Chapter 15 #4
Joe stumbling over saves me from having to field any more commentary.
“Hey, look who it is!” He slings an arm around Andrew’s wiry shoulders.
“Our esteemed editor…my favorite co-worker…” He nods to Julie.
“And our star writer!” He grins at me. “Have you always been this hot, Lennon? Or is it just the vodka?”
Tina squeals. “You have vodka? I thought they searched everything?”
Joe smirks and pulls a flask out of his pocket. “All it takes is a little imagination.”
Pretty soon, I’m in the midst of a lot of drunk teenagers. Laughter and jokes fill the night air that’s tinged with the scent of the pine needles carpeting the forest floor. There’s a sense of community, of belonging, that I haven’t felt in a long time. Sometimes, getting lost in a crowd is nice.
I haven’t acted any differently. Nothing about my past or my popularity status has changed.
But I came on this trip. I opened myself up a little, and I wonder if both Caleb and Cassie were right about me isolating myself.
It’s a depressing thought, since we’re now only a few weeks away from graduation.
My high school years are about to end, and I don’t feel like I have much to show for them.
“I’m going to head back to the cabin,” I tell Shannon, who’s sitting on the rock beside me. It’s been a couple of hours, and I’m struggling to keep my eyes open.
“Okay,” she replies. “Do you want me to walk back with you?”
I’m touched by the offer, but shake my head. “No, I’ll be fine. I remember the way.”
“’Kay. See you tomorrow,” Shannon says, turning to face Lee.
I stand up and head back toward the cabins. The glow of the campfire is easy to see from a distance. As I grow closer, the silhouettes surrounding it come into focus. There are fewer than before, but at least ten still. Caleb is one of them.
I have about twenty feet to decide if I’m going to say anything when I pass by.
My impulses regarding Caleb Winters have always been warped. I took comments I wouldn’t have thought twice about from anyone else like a personal attack. And now, I’m stuck with an uncomfortable, heavy lump in my throat that reminds me of this morning.
So, I stop.
“Can I talk to you?” I ask Caleb. My voice is clear. Confident. Impossible to ignore.
At first, he doesn’t say anything. Finally, he turns his head to look at me. “I’m busy,” he answers, then returns to looking at the fire. His voice drips like bored honey.
“Fine, we can talk here. I—”
With lightning-fast reflexes I’m not expecting, Caleb stands and yanks my hand, hauling me away. He obviously isn’t interested in an audience.
We don’t get very far, though.
“Hey! You two. Stop!” I turn to see Mr. Tanner, of all people, chasing after us, clearly on chaperone duty. An ineffective one, if the fifty kids drinking in the woods are any indication.
He comes to a panting stop in front of us. “Well, this is a surprise.” Mr. Tanner looks between us, and then down at our clasped hands.
My cheeks burn, knowing what assumptions he’s probably making right now. “I just need to talk to Caleb for five minutes,” I blurt.
“Is it related to your English project?” Mr. Tanner questions. I almost, almost think I see a glimmer of a smile in his normally dour expression.
“Tangentially,” I respond. As in, I probably wouldn’t need to talk to Caleb if not for that project.
“Fine. Five minutes,” Mr. Tanner allows.
I’m not expecting his agreement, but I don’t hesitate to take advantage of it. “Thank you!”
“What do you want to talk about?” Caleb asks flatly when we stop about sixty feet later, just on the periphery of the woods.
“I’m sorry about earlier,” I tell him. “I was just trying to make things easier.”
“Easier for who?” Caleb shoots back.
“For both of us. I shouldn’t have assumed anything, but I just figured you were thinking the same way I was.”
“And how’s that?”
“That we’re on two different roads, and they’re about to get a lot farther apart. Making more of this will just complicate everything else…and it’ll end the same way anyway.”
Caleb grasps the back of his neck with one hand, looking down so I can’t see his expression. When he glances at me again, the shadows still block most of it. But what I can see appears resigned. “You know, I always planned to go to Oakmont.”
“Oakmont? That’s in California, right?”
