Chapter Seven
Seven
The first thing I see when I step into the airport is Campbell. Not an exaggeration. The first thing. The color of his suit is so conspicuous that my eyes snap to it like a car crash: the kind of horror you can’t look away from.
“Would’ve been nice to get the dress code memo,” Dexter says. He’s in dark jeans and a graphic T-shirt. My pants, wide-legged and floaty, are one chromosome away from sweats.
“It’s a travel day,” I say, lifting my chin. “There’s no reason to be in a suit.”
“Especially not that one,” Dexter mumbles. “It’s like he physically can’t stop himself from trying to show everyone up.”
Campbell’s lifted his arm in the air to wave at us across the terminal, his entire face split with a grin.
What’s he got to be so happy about? Certainly not his wardrobe choice.
It’s like his slacks and jacket wanted to be maroon but landed somewhere closer to ketchup; he belongs at a Fourth of July parade in a star-spangled top hat.
“Shall we join them?” Iris raises her eyebrows at us.
Them: Campbell in his Elmo costume, Soraya checking her phone beside him, Nolan hovering over their shoulders like a bad omen. They’re standing outside the security line tape as if they’ve been waiting for us.
Dexter nods, and we cross the squeaky-floored terminal to meet them in front of a TSA sign. I feel Campbell watch me the entire way, and I purposefully keep my eyes trained on Dexter, who’s grumbling about needing a coffee the size of his arm.
“Good morning,” Iris says. Soraya pockets her phone and smiles at us, the picture of chic travel in a slick bun and soft trousers. Without heels on she’s at least six inches shorter than me. “Kind of you to wait for us.”
“Well, when we saw we were booked on the same flight.” Nolan doesn’t add another clause to the sentence, just nods toward the security scanners.
We shuffle awkwardly into line behind them. Campbell’s talking to Nolan ahead of me, separated by Soraya and Iris, but even through the din of the airport I can pick out his voice—like a drumbeat, or a bass line, the sort of thing you can’t unhear once you’ve noticed it.
“It’s going to be a long month,” Dexter says. Ahead of us, Campbell catches my eyes over one shoulder.
“Anyone want to volunteer for a coffee run?” Iris asks as soon as we reach the gate.
We have forty minutes until boarding, and I refuse to sit in Campbell’s immediate vicinity for any longer than I have to.
The glare of his suit, for one thing—but mostly I’m terrified that if he gets enough time with me, he’ll bring up that night on the L platform from winter.
“Happy to,” I say. I park my suitcase in front of Dexter and adjust the strap of my shoulder bag. “Everyone text me your order?”
“Well, go with her.” Soraya nudges Campbell in the arm and he looks up from his phone. “Be a gentleman.”
“No need,” I say, but Campbell’s already standing from the seat he’d dropped into.
“Where are we going?”
“Nowhere,” I say at the same time Soraya says, “Coffee.”
I can feel everyone’s eyes on us. Campbell lifts his eyebrows and I know—I know—I need to bite this bullet. Break all my stupid teeth on it. It’s only the first day of an entire month, and Greg didn’t beat around the bush: if I want to get promoted, I need to play nice with Campbell Porter.
I force a smile and meet his gaze. “Ready?”
He looks at me like he wants to say something other than the “mmhm” that rumbles up his throat. We’re only a few paces from the gate when he slides his hands into his pants pockets and adds, “That must have been a real trial for you.”
I sidestep a double stroller. “Which part?”
“The smile.” When I glance at him, he’s already looking at me. “Don’t think I’ve seen one of those directed my way in, oh…ever?”
“From anyone?” I ask, pulling my eyebrows together and frowning. “How tragic.”
Campbell breathes a laugh, shaking his head. I peek at my buzzing phone and see Iris has put all six of us in a group text, coffee orders pinging through one after another. Campbell’s watching the same thing on his own screen.
“Group text,” he says, absently.
“I bet you love a group text.”
We join the back of the coffee line, which is at least ten people deep. Campbell glances up at me from his phone. “What?”
“I bet,” I repeat, “that you love a group text. You’re a group text person.”
His eyes crinkle like he’s on the edge of a laugh. “A ‘group text person’?”
I give him a flat look. “Come on.”
“No, no. Enlighten me, French.”
“You love the constant notifications. You love to drop a quippy little one-liner in the chat.” I look him up and down, assessing. “I bet you even have one with your family.”
He does laugh, then. “You say that like it’s a criminal offense. I do have one with my family.”
Campbell has two older sisters and parents who love each other. He kept a photo of all of them on our conjoined desk at Slater Faust. I say, “Knew it.”
Campbell lifts his hands into air quotes, his long fingers curling. “And, ‘quippy little one-liner’?” The gold signet ring on his pinky catches the light. “Pretty sure you major in those, too. That’s our whole job.”
“So you admit it.”
“Admit what?”
“You’re a group text person.”
“If that’s what you need me to be to you.”
It’s such an absurd thing to say that I actually recoil, spluttering. “Okay.”
“Okay what?” He tips a little into my space, catching my eyes.
I don’t even know what we’re talking about anymore, or how Campbell always manages to send me off balance like this. He smirks like he’s running some inside joke with himself. “Iced caramel latte still, extra syrup?”
“What?” I snap.
“Your order.” Campbell gestures to the cash register; we’re up next. “Are you still drinking that?”
I squint at him. “Why do you remember that?”
“Oh, I remember everything about you, French.”
For a moment we just look at each other. I know it’s my turn to say something, but my brain is lagging behind us.
