I stood up, too. He turned to me.
“I have to go home. I have Max’s keys. The others can ride home with Kendall, right?”
“The others?”
He caught my arm and grasped it. “Will you come with me?”
I wasn’t sure what that meant. What would happen once we reached the Barn.
I didn’t care.
“Of course,” I said. “Let me call Kendall and let her know what’s happening.”
“Are you sure?” Kendall asked when I told her.
“He shouldn’t be alone.”
“So what does that mean, you’re going to stay over?”
“I have no idea. But if Mom or Richard call your house, can you cover for me?”
A pause. “Okay.” Her voice sounded flat and tight.
“I’ll check in with you later.”
I hung up and scooped the penguin from the ground.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said, and took Camden’s hand with my free one. He looked at me and the pain on his face, it was so Azor. The memory of our kiss at the Ferris wheel flushed through me. All my unleashed, bold Satina-ness. “The ending sucked,” I added, “but until then I had the best night of my life.”
Camden smiled a little. “You have no idea.” He slipped his hand into mine to give it a squeeze before drawing it away.
I knew the quickest way out of the fair, and this time he was the one following me.
13
We didn’t speak as Camden drove Max’s car out of the fairgrounds parking lot.
In the strange and also strangely intimate minutes that followed, I stared out the window and thought about how getting to know someone is all about learning and unlearning at the same time. For every piece of new information you gain about that person, you might have to let go of something you thought was true.
Finally he asked, “So, that guy from your school we ran into. He was someone, right?”
“Ex-boyfriend,” I said.
Camden nodded. “You don’t have to tell me the story. Unless it’ll make me feel better.”
“I was the one who ended it.”
A pause. “That makes me feel better.”
We were silent the rest of the drive. Camden seemed lost inside himself, sloshing around in places I had no access to.
When we got to the Barn, I followed Camden to the porch, where he stooped to fish a house key out from under the cushion of the wicker sofa. His Azor uniform was long gone. Now he wore only his white T-shirt and black pants and boots, and I couldn’t help thinking that half of him had been stripped away.
The house was eerily quiet without the voices and the music, the whirr of Eliza’s sewing machine. Once inside, I closed the door behind us. The sound of it seemed to startle him. I thought maybe he’d forgotten I was there, too. But he turned and looked at me, then held out both hands.
I took them.
“You’ve never seen my room,” he said, his voice rough like he was struggling to retrieve it.
My stomach lurched. “No.”
He tugged me toward the staircase, walking backward.
“Is it okay if I show you my room?” he asked.
“Yes,” I squeaked.
I’d been in this situation before. Knowing you’re there for the wrong reason. So aware that the way you want something is completely screwed up, but not caring. Sometimes wanting is a buy now, pay later deal.
I knew I should tell him to stop, that we needed to talk about the whats and the whys.
I could not.
When we got to the stairs, he let go of one hand to walk forward, but kept the other. We walked like that to the top, past the big picture window, across the landing. Through the door Camden opened for me.
He stood aside so I could look around. The room was small, with a slanted ceiling and a skylight. Each wall was painted a different color: forest green, teal blue, burgundy, and white. The combination felt random, yet harmonious. In one corner was his bed, which I only glanced at quickly before feeling my skin flush. It was just a tiny twin, but it may as well have been a king-size water bed with velvet pillows and fur throws, under a banner that said SEX! in fifty-point font.
An overpacked bookcase filled the opposite wall. A beanbag chair sat in the corner, his laptop sunk into it. He had no posters or pictures up. Only a huge map of the world, dotted with plastic thumbtacks. Next to each thumbtack was a tiny slip of paper with writing that I couldn’t read from a distance.
“Nice skylight,” I finally said, leaning against the doorframe. I hadn’t come all the way inside the room. I wasn’t committing to anything. Right?
“Thanks,” he said, staring up at the skylight. “My mom put it in for me when she bought the house.” He paused, maybe snagged by a memory. “We’d been moving around so much, and now we were going to stay still. She wanted me to have a spot to watch the stars change position and remind us that at least the planet was still moving.”
“How old were you? When you finally stopped moving around?” I asked, glad to be talking and sharing again, hungry for more pieces of him.
“Thirteen,” said Camden. “And tired. Happy to be on solid ground.”
I looked at Camden’s face, which was still raised upward.
“Leave all the time-and-space traveling to the Arrow One,” I said.
“Exactly.” He smiled knowingly. “That’s probably why I got so into the series, when I met Eliza and she showed me the reboot.” He lowered his gaze to me now. Back in the present, returned to the here.
He went to the door and closed it slowly, then pushed me against it even more slowly. We kissed like that for a while, and I kept my eyes open, reminding myself this was Camden and not Azor. This Summer Camden and not Last Summer Camden. I realized I’d been shivering, then realized I’d stopped. Since that first true, unbound kiss at the Ferris wheel, we’d somehow already developed our own language of kisses. A knowable rhythm of soft, hard, here, there. Everywhere, anywhere.
Lost, and found.
Finally, Camden tugged me over to the bed. A little voice locked behind a miniature steel door in my brain started whimpering No wait but. I could barely hear it as I lay down on the black sheets.
