Chapter 33 Cam
Chapter 33
Cam
Riley and Ada weren’t at the Big House when I went to pick her up after Dusty and I got home that morning, but Amos was sitting at the kitchen table with the paper and a smoothie.
“Howdy,” he said as I walked in.
“Hi,” I said back with a smile. I shrugged my jacket off and took the seat next to him. “How’s your Saturday?”
“Good,” he said. “How was your Friday night?” There was a light in his green eyes. They looked just like my daughter’s.
“Who wants to know?” I asked.
“An old man,” he said. “Who lives in a quiet house, all by himself…” Amos trailed off, and I rolled my eyes.
“A big, quiet house that he built himself on the most beautiful piece of land in the state. Woe is you,” I said, and Amos chuckled. “What do you want to know?”
“I heard Dusty went with you,” he said.
I looked at the dark brown wood of the table. “You heard right,” I said quietly.
“And?”
“And it was nice.”
“A ringing endorsement coming from you.” When I looked up, Amos was giving me a pointed look. “I’ve been hearing a lot about you and Dusty lately.”
“That’s because this family loves to talk,” I said with a laugh.
“Exactly,” Amos said. “And as much as you all love to talk, I love to listen. So”—Amos clapped his hands together—“talk.”
I looked at Amos, this father figure whom I loved and respected so dearly. He was looking at me like I wished my dad would—with care and hope and interest. He really wanted to know.
So I talked.
“Dusty and I have got this convoluted history. I guess sometimes it feels like the sun and other times feels like a storm cloud…”
Amos nodded as if he completely understood. “And where does the gala fit into that?”
“Well, I knew I was going to have to see my parents, and he makes me feel brave. He’s always been my friend before anything else, and that’s what we’ve been trying to be again—friends.”
“So last night felt like the sun?”
I took a deep breath. “Actually,” I said, “it felt bigger than both of those things.”
“Ah,” Amos said with a knowing smile. I wasn’t sure what he knew, though, because I felt like I didn’t know a damn thing.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“History is just one part of that analogy, Cam. Sure, you’ve got the sun and the storm clouds, but what about the dirt under your feet? The rain on your skin? Fresh air in your lungs?”
The fresh air in my lungs.
“So if everything about you and Dusty is starting to feel bigger, maybe that’s because it is. It’s not just about your history anymore because you’ve started to build on and around it. Your history is still part of this picture, but it’s less important than where you are now. There’s a reason that rearview mirrors are small and windshields are big.”
I dropped my head onto my forearms and sighed.
“You’re very wise,” I mumbled into the table.
I felt one of Amos’s weathered hands rub at my shoulder. “That’s what they tell me,” he said, and then he tapped on my head a few times. I lifted it, so I could look him in the eye. The gleam in his eye was gone. Now, he looked almost somber. “And I know it’s different, but if I had a second chance to be with the person who felt like the sun and rain and air and everything, I would take it without another thought.”
I put my hand over the one that was on my shoulder. “It is different,” I said quietly.
“But it all comes down to the same thing,” Amos said. “A mark on your heart and soul that refuses to fade, no matter how much time passes or how much you think you’ve changed.” I thought of my “T” tattoo, Dusty’s physical mark on me. But Amos was right; this mark went a lot deeper. Amos continued: “People, and our feelings for them, stick with us for a reason, Cam.”
“And what if it goes wrong?”
Amos let out a half laugh. “And what if it doesn’t?”
“Touché,” I said. “I just don’t quite know how to reconcile our past with a possible future, I guess. I haven’t really dealt with that.”
“There’s always the possibility of things going wrong, Cam. That’s what makes love a risk, but there’s just as much of a possibility of things going right.” Easy for him to say—he wasn’t the reason things went wrong in the first place.
“How did you know?” I asked. “That Stella was the one for you?”
Amos looked at me thoughtfully. “I adored her from the start, and I wanted to know everything about her for the rest of forever—who she was then, who she would be later. I just wanted to exist in her orbit.
“I called my brother from a pay phone outside the diner right after I met her and told him I’d found the girl I was going to marry.”
“Are you serious?” I said, my voice full of doubt.
“I’m serious.” He nodded. “And I can tell you from experience that the most precious thing we have is time. There’s never going to be enough of it.”
“Are you going to tell me to carpe diem or some shit?”
“Yes,” Amos said. “I am. You have time, Cam. Don’t waste it. Stop letting your past hold you back.” I understood what Amos was saying, I really did. But Dusty and I had history that informed who we were now—even if we didn’t want it to. I had pushed it so far down, so I wouldn’t have to remember it, or how so much of what went wrong was my fault. I had never talked about it with anyone. But with everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours, in the past weeks and months, if I was being honest, I could feel it rising to the surface, churning the soil and threatening to burst through to the light.
