14. Fourteen
Fourteen
With Camp at a coaches’ meeting and whatever that entails after, Lyra offered to watch the boys while I have my not-date with Reed. When I came out of the bedroom in a pair of new jeans and burnt-orange shirt that slides off one shoulder, Lyra’s eyebrows shot to the sky.
When she asked, “When did you get hot?” I nearly ran to the bedroom to put my legging-chambray-unfashion uniform back on. Instead, I laughed, muttered, “It’s nothing,” then scuttled out the door like a crab on crack.
Do Reed and I have a history? Yes. But I’m married—albeit fake happily—and I’m a lot of things, but even Reed and his unfairly bad-boy good looks and sexy photographs won’t change that. This is a work meeting. And he is a line I won’t cross.
Me trying my damnedest at looking like a sexpot is more about leveling the playing field. Between him and Camp looking like they’ve spent every day since high school bathing in a fountain of youth, I’m tired of walking around like everyone’s grandma.
Regardless, I don’t tell Camp about the meeting. Sure, he’s been coming home for dinner more over the last two weeks, and our conversations have been polite—friendly, even—but what I do has nothing to do with him. I’m pursuing a career. A passion. It’s none of his damn business.
I slide into the booth at Liberty Tap and scrub my palms down my jeans.
Reed’s already across from me, waiting with a bottle of wine and two glasses. The same deadly degree of hotness as he has been, only tonight he’s more polished. Hair more styled than windblown, jeans more clean than worn. Instead of a T-shirt, he’s wearing a black long-sleeved button-down.
If I was describing him, I’d call him delicious.
“Reed,” I say, tugging the shirt up my shoulder.
“June.” His gaze follows the fabric as it slips back down.
He pours the wine, and I slip my portfolio and a small notebook out of my purse. He watches me, nervously fidgeting as I stack and restack the items before taking a too-big sip of wine.
“You look good.”
I laugh. “Liar.”
He shakes his head, scrubbing a hand down his day-old scruff, and grins. “So tell me what’s happening.”
I debate how to approach it. How honest to be, how open. The dead bodies and me—they're the only ones that know everything. But, in this booth with this wine, my photography career—if that’s even the word for it—on the line, I err on the side of honesty.
“Camp and I are over. Or will be—that’s complicated.” I pause, let the sentiment roll around my tongue and palate. When I decide I hate the flavor, I take another long sip of wine. “I put my camera away after college, when Lyra was born, and it got busy. Harder after . . .” My voice trails off with the bruised spots in between. “After moving back and all. But now . . . Now I have this chance, this second chance, I guess. And, well, Irma told me I suck. So . . .”
“She didn’t say you suck.”
My eyes narrow.
“Okay, fine, she kind of said you suck, but only with landscapes.” I roll my eyes as he continues. “That doesn’t mean it’s over. It means you have to keep looking. Do you remember what I photographed in high school?”
I chuckle as I recall. “Cars.”
He folds his arms on the table and leans forward. “Cars. Hell, I didn’t even know I wanted to be a photographer, I just took the class because I had a crush on a girl with a fire in her eyes brighter than the hair on her head.” He stops then, staring at me, and I shift in my seat, not ready for this conversation. He reads me well, because he pivots. “But I went out, did some living, kept picking up my camera.” He leans back in his seat, takes a sip of wine, and tilts his head.
“What lights you on fire these days, June? Because, judging by your photos, it’s not waterfalls and lakes.”
As offended as I am, as mentally ransacked by the observations he and Irma made earlier in the gallery, I know he’s not wrong. Even worse, I don’t know the answer. I don’t have a damn clue what lights me on fire.
“I don’t know.”
My confession fills the space between us until the waitress comes, takes our order—a salad for me, steak for him—and leaves.
“How did you start photographing the women?”
“A crazy ex-girlfriend.”
I laugh, loud, considering his images. “Sounds interesting. Multiple personalities?”
“Maybe.” He smiles. “Definitely crazy. She was beautiful, quiet, but then she had this other side of her. A storm rolling beneath her skin. So, I shot it, her profile layered with these intense and ominous clouds right before the sky opened up. And that was it. I felt it. A story I could tell. Feel in my gut. Showing all our layers.” Another shrug. “I love it.”
I nod, envious of his passion. “Are all the women people you’ve dated?”
He shakes his head. “No, only the first one. The rest I find randomly—or they find me. Sometimes they reach out on social media, tell me their story. Or we meet over coffee. Sometimes there’s a vision—who they think they are inside—but sometimes I get to interpret it.”