Camden stretched his body on top of mine and leaned on his elbows, then paused for a moment to look at me. I took that moment to feel the excruciating safety of his weight, the warmth of his limbs mixing with the slightly different warmth of mine.
“I didn’t expect this,” he said, and I didn’t know what he was referring to. Being here like this? Us in general? Me?
“I didn’t either,” I said, which was the truth any way you sliced it.
Camden kissed my neck, then my collarbone. He moved farther down, touching me through the plaid shirt, finally unbuttoning it, tugging it off my shoulders. It felt strange to shed that layer, even though I still had the purple tunic and white top underneath.
The voice in my head was trying harder to be heard now, and I started to see flashes of Lukas. The old couch with the rip up one side. The empty wine cooler bottles standing in clusters on the coffee table, like spectators. Ditching myself for a little while in the dim claustrophobia of Lukas’s basement.
If I kept my eyes open, wide open, these flashes went away. I was here with Camden. There was only the Possible, surrounding us with hue and light.
I was waiting for Camden to lift up my shirt or slide his hand under the waistband of my leggings. But he just laid his head sideways on my belly, as if listening for something.
“Can I help you?” I joked.
“I’m a little overwhelmed.”
Me, too. “Let’s take a break.”
He sat up at the end of the bed, then pulled me onto his lap so I was straddling him. Another combination of warmth, limbs, weight. He put his hands on either side of my ribs and with a bit of alarm, I could feel how aroused Camden was. It was scary yet amazing, knowing I could do that to him. That he belonged to me in this one way.
“God, Ari,
” he said, his eyes searching my face. “You make me feel . . . like I’m joining the human race.”
“You’ve been with girls before,” I said teasingly, stopping myself before adding I’ve seen you with Eliza.
“Not where I found myself doing this.” He held out one hand in front of me. It was trembling.
I grabbed it, steadied it. We both stared at our hands as if we expected them to start acting on their own.
After a few moments, Camden said, “I’m sorry about tonight.” He bit his lip. Pulled his hand out of my mine, which shrank back to my side. “It was so perfect. And then it was totally not.”
“Even the imperfect part was perfect, to me. We all have a past, Camden. If we’re going to be with each other, we can’t ignore that.”
As soon as I said it, Camden looked at my arm, then back up at me. When I didn’t stop him, he turned back to my arm. He started to slowly push up my sleeve. It was tight at the wrist and wouldn’t slide any farther.
“Can I?” he asked, and I knew what he meant. If he’d been asking to take off my shirt, it could not have been more intimate than this.
“You’ve noticed the scars,” I said, my voice catching.
“The first time we really spoke,” he said. “That day with Dani and the diving.”
He rolled up the sleeve until it hit my elbow, then turned my forearm so it was exposed. He took one finger and traced the scratches as if committing them to memory.
“They were shallow, and not anywhere near an artery,” he said matter-of-factly.
“I wasn’t trying to die,” I said. “I was trying to feel better.”
Now he just nodded. “Did you at least ice it down first?”
“With a bag of frozen peas.”
He laughed nervously. “Did it work?”
“It was like someone else’s skin I was cutting.”
Camden lifted my arm. “I know this isn’t going to make it all better,” he said, “but . . .” Then he kissed my wrist a few inches from where the scars trailed off.
I inhaled sharply. “It might.”
He looked up at me from under those giraffe eyelashes, my arm in his hand, and kissed it again. The voice behind the door stopped whimpering. He could have asked me to do anything. I would have taken on a thousand regrets just so I could have whatever he was giving.
“Ari,” whispered Camden, placing my arm gently back down. “I need you to know something.”
“Okay,” I whispered back, not really ready for whatever he was going to say but definitely ready to fake it.
“I want you here,” he said. “I want to stay here in my bed with you all night but . . . I can’t . . .” He made a waving motion with his hand. It took me a second to figure it out.
“Oh.” Then a flooding rush of relief. “No. I wouldn’t want to . . . I mean, it’s too soon.”
“Good.” He sighed, then looked to the ceiling. “That’s excellent.” He put one hand to his forehead, like he was seeking shade from some blinding memory. “You have to understand the things I’ve grown up with. The stuff I’ve seen my mother do, and the guys who’ve come through our lives. And how she seems to lose a little piece of herself every time.”
We were quiet for a few seconds, then I said, “So you’ve never . . .”
He looked straight at me again. “No.”
I glanced away, partly because I didn’t want him to see how glad I was to hear that. And how surprised. That any guy could date Eliza and not go there.
Because he was Camden, that was how.
“I haven’t either,” I finally said. It was technically true. Could it be that I was actually more “experienced” than he was? And how would that change things?
Camden exhaled and smiled a bit. He was glad. I was glad he was glad.
“You understand, then,” he said, lacing his fingers through mine. “Why I can’t seem to touch you enough but I can’t . . . I’m not going to do something just because some unwritten rule somewhere says we should.”
I nodded, blocking out the memory of Lukas saying, Come on, Ari. We’ve been going out for three months.
“Should I leave?” I asked Camden.
