Chapter Thirty
He doesn’t even have to pull me in.
My chest is drawn, magnetized, right to his.
My hand snakes up Cam’s shoulder and curves around his neck, touching the feathery ends of his hair.
His fingers flex and curl as they knead into my shirt.
The touch is surprisingly gentle. But there’s so much tension in the restraint.
I can feel how hard he’s working not to crush his body immediately against mine.
The spaces left between us are going to make me explode.
His eyes go heavy as they slip down my cheeks, landing on the center of my mouth. I raise my other hand and cut his jawline with my thumb. He inhales sharply, lips parting.
I cannot believe I’m going to do this.
Again.
I swallow and tilt my head to one side.
“What do you want?” I whisper.
His breathing is thick and strained. I move the tiniest bit closer, until I feel his breath over my skin. I repeat the question.
“What do you—”
His mouth is on mine before I can finish.
I catch his bottom lip, savoring the exact flavor of him. Not even a specific brand of lip balm or a leftover fruity taste from some sports drink. There’s just Cam—warm and spiced.
I’m aware that now would be a great time to close my eyes, but for some reason, I can’t.
I’ve spent too much time in this room, twisting under my covers late at night and imagining this scenario playing out in my head.
Because the truth is, I have wanted Cam so badly.
Wanted to have him want me, like this, so badly.
I have to at least try to capture every detail of this moment in my memory.
I catch a glimpse of the ceiling through the curls in Cam’s hair as our lips pull away and come back together, and I know I’ll never see my ceiling the same way again.
The late-afternoon light spills in through the curtains behind him.
This is a mirage. It’s a dream. It’s blurring the line holding fantasy back from reality.
Cam’s hands move down my hips, and I feel high and giddy and half asleep.
I realize this moment is so surreal that I might, in fact, be dreaming.
But if I am, I’m in no hurry to wake up.
The light from the setting sun gets stronger.
It pulls Cam in until he’s a silhouette across from me.
He tips his forehead against mine. It’s so easy to lean into him, to have the two of us meld into one figure, one statue, as if we were always destined to come together this way.
The light gets brighter, and I finally close my eyes, sinking fast into him.
There’s only one speed when it comes to kissing Cam, and that speed is quick, hungry, hurried.
My mouth presses hard into his, and it’s like falling down a rabbit hole.
And down.
And down.
And down.
As I fall, the scent of his mouth, his neck, his arms, grows sharper. The more I kiss him, the more I start to smell something else too.
Fresh-cut grass. Damp earth. Rain somewhere in the distance.
I open my eyes.
Cam’s lying in the meadow, across from me.
Pale shadows are scattered over us from the canopy of trees way up high.
A shovel at Cam’s feet.
A book under my arm.
Our mouths were still tingly and buzzing. I reached for Cam and found a tiny strip of exposed midriff. My fingertips inched under the fabric of his shirt. His breath hitched, and my heartbeat dipped down below my stomach.
“Cameron,” I whispered then.
“Cameron,” I whisper now.
His rib cage goes from shuddering to completely still. Then, all at once, he jerks away from me. It takes me a minute to figure out what’s going on. I look around.
We’re back in my room.
The afternoon sunlight has dissolved into a pale pink tinge. We’re no longer standing next to my bed but draped over it, propped up on our sides, facing each other.
The same way we were lying in the meadow that afternoon.
The day I came out as gay.
Cam sits up and swings his legs over the edge of the bed.
I push myself into an awkward pose, my legs half curled under me.
I try to find something to say. My lips are raw and puffy.
I’m exactly at the point of beginning to process the fact that whatever has just happened between us—dream or otherwise—is now very, very over.
Cam drops his head into his hands. “I cannot believe I’m doing this shit again.”
This shit.
The insinuation is a sudden gut punch. I turn my head away so he won’t see my face.
“I’m…sorry if you made another mistake,” I say through clenched teeth.
I’m pretty sure that’s what he said last time.
This was a mistake.
My lips were still warm from the hum of his kiss—it was my very first kiss ever, with anyone—when Cam stood up in the meadow, spat out those words, and didn’t talk to me again for more than twelve months.
Cam doesn’t answer me now in my room. He takes a shaky breath. He’s going to stand up again any second. He’s going to leave knowing that, even after two years, all it took was one well-placed hand on my side, and I was ready to fall right back into him. This is beyond mortifying.
There is no way I can possibly wait another few months before leaving the country for art school. I have to leave for Paris right now. I had to leave five minutes ago. I wonder if I can pack my bags in the next few seconds and beat Cam out the door.
This isn’t fair, I think angrily. This isn’t even my fault.
I didn’t ask for this stupid game between us. I didn’t ask for anything between us! I’m the one who’s been trying to move on since he first rejected me.
“Why did you kiss me again?” I whisper. I’m still too embarrassed to face him.
Cam sniffs and stands from the bed. He takes a few steps toward the door, then swings around, reaching for the book next to me.
“I don’t know, Ivy. I thought things would be different, I guess.”
“Different how?” I wave toward my room, which has been in the same exact configuration since middle school.
My billowy black clothes now are almost identical to the baby gothic outfits I wore in middle school.
I have the same Doc Martens, sized up. Same sarcasm, if only slightly edgier.
I’m the same person who’s known Cam for years.
The same person who fell in love with him the first time.
“You shouldn’t kiss someone if you want them to be someone else,” I say. I’m vaguely aware of the tears collecting at the inner creases of my eyes. It takes everything I have not to blink and fall completely apart in front of him. “I have always been the same.”
“Right,” Cam murmurs. “You’ve been pretty damn clear about that from the start, haven’t you?”
He mops his face, then shuffles through my bedroom door.
I stand up from the bed.
“What do you want from me?” I yell out. “It’s like you’ve made it your entire mission in life to torture me!
You want every girl I go out with, except you don’t.
We’re friends, except we’re not. You want me, you don’t want me.
You like me, you don’t like me. You’re playing this stupid game and only telling me half the rules, then walking away when I don’t do exactly what you want.
Well, you’ve already done this, Cam. We’ve already played this round. ”
He whirls back through the doorframe, gaping.
“That’s really what you think?” he asks.
I shrug, unable to answer. He hasn’t said a word, hasn’t done a single thing, that explains otherwise.
In two giant strides he’s crossed the room again. He cups my chin in his hand and tips my face up to look at him. Is he seriously about to kiss me again? The absolute nerve of this guy.
But before I pull away or lean in—my frontal lobe and amygdala haven’t finished hashing it out, gladiator style—Cam stops just short of kissing me.
“Take everything you just said, Ivy, and reverse it. You have it entirely backward,” he says. “Entirely.”
He drops my chin and heads out the door. And this time he doesn’t come back.