43. Forty-three
Forty-three
Years of plans, fundraising, and meetings have all led to this. The complex is here. A dream for the school and the town alike, due in large part to Camp.
It’s been three grueling days since the fiasco at the studio—three days of him staying at his parents’ and me realizing how wrong I’ve been. About damn near everything. This can’t be how it all ends. I refuse.
Pulling back the thick green curtain, I peek my head around to search for him in the crowded room. Round tables with white tablecloths are scattered around the center of the dimly lit banquet room and topped with wineglasses, votive candles in bubbled glass jars, and water pitchers. Along the perimeter, rectangular tables are covered with baskets and gift certificates, familiar faces walking along them placing bids for the silent auction items.
Across the ceiling: strings of lights. Thousands of little bulbs hang in the air and look like the starriest sky there ever was.
It’s packed, and, for lack of a better word, incredible.
All these people, many of whom I’ve known since I was a kid—some even childhood friends of my parents—all here because Camp had an idea and ran with it. I don’t know if I’ve ever once told him how impressive that is.
Finally, I find him. He’s laughing as he shakes a hand—Greg, the cross-country coach—then only making it another step before someone else stops him. Easy smile on his lips, he’s devastatingly handsome in his suit. His face is clean-shaven, his clothes tailored to his lean body.
He entertains every single person that stops him. Patient and smiling easy, his face is filled with genuine gratitude. As he slowly makes his way through the crowd, toward a table, I see him so differently. Through the eyes of all these people as they beeline toward him. Every single person here loves him.
And he picked me.
He sits, looks around the room, takes a sip of champagne, then checks his phone. His knee starts bouncing rapidly—he’s anxious. Someone takes a seat next to him, he puts his phone away, takes another sip, and quickly falls into another conversation.
“Mom?” Lyra whispers.
I turn to her, smile. “Hey!” I whisper back. “You get it finished?”
She nods, grinning. “Barely. You got your speech ready?”
I laugh a breathy ha! sound. “Something like that.” I hold up a paper, covered in my scribbled thoughts. “This might be one of those fly by the seat of my pants situations.”
Gus walks by, giving me a quick hug before a whispered, “Show time!”
Lyra makes an excited noise, making me laugh as she grabs my arm.
Gus takes the stage, standing behind the mic, welcoming the crowd.
I can’t focus on a single thing he says.
Last night when Lyra told me she was struggling to come up what to say, I knew this was it. My chance to apologize. To see the other side of Camp that Mave, Irma, and Scotty all knew, but I refused to look for.
I made a promise to myself as I laid in bed last night: No more strangers with microphones. These women that know me, they are the ones I’ll sit with. Listen to. Let tell me hard truths from here on out.
“Alright, folks,” Gus says as the lights dim further. “We have a fun evening ahead to celebrate this monumental accomplishment.” He pauses, waits for the stragglers to settle in their seats. “Ledger has been described as both Americana and sleepy, the lake our only claim to fame. That’s all we have to offer, or so I’ve heard.” A few chuckles from the crowd. “But we’ve always been a team. Our community. The kids that fill these fields after school and on the weekend. The parents that shuffle kids around, coaches that work tirelessly to help them succeed.” Another pause and look around the room. “And we most certainly wouldn’t be here tonight if it wasn’t for our very own athletic director and baseball legend, Camp Cannon!”
At the applause, I can’t stop the grin that overtakes my face, stealing another peek at Camp, smiling humbly and waving slightly around the room. Hating the attention but accepting the appreciation.
Gus chuckles behind the mic. “While I could go on and on what this complex—and Camp—have done for our community, I have someone much more qualified than myself.” He extends his hands out to the side. “Let’s welcome Camp’s much better half, June Cannon.”
Gus’s eyes meet mine across the stage as he claps along with the audience, and I freeze. “Mom, go!” Lyra says in a strained whisper, pushing me.
Dizzy with nerves, I take my first step from behind the curtain, feeling myself flush, smoothing the shirt I’m wearing—Camp’s high school baseball jersey—and adjusting my fitted pencil skirt before crossing the stage to my spot behind the microphone.
At the podium, I gesture playfully for the crowd to stop. “Y’all sure know how to make a girl feel welcome.”
I laugh, nervous, and pause, my eyes latching onto Camp’s, which are stunned.
