“Mr. Tate,” she says, the forced pleasantness in her voice edged with concern. “I wasn’t expecting you today. How are you feeling?”
I give her a weak smile, feeling guilty that my misery has permeated not just my foreman and my crew, but Kylie, as well. “I’m good, Kylie. Thanks for asking.”
“Before you go to your office,” she says, her eyes saucer-like, a hint of panic shining through. “I... um, well... your mother stopped by.”
“My mother?”
Kylie nods her head so fast, that I worry it might snap right off. “Yes, your mother. I told her you weren’t in, that I didn’t think you’d be in at all today, but she insisted on staying. She seems...”
“What?” I ask, my heart rate picking up. Why would my mother camp out in my office when I’m not even at work?
“Upset.”
“Did she say why?”
“No, Mr. Tate. I’m sorry, I should’ve asked, but was she distraught, and...”
Distraught? “It’s okay, Kylie. Thanks for letting me know,” I say trying to be as calm as possible. Kylie exhales a shaky breath, returning to her chair, her back its usual ramrod straight.
“Of course, sir.”
Deciding I better leave Kylie to calm down, I head down the hallway to my office where the door is ajar, light spilling out into the hallway. I peek my head inside to find my mother sitting at my desk, her slim frame engulfed in the plush executive office chair, her nose deep into a magazine. I clear my throat, drawing her eyes up from the magazine for a brief moment, and eliciting a dissatisfied sigh that lets me know my mother is very upset with me.
“Mom, what are you doing in my office?” I ask, keeping my tone as upbeat as possible. She sets the magazine down and folds her hands in front of her, and I realize for the first time that she should have been a cop, or a judge, or something. The way she looks in that chair, coupled with the narrowed eyes of her you’re in trouble stare, she could get anyone to confess to anything.
“Oh, just wondering when my eldest son was planning to return to civilization,” she says pointedly. I notice I’m the eldest son today, and not the favorite son.
“Sorry, mom. I know I’ve been a little... off the grid lately.”
“If by ‘off the grid’ you mean sulking in your house in your underwear. Don’t think I didn’t realize you were screening my calls.”
She’s not wrong. “Sorry,” I say, feeling more and more like a boy whose mother is getting ready to put him in time-out.
“I’m sure you are. But you’re the least of my worries,” she stands up, one hand on her hip, the other pressed against her forehead. She begins to pace the small office. “You sabotage your own happiness, sure. But at least you’re not ruining your career. I mean, you and I will talk about Elizabeth, that’s not a question. But Grayson...” she sits back down, leaning her chin into her hand. “I wish your father were here. He’d know how to deal with you boys.”
Grayson? I roll my eyes and slump down into the chair opposite her, leaning my elbows on my knees. I could have sworn I told her not to read the tabloids, and what did she do? She read the tabloids.
“Mom, what did I tell you about the tabloids?” I ask, my turn to play the stern parental figure. She just narrows her eyes at me.
“Well, Gray doesn’t answer his phone, and you’ve been avoiding me for the last few weeks, so what else was I supposed to do to make sure my baby boy is doing alright? After what I’ve been reading, though, I wish I hadn’t picked it up at all!”
As much as it kills me, it does pique my interest.
“Okay, I’ll bite. What are they saying about Gray now?”
It only takes about .7 seconds for her features to soften, and for her to flip open an article in the magazine with a picture of Gray and Ariana Lopez, their faces inside a clip-art broken heart. She slides it toward me and points, looking stricken.
“This article is slandering your brother, that’s what,” she says. “They’re making up stories that he broke up with his co-star for some model, Olivia-something. Can you believe that?”
Olivia-something? A model? “Olivia Knight? The supermodel?” I ask, and to my surprise, she nods. “Are you kidding?”
“No, it says it right here,” she insists, jabbing her finger at the page. “But that’s not even the worst part!”
“And that is?”
