Chapter Thirty
CHAPTER THIRTY
With the trip over and a pile of unread emails to sift through thanks to a) Camila locking me out of my account and b) my recent sexual reawakening, I shouldn’t have time to overthink the realities of what happened between Will and me.
I shouldn’t have lain awake the first night missing his warmth.
I shouldn’t have checked my phone for signs of him like a teenage girl.
The minute he left my presence at the Atlanta airport, headed back to New York, with a caress against the back of my neck and a half-growled See you soon against my ear, I should’ve recalibrated to focus solely on work.
That’s the agreement I made with myself: You can have him in doses if he doesn’t distract you the rest of the time.
But it’s been two days, and it’s obvious that’s just not fucking happening.
The weather outside is too nice. Sales are going too well. The interns are laughing at one another’s desks. My body feels more unwound than it has in years.
Right now, everything is good.
I try to tell myself that doesn’t mean a shoe is about to drop.
Camila appears at my door with a wolfish grin. “You look fucked!” she says.
“ Camila Sanchez!” I hiss.
She cackles, shutting the door to my office. Like a little gremlin, she tiptoes closer. “Holy cow, look at that glow on your face. Was it good?”
“How did you know—”
She slaps both of her palms on my desk, her grin growing. “I know you canceled one of the hotel rooms in Bangalore.”
“How?!”
“I bribed Reese from Accounting to keep me apprised of your corporate credit card charges.” She wiggles her eyebrows.
“Bribed how?”
“Don’t you worry about it, CEO mine.”
“Was it the same bribe you used on the IT girl to lock me out of my email?”
“I’ve got this place dialed,” Camila says, examining her nails.
“Where have you been?” I ask. “I’ve been back for two days and haven’t seen you in the office.”
She shakes her head and flings her hand at the air. “David and I took a trip. Don’t change the subject.”
“From your dubious professional behavior?”
She bends down and leans her elbows on the table so we’re eye to eye. “From your good and proper fucking. ”
“Stop saying that!” I whisper-shriek, looking at the glass door.
“Oh, relax, half the office picked up on your good mood over the past two days. They told me to come in here and get to the bottom of it.”
“Am I usually in a bad mood?” I ask.
“Not bad. ” Camila shrugs. “Busy, distracted, stiff.”
I frown. “I’ll work on that.”
“How ’bout you let Will Grant keep working on that?”
I groan, sinking dramatically from my chair all the way underneath my desk. Camila drops down and crawls beside me, giggling.
I grab her hands in mine. “I have the biggest crush on him.”
She squeals softly. “I knew it, J. From the moment you told me he got us a new reservation at Andalo, I knew you two were going to become something. But I didn’t want to jinx it because of how long it’s been since Clay, and I didn’t want to freak you out, or say the wrong thing, and frankly, I was worried you were going to talk yourself out of giving him a chance if I spoke it into existence—”
“It’s okay,” I whisper, dropping her hands. “You probably would have been right about that. I’ve been wrestling with it. The idea of… a boyfriend.”
A boyfriend! she mouths.
I laugh, thinking back to the last time we acted this way because of a man. It was the day after the first Garlic Fest we’d ever attended. Camila had spent the night with David for the very first time. She came home to our house, the biggest, dorkiest grin on her face, and we sat down on the couch and shared a bottle of champagne and orange juice while she told me every little detail—all the reasons she liked him, all the things David had said about why he liked her.
Camila Sanchez has a rocky relationship history. In college, she let boys treat her like shit. Some would cheat, some would ghost, some would gaslight her, and she’d find reasons to forgive them all. Twenty was when we finally got to the good part. She was happily single, and for some reason, that made me able to look at men again with a semblance of attraction. Clay came into the picture—a nice guy whom I will always wish the best for, despite our relationship failing to last. He came and went, and Camila stayed.
Her college boys came and went, and I stayed.
When she and David got engaged, I was crouched behind a shrub waiting to pop a gold confetti bomb.
After I chose to end my four-year celibacy, she’s under my office desk with me, giggling.
“Want to get some margaritas and talk?” she asks.
It’s four o’clock—so technically not too early to leave for the day—but still, I say, “I feel like I haven’t put in enough face time at the office lately.”
“And you know what? Everybody managed,” she replies. “We’ve done a good job with this place, Josie.” There’s something wistful to her tone that sets my heart on edge.
If she wants to talk, I can’t deny her.
“We have done a good job,” I say, smiling. “Let’s drink.”
At Suerte, I tell Camila about the trip start to finish as we drink tequila and munch on chips and guacamole. She laughs her ass off when I describe the way I politely asked Santiago to pull over so I could hurl on the side of a Peruvian highway. Camila swoons when I tell her about Will begging to just hold me that night. She laughs again when I describe his snoring, which I’ve already grown so accustomed to after three nights in Bangalore that it’s hardly noticeable anymore when I’m drowsy.
“And Zoe?” Camila asks. “Have you talked to her yet?”
