38. I Trust You
THIRTY-EIGHT
Avery woketo the buzz of her watch on her wrist, and sixty seconds later, to the buzz of her phone under her pillow. Five-thirty a.m. Cameron would pick her up at six.
Only a week before, the prospect of hours in the truck with him on a road trip to Tennessee set her toes tapping with excitement. Now, even under the hottest water she could stand, she shivered as she scrubbed herself awake. The days since her disastrous confession had been a roller coaster of mood swings, with churning lows of self-loathing, loneliness and doubt.
Every time she saw him, the ache inside healed, and the fear vanished. When he was gone—to class, to weights, to practice, to what little sleep he earned—it engulfed her again like quicksand. When Isaac died, the weight was constant and unyielding for months, and the shift to normalcy was gradual. Happiness came back in small blips and flutters. Now, a week’s worth of emotions rolled in and out like unpredictable tides, pushing and pulling entirely out of her control.
Needs on top of needs, always—she shouldn’t need him so much that only his presence could lift her out of a funk of her own making. He sensed her floundering. A new tenderness flowed from his hands and lips, and the warmth in his eyes was just as much concern as it was desire—but he held her close, and didn’t ask why.
She wouldn’t have known what to tell him anyway.
Oh, Cameron, I’m so sad that I told you a big, scary truth, and you acted adult and reasonable about it.
I’m so bummed I didn’t know what to draw this week without you in arm’s reach every second of every day.
I’m so mad at myself for doing something stupid that turned out just fine.
Avery toweled off and shook out her hair, damp tendrils brushing her shoulders as she smudged a foggy corner of the mirror and peeked at her sleepy-eyed reflection. Five hours on the road, at least five hours at the stadium, including warm-up times, and after all that, she’d have to look her best to meet his parents. She didn’t know who she’d end up with in the student section at the game since the traveling fan base would be a new experience, but maybe she’d make a friend.
Chin up, she demanded. Her reflection obliged.
Cameron shrugged out of his jacket before he got into the truck and tossed it on the seat between them. “Okay, get the goosebumps out of the way,” he said, smacking his arms to warm them after he buckled up.
“You could have left your jacket on, genius.” Avery warmed her fingers over a heating vent. The early-November cold snap left the campus twinkling with frost, catching the first rays of the morning sun as they headed south.
“It would have gotten in the way.” He pointed at the glove compartment. “Open that. I got you something. I got us something, I mean. Forgive my hack job of wrapping it.”
“This?” She held up a padded mailing envelope, torn messily open at one end. “It’s not a hack job if you did nothing but put it back in the shipping material,” she said.
“Technicality.” He grinned and raised a finger as she reached inside the envelope. “Hold on. I got us that because I was a little worried about you this week. You’re obviously still feeling a little down. I didn’t want to push you to talk about it, and I still don’t, but I had an idea that maybe we could kill two birds with one stone on this drive. Now you can open it.”
A packet of three pens fell into her lap, and Avery’s lips moved in silent confusion as she read the instructions and glanced at his bare arms. “Cameron. You’re kidding. You’re crazy. You have a game today. We’re seeing your parents today. These don’t wash off.”
“They’ll wash off in about a week, if the reviews are anything to go by, and they fade instead of smearing like regular ink. There are a couple of different tips, so you have more flexibility than a tattoo artist.”
“I don’t have any of the sketches. We didn’t even decide on a final design.”
“You can draw what you’re feeling,” he said, plucking one of the semi-permanent tattoo pens from the packet. “Whatever you don’t want to talk about. I want you to trust yourself and see how much I trust you.”
She turned the pens over in her hands, rolling them between her fingers in silence, testing their weight as she caressed his right arm with her eyes. A minute might have passed, or five, or ten as they sped down the highway and she traced, erased in her mind.
“I think I know what to do,” she said. Shimmying in her seat, she unbuttoned her jeans and slid them halfway down her thighs.
Cam nearly slammed on the brakes at seventy-five miles per hour. “What are you—I can’t—” He watched in astonishment as she uncapped the pens one-by-one and used each to draw test lines, wavy and straight, crosshatches, and dots, in random patches over her thighs.
“I have to try them out. I might be in short sleeves when it warms up, and drawing on my stomach would be too soft compared to your arm. And you’re the only one who will see the trial-and-error process, anyway.”
