Chapter 24
It was one of those overused platitudes, but Cam really meant it when he said he didn’t like change.
Cam had eaten the same lunch every day from kindergarten through twelfth grade, a turkey-and-Swiss sandwich. He’d worn the same hairstyle since he was eleven. Despite the overt security risk, he’d had the same password, ringostarfish96, for every internet account from the time he downloaded AIM and was in a big Beatles phase.
And ever since the very best day of his life, he’d had the same girlfriend. Well, until she became his fiancée.
When Cam signed his fellow East Meadow classmates’ yearbooks with the words Never change in bold, he took his own advice and was sure to follow through. He stayed close with his family and friends. He remained at the top of his academic classes. He put everything into his relationship with Liz. He liked order, familiarity. He felt duty-bound to be reliable and counted on. To stay as close to the same as one humanly could.
But adulthood brought changes that Cam couldn’t avoid.
Like Nancy.
When Nancy’s cancer came back, Cam held tight. To Liz, to anything that could make her happy. But he also tried to keep all the other parts of their life the same, to give Liz a small source of comfort amid the unthinkable chaos. He still kept their apartment clean and made all her favorite meals and even maintained a running list of funny tweets and adorable dog photos to show her when she needed a smile. He still came home with flowers like he did every Thursday after work. Cam held Liz tight and didn’t let go. He wanted to wear her pain for her, to inhale it and paint it on his body in a desperate prayer that she might be okay. He wanted to be her armor, keep her safe.
When the worst of it was behind them, when they’d made it through that first awful year without Nancy, Cam felt an inner itch toward the next step. An engagement. A promise to make Liz his permanent family. To be her armor, forever.
It was funny, because proposing to Liz should have felt like more of the same. Cam figured it would mean more dances, more of their favorite weekend rituals, like picnics in the park. More of the promises he’d always made, to never leave her side. More Cam and Liz. The two of them. Only now it would be officially forever.
But the moment Cam told his parents that he wanted to propose, he felt the energy around him change, like a tilting of some fundamental axis. Especially when it came to his mom. He loved his mom, he and Mac owed everything to her. But it was clear from the beginning that bringing Roseanne into the engagement fold brought her into their relationship, too. Cam felt that the two roles he’d always played to perfection—loyal son and loyal boyfriend—were suddenly at odds when it came to all things wedding planning. His family dynamics were being redefined and it was like each day-to-day had a whole new instruction guide. One that was in a foreign language, one that he could never understand, one that he failed and failed and failed.
His relationships didn’t feel the same, and that made Cam so sick. He’d spent the summer almost constantly nauseated. The anxiety infected his bloodstream, and he knew he was making bad decisions because of it, that he was disappointing everyone. How could he tell his mom to scale back when her passion for planning was also her new profession? Would she hate him forever if he admitted that he didn’t want to be her client, he only wanted to be her son?
He couldn’t be honest with his mom, but he couldn’t be honest with Liz either. How could he complain about his mom and her over-the-top involvement to someone who’d spent the past year mourning her own? Instead, Cam would drink too much just to escape his own brain, but he’d regret it immediately. He lashed out. He kept secrets.
He hated how much everything had changed.
This afternoon at Maguire’s, it was like Cam was seeing some bizarre, distorted reality of his life. Liz had lied to him all summer, too. How had he not been able to sense that she was keeping something from him?
Now she was talking about Italy, about moving away. The biggest change yet. What would they do?
Cam knew that he couldn’t control everything. Life would exist outside his purview, and he’d have to adapt, to relent.
But Liz, his favorite person, had never belonged to that category. The girl he’d fallen in love with on the playground and the school bus, the friend turned soul mate turned fiancée, had stayed by his side for as long as he could remember. Why did this feel so different now?
Cam looked around the Serendipity House as he walked inside, greeted his friends with false enthusiasm, and headed straight to the room, a quiet space where he could collect his thoughts, rest his mind.
He hadn’t noticed it back in June, but he realized now that there’d been changes to the share house since their after-prom weekend, too. The coffee machine had been updated, the once-peeling wallpaper in the bathroom redone. The hallway floorboards still creaked and the armchair still sagged, but there were differences, too.
The Serendipity House hadn’t stayed exactly the same.
Had any of the people currently living inside it? He thought about his friends hanging out downstairs and their various new jobs, new hairstyles, new hobbies over the years. Quinn had learned a new language, Brenna had switched to a new career, PJ had moved to a whole new city after UVA. The list went on and on.
Could anyone stay the same? Cam wondered, as he laid his head down on the pillow and closed his eyes. Was change the only constant?
He wasn’t sure, but from the comfort of the Serendipity House, the wind blowing in gently from the opened window, he let himself slowly consider the possibility.
Change was all around him, he realized, as he let his breathing rock and slow. Had it always been?
Suddenly, Cam’s eyelids burst open, and he woke up from his afternoon daydream with an idea.
He needed to call his brother.