Chapter Eighteen #2
I pull my knees into my chest and hug them, holding his guarded gaze. “Tell me anyways.”
It’s a challenge, and I know he’ll meet it. Campbell casts one last look across the street, like someone might come save him from me, before lowering back into the sand. There’s a clean foot of space between us, and I tip away from him when he crosses his arms over his legs again.
“Why is this agent calling you on a Saturday?” I ask. Regardless of the industry, can’t bad news always wait until Monday?
“I haven’t been able to get her on the phone until today,” Campbell says. “She’s busy.” He waves down the beach to where he’d been pacing. “Even then, she was driving somewhere while we were talking. Her kid’s birthday party or something.”
His voice has a frayed quality to it, like he’s white-knuckling something in his windpipe.
It doesn’t quite feel real, being beside Campbell on this beach with the knowledge that he’s been striving for something else all this time.
That the thing that binds us together—the thing he’s always been better at than me—isn’t his only thing.
It’s my only thing; it always has been. But all this time, loud, arrogant, obvious Campbell Porter has had a secret.
It enrages me, and it thrills me. The rush of discovering that there’s so much more of him to learn.
“What’s it about?” I hear myself say.
Campbell’s jaw clenches. “Come on, French. Does it matter?”
“Of course it matters.”
“It’s not going to be published.”
Campbell looks at me, finally. I can see the fight on his face: that he’s trying to swallow this, but that he’s devastated. It’s so plain, so unlike him, that I have to look away.
“Even still,” I say, as lightly as I can manage. “I want to know.”
He sighs again, long and slow. “It’s about memory. About the liminal spaces between how we remember things, and how they were.”
I don’t speak for so long that he looks over at me. Arms braced on his legs, ocean breeze drawing his shirt over the curved lines of his back. “What?” he says, nearly petulant.
“It’s just—” I hesitate, remembering myself. “That sounds really…”
Campbell’s eyes go tight, like he’s bracing for an insult. But we have a truce. And what I’m thinking, anyway, is thoughtful. I’m thinking it sounds so thoughtful. And I’m thinking that this glimpse into Campbell’s interior life feels like a taste of something I might not be able to get enough of.
“That sounds really interesting,” I say, finally.
My voice sounds thin and artificial, clear that I’m covering up what I actually mean.
I can’t tell Campbell he’s thoughtful, not with his body tensed inches from mine on this empty beach.
Not ever, if I’m smart. But Campbell interprets my tone as a slight.
“ ‘Interesting.’ ” His face pinches as he turns back to the water. “Thanks.”
“Hey, no.” I brush my fingertips over his arm, and his gaze flicks to my hand. “I mean that.” His eyes rise to mine, apprehensive. “I mean, I’d be interested in reading that.”
Campbell considers me. The ocean breathes over the sand as we sit, for a moment, in silence. It’s so clear that he’s hurting, and the truth is I’m surprised by how horrible it feels. I should love everything about this: Campbell rejected and miserable. Instead, it’s intolerable.
A seagull swoops close enough to skim the waves, letting out a shrill peal of a squawk, and Campbell tracks it against the clouded sky.
“That’s how I feel,” he finally says, pointing after it. “Like I want to fucking scream.”
I hug my knees to my chest and rest one cheek on them. “Maybe you should.”
“No,” he says, quietly. He watches the seagull disappear over the rocky cliffs. “I’m okay.”
“Are you?”
It takes a beat too long for him to say, “Yes.” He doesn’t move, still looking out over the water. “Stop pushing.”
I don’t know what makes me do it. Maybe the way his hands are clamped so tight around his elbows, like he’s struggling to hold himself here. Maybe that shred in his voice. Maybe just the simple fact of how good it felt to hold him.
I reach out and wrap my hand around his ankle again.
When Campbell looks at my fingers, I say, “I’m sorry this is happening.”
He pulls his gaze up to mine. All the best shades of brown. Fleeting, glistening gold when he blinks.
“You’re a great writer,” I say. Admitting it doesn’t chafe as much as I thought it would. “You know that.”
Campbell doesn’t pull his ankle out of my hand. He doesn’t look away from me, either.
Instead, he says, “Are we ever going to talk about that night on the L platform?”
I blink.
January in Chicago, a world so far from this one, punishing nighttime cold. Snowflakes drifting in the glow of the station lights. The tears freezing to my face.
And the way Campbell’s mouth moved around my name—Mattie—as he stepped toward the train car.
Here, on a beach in a different life, I let go of his ankle. “I was wondering when you’d bring that up.”
It feels nearly moot, now. Campbell’s seen me hyperventilating in a cocktail dress. He’s told me his own secret. Is there any point, anymore, hiding this?
“I’ve been waiting on you,” he tells me. There’s something in his voice as he says it, like he doesn’t mean only this, or only that night. And when I look at him, he just looks right back.
“Hm,” I say.
“French.” Campbell’s voice is low. “Why were you crying?”
I prop my chin on my knees and pivot my neck to meet his eyes. “It’s a bad reason,” I say. I can’t believe we’re doing this, that I’m even entertaining the possibility of telling him. But we do have a truce. “It makes me sound like a really terrible person.”
“Ah.” Campbell stretches his legs out long in front of him and leans back on his hands. “Well, we already hate each other, right?”
I raise my eyebrows. He gestures to himself, then me.
“Enemies. That’s what you said at the airport in Chicago. So what’ve you got to lose by telling me?”
Enemies. I press my lips together.
It would feel good, to tell someone. And Campbell’s already trusted me with something, enemy or not.
“I have a roommate, back home,” I say. Campbell watches me steadily. “Ava. She’s been my best friend my entire life. Since the third grade.”
I press my chin into my knee, sharp, and look at the water so I don’t have to see him for this part.
“My parents got divorced when I was in college, but they’d been separated for years before, and hated each other for years before that. I spent my whole life at Ava’s house, to be away from them.”
I don’t want to know what Campbell’s face is doing; I won’t finish telling this story if I turn to look at him, so I don’t.
“And then we lived together in college, and then we moved to Chicago and lived together there, too. She’s my family—and not, you know, in the way people throw that word around. I mean, Ava’s the truest family I have.”
“She’s who called,” Campbell says. I glance at him, then away. If I’m not looking at him, I can almost pretend I’m not doing this. “She gave your cat the edible.”
“An accident,” I say, quickly. “I mean, she’s really responsible. She teaches kindergarten.”
“I wasn’t judging.”
I cut my eyes at him. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” Campbell says on an eye roll. He nudges my foot with his own. “Keep going.”
I draw a deep breath. “That night I saw you, Ava got engaged.”
My eyes track over his, searching for some kind of reaction. Disgust, pity. When it doesn’t come, I say the rest of it in a rush.
“She’d been with Lev for years and I knew it was coming, and still—it felt like the floor was falling out of my life.
He was planning to move in with us so they could save for the wedding, and then so they could buy a house in the suburbs, and she was going to leave me.
Is going to.” I glance at him, at the stretch of sand behind him, at the water.
Something in my chest has gone fluttery and frantic.
“I was coming home from their surprise engagement celebration when you saw me. My best friend’s engagement.
The happiest night of her life, and I felt like I was going to just… disappear.”