“That’s beautiful. I’m happy for you.”
He studies me. “I could photograph you.”
I shift in my seat, twirl the stem of my wineglass. “I wouldn’t be so interesting. My profile filled with . . . air?” I laugh, self-deprecating, hating the words—how fully they tell how little I’ve become.
He lifts one shoulder. “I don’t know, I need more time.”
“And then some.”
The waiter arrives with our food, and the conversation turns to different topics. His dad passing from cancer. The age of my kids, his relationship status—divorced. Twice. He asks about my parents, who are currently spending six months a year travelling the country in a Winnebago. He even asks about Camp and his baseball career.
“He got injured pitching, needed surgery. He was healing, it looked good.” I shrug. “But it wasn’t good enough, I guess. They didn’t extend the contract, and we ended up here. We bought his parents’ house, they moved to the country. We raised Lyra, which was easy compared to the twins who spend their days trying to give their teacher a mental breakdown—Ms. Mitchell, remember her?”
He wipes his mouth with a napkin, laughing. “God, how old is that woman?”
“Right?” I laugh. “She’s perpetually the same age and terrifying as hell.”
It’s easy, us talking and taking the trip down memory lane, his blue eyes watching me, sparkling like I’m interesting. Like I have something to say that isn’t just Do your homework and Time to eat . Like I’m not just a mom, but a woman. Something other than the people I’ve made and the man I married.
“What should I do about these?” I ask after the waiter takes our empty plates, thumping the top of my closed portfolio.
“I’d photograph everything. You’ll know when you find it. When you get the scan, you’ll feel it change the rhythm of your heartbeat and rearrange your DNA. You’ll find it, give it time.”
I puff out a laugh, take a sip of wine. “You got all insightful, Reed Simmons.”
He chuckles, pouring more wine into each of our glasses. A look at each other, a look away. An energy as nervous as it is tension filled.
“Do you ever think of that night?”
I knew the question was coming, but I choke anyway.
“It was a long time ago,” I say as I wipe my chin covered in dribbled wine.
“I do.”
And in an instant, I’m there. Graduation night, the party at the house on the lake. Camp went inside—a behemoth of a house owned by someone’s uncle—to get us beer. Reed found me on a chair, alone, my toes in the sand. The air was cool, the cicadas were loud.
He sat next to me; we talked, I don’t remember about what, and laughed. I was laughing hard when he kissed me. So abrupt, as if he couldn’t not. Hands around my head, he pulled me in, tongue working its way through my lips and into my mouth. I wouldn’t be able to admit it until later, but, for a split second, I kissed him back. Tasted Reed Simmons like a piece of hard candy.
Then I realized what I was doing, pushed him away from me. “I can’t, Reed. Camp . . .” I said, panting. Panicking. Wanting to vomit over what I’d just done.
“You gonna chase Camp Cannon around for the rest of your life?” he asked, his eyes bright blue—intense—even in the dark.
Before I answered, before I said anything, Camp was there. He’d seen it all from where he was standing silently behind us.
He threw the two Solo Cups of cheap keg beer on the ground, foam spreading across the sand, then marched over to Reed and punched him in the face, busting his lip.
“She’s too good for you,” Reed yelled, wiping his lip, red streak of blood staining the back of his hand. There was no stopping what came next: Reed punched Camp in the face, a blow to his nose, breaking it with a crack.
“Fight!” a girl shrieked.
Camp hinged at the waist, hands cupping his nose, which was spitting blood as he spit curses. When he raised his head, ready to attack, more people were on the beach. They shouted a litany of swear words at each other, me screaming at them both. Shouts of Stop! on repeat.
Reed was dragged away by a group of boys.
I stayed with Camp.
Camp, the only boy I had ever had sex with, ever kissed until that very moment, looked at me like I had shattered his heart, and in turn, mine shattered. And he forgave me. As he cleaned himself up in the bathroom, changed his blood-covered shirt, I traced the boomerang-shaped birthmark on his ribs. “To forever and back,” he said, lopsided smile on his battered face.
I cried. Hugged him too hard. And he hugged me back.
And that was it. Why Reed and Camp started hating each other twenty-two years ago.
“It doesn’t matter now,” I say, pulling myself off that lakeside beach and back to the booth.
“It does to me.”
I say nothing, letting the words loom like a storm cloud.
Someone approaches the table, and still, we stare.
Until they speak. “Well now, Reed, I’d love to know what the fuck you are doin’ with my wife.”