He nods. “Yeah. Get the hell away from my parents, decent weather, girls in bikinis everywhere…”
I flinch. “Did you not get in?” I ask. My tone is snide, and it has everything to do with the jealousy coursing through me.
“They offered me a full ride and a starting spot, actually. I should have accepted on signing day back in February.”
“So why didn’t you?”
“That’s a damn good question.” That’s all he says. But if I squint at the subtext—the tightening around his mouth and the way his hands are clenched—I’m worried his lack of an answer says a lot.
“Look, Caleb. It’s not just the money or the farm.
Gramps is forgetful. I don’t know if it’s just…
age, or something else. And—whatever it is—I can’t leave him alone.
He took care of me after my mom…and then my dad…
now it’s my turn. Maybe that’s part of why I never tried to change anyone’s mind about me.
I knew it would be harder, when they left and I was still here.
” I swallow. “Maybe that’s why I never let myself consider this”—I gesture between us—“because I knew you would be the hardest to see leave.”
Caleb rakes a hand through his short hair. The strands are barely long enough to make the effort worthwhile. “What the hell am I supposed to say to that, Lennon?”
“You don’t have to say anything,” I tell him. “I just wanted to…explain.” Caleb doesn’t say anything. “We can still, uh, you’ll be around all summer, right?” I don’t even know what I’m offering, or trying to say, but I’m suddenly aware my feelings for Caleb are far from superficial.
“I’m spending the summer in Georgia,” Caleb states. “At a baseball camp there. I leave the day after graduation.”
I should congratulate him, but instead I accuse. “You didn’t tell me.”
“I just found out I got in. Why do you even care?”
I glare at him. “You—”
“Matthews! Winters!” Mr. Tanner’s deep baritone pierces the night air like a bullhorn. “Time’s up!”
In more ways than one, I guess.
I turn to head back for the cabins, but a hand grabs my forearm before I can take a single step. “We’ll be right there, Mr. Tanner,” Caleb calls back.
There’s barely any light that’s crept all the way to the perimeter of the campground, but there’s just enough for me to see the jaw muscle that kept me from actually kissing Jake pulsate a couple of times. His thumb traces a circle on the inside of my wrist, sending shivers through my whole body.
“You know I’m in love with you, right?” Caleb asks me.
There are some moments in life when you have a premonition something epochal is about to happen. You can prepare for it. Maybe savor it. Take note of all those subtle details your brain might otherwise skip past like the grooves on a scratched record.
This is not one of those moments.
I’m stunned.
Flabbergasted.
Nonplussed.
I freeze the second he says the words, but I don’t let them sink in. I can’t let them.
“No, you’re not,” I choke out. The world is spinning around me, but Caleb is perfectly in focus.
A single, dry laugh slips through Caleb’s terse lips. “Right. Yeah. Of course you would know how I feel better than I would.”
“I don’t—it’s not—we’re too different, Caleb,” I stutter.
“Only in the ways that don’t really matter.”
I sigh, letting the air escape slowly, like I’m a deflating balloon. “We’re different in an ‘I’m staying here, you’re leaving’ way. I don’t have the time or the energy to be in a long-distance relationship.”
Caleb opens his mouth to speak.
“I don’t want to be in a long-distance relationship.”
Without asking permission, my heart got way more invested in Caleb Winters than it had any right to.
If I said those same words he just told me back, I think I would mean them.
But letting him in? Letting myself rely on the phrase he just uttered?
Letting myself love him and then remaining in a town filled with reminders of him while he goes off to bigger and better things?
I can’t do it.
Caleb’s mouth snaps shut. I hate the hurt I can see swimming in those blue depths. But he’s leaving. Moving on from this town. Moving on from me. Off to a fancy baseball camp and then to an elite university to meet new people with backgrounds as privileged as his.
I’m just the girl he bickers with constantly and occasionally kisses.
He’s about to leave me behind, and selfishly, I’d rather walk away first.
Although Caleb’s the one who spins and strides back toward the cabins before I have the chance to.