I shake my head, heart thrumming. “I want to. Will told me Zoe wants to reconnect with me, too, but we haven’t had a chance to see each other in person yet.”
I’m giddy just thinking about it, but nervous, too. What a strange twist of fate that the very thing that drove Zoe and me apart is what could bring us back together.
We order another round, sip it down to the ice as we talk about the wedding six weeks from now and the Revenant store opening in one month. A couple of guys send us shots from the bar. We promptly swallow them, send a round back to them as thanks, then ask for our checks and giggle as we bail out of the patio exit before the men have a chance to come over and flirt.
Outside, the weather is screaming Keep drinking. We Uber to Rainey Street.
“I haven’t been here in years,” I say as a bus full of girls drives past.
“Slushies,” Camila says, pulling me into a bar. We grab our juice boxes and people-watch from the upstairs patio. The sunlight dims, crowds flooding the street below us.
“Do you remember,” she says, sometime after the sun has vanished, “that time in college when I peed on the floor?”
“Which time,” I deadpan.
“The other time was just water!”
“It was not water,” I say.
“It was!”
“It. Was. Not,” I say. “I don’t understand why you can admit to peeing on the floor one time but not twice.”
Cami laughs, throwing back her head. “Okay, fine, it was pee both times.”
“I fucking knew it!” I scream at her, slapping down my empty slushie.
She disappears and comes back with two more. “Do you remember that time when I dated that guy who jizzed on my padfolio?”
“Who leaves a padfolio on their bedside table during sex?” I shriek.
“We met at the job fair!” she shrieks back. “Who has that bad of aim?”
“Joe does!” I’m screaming for effect, but also because the nighttime music has come on, doubly amplified. “Remember when me and Gio faked a literal death to get you out of that one date with a man named Basil?”
“Oh yes, Bahh-sil, ” Camila says fondly. “I hope he’s doing well.”
I laugh a lot harder than the situation calls for. I haven’t had this much to drink in a minute, and it shows.
“Remember when I forced you to start an Instagram page for your designs?” Cami says.
“I remember you used threats of violence,” I say.
“I don’t regret a thing. I don’t—”
She cuts herself off, and I can feel it. She’s getting close to some kind of admission. There are tears she’s pushing back, that she’s trying to blink away.
“You’re my best friend, Josephine. You’re my best fucking friend and I’m never going to forget the way you were there for me, in college, when I was knee-deep in family problems and could barely keep up with my schoolwork and I let men dictate my happiness. I’m never going to forget the rock you were for me, through all that.”
She brushes her thumbs under her eyes. I don’t know whether to say something or let her get this out. I can feel my eyes welling, just watching her try.
“And working with you at Revenant, it’s been a dream come true. I have loved it. I love what we did together. I’m so thankful to myself for quitting my Whole Foods job and doing this with you,” she says, now audibly crying through her words. “I’m so thankful to you, for trusting your best friend with your business. And now we can both leave for days at a time, and it all keeps running smoothly. We gave it legs to walk on,” she says.
“Only took six years of teamwork,” I manage.
She laughs messily. “We don’t give ourselves nearly enough credit for what we built. At our age? It’s amazing.”
I nod, wiping a tear from my cheek.
“But now,” she says, “I have to do something else.”
She crumbles then, face in her hands. I pet her hair as she sobs, nodding and smiling at a dude who walks past us giving me an Is she okay? look of worry.
After a few minutes, Camila looks up and mumbles something about wanting to go to business school. Something about David getting funding to start his own restaurant in New York City. They have a real estate agent; the house will be sold soon, and they’re moving after their wedding, just in time for Cami to start school in Manhattan this fall. She’s already found her replacement—an internal hire. She’s also found the person who will replace that person. I don’t have to stress about anything. It will be a seamless transition, she promises.
I absorb every word, my lips trained into a smile as she rambles on without hardly breathing. But the why of it all doesn’t really matter.
Because the point is: Camila is leaving—Revenant and Austin—and that’s what’s best for her.
And the point is also: she’s still my best friend, and I’m still hers, and this isn’t going to make me fall apart. Because it isn’t bad news. It’s good.
I rub at Cami’s shoulder as her sobbing ebbs.
“In college,” I say, “you wouldn’t have dreamed of leaving the city where your family lives. Not because you needed them, because they needed you. They needed too much of you. I guess what I’m trying to say is I’m just really fucking proud of you for putting yourself and your marriage first.”
She breaks down again, and I do, too. She pulls me into a tight hug. Over her shoulder I notice the same guy from before. He comes up to us this time, asking what’s wrong.
“Everything is fine!” I say, attempting a laugh and a smile.
He grimaces. “You sure?”
Camila turns around to face him. “You’re ruining the moment!” she barks.
He shakes his head and walks away when I start laughing. My face feels swollen. Camila’s makeup is a mess.
“You don’t seem shocked,” she says.
I wink at her. “This is the second time you’ve told me.”