Camille #2
“Nothing.” I reach for him and bring him back to me, opening my mouth to his tongue and trying to lose myself in the moment. But I can’t seem to get there, no matter how hard I try.
“You’re all tense, sweetheart. Tell me what’s wrong.”
“I… I don’t know.” I do know, but I can’t very well tell him that John is haunting me during this important moment with him.
He guides my head onto his chest and caresses my back. “Relax. It’s okay. Nothing has to happen between us until you want it to.”
“I do want it.” Tears fill my eyes, infuriating me. I don’t want to be this weepy, sad version of myself. I’m so sick of being sad. “I want you.”
“I want you, too, but I’m not in any rush. I swear. It’s all good.” His hand moves in soothing circles on my back, and I begin to relax. “That’s it. Nice and easy. We’ve got all the time in the world.”
“I’m supposed to be comforting you tonight, not the other way around.”
“You’re comforting me just by being here.”
“Eric?”
“Hmm?”
“I just want to thank you for being such a good guy. From the first time we met, you’ve been looking out for me, and I appreciate that more than you know.”
“That’s nice of you to say, but looking out for you is my pleasure. You can’t begin to know how much it means to me to be moving on and to be spending this time with you. I don’t care what we do. I just know that I feel better when I’m with you.”
“Me, too.”
“That’s enough for me tonight.”
I decide to make it enough for me, too, but always in the back of my mind is John’s voice, telling me he loves me, that I’m the most beautiful girl he’s ever known. I begin to actively hate him.
Eric and I spend Sunday together. We go to brunch at a place in our neighborhood where the people call him by name and greet me warmly. They seem happy to see him with a woman.
“Do they know about Brittany?” I ask him over Bloody Marys.
“Everyone knows about Brittany.” Humiliation peppers his every word. “I handled it exactly the opposite of how you handled your situation. You told no one. I told everyone. I think I kept hoping if I told enough people, someone would help me make sense of it.”
“There’s no making sense of cruelty, Eric, especially when it’s couched in love.”
“You’re right, and I’ve figured that out for myself over the last eight months. Once I realized it’d never make sense, I stopped talking about it to anyone who would listen. I was such a pathetic mess. I cringe to think of it now.”
I take his hand. “You weren’t pathetic.”
He offers a cute smile. “How do you know? You weren’t there.”
“I know you, and I can picture you bewildered and hurt, but not pathetic. Never that. You survived. That’s what matters.”
“I like the way I look to you. I want to be this strong, resilient guy you think I am.”
“We’re a pair of emotional cripples learning how to walk again.”
He laughs. “That’s a good description.”
“The way forward is one foot in front of the other.”
“Very true.”
“I want to tell you… I’m sorry for what happened last night. I… I don’t mean to send mixed signals.”
“Stop. You didn’t. There’ll probably be a few steps backward to go with many steps forward. You certainly don't have to apologize to me. I get it.”
“The day after the wedding, when you told me about Brittany… I thought at the time that I was probably the worst person you could be interested in.”
“Why would you ever think that?”
“Because of what I hadn’t told you or anyone then. I didn’t think it was fair for me to get involved with you after everything that happened to you. You needed someone who wasn’t toting a million pounds of baggage behind her. But now…”
“What?” he asks, sounding slightly breathless as he stares intently at me.
“Now I see that maybe we’re perfect for each other because we understand better than anyone else ever could what the other has endured.”
“I couldn’t agree more. There’s comfort in knowing someone gets it, even if I wish you’d never been hurt so badly.”
“Same.”
We’re so caught up in each other that we’re startled by the arrival of the waitress with our food. We’re further startled when Rob, Camille, Amy and Jules come strolling in, taking chairs from other tables and bringing them to ours.
“Um, hello?” Eric says. “Private party here.”
“Too bad.” Amy’s eyes are rimmed with red, and dark circles under her eyes indicate a rough night. “If you shut off your phone during a family crisis, you run the risk of being hunted down.”
“What the fuck, Eric?” Rob’s testy tone makes Eric tense. “How can you just disappear at a time like this?”
He takes a bite of his eggs Benedict. “I’m an asshole because I choose not to be engrossed in the meltdown of my parents’ marriage?”
“No one said that,” Jules says. She, too, looks like she’s been up all night. “But you can’t just check out on us.”
Camille bites her lip, a sign that she’s nervous. Keeping a hand looped around Rob’s arm, she meets my gaze with a grimace.
“Look, guys,” Eric says, “I appreciate that everyone is upset. I feel terrible for Dad, and I’ll tell him so when I get the chance.
But I’m just emerging from my own personal nightmare.
I don’t have the fortitude to take on theirs.
I’m finally feeling good again. I can’t be dragged back down.
I’m sorry if that makes me sound like a callous jerk, but that’s how I feel. Leave me out of it.”
“Easy for you to say,” Rob says. “You don’t have to work with him.”
“Neither do you,” Eric says. “You’ve got a law degree. Use it somewhere else if you don’t want to deal with the meltdown.”
“I can’t walk away from him now,” Rob replies. “He needs me and the rest of us to prop him up. When this gets out, the press will be ruthless.”
“He has a team of people paid to handle that,” Eric says. “I’ve got my own shit to deal with.”
Rob explodes. “For Christ’s sake, Eric! Brittany was almost a year ago. Get over it, will you?”
I gasp, and everyone looks at me. Moving without thinking, I take bills from my wallet, toss them on the table and stand. To Eric, I say, “Let’s go.”