All Yours: A Second Chance Romance

by Ellie Bradshaw

  I pulled the tickets out of my pocket. “Let’s get out of here.” I put them on the table in front of her. “Let’s just get away and have a good time and relax. Give you some distance.”

  She looked at the tickets, half-slid out of the envelope. She nudged one with a finger. “Vail,” she said, her voice toneless.

  “Vail,” I repeated, excited at how happy she was about to be.

  She slid the tickets out farther. “For a week. And the flight out leaves…tomorrow.”

  “No time like the present. This time tomorrow we’ll be kicked back in a ski lodge drinking fancy ski lodge drinks.”

  Aimee picked up her fork and very carefully cut a wedge from a meatball. She stared at the table as she chewed. Her face was a blank.

  “Well,” I said, slightly unnerved by her reaction. “What do you think?”

  “What do I think,” she said slowly, swallowing. “What do I think?” She looked up finally, pinning me with her eyes. “I think, Cameron, that you don’t listen. You never have. I don’t know why I expected…anything different.” Her brown eyes were filling with tears, and I had no idea why. Just knew that it felt as if someone had just drop-kicked me in the stomach.

  “Aimee—”

  She silenced me with a cold hand atop my own. “I can’t go to Vail, Cam. I can’t go tomorrow. I can’t go this year. You realize I still have exams tomorrow.”

  “To hell with—”

  “No.” She squeezed my hand, shaking her head. “No. Not to hell with the exams. Maybe if I was you, Cam, maybe then I could say that. But I’m not you. I don’t have all the things you have that make you so sure that everything is just going to work out all right. I’ve never wanted to say anything about your family’s money, Cameron, but…that money means that you don’t have to care about things the way everybody else in the world does. The rest of us, we all have worries that never even cross your mind because you can just buy something to fix your problems.

  “I can’t.”

  I turned my hand over, tried to hold hers, but she pulled away. “We don’t have to go to Vail, it was just an idea—”

  Tears spilled from her eyes and traced down her cheeks. “And even if I didn’t have exams, even if I didn’t have school, or work, or any other normal thing. I still have my father, sick and dying, and my mom all alone taking care of him.” She let go of a sob that felt as if it would tear my heart into pieces. “And that’s where I would belong if I didn’t belong here. Not in Vail. Not in Hawaii, or Bar Harbor, or wherever else you might think to go. You would have known that if you had just listened to me.”

  I tried to smile. “So we’re not going to Vail. No problem. I’ll cancel the tickets and we’ll—”

  She folded her napkin and put it on her plate. “No. We won’t, whatever it is. We’re through, Cam.” And everything inside me crumbled. “I’m through. This whole thing was a…it was beautiful. We were beautiful. But I have too much going on that you can’t understand, and I—”

  Aimee’s face twisted up and she began to cry in earnest. She clutched the napkin to her face. I reached across the table, touched her arm, but she batted my hand away. After a long moment she lowered the napkin and took in a long, shuddering breath.

  “I love you, Cameron. I think maybe I always have. Goodbye.”

  And she stood up, simple as that, and walked out the door, leaving me with my ring, and my stupid tickets to Vail, and my broken heart.

  Better Than They Know Themselves

  Aimee

  After the debacle in the car, all I want to do is get inside and settle in. Which, I know, could be an ordeal in itself, and so I want to get it over with. I walk through the gravel toward the house in my sandals. I look at my freshly painted toenails and almost regret the effort I made this morning to look “not half bad.”

  That’s not what he meant, and you know it.

  Yeah? Then why did he say it?

  The wooden front porch stretches across nearly the entire length of the long ranch home. On the far end it wraps around the side of the house. I take the four steps in two strides and walk up to the front door.

  Before I reach it, a woman’s voice from my right says, “From the look on your face, I’d guess he managed to say just the wrong thing at just the wrong time.”