“That tramp Ariana Lopez is refusing to work with him! She’s trying to get him fired from the show!”
I close my eyes and let out a long, slow breath. “They’re always making stuff up, mom. Don’t believe everything you read.”
“But what if it’s true? What if she does get him fired?”
“Have you even talked to Gray? I bet none of it’s even true.”
“He won’t answer the phone or call me back,” she says. “I just hate seeing this stuff and knowing he’s so far away. I can’t talk any sense into him.”
“Look, I know Gray’s the baby of the family, but he is a grown man. He can make his own choices, and his own mistakes. You have to give him some space, mom.”
“Oh, I know that,” she says, wrapping her arms around herself. “I just worry, is all. About both of you.”
“I know you do,” I say, reaching over and giving her arm a squeeze.
“Which reminds me,” she says, pointing a finger in my direction. “We have some things to talk about.”
Mom gets up and walks around to my side of the desk, leaning against it and crossing her arms over her chest. She eyes me knowingly, waiting, as if she’s giving me the opportunity to speak before she launches into her lecture. Figuring it won’t make a difference either way, I just lean back in my chair and hold out my hand, signaling for her to go ahead and lay it on me.
“Well,” she starts, “I guess we should talk about why you’ve been sulking the last few weeks.”
I snort a laugh. “Do we have to?”
“Yes, we do. Tell me how you left things with Elizabeth.”
Rolling my eyes, I shift uncomfortably in my chair. Considering everyone has been talking about how Lizzie and I left things, I seriously doubt I need to enlighten my mother.
“Don’t you already know?” I ask.
“I want to hear it from you.”
Sighing, I grip the back of my neck and nod. “She was going to leave again without telling me. She let me believe we had a chance to make things just like they used to be, and then without any warning at all, she was going to leave. I didn’t think I could go through that a second time.”
Not that it had been any easier, me being the one to leave. If anything, it had just felt... wrong, like I was leaving a piece of myself behind. Like I was giving up.
“So, you’re doing just fine with all this, then?” my mom asks, one eyebrow cocked. I narrow my eyes at her.
“Fine with this? How could I possibly be fine with this? I have loved Lizzie Quinn since I was fifteen! Of course I didn’t want her to go, and of course I wish we’d left things a little differently.” I stand up, my heart pumping so hard I can feel my pulse in my ears, and begin pacing the room. Does she really think I’m fine? I screwed up, and I know it. Except this time, I didn’t even ask her to choose. I chose for her. And the last few days, I’ve been wondering if I chose wrong. “She tried to explain, but I didn’t want to listen. I know she probably had a good reason, even if I didn’t let her tell it to me. And now, she’s gone, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I had a second chance at happiness with Lizzie, and I blew it.”
I raise a guilty gaze to my mom, who’s wearing a victorious look on her face, her lips pursed, a smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth.
“Have you told her any of that?” she asks.
“I... what? No,” I say, to which mom responds with a shrug. She walks over to me and gives my arm a squeeze, before heading for the door. Before she leaves, she turns around to give me one last nugget of motherly advice.
“Sometimes, we have to fight hard for what we
want, Cameron. Love might be a risk, but it’s always one worth taking.”
Chapter Seventeen
Elizabeth
When I walk back into my condo in New York and flip on the lights, I realize for the first time that the space looks... sterile. Everything is some shade of white or light gray, with clean, geometric lines and all surfaces free of any trace of clutter or knick-knacks or really anything that might make it feel more like a home. I look around in awe as the thought comes over me that this place is not cozy, or warm, or inviting, or any of the things that a home should feel like. Even the view, an enviable and classic New York skyline which at one time I would have killed over, seems to only widen the space around me. I’m like a planet, drifting out in the universe, my closest neighbor lightyears away. I’m isolated, and alone.
At one time, that what all I wanted. To just be alone.