He slid a hand over the seat between them and walked his fingers gingerly up her thigh, then inspected his fingertips. “The ink dries pretty fast. Maybe. Let me check again.”
“Are you sure?”
“When have I ever passed up a chance to touch you?” He winked.
“I mean, you’re going to be on TV today. This is?—”
“This is going to be the best game ever.”
“There’s a lot of emotion for you in that stadium,” she said, tapping the brim of his hat. She slipped her fingers through some curls that escaped the hat and tucked them behind his ear. “Will it be weird playing against your friend?”
“Bragging rights. But I will look arguably more badass with my tattoo, though, if you want to do it.”
“I want to do it.” She poked his bicep. “I’m going to start up here, closer to your shoulder, where you’ve got less hair. I don’t know how well these will work down your forearm. If this were a real tattoo, they’d be shaving you.”
“My throwing arm is yours to do with as you please. The rest of me is, too, if you need a break.”
She scraped her nails over the top of his thigh and smiled. “We can’t have Cameron Porter pulled over for distracted driving,” she said. “Eyes on the road. And while I work, you’re going to amuse me with some stories to help me with another project.”
“What stories, and what project?”
Avery pressed the first ink to his skin. “Jordan’s stories. I have some ideas about what happened.”
“It is impossible not to look,” he groaned.
“You’ve said that eight hundred and seventeen times now, and somehow, you’re managing.”
“It’s harder now that we’re off the highway and I need my arm back to drive,” he countered. He consulted the traffic on his map. “I’m whining, but I’m trying, and will manage for another nine minutes.”
“Thank you, Cameron.”
“For what?”
“For trusting me.”
He stopped at a red light and met her gaze. “I love you, Avery. I trust you.”
“Are you sure you want to say that before you look at your arm?”
“That’s what trust is, goofy girl. Whatever you confided in me with those millions of little stab wounds over the last few hours matters to me because it matters to you.”
“But did you say?—”
“I love you, Avery.”
“I—”
The driver behind them laid on his horn and yelled some choice words when he spotted the UND Football sticker on the rear window. Cam inched forward as slowly as possible, waiting for another left-turn arrow. “Not today, buddy,” he whispered, smiling at the rearview mirror. “I think only one of us will beat the stadium traffic with the VIP pass today, sir, and it is not you. I’ve got all the time in the world.”
He pulled Avery close for a kiss just before the arrow turned green and took his time letting her go.
“I love you, too!” she shouted above the horns.
“Cameron! Cam!”
Avery jerked her head left and right, looking for the source of the unfamiliar female voice while Cam dug through one of his duffel bags in the backseat of the truck. “Checking, checking, double, triple-checking…” he murmured, working through his checklist of glasses and epi-pens and the necessary hats.
“Cameron Porter!”
He jerked upright, arms laden with gear. “Pippa? What the hell are you doing here?”
“Didn’t you get the ten million messages I sent you? They told me to come find you so you’d know where to go.”
“I was that creepy kid who memorized the stadium map by the time I was seven,” he snorted. “And I keep my phone on silent before games. Why did you—wait, why are you even here? Where’s Shelby?”
“Back at school waiting on a PCR Covid test since her quick test kept showing inconclusive.” Pippa grinned. “So Professor Montoya sent me, and it’s trial-by-fire time. Go team, right?”
“You are going to be great.” He beckoned. “Avery, come here. This is Pippa. Pips, I told you she was real. This is Avery.”
Pippa bounced on her toes. “I am so happy to meet you, Avery. Shay told me all about you, and she said we’ll be friends.”
“She did?” Avery broke into a wide smile. “Do you know?—”
Pippa’s mouth hung open, and she pointed at Cam’s arm when he shoved the stack of his clothes back in his bag.
Under cotton candy clouds just below his shoulder, a posy of French lavender rested in a U.S. Coast Guard life preserver. A fluffy bumble bee wearing sunglasses napped on the blossoms, drifting on calm water. The gentle waves merged into the blaze of a bonfire on the inside of his elbow, flames chasing footballs and uprights, and a helmet with a design of honeycomb, cracked open with a half-dozen bees flying out toward fiery flowers.
“What’s this?” Pippa asked. “And this, and… Avery, you drew all this on the way here?”
