Mom was in bed when I’d tiptoed in sometime before the sun rose, and I’d instantly fallen asleep when I crawled into bed.
My alarm was blaring an hour and forty-five minutes later. Not cool.
I was scheduled for a tempo run this morning, two miles of warm-up, four miles of tempo, and a mile or two of cooldown. A tempo was a beast to run after a good night of sleep, so I knew I was in for a session of suffering.
Snagging a banana from the counter, I had it down in four bites, and before I’d swallowed the last of it, I was out the door and jogging down the trail.
I tried to concentrate on my pace, my breathing, my form, but I couldn’t. All I could think about was Callum.
The way he kissed. The way I kissed him. The way he felt. The way he touched me. How his hands were rough and callused to look at, but soft and gentle when they touched me. I thought about how I’d never felt half the things I had last night with him when I’d been with other guys. How I’d wanted to do so much more than just kiss. How I would have let him if he hadn’t been so frustratingly restrained.
Unlike Keats before him, who’d seemed to view making out as a necessary evil or an appetizer leading to the main course, Callum seemed perfectly happy making out as long or as little as I let him. He hadn’t been rushing to move on to something else, or let his hands wander into off-limits territory, or left me feeling guilty when the kissing led to nothing else. He hadn’t muttered anything about me being a tease, or anything about a guy having different needs than a girl. Instead, he smiled the kind that was my favorite, kissed my forehead, and walked me to my cabin. He even waited until I was inside the door before leaving, just like he had the night before.
Not that I’d been watching him or anything, or noticed the way he seemed to move a little lighter now. And I definitely hadn’t noticed when he’d thrown his head back and let out a little whoop when he was almost out of sight of the cabin. No, I hadn’t fallen that hard that fast yet. Not even.
That was what I was still trying to convince myself of when I heard a familiar set of footsteps pounding up behind me.
“So you take advantage of me at night and bail on me in the morning.” Once he caught up to me, he slowed his pace to match mine. “Wham, bam, thank you, sir. I totally didn’t take you for that kind of use-and-abuse girl.”
My watch beeped. I’d just hit two miles—warm-up time was over. I went from an eight-and-a-half-minute mile pace to a six-and-a-half. Callum matched my pace, not missing a beat.
“I thought since you didn’t get to bed until four in the morning, you might want to sleep in today instead of running eight miles,” I said, trying not to smile because a person shouldn’t feel like smiling if they were doing a tempo run. Crying was more the correct response.
“And I thought you would have wanted to sleep in after going to bed at four in the morning instead of running eight miles.” He slid close enough to nudge me with his elbow. Just that one little touch made my spine feel like it was liquefying. “But then I remembered who you were and how you probably wouldn’t let mono keep you from a training run.” He nudged me again. “So here I am.”
When the trail opened up a bit, I felt safe taking my eyes off it for a quick second. My eyes swelled the instant I looked over at him. “Why aren’t you wearing a shirt?” My voice was two octaves too high, but for good reason. I’d never seen Callum run without a shirt. Given the way we’d been making out, I knew he’d totally planned it. He was trying to throw me off my game.
“You managed to tear my shirt last night, and I didn’t want to chance the same thing happening this morning. I only brought a few with me, so I need to ration them.” He kept going on about his precious shirts and how I was a destroyer of them or something like that, but I was too focused on what I was doing to pay close attention.
He’d paused just long enough to take a breath as I was tucking the neck of my shirt into the back of my running shorts. I knew the moment when he glanced over and saw that I’d followed the trend and taken off my shirt, too. I knew because that was when I heard a sharp intake of air, right before he wiped out, making sounds with his mouth and body that probably woke up the whole forest.
I braked to a stop and paused the time on my watch before rushing to him. He was sprawled out on the trail, leaves and little twigs sticking from his hair and dirt painting his face and the rest of him.
“Ow.”
I bit my cheek to keep from laughing once I knew he was okay, save for some scraped palms and knees. Oh, and a potentially bruised ego.