Back then, alone didn’t feel lonely. Alone merely felt like a bi-product of crushing my goals, of doing what I set out to do: make something out of myself that would prove everyone wrong. And I did that, ten times over, in fact. So why, standing in the bare, character-less entryway of my highly sought-after condo in the middle of the most popular city in the country, do I suddenly feel like a failure?
Love.
I have none of it.
I spent so much time working on turning myself into something or someone that I believed to be worthy, that I completely neglected to build any lasting relationships in my life. Like somehow, I just forgot to make memories that weren’t job promotions or working overtime. I never had the chance to know my parents, and now, I might have missed out on the chance to have a relationship with my last surviving relative. I never allowed myself to be distracted by romantic relationships, and after seeing Cam again, I’m starting to realize that I very well may have lost out on life’s most important gift.
I take a step into my bedroom, and sigh at the same sterile, white atmosphere. When did my bedroom, the room that used to be my sanctuary, start to look more like a hotel room than the place I should have safest, and comfiest, and most at home? The plush, starched-white bedspread that used to feel like some sort of cloud now just makes me think about the night I spent in Cam’s bed, warm and most certainly not alone.
I’ve known what to do the moment I got in my car and left Rocky Point, but now that I’m here, looking at the remnants of ten years of a life on hold, I can’t wait any longer. I’m not willing to waste any more time.
Picking up the phone, I frantically dial Trisha.
“TRISHA, I DON’T THINK I can thank you enough,” I gush, gripping my phone so tightly it might just slip out of my clammy hand any moment. “I never would have thought of this myself, and it’s perfect.”
“Any time!” Trisha practically yells into the phone. I have to pull away from it for a moment, her voice is so loud. “I’m just happy that you’ll be back in Rocky Point, I was starting to like having someone to hang out with other than my husband.”
“Me too,” I say, genuinely excited at what the future holds. I gave Whitney my notice the other day, and am planning to move back to Rocky Point to be able to be closer to Gran. Whitney was... furious, to put it lightly. She told me I was screwing over her and the team, and that I was selfish and clearly did not care about my career. I let it roll off; it only confirmed that I’m making the right decision leaving New York and going back home to Rocky Point. Plus, Trisha has helped me to figure out what I’m going to do for work when I get there, and I couldn’t be more excited.
I am going into business for myself as a freelance advertising and marketing consultant, and Dearing Hardware is going to be my first customer. Trisha seems to think that the town and the myriad of small businesses that make it up could benefit from someone who could manage their advertising and marketing. I didn’t think it would work, but Trisha showed me several businesses in town that are willing to sign year-long contracts, and is sure more will be interested once they see what I can do. She even set up a call between myself and the town’s mayor to discuss how my services could be used to advertise and market the town to drive tourism during the summer. With Trisha’s help, I’m confident that I’ll be able to get my own business up and running in no time.
I took Gran’s house off the market, and listed my condo in New York, instead. I’ve gotten several interested buyers in just the few days it’s been listed, and my listing agent is fairly sure it will sell within a few weeks. As scary as it’s been to uproot my entire life as I know it, strike out on my own in my career, and confront the past moving back to Rocky Point, it’s also been exciting, and just feels right. It helps to have a friend as great as Trisha in my corner, too.
“All that’s left to do is to pack up your things and make it official,” Trisha says. “Have you told your Gran yet?”
I had called Gran to tell her. At first, she hadn’t really understood why I would want to do such a thing. When I explained to her how important it was for me to be closer to her, to spend as much time as I could with her, she had both surprised and a little weepy. I had been, too. We might not have been as close as we could have been throughout the years, but I’m not planning on wasting anymore time. We’ll make the most of the time we have left, before Gran’s illness gets in our way.
“She was very excited,” I say, and I can hear Trisha squeal on the other end of the line. I roll my bottom lip between my teeth and bite down, a question I’ve been debating on asking ready to leap impatiently off the tip of my tongue.
