23. Dialed In
TWENTY-THREE
After a message confirmingAvery was home safe thanks to a ride from Benny, Cam fell back asleep with his phone clutched in his hand, hoping for a response to his text that he’d be around the studios after practice if she wanted to talk.
It buzzed again at eight o’clock.
“I don’t get a victory song today,” he grumbled when he answered. “Remember, I’m supposed to go for it at fourth-and-two.”
“I said we’d talk today,” Cory said. “We’re talking. Got to get that burn going before I get to the gym.”
Cam rubbed his head. “I re-read that chat a hundred times. I couldn’t get everything in order, and there’s a piece missing in my logic, so I know it didn’t make sense. No wonder Ethan was pissed. I don’t even have to be drunk to be an idiot like Justin. I’ll do it buzzed.”
“I see what you did there. Bzzzz.”
Cory’s cheesy grin shone through the phone with the unbearable perkiness in his voice. He should feel like a train hit him after the beating Penn gave him the day before and the disaster he tried to mitigate when Cam got home. But he squeaked out a win like he always did, and would pose for a cute brunch photo for his girlfriend Mallory’s social media before noon.
“Have you come up with any ideas about what that missing piece in your logic is?” he asked. The lilt at the end of Cory’s question reminded Cam of every teacher who prompted a student for an answer. Yes, and? Cory knew something that he didn’t want to type or even say, something he wanted Cameron to figure out on his own for some reason, instead of just telling him.
“You said Jordan got me here.”
“I did.”
“You know what happened to him. You can’t actually tell me outright, but you know.”
“If I spill my guts and blow this whole thing up, is that what you need?”
Cameron spun his hat forward and took it off, running his fingers over the frayed edge of the brim. “No. You don’t have to do that. I only wondered because of something he said. I want to know that somebody knows he’s okay.”
“He’s okay, Cam.”
“Thank you.”
“You took every step of this thing personally because it feels very personal to be left behind, but be objective for a minute. Can you imagine a reason Jordan designed his exit specifically to leave you out of it? I’ll bet that the first thing that comes to your mind is the right answer.”
Tracing the embroidered white ’T’ on the hat, Cam considered the question. His first theory about Jordan’s disappearance was a hangover from the days he devoured John Grisham and Tom Clancy, when there was such a thing as free time. From the day he went missing, the scene played in Cameron’s head almost daily. He was always the first one the men with clipboards approached with lowered brows and suspicious stares.
When was the last time you communicated with Jordan Ackerman?
What did you talk about?
Was he unhappy at UND?
Why did you start at the Star Bowl instead of Jordan?
Did he ever talk to you about?——
“I have an overactive imagination,” he said finally.
“You’re an artist. You need one.”
Cam sniffed a laugh. “I guess I do.”
“One of these days, when there’s no chance we’ll ever take the turf together, I want to see your playbook. I know you have one of all the stuff you’ve made up. Everyone does.”
“Oh, I do, and it’s fancy.”
“I’m serious. Marsh draws with ballpoint pens and scribbles over his mistakes. I bet your X and O have shading and little feet pointing the correct direction to fake out the defense.”
“It freaks me out sometimes how much you learn about all of us from a hundred text messages in an app.”
“I’m in my James Bond spy era.”
“I know a little about you. Thatcher. Thief.”
“The transfer portal is closed. I haven’t stolen anyone. Recently.”
“Did you know that Isaac the pseudo-Cory has twin brothers who just committed to your team?”
Cory snorted. “High school commits aren’t stealing.”
“I beg to differ.”
“What did we offer that you didn’t?”
“A depth chart with five holes at linebacker, and a secondary that’s aging out or drafting next year.”
“And wins. We get all the wins. I wonder if they can sing, too.”
“I never want to know.”
“How are the girl, fake-me, and the brother? Any word since last night?”
Cam sat up on the side of his bed, wiggling his toes. “She texted me and said she’s okay and the guys are asleep. She left early.” He checked his watch. “I’m due at the gym at nine. Justin and Isaac will be in at ten. And I’ll probably see Avery at the studio this evening after practice.”
“Did you think about what I said last night?”
“Cory, I know it doesn’t hinge on her, or Jordan, or anyone. I’ve made my choice. I made it before you called.”
“And?”
At the foot of the bed, Cam’s duffel bag sat open, ready for a last check before leaving. He dug through it, found the white UND hat, and tossed it on his desk. Looking in the mirror, he smashed his UT hat on, brim forward, and inspected the bright orange patch of fabric surrounded by sections faded almost to peach.
“I never won a game by dialing myself back. This is on me. Every win can’t be a miracle comeback, and I need to stop waiting until I’m down to start winning.”
He found Avery in the drawing studio in front of an easel, feet tucked under her high, swiveling stool as she worked back and forth between the paper and the pile of pastels and charcoals on the table at her side. Several students on the opposite side of the room peeked around sketchpads at objects piled on a central platform for still-life exercises. Avery ignored it, and smeared blues and greens over the bottom third of her sheet, blurring in circular motions like a whirlpool. Quick strokes of charcoal rendered the edges of the sea wall on the Charleston Battery before she picked up the pastels again and drew a half-dozen abstract, mismatched rectangles in candy colors along the street’s edge.
Cameron hung back and watched her work for a few minutes. She scribbled in a yellow rectangle and smudged it with the side of her hand, then tilted her head and added a few stripes of peach along one side and blended those too. The next rectangle was pale pink with an edge and a corner that bled into violet.
Her hand hovered over the table for her next color, then fell into her lap as her shoulders drooped.
Cam crossed the room and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her back to his chest without a word of greeting. On her tall stool, she relaxed against him as he lay his head on hers.