“Did you just trip?” I crouched down beside him and plucked a twig from behind his ear.
“No, I just wiped out.”
“On a trail that you know like the back of your hand?” I repeated a phrase I’d heard said about Callum a lot—that he knew every hill, valley, and trail within ten miles of Camp Kismet better than he knew the back of his hand.
“I was distracted.” He shook his head a couple of times and looked up at me. Or he looked up at my chest area.
I snapped the shoulder strap of my sports bra. “Please. You’ve run track for how many years? Lived in California for how many? You’ve seen as many girls in sports bras as you’ve seen guys in baseball hats.”
Callum leaned up on one elbow, giving a little wince. He’d taken a hard fall. If I’d known he’d go all stuntman on me, I might not have taken off my shirt. Or maybe I still would have. Especially seeing the way he was looking at me now. “Yeah, but none of those girls have been the same one I was making out with the night before.”
I gave his chest a light shove, but my hand didn’t move away. Instead, it stayed there. I’d touched his chest through his shirt last night, but not like this. Not with my skin warm against his.
My heart was already beating fast from the run, but it picked up even more when his hand covered mine, flattening it against his chest and holding it there.
“Hey, klutzy, I’ve got three and a half miles left of a tempo to finish. Think you can get on your feet and suck it up?”
He let me continue to pluck the leaves and twigs from his hair, looking like he was in no hurry to move. “That’s a lot of up-ing. I just took a serious spill and who knows what kind of injuries I might have sustained. Or, God forbid, a concussion.”
I sighed and dusted his forehead off. He looked like he’d been tumble-dried in a compost pile. “I’m not sure how I feel about being with a guy who isn’t as tough as I am.”
“And I’m not sure how I feel about the girl I’m with thinking she’s tougher than I am.” He rolled his head and held out his hand. “At least give me a lift. Then we’ll get after those three and a half miles.”
Popping up, I grabbed his hand, and just as I started to pull him up, he gave my hand a yank, and I went from upright to lying on top of him. My breath whooshed out from the surprise, the impact, and the fact that I was lying on top of Callum. While he was shirtless and I was in a sports bra.
I didn’t realize I’d been sweaty until my skin was against his, but now it was almost all I could notice, the way it almost made my skin stick to his, like Velcro.
“How’s that for sucking it up?” He smiled at me, where my face was hovering just a bit above. I could feel his breath on my neck, warm and even.
“We can’t keep doing this,” I breathed, trying to focus on something other than his hand drawing patterns along my spine. I succeeded. But instead of that hand, I focused on his other, which was busy slipping behind my neck while his fingers tangled into my hair. “Making out when we’re supposed to be studying. Making out when we’re supposed to be training. If we don’t show some restraint, we’re not going to wind up doing anything but making out.”
His forehead creased. “And this would be a bad thing?”
I shoved his chest, but I didn’t exactly move away. “Only if your definition is failing the SATs and getting kicked off the track team for huffing and puffing your way to the finish line with a five-minute eight hundred.”
Without warning, he kissed me. His head lifted from the ground and his mouth found mine, and he kissed me. The same way he had last night—like I was everything. Like I was a beginning and an end.
When he was kissing me, it was easy to forget that summer would be over soon. We were almost halfway through, and eventually, my nights together with Callum would be over.
When I pulled away from him, he let me go. I knew enough about his strength to know he wouldn’t have if he hadn’t wanted to. That messed with my head, too. He wanted me to stay, but he was letting me go. He wanted one thing, and I wanted the other…and he respected it.
“What’s the matter?” Callum curled his legs up and adjusted his shorts as he watched me pace a few feet in front of him.
“I don’t know.” I was biting my thumbnail. I hadn’t bitten my nails in years.
“Something’s the matter.” His voice was calm.