“Gosh, so many familiar faces when I look around this room. Feels a little surreal, right?” I begin, heads nodding in the crowd. “A lot of us have called Ledger home forever. Some of y’all might be a little like me and never imagined that twenty-two years after leaving this town you’d somehow call it home. Somehow be standing right in the spot where it started for a lot of us. We were so smart then, weren’t we? I mean, at least I was. Teenage June was smart the way all teenagers are: obnoxiously so.” A wave of laughs ripples through the crowd. “At eighteen, I knew everything I was going to do. Couldn’t imagine a life where my dreams wouldn’t work out.” I pause again, finding Camp’s eyes. When his lips tug to a small smile, mine do the same. I look down at the paper, my well-crafted speech, and abandon it, folding it in half. When I speak again, it’s directly to him. “Hi, Camp.” I lift my fingers from the podium in a half wave. Hi, he mouths. I blow out a shaky breath. “What y’all might not know, is that in two weeks, Camp and I . . .” My words trail off as I think about this looming date that’s been stamped on my timeline and how utterly crazy I’ve been. Camp’s eyebrows raise; I lean close to the mic for dramatic effect. “. . .have a daughter graduating.” He smiles wide. “And watching her these past months has been a bit like travelling back in time. Reliving my own history—for better or worse—as I watch her just begin hers. It’s almost as if every single event—every thought and dream and idea—has been brought to the surface.
“For so long, I thought the best way to fly—the only way to fly—was to leave Ledger. And the people in it.” I glance around the room. “I got a lot of it wrong then. And now still, really. To err is to be human . . . or something like that.” I clear my throat; the room stays quiet. “But, Camp? It’s like that man was born knowing a secret the rest of us had to live to learn. He’s always known that it takes a team. Always known people thrive together . He’s known it so well that he decided to build a whole damn complex dedicated to the concept. Teamwork. Leaning on others. Not doing it alone. Asking for help and accepting it when it’s given. I guess I’ve known that, too, but in the words of my husband, I’m too damn stubborn.” More chuckles. “But for all I didn’t know when we were young. For all the bad ideas and dreams that never would be, eighteen-year-old June was ahead of her time in some ways . . . she found a boy and fell in love with him, knowing in her gut she’d love him all the way to forever and back.”
At this, obnoxious catcalls ring out, and I grin. Across the room, so does Camp.
“But here’s the thing,” I continue, voice becoming strong and sure. “Dreams and truths are a fickle thing, and a man like Camp Cannon who has dedicated his life to the concept of team—to others—can never just belong to one person. He’s too good not to be shared.” I glance offstage, give a thumbs-up, and the screen behind me comes to life, a picture of Camp’s high school baseball team filling it. I look to Camp; he laughs into his hands. “It started in high school, with this group of boys, and the coach that swore there was something special about him.” I bring a hand to my mouth, stage whispering into the mic, “Like I didn’t already know that,” earning another wave of chuckles.
I click a button on a small controller, new image, Camp in college, playing baseball. “Then App State.” Another click, team photo of him the minors in Virginia Beach. “Virginia Beach.” Another click, him pitching for Charlotte. Arm pulled back mid-pitch in his deep-red jersey—so at home on the mound that year in the majors. “When Camp got called up to the majors, pitched that first game, I learned to share him with the world. And while Camp did a lot of amazing things in baseball, this is the year he traded one dream for another. Where a tough decision was made for the people in his life.” My voice cracks. “His other team.”
I pause again, Camp and I staring at each other like we are the only two people in the room. I click the button again, and a photo of Camp in his first athletic director office appears—cluttered and windowless—as he holds baby Lyra. “So we learned to share Camp with the school that brought us up.” Another click, a team photo. “A new batch of baseball players.” Another click, him drinking beer at the brewery with the softball team, clay-covered jerseys and wide smiles. “A group of men that tell their wives they can’t miss a Tuesday night.” Another wave of laughs, wives playfully slapping husbands’ arms, lifting glasses in solidarity toward one another across the room.
“And now,” I click again, and again, and again, images of the completed complex—photos that I took—fill the screen. “Now pieces of Camp Cannon will be shared with any kid that wanders onto these fields. Any parent, grandparent, and great Uncle Vernon that sits on these bleachers. Hearts will break and heal on this grass. Kids will learn what it means to work hard and succeed as often as they’ll find what it means to work hard and fail. There will be fights. Noses will break.” My eyebrows raise slightly as knowing chuckles bubble up around Camp’s table.
