by Leanne Davis
“I didn’t know you had any.”
“No one does. I don’t have specifics yet, but I figure a new town would be a good start.”
“Wanna tell me all about it?”
“No. I just want to stay at your dad’s place.”
He shrugged. “Okay by me. Just hafta check with my asshole dad.”
Cami called up Brett Starr, herself, to make sure Jacob’s invitation complied with a higher authority. He offered her low rent, but she still needed the basics, like food, toiletries, and other incidentals. She saved some money after three years of working steadily at the resort with few expenses.
So, when the fall came around, she’d go to Everett. Away from River’s End. Away from her dad and Kate and everyone else she loved. At last, she would embark on her own adventure and start doing something new. Training for a trade or learning new job skills suddenly appealed to her.
Just like everyone kept urging her.
Even if deep down, she just wanted to stay home.
But she intended to commit herself to something. She could no longer stay there alone.
She longed to tell someone. But she didn’t, and why? She had no real reason. Maybe because she wanted them to be proud of her and believe in her. They had to now, no matter what, and she wanted to make them love her more.
****
A few weeks later at the start of July, Charlie Rydell came home for the last time from Stanford University and his wonderful adventure in California. Cami’s heart tugged, and she wished he wanted to stay home for good. She couldn’t wait until they moved in together and started living and working. But she still wanted to be there. In River’s End. Together. Just as she always dreamed. For years, she clung to her faith that if she’d just manage to hang onto Charlie through the four years it took to earn his bachelor’s degree, she’d be home free. But as soon as he got it, he announced his next plan: going to school internationally. So much farther away. She got dizzy whenever she began to envision their next separation. It always seemed to get harder than the time before.
Charlie was tired when he first got home and he slept and slept. Then he rested and read. He was so quiet and withdrawn, he seemed to be having a hard time adjusting to having nothing to do. Four years of college with strictly timed breaks had left him both exhausted as well as depressed. Not because he was away from there but because those days were over. Like he just climbed a mountain and when he got to the top, all he could do was stand there, wondering, Now what? A few pictures to commemorate the experience, but what did it mean?
Their first few weeks together were uncomfortable and Cami visibly struggled. Their wooden conversations bothered her the most. They often used Jacob as a go-between and Cami found herself grateful for his presence. He occasionally eased the awkwardness between Charlie and her. Yet they never spoke of recent events, especially those of the last few months, and nothing meaningful seemed to occupy their minds. They were just there.
There was something so distinctly missing and yet, both of them were too afraid to say anything. Without Jacob between them, they had nothing to say to each other. It started to seem like a game of unspoken chicken, the end winner of their game being: who was going to end their relationship first?
****
Charlie stared out towards the river, thinking how hard it was to be home. Especially with Cami. It was a brand new lifestyle to him. He wondered how to penetrate the invisible wall that so efficiently kept them at a distance since her miscarriage.
That was not what Charlie ever wanted to happen. Depressed and dejected, he flopped down on a rock at the beach. The air helped him clear his scattered thoughts. “Hey.”
He turned at the sound of Erin’s voice. She lumbered towards him, her stomach round and very pregnant. “Hey.” Erin sat down and nodded at him. “How’s it going?”
“Could be better. Cami and I…”
He threw a rock as far as he could into the river. “I’ve noticed, you don’t have to mention it, the awkwardness and tension. Ever since the miscarriage?”
“Yeah. We can’t seem to get on the same page. What should I do? Lie and say I’m sorry too? I… I don’t know if I really am. I’m so sorry Cami had to go through it, but the results of it were what I wanted all along. And she knows that. How can I give her my genuine, untainted support when she knows where my head was during all of this?”
“It’s a son of a bitch. That’s about all I know. It’s a horribly unfair set of circumstances where you and Cami are both damned if you do and damned if you don’t.”
“We were so far apart on this before, how can we ever come together now?”
Erin waited a long moment and Charlie licked his lips. “Do you want to come together? Considering what you now clearly see she wants and is willing to do, are you still content to be with her? Is it something you still want? Or is she no more than a habit? First loves are very potent things. They anchor people with nostalgia. But there is a reason most of them don’t work out and they eventually get relegated to first loves. Maybe you don’t want the same things. You have differing goals and needs and timelines. You have to admit, she went to some pretty far extremes to change her life.”
Charlie’s breath stilled and stayed in his throat. His heart hammered. No. Erin’s words struck him hard, but no, that wasn’t it. He still had so much passion for Cami inside him. Confident of only one thing, he replied, “I still love her.”
“You say that too fast. You say it too automatically. Don’t you hear that?”
“She suggested that too. Well, in her way. Not in out and out words. We haven’t come close to saying the truth out loud… at least not yet.”
“Maybe you should.”
“I’m scared to. I don’t know if I’m ready for the answer.”
Erin shrugged. “Maybe you two have outgrown each other, Charlie. You truly might need to consider that. Getting your master’s degree abroad? That had to be a huge blow to her. She doesn’t want to leave here to go to the next town. She wants you to come home and live here, marry her, and have a whole string of babies. Those are vastly different goals.”
