Yours Truly, Cammie

Chapter 1

ONE

I’m going to kill JoJo . That was all I could think about as I stared into a pair of oversized blue eyes.

I normally found blue eyes attractive on a man, but I couldn’t focus—even a little bit—on the color of my date’s irises because of the way he was chewing his food.

Picture this: a dinosaur gnawing on a piece of raw meat, with zero awareness that its food was flying everywhere.

Even between chews, I could see his spit sailing across the table.

I was pretty sure this man had never eaten food in his life.

He was like those guys on Naked and Afraid when they hadn’t eaten in several days.

It could have been a slimy slug, and they would have eaten it up like it was nothing .

Maybe this guy had been on Naked and Afraid at some point.

I could see it. He definitely had a caveman aspect to him with that scraggly brown hair stuck to his oily forehead.

“So,” he said with food still in his mouth.

I literally had to hold back a gag. “You a nurse? I bet you’re pretty”—he ripped off another big bite of the sirloin he was holding (with his bare hands!) and then gulped his beer so loudly that people started to look over at us—“I bet you’re pretty smart, then, huh?

” Apparently not smart enough to stop going on blind dates that my best friend says are going to be “winners.”

“Mmmh,” I mumbled, keeping my mouth tightly closed. “You know what, I’m going to go to the restroom. Excuse me.” By restroom, I meant the door to this fine establishment, because if I had to sit there and stare at that troglodyte any longer, I was going to take a fork and poke out my eyeballs.

I didn’t even care enough to wait for him to acknowledge what I’d said.

I just got up, chair scraping along the maroon cement floor, and walked quietly to the exit.

The crisp, cool night air hit my face, causing strands of my wavy, blonde hair to whip around it, and I marched myself—wedges and all—to JoJo’s boutique.

Everything was pretty close in our little historical town.

It was basically walking distance to everything, except for the hospital, which I drove to several nights a week.

I was even more pissed off that this date was, yet again, another dud, because I could have been catching up on sleep in my comfy, queen-sized bed, but nope .

There I was, huffing my way down the narrow street to JoJo’s boutique to hash out this ridiculous date she had set me up on.

The bells on the door jingled as soon as I pushed it open.

“I’m going to kill you!” I yelled as soon as I was through the entrance. JoJo’s black hair was piled high on her head in a messy sort of way, and her dark eyes grew large at the sight of me all dressed up in my pretty emerald dress, red-faced and blazing with anger.

She straightened up on her stool behind the glass counter and had the nerve to ask, “What? Why?” very, very innocently. I could kill her !

“Why?!” I cried incredulously, throwing my hands up. “Have you freaking met the guy you set me up with? Where did you find him? In the wilderness somewhere? Living in a damn cave?!”

I walked the next few feet toward her and heard a snickering from her computer. I leaned over the counter and saw that she was video-chatting with her fiancé, Ryan.

“I told you, babe,” he said, looking from me to JoJo. “I told you she wouldn’t be cool with Dustin.”

“He told you? And yet, you still set me up with him? What? Does he know me better than you, now?” I narrowed my eyes at her because I could tell she was trying to hide a smile. She took her red-stained bottom lip in her mouth, biting it hard. I grinned—just a little.

“Well, you boycotted the last two guys I set you up with, so I had to change some things around.”

“That was because the last two were Marines, and I told you I won’t date a Marine.”

Her eyes softened, and I felt my heart twinge a little, but I ignored the hell out of it.

“No more. No more blind dates. I will find my own man…someday.” I almost scoffed at myself.

I was twenty-five years old, and I’d had exactly one steady boyfriend my entire life.

It wasn’t really my fault. With a father in the Marine Corps for over twenty years and an older brother who didn’t approve of any guy I dated, the choices were slim pickings.

“Fine! I’ll stop.”

I could tell she was fibbing by the way the sarcasm rolled off her tongue. I knew JoJo better than anyone—except maybe Ryan, but that was only because they had been together forever.

“Tell Cammie the good news, babe. ”

I moved around the counter and dragged the rainbow-painted stool over to the computer to see Ryan better.

“What good news?” I piped up, adjusting my dress under my legs.

JoJo responded from beside me, “Well…Ryan’s coming home soon.”

His bright smile took up the entire computer screen, and a sense of happiness flooded my body, soon followed by an insane amount of jealousy and hot, searing pain.

I faked it, though. I exclaimed, “That’s fantastic!” too loudly and earned myself a sideways look from JoJo. She knew this would hit a tender part in my heart, but I just hoped she’d let it slide.

“When?” I asked, looking at the desolate beige color of Ryan’s tent through the camera.

“You know I can’t tell you when…exactly. But soon.”