“I didn’t do half of what I set out to. Didn’t make it very far out of Ledger before getting pulled back in. But Camp Cannon . . .” My breathing gets shallow as I click the button, photo filling the screen of me and him, the one Lyra took at the picnic. “Well, I’ll love that man as long as everyone else does—all the way to forever and back.” From under the podium, I grab a flute of champagne and raise it toward the crowd. “To Camp,” I say, “who I love more today than I did when Scotty Armstrong threatened him into asking me out.”
And with that, the room roars with claps and calls, glasses lifted, Camp’s name on their lips before they drink.
I blink back tears, so does he.
“That’s not all, Camp,” I tease into the mic before stepping aside as Lyra joins me onstage with quick steps and a Ledger-green dress.
“Dad,” she says into the mic. “We couldn’t let this night go without hearing from your team. And, since they were so rudely left off the guest list”—more laughs—“here’s what they had to say.”
I click the button one last time, and a video starts. The first kid, Tommy, smiles wide on the screen revealing a mouth filled with braces.
“Coach, thanks for all you do. Never would have gotten out of that detention without your note.”
Laughter bubbles across the crowd, and Lyra and I smile at each other with all our teeth.
It was a last-minute idea to make this video. She and Nick scrambled to get clips recorded and edited right up until this afternoon. This is the first time I’m seeing them all together.
The next boy, Grant, appears.
“Thanks for not benching me when I walked four batters in a row.”
Another, Toby: “Thanks for driving me home from every practice when my parents were working.”
Billy: “Thanks for believing in me, Coach.”
Dyllan: “Thanks for showing up, CC.”
“Thanks, Coach.”
“We’ll miss you, Coach.”
What?
“We’ll be lost without you; Coach Jack picks the worst music.”
Jack? Jack.
Bet you’re excited for next year; I know he is.
I freeze. Eyes—slowly—going to Camp.
“Won’t be the same without you, Coach. Keep your office door open, we’ll need to complain.”
“You taught me how to throw a curveball, Coach—I’ll never forget it.”
Camp is leaving baseball. For me. Us. Again.
My eyes widen, and the room disappears. He nods. His wordless confirmation.
The video goes on until it ends, and the room erupts, snapping me out of my trance. Lyra’s elbow digs into my arm as she claps, and I have to force my hands to move. It’s a roar around me, nearly two hundred people standing and clapping for the man who is so much bigger than the teams he’s played on and the complex he helped build.
“Did you know?” I ask Lyra when we shuffle off stage, whispering while Gus takes the mic again and starts talking about fundraising. “About next year. The coaching?”
She nods. “I found out last night. I guess Dad just told the team. Nick told me.”
I squeeze her in a hug. “You did great.”
She pulls back, tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. Our roles feeling backward. Her seeming grown.
“Go, Mom.”
I nod, squeeze her again, then adjust my skirt before sneaking down the steps and out into the maze of tables and chairs, slipping into the vacant one next to Camp.
“Guess they like you,” I whisper in his ear as I sit.
He turns to me, eyes searching mine in the low light.
“Jungle Rules,” he whispers.
I take the lapel of his coat in my fingers and smooth a palm over it as an excuse to touch him. “I’m mad that you lied to me about baseball.”
“I’m mad you lied to me about everything else.”
“I’m mad I lied about everything else.”
“I’m not coachin’ next year. Not full-time. I’ll help with the pitchers. And I’m still the athletic director, so I’ll still have to be at games, but not as many.”
My eyes search his.
“You don’t have to do that.” Applause happens around us as Gus finishes his speech. “I don’t want you to do that.”
He chuckles; soft music starts to play. “Yes, you do.”
I exhale a laugh. “Fine, yes, I do, but you still don’t have to. We can figure something else out.”
“I want to. It’s been years and . . . it’s time. Jack wants it. He’s excited, and I’m . . .”
“Old,” I tease, letting my hands trace his jaw then dancing across to the bump on his nose. It’s intimate feeling, but even though we’re in a room full of people, I can’t stop myself. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I wanted to surprise you. You said you were going to the gallery; I went there to tell you.” He shakes his head with a chuckle. “That backfired.”
I drop my hands to my lap. “Reed did that, I didn’t know. It was nothing, I—”
“I know.”