“Amos—” I said, but the door opened, and I heard Riley’s feet running across the hardwood floors, and within a few seconds, I felt her arms around one of mine.
“Hi, Sunshine,” I said and pressed a kiss to the side of her head. She gave my arm another squeeze before jumping into Amos’s lap. Next to her grandpa, I was chopped liver, and I didn’t mind at all.
“Hey,” Ada said as she walked into the kitchen. She was wearing a long black wool coat over black jeans and black Doc Martens. She always looked so cool.
“Hey,” I said. “Thanks for watching her last night.”
“No problem,” Ada said. “Can’t wait to hear all about it.” She raised one of her dark brows suggestively at me, and I rolled my eyes, but I was trying not to smile. I’d never really had this—someone to talk to the morning after, to debrief and giggle.
“Mom, look at my shoes,” Riley said. I turned back to her on Amos’s lap and looked at her feet, which had little Doc Martens on them.
“Oh my god,” I said, looking back at Ada. “I love them.”
Ada grinned. “Aren’t they perfect? I’ve decided I’m going to have to get her a pair every time her feet grow.”
“Did you say thank you, Sunshine?”
Riley nodded. “A lot of times,” she said matter-of-factly.
“What are y’all up to today?” Amos asked.
“Well,” Ada said, “Riley thinks that Cam’s plates are boring, and I’ve got nothing to do, so I was thinking we could hit the antique store?” She looked over at me.
“First of all,” I said lifting a finger, “my plates are not boring. Second of all: What do you think, Sunshine? Does that sound fun?”
Riley nodded eagerly.
“All right, let’s do it.”
—
The antiques store in Meadowlark was surprisingly well stocked for a small town—probably because it was the only one in the county; the next closest one was nearly two hours away in Sweetwater Peak.
Being in the glassware section did make me a little nervous. Riley was tornado-esque, so I kept a close eye on her as we perused and made sure that she didn’t pick things up without help from Ada or me.
“So how did things go last night?” Ada asked as she pushed a small cart next to me.
“Good,” I said, trying to play it cool.
“How good?”
“There is a child present, Ada Hart.”
Ada giggled. “That good, huh?”
I blew out a puff of air. “Yeah. That good.”
“I knew it,” Ada muttered. “You don’t have a neck tattoo and a nose piercing and not be good. And don’t even get me started on his little cropped T-shirts.”
“Oh my god,” I said. “You and Emmy need a spray bottle. You’re both feral cats.”
“Because we have eyes,” Ada said. “He’s a beautiful man—not as beautiful as Wes, obviously, but beautiful. That’s just a fact. His face is like perfectly proportioned and almost too symmetrical. I’m an interior designer—I notice those things.”
“He does have a nice face,” I said. “Among other things.”
“Oh, fuck, yeah,” Ada said quietly, making sure Riley didn’t hear probably. Riley and the F-word had a complicated history, thanks to Gus. We were working on it. “That’s what I’m talking about.”
A laugh escaped me. “You’re ridiculous,” I said as I picked up a pair of chicken-shaped salt and pepper shakers—trying to will the blush off my cheeks. “Last night was good,” I said with a shrug. It was universes beyond good, but it felt too vast to even put into words.
“Okay…so what happens now?” Ada asked.
“I…really don’t know.” I sighed as I set the salt and pepper shakers down. It was true, but I saw Ada clock the hesitation in my answer.
“Cam.” Ada nodded. “If you don’t start talking about you and Dusty soon, everything about the two of you that you keep just below the surface is going to bubble over.”
Damn. Ada was perceptive, and she had me pegged, but I tried to play it off. “Oh yeah? What exactly do you think I’m keeping below the surface?” I asked.
“You tell me,” she said. “I’ll make it easier by starting with what I already know.” I nodded for her to keep going and then looked around for Riley. She was occupied with a bunch of throw pillows.
“You and Dusty dated in high school,” Ada said. “No one can give me a straight answer on when or how or where it ended, which is odd, considering everyone knows everything about everyone in this town.”
I looked down at my feet. Ada was already treading dangerously toward the exact thing I didn’t want to talk about.
“And I’ve been watching the two of you—”
“Creepy,” I butted in.
“Concerned,” Ada argued. “There always seems to be this weird tension on the surface whenever you two are together. But then, it’s easy to see the familiarity. Like at Christmas. The two of you looked like you’d rather be sitting anywhere else than next to each other, but then two seconds later, you’re gazing into each other’s eyes and smiling like there’s nowhere else you’d rather be.”