“I didn’t want her to lose the baby, however.”
“I don’t think anyone suspects that. Especially Cami. She knows you too, Charlie.”
“She’s acting really odd. Not how I predicted.”
“What do you mean?”
“She usually cries if something is wrong and she can be pretty out there with what she feels, at least to me. But she’s been so quiet. Just a few silent tears. Nothing like what I expected. She’s not really expressing her grief. I thought she’d be hurting and in need of my comfort and consoling. Not like a blank, comatose mannequin. Totally quiet most of the time. I think that’s half of my problem, I can’t get through to her to even argue or fight this out.”
“Grief makes people react in all kinds of ways they never did before. You witnessed that just recently in your dad and Ben after the fire.”
Charlie nodded, looking glum. “I judged Ben so harshly for it. I didn’t even try to help him.”
“You were young and didn’t understand. You’ve grown up a whole lot since then. Probably this has made you grow up more than anything else. Some guys would have ditched Cami after what she did. But you didn’t. You still don’t want to ditch her. Believe me, that says a lot about you and how you feel about her.”
“And yet, we are still no closer to spending our lives together. I’m worried this latest tragedy could rip us all the way apart. She’s pulling away from me already and insists that I’ve done nothing but pull away from her.”
“Have you?”
“I did for a while. Yes. I was working out my shit. But dealing with what is real and working things out doesn’t mean I wanted to leave her. I sometimes feel like I have to make up for all the bad things that happened to her when she was younger. I can’t make up for any of those. She expects me to support her so she can stay at home and raise the family she never had. But I’m not sure that’s
even what I want.”
Erin reached out and squeezed his hand. “I think you need to tell her that, Charlie. But first, you must determine if your differing life paths still converge at any point.”
“How do we compromise?”
“Maybe you don’t always. Maybe you just have to find ways to live with it.”
“If Dad refused to have a baby with you, what would you have done?”
She nodded, and her smile was small and tender. “A couple of years ago, all the external factors of our lives began to mesh together, and I was feeling more mature inside and out. Then everything seemed to merge together for me and I wanted to have a baby, for the first time in my life. After lots of talking and tears and times when I believed we’d never have a baby, he finally gave in, but I didn’t believe him. I’d ask myself why I was doing this to us, especially when we were after the happiest we’d been since the fire. But maybe the fire compelled me to do this. I don’t know, Charlie. It’s just an never-ending balancing act of two people trying to work together.”
“So, what do I do?”
“You have to be brutally honest.”
“I don’t even know what my truth is. So how can I tell her it? I didn’t want her pregnant. Not even a little bit. How can I comfort her now that she isn’t? I wouldn’t want me hanging around either.”
Erin’s face crumpled in sympathy. “I think you both have to decide if you two are worth it, and then you two have to keep talking… and fighting… and cooling off. And you have to start all over and do it some more until something turns.”
“I’ve tried. It just comes back to what happened to get us here. Since our feelings weren’t the same about the pregnancy, our reactions and the emotions involved aren’t either.”
“Keep trying. Or break up. That’s your reality.”
He nodded before staring out at the water. Erin said, “I’m sorry to add this now, of all times, but I wanted you to hear it so you could tell Cami. Kailynn’s pregnant now too. So, this has to be an even harder time for Cami to live here.”
His eyebrows lifted. “I always wondered if they would have a kid. No, that’s great news for them. See? They waited until they were ready.”
“Some people don’t see it as that big of a deal. It’s just a difference in priorities and values, Charlie. She didn’t consider what she did a betrayal to you, not as you did. So you have to keep trying or—”
“Break up.” He closed his eyes with a deep breath. “I don’t want to break up. I am sure about that.”
“Then…”
His lips tilted. “Keep trying. I got it. Thanks, Erin. I don’t say it often enough, but I’m so glad Dad married you.”
She reached her arm around him, drawing him close for a hug before letting him go.
Rising to her feet, Erin left him to his thoughts. After a while, he got up and went back to Cami.
****
Cami was sitting on the porch, huddled in a sweatshirt with the hood pulled down. She kept her hands deep inside the pocket of the sweatshirt. Lifting her head up when she heard Charlie approaching, she stared at him as he walked closer. He stopped on the steps below her. He took in a deep breath and said, “We need to talk.”
Cami stared hard at him and said, “Yes. We do. Or, maybe we should just break up.”
How could she vocalize that so casually?
He sighed as he plodded up the stairs and dropped down beside her in a wicker rocking chair. Across the street, the pastures were peppered with horses that tossed their heads or stomped their hooves. Others were placid and calm, munching on grass or trotting through the fields.
“Do you want that?”
“Do you?” she challenged. Mouth set in a grim line.
In a hollow tone, Charlie’s shoulders fell. He gave in first as his face crumpled with emotions. “No. I don’t want to break up.”
“We aren’t the kids we once were. You in your jeans and flannel, always grabbing my hand to make sure I was okay and right beside you. Remember those wonderful times we had? They were so innocent and sweet. We were nothing if not adorable.”
