by Piper Lennox
“This. The job. Getting to know Tim, in any capacity, and thinking he might be a decent guy, if I give him a shot. Taking an opportunity that I’ve never had in my entire life.” He stops, just long enough for me to sit up and stare at his back. “Being a Fairfield.”
“I’ve known you were a Fairfield all along,” she says, in this tone like I’m being ridiculous. I get up and walk to her dresser, sliding her old soccer trophies back and forth on the wood, in and out of their dust-free squares. “Why would it bother me now?”
“I don’t know.” I look at her. “Maybe because I’m finally getting to use that to my advantage. Like...for once in my life, I’m getting just a fraction of what I should have.”
“Why? Because your dad is rich?”
“Because my dad,” I spit, “who yes, is rich, wasn’t around. Because I’ve had to carry this—this burden of being a Fairfield for twenty-two years now, with nothing good coming out of it. Excuse me for wanting to seize the one and only opportunity—”
“It’s not an opportunity,” she laughs, stomping across the floor to the box she was assembling. “It’s a bribe.”
The screech of the tape as she rips it off the roll makes my blood run that much hotter.
“If he wanted to bribe me into forgiving him, he would just throw money at me. This is a job, Camille. I’m not getting something for nothing. And you know what? The way you’re acting makes me think you’re just—”
My mouth shuts. Camille drops the roll of tape from one hand to the other. “Say it.”
I look at the dresser again and fix the trophies, one by one, nudging them back to their squares. “It makes me think...you’re just jealous.”
She laughs again. This time, it’s pressed thin, an airy sound where the emotion cracks the surface. I hear the tape roll slam into the bottom of the box as she stands and leaves the room. “Spoken like a true Fairfield.”
I follow. Our footsteps are so heavy, they’d rattle the photos on the walls, if there were any left. “Can you blame me? I’ve got this incredible job on the table, all this great stuff that’s going to result from it—stuff I want to share with you—and yet you’re not even a little happy for me.”
“Maybe I would be,” she says, pulling books from the only remaining shelf in the living room, “if this was what you wanted. But it isn’t. It’s just some consolation prize Tim is offering you, in place of all the shit he didn’t do for you before. And you just accepted it.”
“And how do you know what I want, huh?” I take the book from her, making her look at me. “Remember that night we were talking about careers? Figuring things out? You said you didn’t know what you want to do with your life. I said the same thing. It’s trial and error, remember? So what if Tim is giving me this job for the wrong reasons? I’m taking it for the right ones. It’s a good opportunity.”
“No,” she says, biting her words as she yanks the book back from my hands, “it’s a Fairfield opportunity.”
“So that’s it, huh? I’m a Fairfield, so anything good that happens to me is because of that. Not because I’m due something good for once in my fucking life. Not because I’d be good at it, or an idiot to let it pass by. It’s more money than I’ve ever had in my life. And it’s not like I’m leaving some passion-fueled career to do it. Everyoung is fun and all, but...but this—”
“This,” she finishes, the tears in her eyes betraying the steel I hear in her voice, “is going to make you rich. You can be the Fairfield you always wanted to be. Trust me, I get it. Congratulations.”
“You are jealous. You’re wondering, ‘Why him?’ Why am I getting this—why do Fairfields seem to get everything—and you’re having to move onto your best friend’s couch, while your parents declare bankruptcy? That’s exactly what you’re thinking.”
“I’m wondering,” she snaps, “why people like the Fairfields get so much handed to them, when nice, normal people like.... Why life has to be so fucking hard for the people who deserve a break more than anybody.”
“Because life isn’t fair, Camille.” I throw my hands up and back away, letting them fall to my sides with a slap that echoes through the barren living room. “I don’t know what you want me to do, here—life doesn’t give everyone the same cards. You know that, I know that. So what am I supposed to do? Not take my break, because it’ll upset you? If things were reversed, and it was you who’d gotten this job offer—I’d be throwing you a goddamn party.”
