gaming and found myself the only one without a drink.
I was trying to train myself to like the taste.
So far, it still hasn’t worked. If anything, it’s only made me believe that anyone who claims they like the flavor is straight-up lying, or they’ve never tried, like, ice cream, and don’t know what it means for something to taste good.
“Did I ruin your plans for tonight?” Cammie asks suddenly.
My brows rise at the complete shift in tone from her other delirious musings.
“No, I wasn’t doing anything important,” I say, because echoing her earlier “yes and no” feels like it again only opens up the potential to make her sad.
Somehow, that’s quickly become the thing I most want to avoid in this life.
“What were you up to?” she asks, her gaze so focused on tearing a hunk of bread into tiny bits that I’d almost think her question was aimed at the bread pieces.
I reach up to scratch at the back of my neck, unsure if this is something I should admit, even with the strong chance she won’t remember it by morning.
“I was going to work on some math problems,” I say at last.
Cam startles me by blowing a loud raspberry into the otherwise quiet room, followed by a similarly—and still unnecessarily—loud boooo.
“Okay, I was gonna be sorry if I threw off your night, but actually, you’re welcome. That plan sucked.”
“Damn, okay,” I say with exaggerated offense, though it’s belied by the chuckle in my voice. “Sorry for enjoying the pursuit of knowledge. Sue me along with Subway, I guess.”
Cam throws her head back and laughs, her uninhibited joy making me laugh, too. Her eyes sparkle when she meets my own. “Now that I’m not mad at you anymore, I’m just bullying you for fun. It’s a loving kind of hating on you, you know?”
My laughter dies out, and all at once it feels like there’s not enough air in my lungs, or in this kitchen, or anywhere that I am with her and with those big blue eyes looking at me with nothing even resembling hate in them. They’re filled with something more like the opposite, in fact.
I nod and open my mouth to respond, but before I can assure her that, yeah, I do get it, she keeps going.
“I figured you might have one of those long phone calls lined up with whoever you’re always talking to—”
My eyes widen. “I might…what?”
“Probably a girlfriend, right? I’ve heard you a couple times through the wall, and I can never tell what you’re saying, but your voice just sounds low and rumbly and romantic, so you can just be honest with me, okay?”
I cover my mouth with my fist, pretending to clear my throat into it to disguise the laugh I can’t keep in.
Fortunately, Cammie is still too interested in her bread to look at my face.
Once I can keep it together, I reply solemnly, “You’re right—it’s time you learned the truth.
That low, romantic voice is what comes out when I’m feeling really passionate.
” I hear a hitch in her breathing, and it’s a miracle I can go on without breaking, let alone make my voice even deeper, draw the words out slower.
“Like on long calls…late into the night…discussing linear algebra or number theory. Maybe even combinatorics, if the mood strikes.”
Her head jerks up, face twisted in something akin to disgust. “Ew! Is that, like, your version of dirty talk?”
A laugh bursts free and turns into more of a wheeze.
“What? No, you freak—I don’t have a girlfriend, and I’m always on the phone with my friends, who also do math for fun, and sometimes we talk about it.
I’m sorry to report that I’m not carrying on a long-distance love affair.
Just a boring nerd doing boring nerd things. ”
“Oh. Well, that’s good. But you’re not boring.
You’re the coolest nerd I know, Weston. You always have been…
” That sentence trails off into a yawn that blurs into more rambled words.
“And it’s even more absurd now that you’re this”—she waves a hand to gesture up and down my body as I lean against the counter opposite the one she’s sitting on—“this hot, grown-up man-person.”
I feel my face burst into flames right on impact of the word hot. The rest of my body, too. Did the temperature just shoot up ten degrees or something? My mouth is still open, but now it’s just because it’s kind of hanging there, unable to close or to find any appropriate response.
“Like, what the hell, dude? It was so annoying when you opened that door on my first day here, all ‘you look like shit,’ and I couldn’t even say it back to you, because you didn’t. You look like the picture an average guy would use to catfish girls on dating apps. It’s disgusting!”
“Okay,” I say, and I can hear how short of breath I feel in the word, though I don’t think Cammie even remembers I’m here, lost in her own musings.
It doesn’t feel fair to let her wax poetic about how attractive she apparently finds me—though it also feels great, don’t get me wrong—when she’s inebriated and I’m completely sober.
This is a talk we should be having when we both have the same amount of our faculties.
“Think we’re ready to call it a night?” I ask, but I’m already putting the bread and olive oil away.
“Nooo,” she says, dragging the word out for at least five seconds. “We haven’t even found my dad yet!”
“Yeah, I know, but hear me out—I think we’ll have better luck if we both sleep on it and try again tomorrow,” I propose.
She lets out another huffy breath, but ultimately nods, her eyelids drooping like she’s already well on the way to dreamland.
“Come on, let’s get you up to your room,” I say, slinging my backpack over a shoulder before helping her hop down from the counter with my hands on either side of her waist. I don’t let myself linger any longer than necessary, as nice as it would be to pull her close, hold on for a while, maybe—No, I’m not going there.
I’m not thinking about going there, either.
Instead, I lead the way back to our side of the building, up to our floor, and even help unlock her door when she struggles with the key.
“Hey,” I say before I completely lose her. “Here’s your computer and journal back.”
I swing my backpack around to unzip it, retrieve Cammie’s things, and hold them out to her.
She does a little twirl, in no hurry to take them from me, and singsongs, “Thank you, Weston. West, West End.” She laughs to herself.
“Does anyone ever call you ‘East,’ just, like, as a joke? Imagine if that was your name—Easton. Southward. Northington.” She dissolves into a fit of giggles at her own weird humor.
“Nicknames are so strange. Like, yours doesn’t even have to be West. It could be ‘Ton.’ Should I start calling you that as an inside joke? ‘Ton Jacobs.’ ”
I’m about to roll my eyes when an idea hits me. Something I can’t believe I haven’t thought of before now. Even more shocking is that Tipsy Cammie inspired it.
But I yank the journal back to my chest, still holding the laptop out toward her and giving it a shake. “Actually, I’m gonna hang on to the journal for the night, if that’s all right. I have something I need to look into.”
Cammie absolutely does not care right now.
“Look your fill, Ton,” she says as she takes the laptop, shooting me a wink that Sober Cammie would never and Sober West will never forget.
Then she twirls on one sock-covered heel and saunters into her room, letting the door fall shut behind her. The last thing I see before it closes is the back of her T-shirt: ’cause I dig you.