35. Thirty-five
Thirty-five
“I'll be honest, June, I didn’t expect your call,” Reed says with a smirk as he adjusts the camera on the tripod.
A nervous laugh puffs out of me from the stool I’m sitting on, trying to forget I’m naked underneath the white sheet that’s wrapped around my shoulders. “Yeah, well, I didn’t expect to make the call.”
The two days since my minivan meltdown have been filled with tension. Though Camp and I have slept in the bed together, we haven't talked. He wakes up, goes for a run, and goes to work; I take care of the kids and feed the dog.
More than once, I've caught him looking like he wants to say something; more than once he never has. Last night at dinner, Camp and I were silent while the kids were oblivious, rattling on and on about end of the school year excitement around the kitchen table.
The same kitchen table Camp bent me over a mere week ago during our whole-house screw-fest.
A bubble of bliss, popped.
The words from the podcast have clawed at me. If I accepted what they meant—that I’d been too cavalier to trust strangers that knew nothing about me—it would mean one thing: I’ve been a fool.
After nearly two days of agitation, when I read the note saying the boys got red cards in class, it pushed me over the edge; I called Reed out of desperation.
Desperate to escape everything. To be anyone but myself.
“If the offer still stands, let’s do the photos,” I told him. “But if you do anything funny, I’ll knock you out. Scotty took me to a boxing class.”
Reed laughed, said, “I wouldn’t dream of it,” and texted me a time.
So here I am. Mostly nude and posing for a photo on a Tuesday night with Reed Simmons.
He lifts his head from behind the viewfinder, smile turning serious. “Wanna talk about it?”
I shrug, the sheet shifting across my bare skin. “I accidentally spent my life chasing Camp Cannon only to have him never chase me.”
He laughs under his breath, switching out the lens on his camera, stance wide as he studies me. He opens his mouth to say something but closes it as though he changed his mind.
“What?”
He presses his lips in a tight line, hesitating. “It’s just that, every single time I’ve seen him since I’ve been back, and the way he doesn’t hesitate to let me know how he feels about me, makes me think otherwise.”
“You’ve seen him once, that’s hardly a shock.”
He snorts a laugh.
“Either way.” I pull at a thread on the sheet. “I just can’t spend my life like this, you know? Like-like-like my life might be half over, and what, the rest of it is just going to be me haunting a house he picked out while I wait for him to come home from baseball practice?” I scoff. “He said he was working on being home more, but do you know what he said last night?” I shoot a hand into the air as my voice rises. “He wants to win nationals next year! Nationals, Reed! That’s the opposite of being home more.” He says nothing. “And, you know, for some reason somebody bought all the pieces I had at the show. Someone saw me—or at least what I was capable of—and, what? I just shut that down so Camp can keep playing baseball?” I make a groan-grunt-shout sound. Reed has the nerve to look amused. “Why are you smiling like that? Like this is at all funny. My marriage is falling apart, and I’m naked under a sheet with public enemy number one.”
“What would you do if I tried to kiss you right now?” he asks, tone matter-of-fact. Like a businessman bartering a deal.
I suck in a sharp breath and tighten the sheet around my chest. “Scream. Why?”
He chuckles, putting a lens in a case. “Then I’m not the enemy—and I’m not going to try to kiss you.”
Part of me is offended by this fact, but more so, I’m relieved. Reed—smokin’ hot Reed—is talking to me like the friends we used to be. The heat his gaze had at the gallery show has been replaced by a concerned warmth. A dynamic shifted.
“Why didn’t your marriages work?” I ask, watching him as he moves from his camera to the large, white light boxes in the corners of the studio, angling them toward me.
“My wives would probably say I chased them until I didn’t. Work has always been it for me. The thing that lights me on a fire that burns constantly. When things get hard, I shake it up by buying a new lens, going somewhere else to gain perspective. But relationships?” He shakes his head as he pulls a backdrop down. “You’re there. Stuck. Nowhere to run but to each other to figure it out.”
I blow out a breath. “That’s the damn truth.”
He steps next to me, looking at the gear scattered around the room, assessing.
“Will you get married again? Is it worth it? The love then loss?”
“Way I see it, there are three questions anyone should ask themselves before they get married: Can I imagine my life with this person? Is my life better with this person? Is having this person worth giving up any other thing in my life?”
He pauses, slipping his fingers to the top of the sheet, laughing at the glare I give him. “I got it, June, your chest is off-limits, and you aren’t sleeping with me. Your terms were clear when you shouted them through the phone.”
