Chapter 30
APRIL - THE REED LAND, NORTH CAROLINA
Now playing: Drunk On You - Luke Bryan
The sound of a camera clicking and a flash woke me.
My eyes fluttered open slowly, the morning sunlight peeking through the dark curtains across from my bed.
I groaned when I noticed Cal wasn’t next to me.
The bed was cold where he’d slept. I rolled over, covering my face from the blinding gold light making itself comfortable in my space.
“Did you break something?” I mumbled into the pillow. I knew Cal was in here; I just didn’t see where.
Coming home after everything was a blur.
Okay, maybe that was dramatic, but the memory really wasn’t that sharp.
By the time Cal and I got into my house, we went straight to bed.
I didn’t even get the chance to show him the house, the house I remodeled and tried to make feel more like mine than my family’s, all while lost in a daydream that maybe one day, he’d see it.
And here we were. He was here. In this house that I wanted to turn into a home with him.
“No,” he said, and the bed shifted beside me. “I’m playing with old memories.”
I lifted my head to see Cal. He was wearing my buffalo plaid pajama pants that I’d stripped out of before we fell asleep last night.
His legs were crossed, and in his hands was the Polaroid camera I bought all those years ago to take photos of us together without the fear of them ever being seen.
He was smiling, and Jesus, I couldn’t help but notice the look in his eyes right now.
It was so… alive. Full of love. And it was all for me.
“You took a picture of me sleeping?” I groaned, wincing at the morning sunlight pouring onto my face.
Cal nodded as he leaned down and kissed my lips.
“I saw it on the dresser last night when you fell asleep. I had to do it. You used to take them of me sleeping all the time,” he said, handing me the little square piece of film that was still developing, but clear enough to make out that it was me, curled up in bed, totally dead to the world.
How attractive.
“That is an awful picture of me! I’m pretty sure I’m drooling in it,” I said with a sleepy groan.
Cal laughed at me. “So? You used to get awful pictures of me all the time and I never protested.”
I glared at him. Okay, maybe he was right. I used to take photos of him every chance I got; there was no way to resist it. Callum had always been the most perfect creation in my mind, and marveling at him in photos may have been my favorite pastime in our early twenties.
“There was never a bad picture of you,” I countered as I flung the blanket off my body and pulled myself to my feet.
I headed directly over to the closet, opening the door and pulling a shoebox down off the shelf.
I walked back over to Cal, who was now staring at me with a smirk, but also a hint of confusion.
I handed him the box as I climbed back onto the bed, rubbing my eyes, desperately hoping it would cause my brain to wake up fully.
Cal opened the lid, and his mouth fell open just a bit as he looked at the contents. This box used to haunt me like a ghost. It plagued my mind with regret, heartache, and the god-awful reminder that my stupid decisions led to me losing the one person in my life I needed and wanted the most: him.
He rummaged through it a beat, observing the memories of a past life we once lived. The first thing he pulled out was the key card from the hotel in Miami. The place where I kissed him for the first time. The place that changed our lives forever.
“Where was this from?” he asked with a confused laugh.
I stared at him for a beat, anxiously biting my bottom lip. This was either about to be the most pathetic confession of my life, or the most endearing to him. Knowing Cal, I wasn’t going to have the answer to that question until after he made fun of me for it first.
“Miami,” I said in a near whisper. The admission felt even more pathetic now.
His eyes widened as he looked at the little plastic card in his hand, then back at me. “You—you kept this?” he asked, trying to mask the small hitch in his voice.
I nodded. “That was the night I knew I was royally fucked,” I admitted.
Tears welled in his eyes as he hesitated to respond, still holding the old key card, the memories washing over him just like they were washing over me.
“What do you mean you were fucked?” Cal asked.
“Because I knew the moment I kissed you, there was no going back for me. Not in this life, not in any other.”
Cal looked away. “Fuck,” he mumbled, wiping at his eyes.
“Back then, I felt so stupid. I started falling for you so fast, and I always figured I was just this… piece to your puzzle. That you were trying to figure out who you were, and fucking around with me was a part of it. I used to psych myself out so much when things would start to feel like more, because I wanted them to be more, but I didn’t think you ever would. ”
The confession hit me like a truck as I recalled my own feelings from almost a decade ago.