“There was no gazing,” I said with an eye roll.
“There was gazing. And longing—especially from him.”
I scoffed. “Since when did you become such a hopeless romantic?”
“Since Wes, duh.” Ada shrugged.
“I don’t know, Ada,” I said quietly. “We were each other’s first everything. That familiarity is always going to be there.” After last night, I believed it even more now.
“So was last night just two old flames, stuck with only one bed, giving in to that familiar feeling, or was it something more?”
“Have you been reading Teddy’s romance novels, too, now?”
Ada just looked at me, waiting.
I sighed. There wasn’t any reason for me to lie. It was time to let this out. “More.”
“That’s what I thought,” she said. She looked smug. “So why don’t you seem happier? You had a great night and great sex with a great guy, who seems very all in on you, at least from the outside, but it feels like…you’re fighting it so hard.”
She was right, of course. And I was so tired of fighting. I took a deep breath. “I’m scared,” I said.
“Of Dusty?”
I shook my head. “Of what happens if it doesn’t work out again.” Because it’s my fault it didn’t work out the first time.
“Cam…” Ada said quietly. “Please…I know you haven’t wanted to talk about it. But…what exactly happened between you guys?”
I hesitated for a second, trying to find the words. “We had sort of a…traumatic ending, I guess.”
Ada nodded. She understood those. “I mean, from what I know about Dusty, he seemed to bounce around a lot. Did he just disappear one day?”
“No,” I said quietly and swallowed hard. “I did.”
Ada’s eyes widened, and she waited for me to keep going.
“Dusty and I were more, even back then. I thought we were going to be together forever. So when he went to guide school in Montana, I went with him.”
“You ran away together?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“That doesn’t…sound like you,” Ada said.
“It isn’t like me,” I said. “But with Dusty, I was…I don’t know…a bolder version of myself. Carefree.” He is still the only person who has ever gotten me out of my head—the only person who made me want to live outside of it.
“So when I think about him or when I’m near him, I think of that girl—that ferocious and courageous girl who decided to set her own expectations and who wanted her own life.” It was hard to swallow. “And when I think of her, I think about how disappointed she would be in the woman I became—the woman who came crawling back to a life she didn’t want.” I thought back to what it was like coming back to Meadowlark. When I got home, my mother was barely surprised to see me, and my dad looked at me with disgust. I’ll never forget what he said: “If you do anything like that again, you’re out. You’re done.”
I remember wanting to break down and cry. I remember wanting them to comfort me and tell me everything was going to be okay and that they were happy I was home, but they didn’t. But I still felt…indebted to them somehow? They gave me a second chance to do what they thought was the right thing, and I’d never known my parents to give second chances, so I became so focused on not screwing it up that I barely even noticed that I was losing parts of myself that I’d come to love because Dusty loved them first.
I’m still ashamed of how easy it was for me to fall back into their expectations—how relieved I was when I realized how easy my life could be as long as I sacrificed myself and real happiness.
“And honestly, I can’t handle that. It breaks my heart. I mourn that girl constantly, and when Dusty is around, the grief is almost…overwhelming. Because it becomes so obvious she’s too far gone and that she can’t come back.”
“Oh,” Ada said softly.
I gave her a half laugh. “That’s probably more than you were asking for.”
“No,” Ada said. “More than I was expecting, but it’s exactly what I asked for.” She was quiet for a second after that, and I dragged my finger over some old coffee mugs. “I don’t think you need to be scared of Dusty,” she said. “And I still think you’re ferocious and courageous and all of those other things.” I shrugged. “You are. You really are. I mean, Cam, look at the life you’re building right now.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“You took the bull by the horns after the wedding, and I know you didn’t really have a choice, but it’s still impressive. You found your dream home for you and your daughter, and you created a new life for the two of you, all on your own.”
“I mean, I had a little help.”
“We all need a little help to get where we’re going, you know. What matters is that the end result is yours. And I think that if things had gone differently in your past, with Dusty, with your parents, with Graham, you wouldn’t have ended up here. You were so young. You had a lot of discovering to do…and maybe you still do. But you deserve everything you have and everything you want—including Dusty. I get you saying you’re scared of him and what could happen, but it seems to me like you’re just scared that all of this is too good to be true, but it isn’t. It’s real and it’s happening, and I think you should just…let it.”
Ada’s words made me feel…lighter. I’d spent years building a wall, brick by brick, inside my head and my heart, trying to block out everything having to do with Dusty. It wasn’t until recently that I realized how heavy those bricks were.