  I jump a little, squeak in a very undignified manner, and turn to see Cam’s mother rising from a cushioned wicker porch chair. It’s been several years since I saw Katy Simons, but I’d recognize her anywhere, day or night, sun or shine. Not only is she one of the semi-permanent fixtures of my childhood—kind of like another parent, or a church—but she is one of the most striking women I have ever met. At six feet tall, she towers over me and is almost as tall as Cam. Her hair, not so long ago raven-black, is now a silvery waterfall that rushes straight down to her mid-back. She is square-shouldered and has the rough face of someone who spends her time in the sun rather than in salons. Katy doesn’t, and never has, “lived rich.”

  Before I can respond she wraps me in a giant hug and squeezes the air out of me. It’s like coming home. After a moment she holds me out at arms length and looks me up and down.

  “He wouldn’t say who the girl was he was bringing,” she says, looking at me with those gray-blue eyes I remember so well. “But he didn’t have to. I knew it would be you.”

  This isn’t the first time someone has said something like this about Cam and me, but it surprises me all the same.

  “You—?”

  Behind me, Cam’s loafers tap up the steps. “Oh, you didn’t know, Mom,” he says, his voice amused. “You just like to act—”

  Her eyes shift over my shoulder, to him, taking on a decidedly icy cast. “You hush up, Big Mouth.”

  Cam hushes up. His mother is the only person I’ve ever met who has that power over him. I make a mental note to ask her how she accomplishes that.

  Not that I plan a future that involves getting Cam to do…anything, I remind myself.

  “The thing about Cam,” she says, and touches my shoulder lightly, almost as if she’s afraid if she’s not careful I’ll blow away in the wind, “Is that he doesn’t think much before he speaks.” She smiles. “Of course, you know that.”

  I do know that, and we share that smile.

  Cam, it seems, does not know that. “Oh, come on—”

  She waves a hand at him, shooing him on. “Go unload your car. You guys will be staying in your room.”

  At the news that Cam and I would be staying in the same room I feel my eyebrows creep up and my face get slightly warm. Katy’s eyes, scanning my face, narrow just a bit, laugh lines webbing at the corners. She nods slightly, almost to herself.

  “Don’t I get a hug,” he says. The only times I’ve ever heard Cam whine have been to his mother.

  She makes an exasperated noise. “I hugged you last Christmas.” But she lets go of my shoulders and steps past me. “Here, you big baby,” she says, wrapping him up. Large as she is, when Cam’s arms go around her she looks very small. He smiles over her shoulder at me and winks.

  “Now go,” she says, releasing him. “Your lady and I have catching up to do.”

  Even though our engagement is all pretend, having Cam’s mom refer to me as “his lady” touches some feeling inside me. Pride, perhaps? Comfort?

  Cam turns and heads back down the steps. “And take your stuff in through the garage so we don’t have to hear you tromping up and down the porch stairs,” she shouts after him. He grunts.

  “Come sit down a minute,” Katy says, touching my arm again as she passes. She sits back down in her porch chair with a grace that doesn’t seem to match her long bones. There is another chair beside hers, and in front of them both a small glass table with a pitcher of iced tea and two glasses. She pats the other chair. “I won’t keep you. You’ll be wanting to see everybody else, I’m sure.”

  The thought of meeting Jason Simons, Cam’s dad, for the first time in years—this time as his fake-future-daughter-in-law�
��makes me uneasy, but I force a smile and sit.

  “How’s your mom?” she says.

  Of course she would know about my parents. The Simonses might live away from town, but it’s still a small place. “Not too good.”

  She shakes her head. “I was so sorry to hear about your dad, and now this thing with your mom.” She pats my hand. “I know it’s hard for you.”

  I don’t want to get all misty-eyed out here on her front porch. “We’re making it.”

  Katy looks at me out of the corner of her eye. It’s a knowing look, as if she’s saying, We both know that’s not true, but that you have to try to believe it.

  She looks out across her massive front yard, eyes drifting to far away. “He’s a lot like his dad, you know,” she says, smiling a little.

  I don’t, but keep my mouth shut.

  “Says the wrong thing a lot. Like his mouth and his heart aren’t connected properly. Says things that make you think, ‘God, how did I involve myself with someone so insensitive, or self-absorbed, or just plain dumb?’”