I always made myself believe that Cal didn’t want me the way I wanted him.
I thought he’d eventually get sick of me, or decide a woman was what he wanted.
I never allowed myself to just be with him, because the fear of it all being ripped away terrified me, even though I ran away from it all in the end.
“I didn’t think I deserved you. Hell, I still don’t believe I do. Except now, I don’t have major paranoia that you’ll leave me for a woman,” I said with a small giggle.
Cal rolled his eyes at me. “Oh, fuck off with that,” he said as he swapped the key card with a coffee sleeve from Seattle that had the logo of the shop we stopped at.
“I never thought about that, even when we weren’t speaking.
I couldn’t think ahead like that. They weren’t you.
Nobody could have ever taken that place. ”
My heart swelled at the statement as I watched Cal inspect the coffee sleeve.
“Why was Seattle important to you? I mean, that’s when I realized I was falling in love with you, but what was important about it for you?” he asked.
A devious grin crept across my lips as I leaned in and kissed the side of his neck. “Well, that was the first time you let me fuck you,” I mumbled into his neck as I kissed the skin again.
Cal shoved me away. “Wow, so I was just a piece of ass to you?” He laughed.
I shook my head. “I mean…”
He nearly shoved me off the bed for that one, and I couldn’t help but laugh.
“That was the first time you were vulnerable with me. That was when your dad called you, and you told me that same day that the only place you felt safe was with me. I never took that statement lightly,” I told him.
“You’ve always been my safe zone,” he said as he rummaged through the box again, this time pulling out the small stack of Polaroids.
He started going through the stack slowly, looking at each image with a smile.
There were easily seventy-five photos in the stack, all from different places, different cities, different hotels and different rental cars.
Different moments in time where I felt myself falling more and more in love with Cal, but was too scared to admit back then.
I caught him staring at a few different ones: the one of Evan in Kentucky the day I bought the camera, one of him glaring at me in a car, and the one I took of him in Scotland in our hotel.
“That was when I knew I was falling for you, too,” I said as I scooted towards him, staring at the photo in his hand. To this day, it was still one of my favorites of Cal, because the look on his face was one that was only meant for me. Even back then, I knew that.
“Promise me something?” Cal said with hesitation.
I nodded. “Anything, babe,” I said as I planted a small kiss to his shoulder.
“We’ll take more pictures together. Not just with the Polaroid, but on our phones too. I don’t care if anyone ever sees them, I want them for us,” he said as he looked into my eyes, like he was hoping to drive the point home as deeply as he possibly could.
I smiled at him and leaned forward, cupping his face with my hand and kissing him. “You can have all the pictures you want of us,” I assured him.
Without a second thought, Cal reached over to the nightstand, yanking his phone free from the charger and opening the camera app.
Then, with absolutely no warning, he was on top of me, pushing me back into the mattress, and kissing me to the sound of rapid-fire photos on his phone.
I smiled into the kiss, I couldn’t even help it.
The way he was so eager to have more photos of us together warmed me in a way I couldn’t really describe.
He rolled off me with a giggle, and I rolled into him, my face in the side of his neck, kissing the skin to the tune of more camera clicks.
I rolled back over so I could see the phone screen, and smiled happily. There were easily a hundred pictures of us flooding his camera roll. The ones of him on top of me, now these of me kissing his neck, and the biggest smile possible on Cal’s face.
“That’s going on my lock screen,” he said as he set the image as his screensaver.
I smiled at the image now adorned with the time and date.
It seemed so juvenile to feel so touched and excited over something as simple as his background being a photo of us, but for me, that felt like everything.
And I knew for him, it did too. We’d spent so much time and energy on hiding this, who we were to one another.
It had been almost ten fucking years of that.
To see that now, we didn’t feel the need to be so…
hidden. It was a sense of relief that I never thought we’d get the chance to experience.
But here we were. In the house we always dreamt of.
In my, no, our, bed. Happy. Existing. In love.
My phone buzzed on the nightstand obnoxiously, and I inched away from Cal just enough to grab ahold of it.