“You want a party?” she snorts.
“I want you to be happy for me.” Even I’m not sure how I end up across the room so quickly, startling her when I knock the next book right out of her hands and into the box at our feet. I kick the entire thing aside and step close.
“Camille.” I swallow whatever’s rising in my throat. “Look at me.”
She steels her jaw and breathes in a heavy, paced way, like she’s about to haul off and slap me. Instead, she shuts her eyes, then opens them with laser precision on mine.
“You’re already different,” she whispers, pushing back from me when I try to hold her. “The fact you can actually stand there and say that I’m jealous....” She shakes her head. The tears spill, finally too much to hide. “I think you should go.”
24
“I’m not leaving things like this.” I try to step close again. She steps back. “Camille, come on—do you hear how stupid this sounds? For you to get so upset over a job, that you don’t even want to be with me anymore?” I laugh, it’s so stupid. Downright absurd. I’ve got to be crazy just for drawing the conclusion, myself.
But Camille doesn’t laugh. I see her swallow again, more tears collecting.
“No.” I shake my head and reach for her; she flinches when I take her elbow, but lets me get close again.
Too close for her to pretend she can’t feel the heat radiating off me. So close, she’ll have no choice but to think about every other time we’ve been just an inch or two apart, the world narrowing down to only us.
“No,” I say again, “that...that isn’t what’s happening, here. Is it?” My eyes bounce between hers. “Camille, you can’t honestly be doing that. Breaking up with me because...”
Her eyes shut when I say this part, “breaking up,” like it’s some password neither of us wants to hear.
“...because I got a new job, and you didn’t?”
Suddenly, she wrenches out of my grasp, blinking the tears to nothing. “Go.”
“God, Camille, come on. You can’t—”
“Go! Just—just get out.” She yanks open the door and stands there, arms folded against herself, eyes shut as I pass.
“Fine,” I mutter. Arrow follows, nipping at my pant leg. His whimper fills the living room.
“Arrow, stop. Down.” Camille wraps her arms around him to try and hold him back.
He goes crazy between us, licking her face, then nipping at my pants again. He whines. His feet click on the floor, back and forth. Torn between wanting to stay, and wanting to leave.
I pause and start to kneel, reaching for him.
“Stop. He’s not going to calm down until you leave.”
“Or I can stay,” I challenge, keeping my eyes on hers, my voice just as cold. “That would probably calm him down, too.”
“He’s not your dog. You don’t know what calms him down.”
“I’m telling him goodbye. If you’re going to be petty as shit, fine, but at least—”
“Silas,” she shouts, “just fucking go.” Arrow cowers and stops struggling against her, blinking at the floor. “Now.”
I stare at her, breathing so hard it feels like my ribs have cracked open.
“Maybe I’m not the one who’s different,” I tell her. She shakes her head as I stand.
I slam the screen door on my way out. I can still hear Arrow scratching at it, all the way to my car.
His tires squeal at the stop sign. Arrow paces back and forth in front of the door, whining and looking back at me.
“Arrow, down,” I say,
but the words fracture in my throat.
I wipe the tears away with my sleeves and call him to me. Eventually, when he realizes Silas is gone and I’m not letting him out, he flops onto the carpet behind me. Whenever I pet him, he sighs.
The rest of the day, I stay locked in my room. I tell Mom and Dad through the door that I’m packing. They say the meeting went well. I pretend to be happy for them. When they ask why Silas left the radios, I lie again and tell them he changed his mind.
All night, I think about calling. It isn’t too late. Knowing Silas, he’d drive back immediately, just to climb through my window and make up.
It’s just a job, I try telling myself. At least he’d live nearby.
In his expensive penthouse. Spending every day telling my bosses what to tell me, someone who’s worked there for years, when he’s still a complete rookie. Spending his nights flashing cash and rubbing elbows with the Fairfields’ inner circle, like he was always destined to do.
I check my phone around two a.m. He hasn’t called or texted.