Everything, I think. Like all the times I’ve come in second to him, like that stage in France where he beat me in front of everyone. Maybe like that bitter cold night at the Diversey L station.
“Keep your enemies close,” I say, finally.
Campbell’s face does something strange. Not the laugh I’m expecting, but a ripple of something different—how his eyebrows go tight, his eyes flicker open and shut, his lips twitch together.
Before he can respond, they call us up to order.
Slater Faust Chicago Headquarters
30th floor coffee shop
Five years ago
Emmaline from Art Direction gets engaged on a Thursday, which means we’re rounded up for an impromptu celebration on Friday morning. The design interns go out for donuts. Campbell and I are assigned to coffee. Easier for us: there’s a café in the building, twelve floors down.
“Who proposes on a Thursday?” Campbell says as we step into the elevator. He’s wearing a mint green polo shirt and khakis. I told him when he showed up this morning that it made him look like an ice cream cone, which he seemed to take as a compliment.
“Who proposes at all?”
Campbell punches the elevator button without looking at me. “As ever, French, you are a ray of sunshine.”
I’m twenty-two and a few years out from my parents’ inevitable divorce. By now Ava’s been with Lev all summer; just last week, he told her he loved her for the first time.
“Let me guess,” I say, leaning against the wall and crossing my arms. “Your parents have an incredible love story and it’s what inspired you to start writing in the first place. To capture that feeling. When you had your first kiss at…”
“Fourteen,” Campbell supplies.
“Fourteen, you went home and wrote a poem about it. You kept it, because it reminds you of the first flush of young love. In fact, you even pull it out sometimes when you’re home for the holidays because that nostalgia still feels really inspiring, creatively.”
The elevator doors slide open and Campbell leads me through them, smirking. “Are you done?”
“No, one more thing.” I raise a finger in the air. “You believe in soulmates. It’s the hill you’d die on.”
“Wrong.” He shoves his hands in his pockets and the lanyard around his neck sways. Campbell’s the only intern who wears his ID badge like a necklace.
“About all of it? Or just one part?”
“I don’t believe in soulmates,” he says as we cut across the lobby toward the coffee counter. It’s quiet, just one barista and a couple women dumping sugar in their to-go cups. “Pretty staunchly opposed to that conceptually, actually.”
Pretty staunchly opposed conceptually, actually. I roll my eyes.
“But there was a poem,” I say.
“Also no. Stop trying to pin down my enigmatic personality.”
I snort, and it rattles in my throat so violently I start to cough. Campbell whacks me between the shoulder blades. “Don’t die on me, French.”
“As if you wouldn’t love,” I wheeze, “to have me out of your way.”
“No, I’m winning fair and square.” We’ve reached the counter, and the barista waves to us from where she’s wiping down the espresso machine, one finger up in the universal sign for Just a minute.
Campbell waves back as he turns to me. “I don’t want to get this as some kind of pity job because you choked while insulting me. ”
“Was I insulting you?”
His eyes narrow, blond lashes glinting. “You basically called me a sap.”
“Aren’t you?”
“No, I’m incredibly alpha and virile. I thought that was clear.”
“Did you just say virile?”
“Besides, love is more painful than it’s worth.”
Campbell’s gaze falters over mine, his eyelashes stuttering like he’s caught himself. When he swallows and looks away from me, his cheeks turn a scraped pink—like I’ve spotted a flash of something just below the surface I was never meant to see.
“Whoa.” The barista laughs, and both of us jerk toward the sound of her voice. “Happy Friday to you, too.”
Campbell yanks on a grin, and suddenly he’s familiar again.
“Sorry you had to hear that.” He leans toward her, but I don’t miss the steadying way he swallows again as she smiles under his gaze.
Campbell has this effect—even in his lanyard.
People are drawn to him: those gold eyelashes, the slow roll of that barely there Southern accent.
“Bit of a debate between my colleague and me.”
The barista glances my way. “Are you debating whether to break up?”
I try to laugh, but it comes out strangled. I point between Campbell and me. “We’re not dating.”
“Alas.” Campbell doesn’t look at me, just drums one corner of his wallet on the counter. “Picking up coffees for an engagement party.”
“Exciting,” the barista says, tapping at her monitor. “What’ll it be?”
Campbell sighs out a laugh and pulls his phone from his pocket. “Maybe reserve your excitement until I’m done rattling off this list.”
I watch him as he reads off the orders: pointer finger dragging across his phone screen, the slowly diffusing blush on his freckled cheekbones. Love is more painful than it’s worth. The unsteadying idea that anything could’ve ever hurt this cavalier, unflappable person.
Once he’s finished, Campbell turns to me. I find it hard to meet his eyes. “What do you want, French?”
“Iced caramel latte,” I tell the barista. “Extra pump of syrup.”
Campbell stares at me. His mouth parted in a smile, his eyes lighting with something nearly gleeful.
“What?” I say, glancing at him and away.
“Caramel latte? Extra syrup?” His eyes move over me, face to feet and back again. “From Ms. All-Black-Everything herself? Famed hater of love and all things sweet and beautiful?”
“First of all, that’s not what I said.” I take a step back from him as the barista turns away to start our drinks. I don’t miss that her eyes linger on Campbell, and I didn’t miss how it felt when his gaze swept over my body. “And second of all—”
I want space from him, so I take another step backward. Campbell’s eyebrows are raised, anticipating me. Love is more painful than it’s worth.
“Stop trying to pin down my enigmatic personality.”