23. Twenty-three
Twenty-three
On the front porch, sitting in the porch swing with chipped white paint, I’m stoned. We both are.
“Remember that time Scotty ran all those thongs up the flagpole?” Camp asks, laughing loud as his arm drapes around the back of the swing, the streetlight painting the lines of his profile.
I match his laugh until tears drip down my face.
“I thought the ROTC instructor was going to kill her. He was so pissed. I think in detention she had to write an apology letter to the United States of America for disrespecting the flag.”
“God,” he says, chuckling. “I forgot that part.”
Every muscle in my body is relaxed, and every thought in my mind is flowing out of my mouth like a tube on a lazy river as we tell stupid stories about ourselves that are old enough to be in history books.
Headlights shine in our eyes as Lyra’s sedan pulls into the driveway.
Panic-seized, I grip Camp’s knee.
“She can’t see us like this!” I hiss. “High on her drugs!”
“Shhh!” he manages through a snorted laugh. “God, J. Stay quiet and she won’t know.”
Out of her car, across the yard, and up the steps, she looks at us, stack of books under one arm.
“Hey, Lyra!” I shout. Then wince.
“Hi,” she says, drawling out the word as she looks from me to her dad. “What are you two doing out here?”
“Chillin’,” Camp says, southern drawl thick and as if chillin ’ is at all part of his vocabulary.
Her eyebrows pinch, and she tucks a strand of hair—back to pink—behind her ear, gaze floating over to me.
“Chillin’?” she asks, confused. “That’s weird.”
Unfortunately for me, the words in my lazy river of a mouth keep flowing. “Lyra,” I say, “you can’t do drugs, so we ate them.”
Her eyes widen, jaw drops. “You’re stoned ?” she asks, voice shrill.
“Your mom wasn’t supposed to tell you that,” Camp starts, knuckles scrubbing across his mustache. “But yes.”
And that’s all it takes for the loudest cackle of my life to come out of my mouth and fly into the night air. When Camp joins me, both of us laugh until we wheeze. Until we forget what we’re laughing about. Until Lyra, who is standing dumbfounded, mutters something about my bathing suit, her parents being stoned on edibles that don’t belong to her, and storms into the house.
“You’re probably grounded for this!” Camp shouts through the screen door, fresh laughter swelling out of both of us when she yells a response we can’t understand.
Laughter exhausted, we fall quiet, staring off as the swing sways at a gentle cadence.
“How do you think this happened?”
I look at him. “The edibles?”
He smiles, but it doesn’t meet his eyes. “Us. The fallin’ apart.”
I drop my head on the back of the swing—his arm—and close my eyes. My heartbeat, a steady badum in my chest.
It wasn’t because I got pregnant with Lyra. As unexpected as it was and as much as it altered the course of my entire life, we were still happy. Even though things were hard, we were broke but good.
It came next. The hard parts after.
Camp reads my silence, my thoughts falling into the pockets of the story we never talk about. Nobody ever talks about.
He bends his elbow as he wraps his arm around my shoulders.
“The lost ones?”
The lost ones , that’s what he’s always called them. There were two. One early, one late. Sorry, June, the doctor had said . . .
When my nose and eyes start to burn, I clear my throat. We never spent much time talking about it, and there’s no need to start now, especially while we’re edible-stoned and pretending to be something we aren’t.
“Life just happens, Camp. I don’t think there’s any one moment, ya know?”
Whether I’m deflecting or not, there’s still truth to my words.
“Death by a thousand cuts,” he says, gaze straight ahead.
“Death by a thousand cuts,” I echo, realizing it was a slow burn of me going from June to Mom to nothing in between.
“I should have seen it.”
“Hmm,” I say, both of us turning our heads to face each other. “We’re both to blame, Camp. I felt so bad when you got injured. Got cut from the team and lost your dream.”
The swing stills.
His hand, his familiar palm, is on my face, pulling my forehead to his. “ You were the dream, June. Baseball was just a bonus.”
And I feel it now, how easy it would be to just fall into him. Love him to forever and back like I always thought I would. Believe that things would be different if we tried again. Believe he’d keep showing up for dinners and planning picnics. But I know he wouldn’t. I would stop chasing any other version of myself, and he would fall back into letting me.
Another hand finds my face; his palms become a frame, boxing in a picture of me. Our stare is one I feel in my throat, my eyelids, and deep in my belly. He moves closer, his lips just over mine, and the breath from his nose and the slightest brush from his mustache tickles my skin. Alone on the porch, we’re soul-scraped and stoned.
“I want to kiss you,” he says, low.
I hesitate, searching his eyes like crystal balls that can tell the future.
Wishing I could see what this is, where it leads, and what to do.
I open my mouth; a phone dings.
His eyes close; the moment shatters.
Camp’s hands drop from my face to slide his phone out of his pocket.
“Dammit,” he mutters, fingers swiping the screen before bringing the phone up to his ear. He looks at me. “Guess the bus driver for—Dani. Hey . . . yeah, just read it.” He chuckles softly, running his fingers through his hair. “They all go to that Chinese place or something?” He pauses, nodding. Eyes crinkling as he smiles before his face goes serious. “Right. No, Jack might be able to do it if we can’t find anyone, it’s still two days away, can’t they take some Pepto?” Another pause.
I tune out the rest of his words, my insides twisting. We can’t even have a moment—whatever we were having—without something. Dani. Work. Chinese food.
He’s still talking when I stand up from the swing.
“Hey, hold on, Dani—J?” I pause in the doorway and look at him. “I’ll be just a minute. Bus drivers have a stomach bug or something—nobody can drive the softball team to the tournament Saturday.”
He laughs, and I’m quiet; the sound dies on his lips.
“This won’t take long.”
I wish that were true.
“It never does.”
“J—”
I don’t let him finish. I step inside and let the screen door snap closed behind me.
He’ll never change. He’ll always pick something else. Maybe he wanted to kiss me, but he also wants everything else.
In the bedroom, vibrating with emotions that have nowhere to go, I grab my phone.
Me : Still up for trying that boxing gym?
Scotty: Uh-oh. Campy piss you off?
Me: Ignoring you.
Scotty: Class at 6 tomorrow night. That work?
Me : I’ll be there.
By the time Camp comes in, I’m already in bed, and the mattress shifts as he sits at my feet.
“June?” he whispers.
I listen to him breathing in the dark and wait for him to make his next move. To tell me he’s sorry or say something to convince me I’m reading this all wrong. To try to kiss me again or apologize seven thousand times. Something. Anything.
Instead, he sleeps on the floor; I sleep on the bed.