“We still are.”
“We are not. We don’t even look at each other anymore.”
He nodded, conceding her point. “We could be then. We could still be them again.”
“No.” She shook her head. “We aren’t that Cami and Charlie anymore. Too much has happened, even if it isn’t anyone’s fault. We’ve been separated a long time and now, and the things you want are opposite of what I want. Look how far I went to get what I wanted. But I was perfectly willing to do it. It shames me, even now. But I was willing. I don’t want to be like that, Charlie. Doing all the wrong things to get what I want when our life’s paths are so divergent from each other. What if we’re not ready to merge for five years or more? It’s not fair to you or to me. And when will one of us hurt the other again? I hurt you in the worst way, but you did subtle, little jabs at me for years. It’s just well, maybe it’s time for us to realize we aren’t right for each other.”
He let her lethal words fall between them, like errant lead shot, scattering but with the potential of hitting and hurting. Instead of agreeing with her, Charlie turned and reached for her hand, tugging it free from her pocket. He took her fingers in his and squeezed. She let her hand stay limp. “I have to disagree with you. We are right for each other. We are just having a hard time right now. Because of the miscarriage and our opposing views on it. And you’ve been very sad. I’ve tried to respect that.”
“Yes, you are always respectful of me. But maybe, respect isn’t enough. Maybe you’ve let respect mask that you are also indifferent to me now.”
“No. I’m not. You are it for me, Cams. You always have been.”
“You’re also excessively loyal and short-sighted. Maybe you’re too blind to see when two people have outgrown each other. It’s not working anymore.”
“We’re just going through a rough patch. I clearly see and agree with that. But it isn’t just loyalty and myopia. It’s actually love. You are raw and hurting and so am I. But—”
“But what? We are suddenly going to feel the same about the baby and miscarriage?”
“No. And because we don’t, we are going to have to work harder to fight this, not each other. We have to fight for each other. Even if it means we keep repeating this cycle of getting hurt and quarreling and making up, only to do it all over again. It can only keep on repeating until we figure it out. And I believe we will. This is real. This is love. This is worth fighting for.”
“You seem to forget who I am sometimes. There was never, not even once, a house or a home like you grew up in. I lived in rooms. Shacks. Trailers. Empty buildings. I was raised poor in a way you can’t even imagine. So, when I came here, everything I saw was brand new, I never even knew what a family could be. I never knew such things existed and now I get to live it. Right here. I’m part of something I never had before. This place is everything I could ever want. No castle in Europe, or mountain top in South America, or glacier in Alaska could make me want to leave this place. Don’t you see what I mean? Nothing that the world can offer me could ever be as perfect as what I have right here. And yet, you long to explore the very world I sought refuge from. For me, the outside world was a scary place where I was abused and neglected and hurt. Why would I want that? Your experience on the other hand, is practically the opposite of mine. So was your childhood. I know that. I understand your need to experience and learn more things you consider important. But you fail to realize that what I value is just as important to me. My top priority right now is being with my family. Being safe at home. All the things that were denied me have become the same things I can’t pretend not to want.”
Charlie’s gaze penetrated hers. His eyes grew glassy with emotions, but he still opposed her logic. “All those things you’re saying only make an argument for why we should not break up. It doesn’t matter that we have very different backgrounds and motivations. I’m not denyi
ng that or the legitimacy of all the things that upset you. I even understood where the pregnancy came from, even if I didn’t agree to it. But now I believe it’s all the more reason for us to stay together. We have become each other’s family, so we have to do whatever is required to make it work. We have to make sure we stay family. Lovers. Us.”
“Again, just a string of pretty words.” She snorted.
“You were lonely while you were waiting here for me, and unhappy for almost four years, right? That’s what I heard you say?”
“Yes.” She tugged her legs up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “I hate to just be waiting for you. Always waiting for my life to start again.”
“I’m suggesting that you find something else besides the ranch or resort to do with your time. I don’t want a baby any time soon. You’ll have to accept that.” He knelt before her, taking her hand in his and staring up at her. He cupped her cheek, lifting her face to see her dark-eyed gaze staring in pain at him. “I want you to choose to be with me. I’m asking you… No, I’m begging you to. But that means I can’t have a baby yet.”
“I know that.” She shut her eyes.
“Cami? Do you want to have a baby with someone else? Do you want to break up, so you can find someone else to start a family with?”
Her eyes jammed open. “No!” she flung out the word with more feeling passion than he’d seen in five months. “No. Oh my God! No. It was never about having just anyone’s baby. It’s about having your baby.”
“Then please, wait for me. Wait for me to be ready. Find something… anything that will keep you more fulfilled than the work you do on the resort. I think if you do, we can find a way to wait until we are both on the same timeline for wanting a family. Maybe we can make it easier to live with now. But the way I see it, we have two choices, break up and not have a baby or stay together and not have a baby. It honestly, doesn’t make much sense to me to break up, when we both still love each other, right?”
“Yes. We do.”
“Then what do you say?”
Her gaze was long and sad and her face solemn but serious. Finally, she nodded. “Okay.”