“Nothing’s the matter.” I continued to gnaw on my nail, pacing fast enough for the dust to break around my shoes. “Or everything’s the matter. I don’t know. I can’t tell.”
“Okay, so let’s cross nothing off the list because there’s nothing to talk about if nothing’s wrong. What’s everything wrong?”
I spat out a chunk of nail. Gross. If Callum thought my nail hygiene habits were just as disgusting, he didn’t show it. “Besides everything?”
“Top of the list.” A minute passed. “Your dad leaving?” he suggested gently.
When I shot him a surprised look, he shrugged. “Harry told me yesterday in the hospital.”
I huffed. “I don’t care what my dad does.”
He looked up at me like he could see into me. “Is that why you look like you want to cry?”
I swiped my arm across my eyes just in case. “It’s just that this was his whole idea, coming here, you know, and he bails. Doesn’t say good-bye; he just leaves.”
Callum let that hang in the air for a moment. “Maybe he’s got something important to do.”
“Maybe he’s got more computer screens to cuss at and walls to daze off at.” I kicked a small rock in the middle of the trail. “He’s the reason everything is falling down around me, and he isn’t doing anything to fix it.”
“You don’t know that.” He lifted one shoulder. “And you don’t want to start giving other people power over your life. That’s a tough habit to break.”
I stared into the trees. “Personal experience?”
Callum shook his head. “My brother was a big fan of the victim mentality. Blamed everything on our dad. He felt powerless, but really, he’d just chosen to give his power away.”
My teeth ground together—Callum wasn’t giving me the typical lip service most people did when I unloaded my baggage. It wasn’t the first time he’d challenged me when others would have just consoled me. “I’m not giving my power to anybody, but I can still blame my dad for screwing up our lives and leaving.”
“If he left, like, left for good, he wouldn’t be calling to check in, you know?”
“He hasn’t called to check in,” I said.
“Harry said he’s talked to him.”
My mouth opened, but nothing came out. How did Callum know that and I didn’t? “Why hasn’t he called me?”
“You wouldn’t answer? You’d let it go to voice mail? You’d hang up? You wouldn’t talk? You wouldn’t let him get a word in?” He was listing things off on his fingers.
“Yeah, yeah. You made your point four points ago.” I sighed, knowing he was right. I wouldn’t have answered if Dad had called me. I didn’t want to talk to him. But I had a million good reasons for not wanting to talk to him, too.
“So your dad’s the matter.” He clasped his hands together. “What else?”
“Everything else.”
“Ice cream sandwiches? Monarch butterflies? Sunny days? Buttercups?” He was listing things off on his fingers again.
I looked over at him and crossed my arms. “You’re a pain in the ass.”
His smile stretched. “You’re welcome.”
I kept pacing. “I’m worried about Harry’s wrist. I’m worried about my mom and if this new version of her is here to stay. I’m worried the campers and Ben and the other counselors won’t trust me after what happened yesterday. I’m worried about testing really, really well on the SATs this fall, and I’m worried I won’t be able to run anything faster than a sub-seven with all the stress and distractions I’m dealing with. I’m worried about saving up enough money for a car, and I’m worried that I won’t get into college. I’m worried about being on my own next year, and Harry being basically on his own…and neither of us able to do it.”
I could have gone on, but I didn’t want to sound even more pathetic.
“That’s a lot to be worried about,” Callum said finally.
My eyebrow peaked. “You think?”
I heard him take a breath. “But it seems kinda pointless worrying about all those things that may or may not happen.”
He was right, of course—but that didn’t change the way I felt. Waste of time and energy or not, I was still freaking out about everything coming my way.
So I moved on to the topic I hadn’t brought up yet. “I’m worried about us.”
When I looked over at him, he didn’t seem surprised. He almost looked like he’d been expecting this, just waiting for me to mention it. “What’s got you worried?” he asked, patting the ground in front of him.