The room goes pitch-black when I shut down the phone. Then, finally, I let myself cry.
I think of earlier when, in this very spot, I thought he was going to kiss me. I thought he was about to fix it all and take my breath away, like he always did. I desperately waited for him to prove he was still who I thought.
I’d been so wrong about the direction that moment would take. I was wrong about a lot of things.
To his credit, he did leave me breathless. Just in the worst, deepest way possible.
25
“Jesus, how are you even alive right now?”
I groan when Knox opens the blinds, sending a wash of sunlight stabbing through my eyelids. “Close the window, man, fuck.”
He ignores me and kicks the almost-empty tequila bottle by my head. “Went a little too hard celebrating the new job, huh? By the way, you puked in the non-disposal side of the sink.”
“I’ll clean it,” I mutter, covering my eyes with my arm. Even that is too much weight on my head, though, so I sit up and swallow the bile in my mouth. “God, I feel like shit.”
“Not surprising. You put away about four times what I did.” He reaches out a hand to help me, but I wave him off and basically crawl onto the sofa.
I remember asking Knox if he wanted a drink, when I got back to the apartment and saw I had basically two options: sit in my room and cry about Camille all night, or get obliterated. To my pained and blurry recollection, I did both.
“We had about four shots together,” Knox prompts, when he sees me struggling to piece last night into place, “then I went to bed. What you did after that is a mystery.”
At least that’s one silver lining: he wasn’t around to witness my descent into drunk-crying.
“What time is it?” I lift my head out of the throw pillow enough to see him straightening his tie.
“Almost eight. You calling out?”
“No. Maybe.” I push my face back into the pillow and think of my two-week notice, saved in a flawless PDF on my laptop. After visiting my mom last week, I came home and wrote the letter without even thinking. Without even knowing yet if I would need it.
Then again, maybe I did.
“Last night,” I start, but the effort of speaking—or just remembering; I’m not sure—makes me pause. Knox checks his watch and waits.
I take a breath. “Did I...tell you anything?”
His brow furrows. “You told me to get drunk with you. You also told me I was a ‘shithead’ for going to bed earlier than you.”
We both laugh. Mine splits my skull right down the middle. “Sorry.”
“No worries. I’ve heard worse. Probably said worse to you, once or twice.” He grabs his coat and checks his watch again. “If you’re still dead around noon, hit me up. I’ll bring you Pedialyte on my lunch break.”
I wince my way through another shot from the tequila bottle. “Hair of the dog,” I grimace, while he laughs his way out the door. “I’ll be fine.”
When the door clicks shut behind him and I’m alone in the suffocating silence, I set the bottle on the coffee table and sigh.
“You’re already different.”
Well, she was right on one account: I’ve never gotten that wasted in my life. Never gotten sick, never blacked out. Drinking has always been a fun thing for me, something social and easy to pace. Last night, it felt necessary. Every time a memory of Camille fought its way to the surface, I doused it with another shot, then another.
When she kissed me on the bridge—shot.
Running with Arrow on the farm, looking over my shoulder to find Camille laughing in the last sunlight—shot.
“I want you to be my first.”
Two shots. Three.
I don’t know why it hit me so hard. She didn’t do anything I hadn’t worried about and half-expected from the start: I knew, from the day we met, she hated the Fairfields.
The only reason she gave me a chance was because I wasn’t one of them. Now, in her mind, I am.
My phone died during the night. I charge it while I shower, a task so herculean I have to sit on the tile and let the water half-drown me until I can’t smell my own liver. When I crawl back out, fumble into my clothes, and power the phone back on, the sight of the empty inbox makes me nauseous all over again.
I call out of work. My notice can wait until tomorrow.
The thread with Camille guts me. Reading our texts from just a few days ago is like looking at photos of murder victims from their prime, the graduations and birthday parties with them smiling wide, no idea of what’s ahead.
“I miss you.” I send it before pride can overrun my hangover.
