33. Thirty-three
Thirty-three
“Still fits you like a glove, J,” Camp says with an easy grin and mussed hair as he makes eggs-in-a-basket. He’s in sweatpants and a Ledger T-shirt, I’m in his high school baseball jersey. Which, despite the curves I didn’t have when we were teens, still hangs to my thighs. I was in the closet, digging through my drawers for something to wear, and when it caught my eye, I couldn’t not put it on. It’s been years since it’s seen the light of day, and the light of this Sunday morning seemed perfect.
I cradle a mug of coffee in my hands as I lean against the counter next to him, blowing the steam as the dog sprawls across the floor at our bare feet.
I chuckle with a playful eye roll. “A very worn glove.”
With the hand not holding the spatula, he tucks a piece of my wild hair behind my ear and kisses my nose then takes his time as his eyes go from my head to my toes, turning my belly to the warm gooey center of a cinnamon roll. “Still looks good.”
I shake my head, taking a sip of my coffee as he refocuses his attention on breakfast.
One look in the mirror this morning and I laughed. I look like Medusa if she had a post-sexathon glow and red hair. But I don’t care. The kids are still gone, the house is quiet, and after yesterday—and last night—Camp looks so perfect in the kitchen making breakfast, I don’t care what I look like. I want to jump inside him and never come out.
“Remember that thing we used to do when I was still playin’ baseball?” he asks, turning the stove off and pulling a plate out of the cabinet. “When I’d been gone and only had a couple days in town and we had so much to catch up on?”
I laugh against the rim of my mug. “Twenty Confessions?” I take a sip. “Where I would tell you actual things that were happening in my life, and you told me, like, three important things and then all the kinds of sex you imagined us having.”
He does a kind of half snort, half laugh as he slides our breakfast from the pan to the plate. “That sounds about right.” He sets the plate in front of me with two forks before leaning against the counter. “Let’s play. Tell me what I don’t know.”
It’s simple, maybe stupid, but seven million butterflies flutter through me as he takes a bite of his food, yolk dripping from his fork and onto his faintly stubble-covered chin. He laughs as he wipes it off then takes a sip of his coffee. It’s familiar and it’s a freefall.
He raises his eyebrows, as if reminding me I need to answer. “Right. Okay.” I set my mug down and cut into the toast and egg. “The boys’ teacher might be the actual spawn of Satan.”
He barks out a laugh as I take my first bite then stabs his fork into the food again. “Not news. What else?”
“Hm. Okay. I think Lyra and Nick might be having sex soon.”
His face twists. “Not allowed. Ever. Next.”
I chuckle and take another sip of my coffee. Typical dad response.
“Fine. Scotty—I don’t know. Something seems off with her. And of course she won’t talk about it, but”—I blow out a breath—“she’s alone and—the way she went off on Ford . . .” I shake my head. “I worry. She dates complete morons, lives in that lonely apartment above the crematorium, and deflects like she’s been professionally trained. I don’t know what’s in her head.”
He nods, sets his fork down, and picks up his mug. “You think it’s about Zeb?” he asks.
I shrug. “I think it’s about everything.”
I take another bite, he sips his coffee, and we let that hang in silence.
When he picks up his fork again, he says, “Tell me about photography. How’s it goin’?”
I want to lie, deflect Scotty-style, but I can’t. Not to him. Not here in this kitchen in his jersey eating breakfast. Not with him looking at me the way he is.
“I actually had a show.” I pause, clear my throat, take a sip of coffee. “At the gallery.”
The guilt of the confession is so heavy I can’t look at him, but out of the corner of my eye, I see that he’s holding his forkful of food midair, unmoving. I pick at something on the counter.
“Really?” he asks, tone surprisingly neutral.
I nod.
“And how did that go?”
“Good,” I say, still not looking at him. “Really good actually. Someone bought every single piece.”
He sets his fork—still filled with food—down on the plate. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
I brave a look at him, my eyes burning with tears a blink away from falling. “I-I-I was mad at you. And-and I thought maybe I wasn’t good enough. Or something. I don’t know. It was the night Hank got hurt. And then I felt guilty. And-and-and—”
“J,” he says, expression softer than I expect or deserve when he cuts me off. He brushes another rogue hair from my face then wraps a palm around my neck while his thumb rubs the line of my jaw. “I would have been there—I wish I would have known—but I’m proud of you. And you are good enough, no matter what you do. You’re better than good.”