  I have to admit that I have thought this exact thing about Cameron Simons more times than I can count, and find myself nodding slightly.

  “Can’t ever seem to bring themselves to say what’s really important.” I look away, pressing my lips together. She leans over and touches my hand. “I can see Cam still struggles with that.” Her tenderness, a salve delivered so honestly, makes my eyes sting.

  She draws in a deep breath and then sighs. She leans back in her chair and looks over at me. “It’s hard knowing the right thing, especially with your children. Look at Jason. Put him in a board room and he’s a king. Give him responsibility for raising kids, and he’s…” She drifts off, her smile becoming bitter. “For years he gave that boy everything he could have wanted, and now he acts surprised that Cameron figures that he should just be handed everything he wants. Gave him everything but his own time, anyway. Which was what Cameron really needed, but…it’s water under the bridge now.”

  I can’t help but think that she’s right; I’ve thought the same thing for years.

  “So now he issues this ultimatum. Instead of taking Cameron aside, teaching him, telling him he loves him, like he should.” She purses her lips. “Like I’ve told him to do. Nope.” Shakes her head. “Instead, he tells him that he’s out of the family if he doesn’t bring home a fiance.” Her eyes narrow again, pinning me to the chair. “And now here you are.” The conversation seems ready to take a strange turn, and I feel a sudden need to squirm under her gaze.

  “Here I am,” I say, laughing a little uncomfortably.

  “Just as I knew you would be,” she goes on. She smiles, an open, broad smile filled with an acceptance and joy I’ve only seen on a few faces in my life. My father’s. Cam’s. “I’ve known since you were kids that we’d be sitting on this porch one day, having this conversation.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  She leans over the small glass table and pours tea into first one glass and then the other. She holds one out to me. It’s cool in my hand and when I sip I discover it is lightly sweetened.

  “Because, Aimee, it’s been clear to anybody who’s known you two that you were made for each other.”

  It’s like getting punched in the gut. In a good way. Kinda. Can getting punched in the gut be good?

  I am not made for Cam Simons, I think. Maybe I thought so once…

  And then that other voice, the one I don’t have complete control over, says, You sure about that, Miss Flutter-Tummy?

  She holds out a hand. “Let me see that rock he put on you.”

  I’m confused for a moment, until that voice says, The ring, dummy.

  “Oh,” I say to the voice, but apparently Katy thinks I’m just exclaiming my over-joyed-ness to her.

  “Exciting, isn’t it?” she say.

  I put my hand in hers, and she turns it over. She lets out a low whistle. “Look at that,” she says, her voice appreciative. “He may be spoiled, but the boy has taste.” The ring is platinum, with a giant pear-cut diamond that catches the light and casts it back out again like a disco ball. Just to make sure no one forgets it’s a diamond ring, that diamond is encrusted with about three thousand other, tiny diamonds (Maybe not three thousand, but who can count all those almost-microscopic things? Answer: I can, and did. But I’ll never tell anybody. There are twenty-eight of them.). The whole thing is ostentatious and beautiful.

  “Probably fake,” I joke.

  Katy shakes her head, smiling. “No, not my boy,” she says knowingly. “Cam wouldn’t buy a fake engagement ring.” She looks me square in the eye. “Not even for a fake engagement.”

  It takes a moment for her words to sink in. Then my mouth drops open.

  First her mouth stretches in a slow smile, and then Cam’s mom laughs, her shoulders shaking. At first I think it’s the cynical laughter of someone who caught someone doing something bad, but then I realize she is laughing with deep, unabashed good humor.

  “Oh, Aimee, you should see the look on your face!” she exclaims between guffaws and gasps for air. “You look like you just noticed a car was about to run over you.” She wipes a hand over her face, slowly gaining control of herself. Then she sits in her chair again, a self-satisfied look on her face. “Don’t worry, hon, y’all’s secret is safe with me.” She arches an eyebrow. “But don’t make the mistake of thinking that you two can fool me. When it comes to my boys, I don’t miss anything.”

