Chapter Eighteen #3
I shake my head and press my eyes shut. “It’s the ugliest thing about me, probably. Selfish. Even now, I’m planning her bachelorette and helping with the wedding and it just—it feels like everything’s changing. And in all these same moments where I’m happy for her, I’m also panicking.”
I suck in another lungful of air. Already, shame is clawing up my throat. I shouldn’t have said any of that out loud, ever, and especially not to him.
“I think that’s grief, actually.”
His voice comes from behind me. When I still don’t look at him, Campbell’s foot slides through the sand so it’s pressing against my own.
“French, hey.”
I turn to him, and the sun’s low enough now that the whole beach is unbearably bright. I find Campbell’s gaze through it.
“I think that’s allowed,” he says.
Thinly, I say, “I think actually it means I’m a terrible person.”
He smiles, quick flicker of it. “I think you’re wrong.”
I press my face into my kneecaps and mumble, “What else is new?”
“Look,” Campbell says, “did you say any of this to her? That her engagement feels like the end of your life?”
“Of course not.”
“Okay, then. You’re allowed to be sad. Jesus. It’s sad when things change.”
I force a gust of breath between my knees. “It makes me feel crazy sometimes, you know?” I look sideways at Campbell, whose foot is still touching mine. “Like, I’ve never wanted this stuff. The marriage, the kids.”
“Plenty of people don’t want that.”
Do you want that? The question blindsides me with its urgency. Campbell Porter married, Campbell Porter a father.
I dispel the images so I can say, “No, I mean—there’s this weird thing that happens, when I’m watching Ava do wedding planning, or cook with Lev, or whatever, and it’s—” I break off, exhaling hard.
I hate that I’m talking about this. Hate that I’m talking about it with him.
“It’s like, I know I don’t want it for myself.
It makes me itchy to even think about, honestly, everything that comes with committed partnership.
Having to consult a man just to buy a”—I wave my hand through the air, and Campbell’s eyes flit to my fingers before returning to my face—“a rug, or picking up his dry cleaning, or dealing with someone else on my taxes. But just loving Ava makes me want to be living the same life she is. And her getting engaged is just, you know, the ultimate.” I let my eyes fall to his. “Am I making any sense?”
Campbell nods, but I can’t stop explaining myself.
“Sometimes I really think I would just give up my career and my dreams and everything else so I could have the same life as Ava, with the husband and the kitchen and the waffles on Mondays. Not because I want it. Just because I want to share everything with her. And that night, it was like: Am I going to change everything about myself to be the same as Ava? Or am I going to just let myself lose her?”
Campbell pulls his knees up so he can lean forward.
It brings our faces much closer, and when he looks at me I go translucent.
The weight of his eyes on mine, the unrushed cadence of his breathing, like he’d stay here all night to catch what he’s searching for in me.
His gaze charts over everything raw and vulnerable I’ve opened up for him.
But when he finally speaks, what he says is: “You’re telling me you don’t like waffles?”
The sound I make is nearly a sob—a groan that bottoms out in a laugh. It’s a relief, to joke about this instead of treating it so gravely. It feels like a gift he’s giving me.
“Campbell.” My voice trips to get the tone right: sliding back into combat with him after all that honesty. “I’m telling you I’m losing my mind over my best friend marrying the love of her life, like some kind of evil hag.”
“You’re a lot of things, French,” Campbell says. His arms are folded across his knees again. “Evil isn’t one of them.”
I look at him. The hot sweep of sun over his face and the déjà vu of finding him here beside me, a nostalgia I can’t quite name.
No, I think. You aren’t evil after all, either.
“I guess it just feels awful,” I say. “To want something different than the person I love most. And to feel like if we both get what we’re looking for, it’s going to pull us apart.”
“That sucks,” he says, simply. “It’s hard to grow up and find out you’re different than people you’ve known all your life. Doesn’t mean you have to lose them, though.”
Thoughtful, I think. When I finally speak, my voice is so quiet they’re barely words at all. “But I might.”
“You might,” he agrees. “I don’t know Ava. But I know I’ve never seen you give anything up without a fight.”
I waver. There are so many things I could say. That he’s right, that he’s so different than I thought, that I can’t believe he’s the one I’m finally talking to about this. I’ve been waiting on you.
What comes out is: “Do you think I’m selfish?”
Campbell smiles at me. “No, French.”
He circles one hand around my ankle, mirroring the movement and squeezing gently. His palm is soft. My calf tenses like a reflex.
And then, as if he can see right through to the frantic pounding of my heart, Campbell says, “I think you’re scared.”