“I can hear the steam coming out of your ears from here,” Trisha says. “What’s on your mind?”
“How... um...” I clear my throat, which has suddenly gone drier than the desert. “How’s Cam? Have you heard from him?”
There’s a long pause on Trisha's end of the line.
“Eddie says he hasn’t really been himself, whatever that means,” she says. “Apparently Hank's been sending in any orders to the store, which Eddie thought was odd. And the handful of times Eddie’s gone over to deliver materials to the office, Cam hasn’t been there. One day, Eddie asked that redheaded supermodel Cam’s got behind the front desk if she’d seen him, and she said Cam hadn’t been in in about a week.”
My jaw hangs slack as Trisha speaks. I hear what she’s saying, but I just can’t believe it. That business isn’t just Cam’s livelihood, it’s his life. And he just suddenly stopped showing up?
“Maybe Cam’s just busy. Or maybe he took a vacation or something,” Trisha adds, sensing my concern. If he took a vacation, why wouldn’t Kylie just say that?
I’ve thought a lot about the way Cam and I left things, and I can’t help but feel guilty, like everything that happened was all my fault. I should have told him what was going on with work, that my boss was pressuring me to leave. I should have been honest with him before we’d gotten so close. I let him believe we had a chance at something, and then did the one thing that would be sure to cause him pain: left Rocky Point, and him, for New York without any warning. And to top it all off, I didn’t even tell him. He had to overhear it.
If he had just let me explain before he’d stormed off, I could have told him about my plans to come back. Granted, I didn’t have all the details worked out then, but I knew I wanted to try. I can’t help but feel like I should have stopped him, tried harder to explain, done something to stop him from thinking I was running away again. I wanted to pick up the phone and call him so many times, but I just didn’t know what to say to make it right. And I know I’ll have to confront Cam eventually, when I’m back in Rocky Point full time. I doubt we'll be able to go back to anything like what we might have had, but I’ll have to try. Maybe, if he doesn’t hate me so much, we can at least be friends.
“Maybe. I just hope I haven’t completely ruined things.”
I hang up the phone and peer around at my townhouse, mountains of empty boxes stacked against the walls, waiting to be filled with all the things and memories I’ve accumulated since college. The sad part is t
hat more likely than not, it’s all going to end up in storage. I’ll always treasure the time I spent in New York, but the more I plan my move, the more I realize what I need is a clean slate. A true fresh start, in my relationship with Gran, in growing my friendship with Trisha, and in building my career in Rocky Point. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll get a fresh start with Cam, too.
Chapter Eighteen
Cameron
IT’S GONE.
The For Sale sign in Helen Quinn’s yard, the one I’ve driven by every day for the last month, is no longer there. I saw it this morning, on my way to a job site, but on my way home... just, gone.
It took most of the drive for it to really hit me. After driving by Helen’s, I spent the rest of the ride home in silence, my brain totally blank and running on autopilot, trying to come to terms with what that missing sign really means. Twenty minutes later, I still can’t seem to get out of my truck, even though I’ve been parked in front of my house with the engine off and my stomach is growling.
If the For Sale sign came down, then Helen’s house sold. If Helen’s house sold, then... it’s over. Lizzie has no reason to come back to Rocky Point, at least not for more than a few days. All of her ties with Rocky Point have been successfully and completely severed. Ultimately, I knew this was the most likely outcome, but a part of me had fought against accepting it. Because accepting it would mean admitting that I’m out of time, and admitting that I’m out of team would mean...
Well, it would mean that I blew it.
I did blow it. Bad.
Headlights pulling into my driveway beside me pull me out of my momentary self-loathing, and I slide out of my truck with a sigh. Stuffing my hands into my pockets, I watch as my mom climbs out of her SUV, scoops Bella into her arms, and walks toward me. I’m not expecting her, but she has an uncanny spidey-sense for whenever one of her sons is going through a crisis, or ruining their life. It’s annoying.
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