A lone tear of guilt drops down my face and he watches it. My throat hurts too bad to talk, so I nod.
I’m glad he knows, but I feel like a monster. How could I have not invited him? Not even told him?
“I’m sorry,” I say, letting out a shaky breath as he brushes his knuckles under my chin. “That I didn’t tell you.”
“Don’t apologize. But someone bought every piece?” Curiosity fills his face. “Who?”
“That’s the weird thing,” I say with a sniff. “They wanted to remain anonymous. I have no idea why, but they bought everything. For a lot of money.”
His lips twitch as he fights a smile. “You have some kind of secret admirer I need to know about?”
I snort-laugh, snaking my arms around his waist and dropping the side of my head to the crook of his neck. He runs his fingers through my hair. “Ha. Ha. I do not think so. It sounds stupid, but it felt good. I don’t know . . . special. That someone would do that. Would want to buy photos I took.”
“Oh, really?” There’s a playfulness to his voice. “Now you’re a secret admirer of your secret admirer? Do I need to be worried, wife ?”
This time, my laugh is loud.
“Maybe. But only if he’s old and rich.” He wraps his arms around me, the food and coffee abandoned on the counter as we tilt our heads to face each other. Our smiles mirrored. “It’s your turn. What’s new?”
“I was thinkin’ about what I could do with you on the counter.”
I snort. “That’s not how this works. Tell me something.”
He takes a step that pivots me so my back is pinned to the counter.
“I met a girl with wild red hair and I’m gonna marry her.”
I fail to hide my smile. “Old news, Camp Cannon.”
His hands drop to my hips and travel up, under his jersey and on my body; his mouth finds mine.
He kisses me, pulls away enough to say, “I got a job as the athletic director at the high school,” and kisses me again. “Oh! And I helped design a new sports complex, and I need a date to the gala. Apparently, I have to be there.”
“You’re still terrible at this,” I half say, half laugh as his mouth stays close to mine.
My hands travel across his skin under his shirt, lifting it halfway up his torso until I see his boomerang-shaped birthmark. I trace it—twice—and he stills. Our playfulness on pause. I want to kiss it. Lick it.
“To forever and back,” he says as my fingers dance across his skin.
I hum a soft noise in response, looking back at him—feeling so beautifully content—and poke a single finger into his ribs and make him laugh.
He tickles me in retaliation, making me laugh harder, before squeezing my hips and lifting me onto the counter.
“Lookey here, I got you on the counter,” he says with a sly grin as he spreads my legs so he’s standing between them.
I laugh with an exhale, the space between us, though barely there, feeling too big. Too far. Like he might disappear if I don’t get closer.
“You got me on the counter.” I trace the crooked line of his nose and the cupid’s bow of his lips with my finger before slipping my hands around his neck. “Now what?”
“Now”—he wraps his hands around my knees and slides his palms up my bare thighs, sending a radiating ache through me; without him asking, my body scoots closer toward the edge—“I’m gonna slide inside you and make you scream my name in the middle of this kitchen with the dog watchin’.”
Said dog is splayed across the floor and snoring. And, because it’s the only thing I seem to be able to do today, I smile like an idiot.
“That’s weird,” I tell him, doing nothing to stop him as he slides my panties off.
“Don’t care,” he says, not breaking eye contact when he drops his pants.
I don’t argue. Instead, I wrap my legs around his waist.
He kisses me, tasting like breakfast, and I feel my heart exploding with every beat. Not from the sex we’re about to have or that we’ve already had, but from him being here. From everything else. The laughing. The talking. The eggs in a damn basket. From us being us.
I pull back from his mouth—just far enough so I can speak. “You’re Today’s Best.”
His smile is true; his eyes are bright. “So are you.”
Mouth to mouth, tongue to tongue, hands on my hips and with a push of his own, he’s in me, turning us into a tangled mess of breathing and grinding and giggles, until—true to Camp’s word—I scream his name and the dog barks.
And there, in the middle of the kitchen on a Sunday morning, I fall in love with my husband all over again.