His eyes widened. “No! I mean, I don’t want you to. I’d like you to stay. Can you stay?”
I knew he was really saying, I don’t want to be alone.
“I’m supposed to be sleeping at Kendall’s, but she said she’d cover for me.”
Camden nodded, suddenly businesslike, and patted the bed. We unfurled together, stretching out on the sheets, our heads touching on the pillow. I wrapped my feet around Camden’s feet. He reached up and cupped my cheek.
“You told me about the scars. I want to tell you a secret about Gus. The one who died.”
“Tell me,” I said, staring up at the skylight.
Camden moved his arm so it was across my waist. Took a deep breath.
“He was an asshole.”
I let out a nervous, surprised laugh, then quickly sucked it back in.
“I hated him,” added Camden. “It feels really good to say that out loud to someone.”
“What did you hate about him?” I asked, because I wanted him to continue the telling.
“When my mom wasn’t around, he’d say nasty things about her to me. Then he’d say nasty things about me to me. He took money from her purse and dared me to squeal on him. So a few times before the night he died, I wished he were dead. You know, the kind of wishing that comes out of you like you’re swearing, you’re just letting out your anger.”
I nodded against his shoulder.
“Then, when he did actually die . . .” Camden’s voice closed up, tied tight with a string.
“You thought you’d made that happen.”
“I was twelve.”
“You never told anyone?”
“God, no. I felt so guilty. Happy and relieved, but guilty.”
“Traumatized.”
“In a multilayered way.”
“Wow,” I said.
Camden sighed, and the movement of his body as it took on extra air, then released it; I could feel that movement in every part of me.
“I’ve never told anyone that,” said Camden.
I put my hand on the hand that was on my waist. It felt like he’d gifted me more than I’d gifted him. We were pushing through each other and maybe if we stopped now, we might never make it to the other side. Then we kissed for a long time and I imagined that the stars floated down through the skylight to where we were. There was no floor or ceiling anymore, no ground or sky. There was only everything, mixed in together.
Finally, I bit his lip gently and pulled away, feeling raw. There was something about him strong and solid against me, like a foundation. I decided to act on this tiny thread of courage before I lost it.
“I’ve got another secret for you,” I said.
“Another one?” he asked, amused.
I shrugged.
“Don’t feel obligated,” he added. “This isn’t like a Secret Smackdown.”
“I know. I just want to tell you. Think of it as a bonus.”
“Okay.”
I took a deep breath, in my mind flying away from the person who was warm and breathing and next to me in his bed in his house where we were alone and the whole universe might as well have been ours. Away from me now, back to me then.
“When we first met, you said you remembered seeing me at the lake before.”
“I did,” he said.
“I remembered seeing you, too. Last summer.” I paused. “Actually, I had a huge crush on you.”
I closed my eyes and buried my face in his neck. I felt Camden take a deep breath.
“But you didn’t know me. We never talked. Did we? Shit, if we did and I forgot . . .”
I forced myself up again, to look at his face. A small frown creased his forehead.
“No, we never talked. It was one of those from-afar things.”
Camden lay there for a few more moments (that frown, u
gh) and then asked, “What was it about me that made you have a crush without actually meeting me?”
“I’ve thought about that a lot,” I said. “It was only four months after that night with the Lady Bic. I was fighting to feel better. To feel like I had the strength. And I’d watch you—” Oops, I hadn’t meant to tell him about the watching. Too late now. “You seemed so confident. Free. As if you had it all figured out and maybe you could show me.” I pressed my lips closed tight to keep myself from saying any more.
After a few seconds, Camden shifted away from me, rolled over onto his side to face the wall. I couldn’t see his face.
“You’re weirded out, aren’t you?” I joked.
Camden didn’t answer right away, and with every second that passed without him saying No, not weirded out at all!, I died inside a little more.
“I’m glad you told me,” he finally said. He didn’t sound the least bit glad about anything.
“You okay?”
“Just really tired all of a sudden. I was super-wired earlier but now I think I might drift off.”
“Let’s drift,” I said, lying down on my left side. I didn’t dare get closer. I left a little cushion of space between us as we lay in identical positions on his bed. Air rushed into it from the open window above, making that distance feel wider.
I only half-slept that night, tense and angry in my dreams. I kept seeing Camden fighting with Lukas. Then Max yelling at Eliza, Kendall screaming at the guy who was overdosing in front of the gyro shack. One person would morph into another, and sometimes it would be a real person and sometimes it would be a character from Silver Arrow. Also, there were batter-dipped hamburgers everywhere.
I opened my eyes covered in sweat, sunlight coming in diagonally from somewhere. A green wall. A trapezoid of yellow. Wooden floors with the dust visible and fairly sparkling, like dew. I had no idea where I was.
Then I felt Camden next to me, a presence rising and falling with breath, and things made sense again. I stared at the outline of him, still turned away from me in the bed. The delicious curve of his shoulder blades against his T-shirt. The small patch of skin visible at the base of his neck. Most people look younger, more vulnerable when they’re asleep. But Camden looked strong, as if his peace were power.
What Happens Now Page 15