“I sure hope that’s you, Cam.”
“It’s me.”
“Good.”
He barely touched her before that moment, but holding her so close he could feel her pulse felt as natural as the breaths they drew in unison. With both arms around her shoulders and neck, he felt like he was choking her, so he slid one over her waist instead, grazing her breasts as he shifted down.
She rested her cheek on his forearm and let her hair fall into her face as she stroked his arms with pastel-smudged fingers. He would let her paint his entire body if it would soothe the nervous thrum of her heart. The slow release of the tension in her neck and shoulders melted her against him, and he moved his lips against her hair, unable to speak.
The whispers in the studio disappeared. He held her in silence, and she made no move to pull away or offer any update or explanation about Justin or Isaac. If she was content with that, so was he. He remembered that feeling of sitting quietly with someone who had nothing to do with the things that hurt or infuriated him, the small peace that brought him, and understood why she wanted him to leave the night before.
That morning in the gym, he kept to his usual workout with the tight ends and other quarterbacks, and watched the linebackers from a safe distance. Isaac stuck close to Justin, probably to load the weights a little easier and not tell him. Justin was washed-out and sweating before he lifted a thing, and took more water and bathroom breaks than he was supposed to. Cam probably should have offered a light smack on the shoulder and an atta-boy for pushing through, but couldn’t. Not after what Justin said to Avery the night before.
He’d have to learn how to draw that line and compartmentalize another day. He would and could do a lot more than that.
From the gentle shift of her weight, he thought Avery might be falling asleep upright in his arms. He yearned to carry her home and lay her somewhere soft to regain her strength, but even in his daydreams he knew she was right where she needed to be: in her studio, drawing water with washes of color, houses looking over the swell of the same ocean that took her brother, and doodling waves on his arms with pastel smudges.
“Cameron?”
“Avery?”
“He didn’t drown, you know. I don’t know why I’m afraid of water. He didn’t drown. He was wearing his life jacket. He wasn’t stupid like Justin said.”
“He doesn’t sound stupid at all. He sounds braver than I could ever be. Someone to be proud of.”
“I am proud of him.” She swallowed thickly. “It was hypothermia. Isaac was out that afternoon with his friend Braden for one last run before he cleaned the boat out for the winter. The water was cold. When that jet-skier hit the boat, Braden said he went flying. Isaac dove in. He was a strong swimmer, but he kept yelling back that he saw something, and went further away. I learned later that sometimes, in the early stages of hypothermia, you might hallucinate a little. Braden couldn’t drive the boat, but he called the Coast Guard right away. It was too late when they found him.”
She untucked an arm from his embrace and dragged her finger through the whirlpool of blue. “So I—I don’t really know why I’m afraid of water and not afraid of being cold. He loved the water. It’s not like you being afraid of bees. Those really could kill you.” She shuddered.
“Fears show up in different ways. My parents refused to have any flowering plants around our house. They didn’t want to take me to parks or zoos. Flowers became this exotic thing to me, and I chased them. I still do.”
Avery inspected her blue-smudged fingertip and traced a squiggle on his forearm. “Maybe I should try chasing water.”
“You already are.” He pointed at her drawing. “It’s making you stronger. You’re facing it on your own terms.”
“I wish my brother would.”
“I wish he would, too.”
“I didn’t speak to him before I left. Maybe I should have.” She pivoted on the stool a few degrees. “Did you see him today?”
“He was at the gym. He looked like shit, but he was there.”
“I wonder if he’s spoken to Mindy.”
He noticed she didn’t ask about Isaac, and let it slide.
“Do you like drawing the water? Does it make you feel good, or is it just something awful you force yourself to do?”
She nodded at the paper. “I like this water. It seems like it must make the people in these houses happy to look out on it every day. I haven’t moved on from it, though. I should try something else soon.”
Cameron retrieved a sketchbook from his bag and opened it midway through. He’d carried it around for weeks, waiting for the right time. When he looked up, she met his eyes for the first time since he set foot in the studio, and the collision of hope and pain starved his heart for the love of hers, but a series of crude pencil sketches was all he could offer.
“I want you to see this. It’s from my class last spring,” he said, turning the book around. “With Mindy, if you can believe it. It’s yours if you want it.”
Lips slack and jaw slightly agape, she traced the air over the buildings, careful not to smudge pastels on the paper. “You drew it,” she whispered. “You saw me staring at that drawing in the lounge and probably thought I was a madwoman, and that was your picture.”
“It wasn’t even that great a picture. I drew it from memory, and it’s probably all wrong. I couldn’t understand what you saw in it that was so important to you, and honestly, I was afraid to ask. Then you came back and looked at it again and again. I can throw a football and make thousands of people happy, but Avery, I don’t know if I’ve ever created art that had meaning to someone besides myself.”
He spun her on her stool so her back was against him again, and wrapped his arms tight around her. She held the book in her lap and didn’t look up.
“There are a couple pages of sketches if you want to see how it all came together. I know you took the one from the lounge, and I thought you might like to have these, too.”
“It’s hanging over my desk.”
“If it wants company, grab those three pages.”
“Cameron. Thank you.”
She plucked carefully at the paper as she pulled it away from the spiral binding. “Why aren’t there any flowers in front of those pretty palmettos?” she asked. “Magnolias, maybe, in the little gardens facing the water?”
He poked the simple shrubs in front of several houses. “I was tired of this picture before I turned it in. I overthought it and screwed up the perspective a half-dozen times, which you’ll see in those pages. I didn’t have time for flowers, so I decided it’s late fall. The magnolias and camellias and all the bees are gone.”