I moved closer until I was a few feet away, then plopped down on the trail so I was facing him. I drew my legs together like his and did my best to ignore the overwhelming pull I felt being this close. We were close, but I wanted to be closer. “What people will think,” I started. “What will happen at the end of summer. How we’ll be able to be together and still get important stuff done like training runs that last longer than twenty minutes and study sessions where we actually open the books.” I tapped my watch, where the time still read twenty minutes. We would have been close to finishing our run if we hadn’t gotten “sidetracked” at mile two.
“I don’t care what people think, and I don’t think you do, either.” He paused, giving me a chance to disagree. He was right, though; I didn’t really care what people thought. Too much. “If it makes you happy, during our runs and studying, we’ll adopt a no-kissing policy. Maybe setting that aside for ten-minute breaks.” His grin was definitely tilted higher on one side.
“Five-minute breaks.”
“Oh yeah, sorry, I forgot you were the restrained one.” He didn’t roll his eyes, but his voice more than made up for it. “And as for the end of summer, add that to the list of pointless things to worry about. We can’t call the future, so why waste time worrying about it?”
I linked my pinkie with his and nodded.
“Is there anything else?”
“It’s just things are moving fast,” I started, drilling my tongue into my cheek. “Yesterday afternoon you wouldn’t look at me in the hospital, and this morning we’re kissing practically topless.”
“Topless?” Callum made a face. “You’re wearing a sports bra.”
I felt a smile coming. The worst had to be over. “Sure, now it’s a sports bra.” Callum smiled, too, looking as relieved as I was that we’d navigated through the heavy stuff. “I’m just saying I think we’ve felt something for each other for a while, and now that we’ve admitted that…” I felt myself almost blushing. Having this conversation with him was all kinds of awkward. “The physical part is trying to catch up. Like, really trying to catch up. I just don’t know if I can trust—”
“I swear to you,” he interrupted, looking me straight in the eyes. “I won’t do anything without checking with you first. You just want to kiss? Fine. You just want to hold hands?” He made a bit of a face, like he was grimacing. “A hesitant and reluctant fine, but still, I’m down. I won’t push you any further than you’re ready to go.”
My smile had gotten bigger. Not because I needed him to confirm a
ll that, but because I could see he was almost as uncomfortable as I was talking about this stuff. It was kind of a relief to see a person like Callum squirm.
“I know that,” I said, leaning toward him. “I trust you. It’s me I’m not sure I trust.”
His jaw dropped in mock surprise. “You trust me? This? Coming from Miss Trust Issues herself?”
“Of course. You haven’t given me any reason not to.”
Callum looked at me. Like, really looked at me. “Plus maybe I might have earned some trust, too?” He waited for my answer. I made him wait a little longer.
“Maybe.” I might have been more convincing if I hadn’t still been smiling at him.
“Okay, so you’re not sure you can trust yourself when it comes to keeping your hands off me. I totally get that.” I swung an arm around just so I could punch him, but he grabbed it and he kept my hand in his.
“You’re no help,” I said with an exaggerated sigh.
“Okay, clearing the filthy thoughts from my head now.” He gave his head a violent shake and thumped it a few times with his palm. “Still trying.” A few more whacks, and then his face cleared. “So how do you learn to trust yourself?”
My shoulders fell, along with everything else. “I have no idea.”
It was Talk with Mom Night. I’d been dreading and looking forward to it ever since she brought it up the night of Harry’s accident. Part of me was ready to know just what was coming, and part of me wanted to keep my head in the sand.
I’d been in such a rush to clean up after the crafts session I’d led that I’d spilled a bottle of glue, which had mysteriously lost its lid, and dumped half a container of shocking-green glitter in the process of wiping up the glue.
“Thanks for your help. I would have been there all night.” I caught myself just before mussing Harry’s hair. He’d confronted me a couple of days ago on how it made him feel like a baby when I did it. A month ago, he couldn’t get enough, and now it made him a baby. He was growing up. That was a good thing, I reminded myself.
Trusting You and Other Lies Page 18