A few minutes later, she reads it.
And when I wake up in the evening to Knox clattering back through the door, she still hasn’t answered.
26
“You’re doing it again.”
I barely give Brynn a glance before looking back to my spreadsheets. “It’s supposed to snow tonight. We have rock salt, right?”
“I don’t even have table salt.” She opens a Diet Coke and leans over my shoulder. “Jesus. Your schedule is ridiculous.”
I cover the papers with my arms like she’s cheating off a test. “Can you not?”
“You’re doing it again,” she repeats, yanking out the chair beside me and falling into it. “Working yourself stupid.”
“Mom and Dad are going to need some help when that camper kicks the bucket. And trust me, it will. Mom picked some ancient thing at the back of the lot, and the whole thing is—”
“What makes you think they’ll take your money again?” Brynn’s mouth twists to the side; she’s genuinely amused by my apparent stupidity, which just makes me pull my papers that much closer to myself. In addition to my ridiculous schedule at the Acre, I’ve got plans to double my dog-walking clientele on Brynn’s block. First thing on my day off, I’m going to every single house with any signs of a dog and leaving my new business cards. On top of all that, I’ve got a list of projects for my line-editing job.
“They’ll have to.”
“First,” she laughs, “no. That’s the whole point of them doing this. Their money will go way farther without medical bills and a mortgage, so they won’t need yours. And second: your dad knows your mom let you help, before. Doesn’t he?”
Stubbornly, I take a breath and stay silent.
“Exactly. What was it he said? ‘If I’d known that was going on behind my back, I would have had no problem selling this house.’ That about right?” She grabs one of the apples I bought from the fruit bowl and smells it before taking a bite. “Third—you are taking on way more work than necessary, even if it was up to you to save your parents. Which it isn’t. You’re going to burn yourself out in a month, maybe two if you’re lucky.”
“And what would you suggest?” I snap, flipping my pen to the side. “Waiting tables thirty hours a week, like you? Using the rest of my time to chase guys who treat me like shit
?”
I gasp to myself as soon as the words are said. Brynn just smiles, like my outburst was exactly what she wanted to hear and doesn’t bother her in the least. Which doesn’t stop me from becoming completely unhinged.
“Don’t cry, Cam—I know you didn’t mean it.” She slides me the paper towel roll and gets up, but instead of storming out, she just grabs another Diet Coke for me. “But no: I’m not saying you should live life like I do. You like stability. ‘Enough’ isn’t enough for you: you need savings and budgets and...and a cushion, in case you fall.” She pauses, picking at the tab on her soda. “Because that’s all you really know. Every time you and your family got ahead...you’d fall.”
The paper towel scrubs the makeup and tears from my eyes until it’s as big a mess as my face probably is.
“Me,” she goes on, “I don’t see the point in all that. Yeah, planning ahead is good—but you can’t always do that. So why not enjoy the good times a little more? If thirty hours lands me enough tips for rent, utilities, and food, that’s fine with me. I have enough left over to have fun, and time to actually do it.”
She quiets, looking at the stack of bills—some overdue—she left by the fruit bowl. “One of these days, I’ll take a page from you and kick things into a higher gear. Maybe now that you’re here, who knows.”
“You could go back to beauty school,” I tell her. “With me paying half the bills, you’d have extra money to pay for it.”
“I could,” she nods, “and I might. If that’s even what I want to do.” Her head tilts as she studies me. “We’re twenty-two, Camille. We have so much time to figure things out. We have time to work, time to save—but all that could end, like...tomorrow. If you died tomorrow, what would you want to flash in front of your eyes, you know? Nothing but work?” She shrugs, looking back at her soda. “I know I wouldn’t.”
As though Death is staring me down right now, I actually do see my life flash in front of me: Arrow, leaping out of that black basket on my ninth birthday. Remissions and relapses, Mom falling every time she’d start to bounce back. Listening to my parents whisper about bills through the vents.