I soften, just slightly, and he works the sheet so it’s draped across my chest but leaves my entire back open, spinning me around so my back is toward the camera.
“Anyway,” he continues, “those are the same three questions you should ask when you get divorced. For me”—he shrugs—“it’s always been three yeses when it starts and three nos when it ends.”
I consider this, his questions, my answers. Camp. Reed not being able to stay in a relationship because he constantly wants something else. Something more. He positions me, facing away from the camera, bare back exposed, sheet draped.
“Listen, and here’s the last thing I’ll say about it. You broke my heart when you were with him in high school. I loved you the way someone that age thinks they love someone they can’t have. But we wouldn’t have worked—I know that—not now that I see what you have. The kids, the house, the dog that’s bigger than your kids in the photos.” He smiles, but it doesn’t meet his eyes. “And Camp. I get it, maybe more than most, that people don’t always see the truth, what happens in relationships behind closed doors. But that man”—he shakes his head—“whether he knows it or you know it or whatever, is the one chasing you. I think maybe you have some image in your head of what’s happening and aren’t willing to see what’s real. What’s right in front of you.” I say nothing as he positions himself behind his camera. “But as for me, I chase what I want and leave when it isn’t—I don’t think that’s who you are, June. Relationships are about sacrifice. Some are big and loud, but some aren’t. Some are so quiet they go unnoticed. A subtle bending to fit—tilt your chin down. Look over your shoulder.” He snaps a series of photos as I follow his posing instructions. “Do you talk to him? Like, really talk to him?”
I jerk my head toward him, chin tucked at my shoulder, eyes narrow.
He laughs again, blue eyes dancing, dark hair disheveled. “I’ll take that as a no—go back to sitting the way you were, less angry. Right, like that. Close your eyes.” I do as he says and hear another click of the shutter. “My guess is you approach him like you did shooting landscape photography. Hellbent on doing one thing, hard-pressed to see there was something different and better for you. Not that I’m defending the asshole, but how do you expect him to meet you halfway if you don’t tell him how?”
I scoff. “I talk.”
Do I talk?
I told him I wanted a divorce. That I hated his mustache. That he never helped around the house. That he’s always gone.
But . . .
I’ve never told him how hard dinner routines are for me. How hard it is for me to take time for myself because of how much he works. Plays. How I always sit the bench to baseball.
Why?
Another click of the shutter then Reed switches out his lenses. Does something with the lights.
Because I want him to just know. Because I don’t want him to blame me when he’s unhappy. Because, according to Camp, I’m damn stubborn.
Do we really need more advice or do we just, you know, need to have a real conversation and listen to our gut? The words from last night’s podcast burn like acid in my ears.
The realization sinks heavy in my gut. I’ve always just wanted him to know, but a bigger part of me didn’t want him to blame me for his unhappiness when I asked him not to do something or told him how hard it all was. Somewhere along the way, I decided I’d be unhappy enough for all of us and spare him. Only, instead of it working out like that, we’re over.
When he told me about playing toward hosting nationals next year. Adding more tournaments to the lineup . . . I didn’t ask him not to, I snapped.
How the hell did it take Reed Simmons photographing me in a sheet to realize this?
“Okay, we’re going to take one more series but this ti—”
“You’re right,” I blurt. “I never told him. Any of it. Like-like as far back as I remember.” It all flashes before my eyes. Me not telling him I didn’t want to stay home. That I didn’t want to buy his parents’ house. That the absence of the lost ones gnawed a gaping hole in me. That finding out I was having twins at thirty-six years old was borderline catastrophic. “I mean, he was a blind moron that didn’t pick up on the cues of me digging my own grave, but-but-but.” I drop my head back with a groan of realization.
“That bad?” he asks, puffing out a laugh as he moves from behind his camera until he’s standing next to me.
I blink, thinking of everything I haven’t said in my over two decades with Camp, and groan again. “Where do I even begin? And what if he doesn’t want to listen?”
He rests his hands on my bare shoulders, gentle look in his eyes. “That asshole?” He grins and rubs his palms down my arms before dropping his hands by his side. “I have a feeling you’ll figure it out. You’ll do something or he’ll do something . . . where there’s a will, there’s a way. I’ve watched you two—he’ll listen.”