I gave him a small grin and turned my head to JoJo’s phone, which was lighting up on the counter.

It flashed the name “Dustin,” and she whipped her tiny frame toward me.

I bit the inside of my cheek, only feeling a fraction of guilt at the fact that I had just left my date.

I honestly didn’t think he would notice.

I assumed he would just start making love to his steak or something absurd.

“Why is Dustin calling me, Cammie?” JoJo inquired with a dubious tone.

“Uh…” I choked back my laugh when I saw a couple of teenage girls walk in. I leaned over and whispered after she was finished greeting them. “I may have left him there…without saying goodbye.”

A barking laugh came from the computer, and I ducked my head, shoulders shaking with laughter.

“You’re so mean! ”

“No, you’re mean for setting me up with him! Your fault.”

She snatched the phone and silenced it. She texted something to Dustin, and I assumed she told him I had a bad case of the runs or something, just to embarrass me.

But I hated to break it to her; nothing could humiliate me when it came to Dustin.

Nothing . I probably could have belched at the dinner table and I wouldn’t have even felt a sliver of embarrassment.

I soon stopped laughing and jumped off the stool to check out the new items JoJo had put out in her store.

Plus, I wanted to give her and Ryan some more video-chatting time together.

He had been deployed for almost seven months, and I knew how hard deployments were.

People always said that, with time, things got easier, but I knew for a fact that was a blatant lie.

I puttered around the store, listening to the creaky wooden floorboards bend and wiggle with my every step.

JoJo was really great about putting unique things in her shop.

It wasn’t like the rest of the stores lining the street.

They were all lacking in style, and the owners filled their shelves with mundane, cliché things like twined friendship bracelets, knickknacks that said “New Bern, NC” on the side, and very unoriginal, pale pink and blue “New Bern” T-shirts.

JoJo’s shop, though, was full of color and vibrancy.

She had funky furniture; brightly colored, abstract paintings from local artists; beautiful, handmade jewelry; clothes; and lots more.

It was the cutest little shop in town…by a landslide.

After I heard JoJo and Ryan say their goodbyes, I dropped the whimsical floral cardigan back in its place on the shelf and looked at myself in the vertical mirror hanging on the wall.

I saw the reflection of the two teenage girls who had walked in earlier.

They were perusing the clearance rack and giggling about some boy at their high school.

A wave of nostalgia washed through me. Back in high school, things were so much less complicated.

I wished I could go back. Actually, I wished I could rewind this whole day and talk myself out of going on the date with Dustin, as it felt more like a National Geographic experience than a date.

Through the mirror, my large, round hazel eyes were mourning my perfectly applied makeup that I’d spent an hour doing earlier.

I shook my shoulder-length, dark-blonde hair in exasperation.

I looked really good tonight. My glossy red lips made me look bold and sexy, but paired with the pretty green dress, I still looked delicate and sweet.

I stuck out my full bottom lip and pouted. So much for getting lucky tonight .

As soon as I made it back over to JoJo, giving the teenage girls a small smile as I passed, I was blindsided by the way she was acting.

“So…” JoJo said as she twirled her fingers together rapidly. That was her nervous tick; it had been that way since we were kids.

“Why are you nervous?” I droned, looking at her out of the corner of my eye.

“Because what I’m about to ask you is a big request, considering…” She didn’t have to finish the sentence. I knew exactly what she was getting at.

“Just ask. What’s up?” My voice wavered a little, but I ignored it, just like I ignored most things.

“Well, you know the guys are coming home soon…” I nodded, knowing she meant Ryan and the rest of the men and women in his platoon, most of whom I was familiar with.

“How would you feel about throwing a “Welcome Back” party at your house? I would do it at Ryan’s and my place, but the cops got called to the last party.

We weren’t even that loud, but you know the walls at the apartment are as thin as freaking paper.

Plus, I can’t really surprise him when he lives there.

I want to do it a day or two after they get back, and I want to decorate and everything… ”

I put my hand up to stop her rambling. In the few seconds that she’d been talking, I felt a wide range of emotions: longing, envy, hurt.

But then, all that was replaced with relief.

Relief that Ryan was coming home. Relief that our friends were coming home unharmed.

Relief that they were all still alive—because some weren’t that lucky.

I sucked in a breath and shook out my shoulders.

“Sure, JoJo.”

She shrieked and leaped over the counter to wrap her slender arms around my neck, thanking me over and over again.

“You’re seriously the best friend that I could’ve ever asked for. Thank you, Cammie!”

I smiled warmly at her again.

“On one condition,” I piped up, and she stilled. “No more blind dates, JoJo!”

She laughed, and I thought for a moment.

“Unless it’s with Justin Timberlake.”

She smiled. “You’ve got it, Sista.”