She adopted the comic-book styling she envisioned for the Jordan Ackerman project, using rows of dots and tiny crosshatches to create the illusion of depth. Without thinking, she rubbed her left thigh. Her practice ‘paper’ became a sloppy scratch pad, but on Cameron’s arm, her work was nearly flawless.
“I did. Cam said the markers won’t wash off for a week, so get ready for the weird questions about his tattoo, I guess.” She looked at where Pippa was pointing, along the outer edge of his triceps.
“What’s this?”
“More flowers and footballs, right?” Cam asked. “I couldn’t see all the way around.”
Avery snapped a picture with her phone and handed it to him. “Surprises abound. I thought it was right for this game.”
“It’s perfect,” Pippa said. “But he can’t show anyone.”
“Oh my God. I’m showing everyone.” Cam pulled Avery into a tight embrace and kissed her, then zoomed in on the photo. “You put Peyton Manning’s signature on my arm, and a damn bougainvillea vine around it, you show-off. You’re good, Avery. You are so damn good.”
He lowered his voice as Pippa stepped away to answer a phone call. “Is any of this what you were really thinking about all week?”
“I was dwelling on what it would be like to lose all these things if I pushed you away because I was afraid you’d leave like everyone else. Today, I thought about saving them.” She tapped the bonfire. “The times you stood with me.” She poked the waves and the lavender. “The things we shared and want to share.” The bee and the signature. “The things that drive you.”
With the edge of her fingernail, she traced the circle of the life preserver. “And I thought about a loss I couldn’t control. We both know that feeling, and for me, I’ve let it shape my life and my fear of being left behind. I thought a lot about doing the right thing, even when I know I might lose like Isaac did when he jumped into the water. His attempt to do the right thing went horribly wrong, but he tried, and I will always admire him for that. Cam, I didn’t have faith in either of us this week, and that was so unfair to you. Again. Ever since the day I decided to trick you to keep your attention, you’ve shown me nothing but how good and honest you are.”
“Avery, that’s so much to carry.” He covered her hand with his, pressing it to his arm. “You don’t have to do that alone.”
“But it’s been all these cluttered thoughts, and I know some of my stupid metaphors don’t add up. I still don’t know how to put the words in order.”
“Remind me to tell you later how much I feel that,” he said, glancing at his arm. “One fat, sleepy bumble bee. But go on.”
“I wonder if that was what was beneath the water all this time. I’m not afraid of what took my brother. I’m afraid of what took him there. Jumping. A leap of faith without a real plan, like what happened last week. I like plans and goals, and in just a second, I ditched the plan to let it fade away. After that, it seemed like only a matter of time before it would all end.”
Cam held her to him, cupping the back of her head so she’d rest her head on his shoulder. His body was solid and warm with his arms tight around her, his broad hands spread like he’d cover her entirely if he could. The slow rise of his chest moved his breaths like a lullaby even as his heart raced in anticipation.
“I love you. And God, I hate to say this, but I have to go,” he whispered into her hair. “Avery, I’m sorry I have to walk away from you at a moment like this, but I have to get in there with the team.”
“I know. And I’m excited for you. This is going to be some sort of religious experience for you today, isn’t it? Playing here for the first time.”
“I’m ready. I’m so ready for this day.” He drew back and looked into her eyes, and a smile spread across his face. His fingers twitched on her back, curling around a football. “This isn’t the end of anything for us. It’s only the beginning.”
“Come on, lovebirds,” Pippa said, tapping her foot as she shoved her phone into her pocket. “That was Glamis. Shelby chewed his ear off about something, and we really have to go, or I’ll get in trouble.”
He grabbed his bag from the truck and slammed the door. “Turn up the heat!” he shouted, pounding his chest. “Where you at, Engel? We’re coming for you!”
Avery yanked his arm, laughing. “Let it simmer for about three more minutes, then go crazy. I don’t suppose you know where the student section is, do you? Or the closest gate to it?”
“Ooh,” Pippa squealed. “I didn’t show you. Avery, I brought you something. I hope it’s not too much, and you don’t have to take it, but I thought it would be fun. Cam, you had better not tell on me.”
“I’ll never rat you out. What is it?”
She dug in her bag for a bright green lanyard and looped it around Avery’s neck. “You’re my sideline buddy today. If anyone asks, I absolutely did not steal those credentials, and your name is Shelby Wentz.”