I playfully place my palms on his cheeks, pinching the sheet to my sides under my armpits as I squeeze his face, laughing as I say, “Thank you. Seriously. For all of this. If I didn’t have a marriage to fix, I’d kiss you, Reed Simmons.”
His head turns slightly, eyes cutting toward the open door to the gallery before snapping back to me. In that split second, his expression changes. Framed by my hands, his smile turns sly. In a movement so quick—so abrupt—Reed moves his face toward me until his mouth is so close to mine his lips brush against my skin when he talks.
“Sorry, Junie,” he whispers. “I can’t resist.”
Before I can move, before I can do anything, he kisses me—fast. His lips are on mine then off before I can register what’s happening. There’s no passion or tongue or feeling. When he pulls back, my eyes are wide, my heart has stopped, and he has a shit-eating grin as he cocks his head to the side and looks back toward the door.
I grip the sheet around me, speechless. What the actual fuck?
“Oh, hey, Camp,” he says coolly. “Didn’t see ya there.”
What?
I turn my head, and then I see him. Camp. Standing in the doorway of the gallery—straight line of sight to what he thinks he just saw—with a bouquet of wildflowers hanging sadly by his side and his eyes filled with hurt.
It hits like a live bomb detonating behind my ribs.
No !
“Camp!”
Driven by an instant shot of adrenaline, I push into Reed’s chest with one hand—who stumbles back with a smug chuckle—grip the sheet around my chest with the other, and pounce to a stand, nearly tripping as I stumble out of the studio, down the short hall, and into the gallery after him.
“Camp!” I shout, desperate. “Wait! It’s not what you think!”
He’s already leaving, and he doesn’t stop. Doesn’t even turn to look at me. Every shout of his name only seems to make him move faster toward his truck parked in the lot across the street. He ignores every beg, eating up the sidewalk and street in long angry strides. I’m run-stumbling as fast as the sheet will let me—stepping over the abandoned bouquet in the doorway.
“Camp!” I shout again, in the middle of the street as he slams the door of his truck.
“No!” I hitch the fabric high on my chest as I run to him. “Camp!” I smack on his driver’s side window. “Camp! It’s not what you think!”
For the first time he looks at me, and when his eyes meet mine through the glass, they’re red and wet. The pain on his face squeezes all the air from my lungs.
“Camp!” I cry again. “Camp!” I’m screaming now. My throat burns as tears pour down my face and I slap the window like a madwoman. “It’s not what you think!”
But he doesn’t stop. He doesn’t roll the window down. And worse, I know he doesn’t believe me.
He looks away, shifts the gear, and leaves me crying his name in the middle of Main Street, wearing a sheet and watching him go.
“Didn’t even punch me this time, and I had ya naked,” Reed observes—like my life isn’t unravelling in front of him—because of him—easily leaning in the open doorway of the gallery.
I storm past him with a sniff. “You’re a special kind of fucked up, Reed. Why the hell did you do that?” I retrieve my clothes from the studio, sniveling as I fumble with my bra and pull my shirt over my head, not caring it’s inside out.
“You’re not going to like my answer,” he says, watching me get dressed like a lunatic as he leans in the studio doorway. “But I just wanted to get a reaction.”
My head whips toward him from where I’m crouched and struggling to tie my shoe. “Are you kidding me?” I ask with an incredulous shout. “This is my life—my marriage! And you just wanted to get a reaction ?”
He squints and presses his lips together, as if he’s thinking about what I’ve said. “Yes.” He grins. “And I also thought it would be good for you.”
Again, his words shock me to the point of paralysis. “ Good for me? You’re insane, you know that? Like-like-like, completely mental. How was this good for me?”
I scramble to find my purse, fishing for my keys. “You and him,” he says, like it’s obvious, rubbing his chin. “You can’t talk to him, and now you don’t have a choice. You either talk to him or you lose him.”
I scoff, finally finding my keys. “So you’re some kind of delusional cupid now?”
He answers with a proud smile, and I groan, picking up my sweater as I shove by him again. This time he follows me through the gallery.
“You gonna chase Camp Cannon around forever, Junie?” he teases.
I ignore him, only stopping in the middle of the street when he shouts, “June?” I glance at him as I push the button on my keys to unlock the minivan. “Note on the flowers says, ‘I’m done.’”
He’s done?
I stare at the note between Reed’s fingers, not able to comprehend any of it.
I jam my palms in my eyes, let out a loud groan, then hurry to get into the van.
What the hell did I just do?