“You know?”
“I know. I read the email.”
We’re quiet, looking at each other, as glasses clink and waves of conversations float by us.
“I’m not pregnant,” I blurt.
His chin jerks back, confusion filling his eyes. “Okay, well the vasectomy probably helped with that . . .”
“Stay married to me.”
His eyes narrow. “Wha—”
“You told me you thought I wouldn’t have married you if I wasn’t pregnant with Lyra. But now I’m not pregnant, so propose to me.” When he hesitates, confused, I look around the room, filled with everyone we know, desperation forcing me forward. “Fuck it,” I mutter, sliding out of my seat and onto the floor. I attempt to kneel with one knee, but my pencil skirt won’t allow it. I settle on both knees, people around us noticing. Stopping. Staring.
“Marry me,” I say, making nearby conversations stop. Camp stills, eyes wide. “Stay married to me. Let’s keep trying. Let’s-let’s-let’s have great sex and eat drugs and grow old together while the boys and the dog destroy our house. In Ledger. Together.”
The tables around us are dead quiet now and I feel the weight of their stares and the gravity of the moment. For a split second I regret using the line “eat drugs” but the way Camp’s lips twitch makes me think he very much enjoyed it.
He scrubs a hand down the side of his face while I’m still kneeling on the floor with an audience growing and my heart threatening to pound a bruise in my chest.
“Together?” he asks, feigning deep consideration.
“Together.”
“To—”
My nostrils flare, and the word quickly turns to a laugh.
His hands cup around my face and, in a room filled with the people that watched us grow into who we are, my husband presses his lips to mine. “I’ll stay married the hell out of you, June Cannon,” he says against my mouth, pulling me to a stand before kissing me again.
This time when the calls and claps break out around us, it’s not for a man, it’s for love. For all our Today’s Bests that it took to get us here. It’s for how hard it is to make it—to keep fighting when it sucks. When it’s loud. When it’s exhausting. When we keep kicking even though drowning seems so much easier.
Loud music starts and chairs slide around the floor mixing with raucous laughter and conversation that breaks out around us.
“Great speech, June,” a voice says. Dani.
I smile, leaning into Camp. “Thanks.”
And then I see it: her hand in Jack’s. Another fabricated story vanishes from my brain, replaced by what’s real. She smiles at me, cheeks pink as she catches me looking at their hands. Dani and Jack. Together. She wasn’t giggling at Camp—it was Jack.
I am a fucking moron.
Camp’s eyebrows raise—he knows. He’s known. He watched me act like a jealous psycho, but he’d known all along this was the truth. Ass.
“So, Jack,” I say, clearing my throat. “Next year, huh? You ready for it?”
He shrugs, boyishly handsome smile on his face. “I mean, it’s not like my predecessor was a big deal or anything.”
The conversation is easy and brief until they are pulled off into a different direction and Camp guides me out of the crowd.
“You could have told me.” He blinks. “About Dani and Jack.”
“Ah. And miss the chance to watch you get all hot and bothered with jealousy?” He lands a kiss on my nose. “Where’s the fun in that, J?”
My hand in his, he leads me out of the banquet hall, into the atrium.
In front of the metal sculpture, I stop, looking around at what he’s help build. The building, my photos.
I bring my fingers to the gold plaque under the one closest, The Lost Ones . “Thank you for this.”
“They’re good, J.” He squeezes my hand in his. “ You’re good.”
He dusts a kiss on my lips, but it doesn’t linger. In an instant we’re moving—fast. Camp is swallowing the space down the hall in long strides and a tight grip on my hand, the heels on my feet making it difficult to keep up.
“Where are we going?” I wobble as I step, stumbling in my shoes. “Camp, you’re too fast.” He only goes faster. “Jesus. Camp, are you listening? Slow down!”
At his office door, he pushes it open, pulls me inside, then locks it closed.
Panting and annoyed, I stare at him, hands on my hips. “What are we doing here?”
Then, he smiles—wolfish—and I get it.
“Way I heard it,” he says, stepping close, eyes hot, southern drawl warm honey in my belly. “You asked me for great sex in front of a room of people and it seems pretty ungentlemanly of me not to oblige.”
The giggle that starts to form on my lips is swallowed by his mouth on mine. When Camp lifts me onto his desk, I help christen the office of the only man I’ve ever loved.