  I can barely breathe. “Katy—”

  “I know the position that Cam’s father put him in. And I know you and Cam have a history that he hasn’t bothered to tell me about.” Jesus, what doesn’t this woman know? “And I know this engagement is fake.” She pauses. “And I also know that it isn’t.”

  It feels as if the bottom has dropped out of the world. Caught. We’re caught. This is all so totally fucked up. And—

  “What do you mean, you know that it isn’t?”

  Katy stands again, too energetic to be still for long, unwinding smoothly from the chair, and holds her strong, rough hand out to me. “One of these days, if you decide to, you’ll have kids of your own. And you’ll watch them grow, and you’ll know them better than they know themselves.” She turns to lead me into the house. “And when you do, sometimes—not often, but sometimes—you’ll be able to look into their future and know what’s going to happen.” She purses her lips. “You know what should happen, anyway.”

  The front door creaks slightly as Katy pushes it inward. We go inside. I stand in the foyer on gray marble tile shot through with pink veining. To one side of me is a staircase. A hallway extends in front of me to the kitchen. To my right is a knee wall topped with a dozen carved oak pillars, each no more than an inch in diameter, that rise to the ceiling and separate the foyer from the recessed living room like the wall of an ornate cages. Down there a huge-screen television (because “big-screen” doesn’t begin to describe the wall-to-wall monster) shows two heads arguing silently on CNN, and two enormous sectional couches wait for someone to sit on them. Nobody is in there, though.

  As if reading my mind (Can Cam’s mom read minds? I wonder.) she says, “They’re all out in back. Jason and Eli have been burning a stump for the last three days and it’s turning into a bit of a party.”

  “Three days?”

  She shrugs. “Apparently it takes a while to burn a stump out of the ground.”

  We walk down the hall and into the kitchen. The marble floor gives way to sensible ceramic tile and the knee wall to dark-stained oak cabinets. A butcher-block counter top wraps around half the kitchen, with a matching island bar sitting in the center of the room. A series of stainless steel appliances hum like robots. They remind me of a refrigerator, a stove, a dishwasher, but by the looks of them they have to be much, much more. These are the kinds of kitchen appliances Elon Musk would make if he wasn’t making electric cars and spaceships.

  The main table is through a set of double doors to the ri
ght, and I remember it as long and ornate and used almost strictly for “important dinner guests.” I had eaten at that table three times that I could remember, and each time it had been an ordeal of appropriate conversation and dinner-ware etiquette.

  Here in the kitchen is a smaller, more homey table for regular eating. Even this one could sit an easy six people, but right now there was only one person sitting at it. Slouching practically on top of it, really. She is pretty and blond, and seems not to notice us as we came through the door. She’s hunched over a laptop, her slim fingers dancing over the keys, her blue eyes flying back and forth across the screen.

  “This is Holly Jorgenson,” Katy says by way of introduction. “She’s Eli’s girlfriend.”

  So Eli finally met someone. I had thought that, with his generally unpleasant personality and apparent lack of interest in anything that wasn’t football or being a pain in Cam’s ass, he would dedicate himself to a life of monk-like celibacy.

  Holly raises a hand in a silent wave.

  “Are you writing a book?” I ask.

  Her mouth twists with something like disdain. “Programming.”

  Katy says, “Holly works for Kansas LP and Energy.”

  “The competition?”

  Katy smiles. “Sometimes the best matches are made where you expect them.” She looks pointedly at me. “And sometimes where you least expect them.”

  “It seems as if I’m not paying attention, but I am totally paying attention,” Holly says, still not looking up, still typing away.

  “You’re very talented,” I say.

  “Frighteningly so,” she says, “But I only use my powers for good.” She looks up at me and our eyes meet. Hers are icy enough that I expect my next breath to puff out like smoke. “Most of the time.” She stands, and I see now that she is super short. If she stood next to me her forehead might be level with my nose. I also see that she’s younger than I expected of a programmer for a major energy company. Holly Jorgenson seems barely out of high school.

  “You’re the fiance,” she says, her eyes moving from my eyes down my body, coming to rest on the ring. “Nice rock.”