North to You

by Tif Marcelo

  And it happens. I snort. “Oh shit,” I say, barely, because my chuckles escalate into chortles, and a full-bodied laugh—and another snort—breaks all the ice I’d attempted to build between us.

  It becomes a circle of laughter, me at him, him at me. Lasting what feels like forever. I catch the cabbie staring at us through his rearview mirror. He probably thinks we’re high.

  And I am.

  I’m high on such happy memories.

  “Classic. I have tears. Damn.” Drew presses his fingers on the bridge of his nose.

  “Thank you.” I sniff. My body is twenty times more relaxed. “Seriously. I needed that tonight.”

  “At your service.” His expression changes, and he sticks his hand into his back pocket and retrieves his phone. “Sorry, gotta take this.”

  The quiet moment gives me a chance to check my own phone. Jaz texted: Home. Ally in bed—check.

  My thumbs skim across my phone: Still with Drew.

  Dots show Jaz is writing back: Cam finally letting go—check.

  I give Drew the side-eye as he texts, hunched over the glowing screen of his phone. It seems like yesterday he sat at a desk next to me with the tip of his pen crunched between his teeth. His vibe is the same. We seem to be the same.

  I text back: Cam embarrassing herself—check.

  Just as I begin my inner admonishment of my snortfest, Drew clicks off his phone. “Sorry. Checking in. Mom still thinks I’m twelve.”

  I shrug back. I remember those days of checking in with Nonna. I used to hate it. Now that she’s gone, it’s me who chases after Ally, preaching her same words: All it takes is one minute. I just want to know you’re okay. “I think it’s sweet.”

  “She was lecturing me about being out so late—all through text, with emojis. Sheesh. These parents, they grow up too quickly, you know? Next thing you know, they’ll be on Snapchat,” he says with a wry smile. “She misses me, though, so it doesn’t bother me too much.”

  My interest piques. “Where have you been?”

  “Bunch of places: North Carolina and Tennessee for training. Upstate New York. Texas, most recently.”

  My jaw drops.

  “Yeah. This shirt isn’t a costume.” He smirks.

  “Well, I knew that. I . . .” I can’t find the words. “That’s overwhelming.”

  “It’s not, in hindsight. I did ROTC right here in the city at Bay Area University, was commissioned, and everything kind of flowed from there. I was lucky and scored a deal to get stationed back here in California. First time I’ve been home in about three years. It took some negotiation but—” His face is quizzical. “Why, is that weird?”

  “No.” I jump in to explain myself. “Not at all. Intrigued, I guess. I’m not close with anyone in the military—”

  “So you’re saying we’re close then? This is progress.”

  “Don’t count on it, Bautista.” I attempt to match his laid-back attitude by sinking into my seat, but a slew of questions rise to my lips. It’s as if an extra layer has been painted onto the man in front of me. “Seriously. Do you like it? Being away from home? Going to war?”

  “I want to serve my country. Everything that comes with it is fine with me, for now. But the moves aren’t bad. It’s an excuse to see new places and meet new people. And going to war, well . . .” His voice fades. “I’m actually deploying in about a month—it was one of the contingents to get stationed here. But that’s a long story. I feel like I’ve been doing all the talking. How about you? Where do you work?”

  The subject change is sudden, and somehow nothing of what’s happened to me in the last decade is as momentous as being a soldier and deploying. Nothing, except for one. “My parents died my freshman year, in a car accident. Shortly after, Ally and I moved in with my grandmother. We lived a great life in the Sierra Foothills, but after she died a couple of years ago, my sister and I moved back here, to strike out on our own. Nonna made good money as a chef at a winery, and she was smart with it, so Ally and I are doing fine even though she’s gone. I’m an entrepreneur, but I’ve had the chance to go after that dream only because of my grandmother. So I work my butt off every day. Try to make her proud.”

  My heart seizes with my words. Truth is, Ally and I officially became on our own exactly twenty-six months ago, but sometimes I forget. My brain tricks me, lets me believe my nonna’s out for her walk, or has her hands buried in dirt in her garden. I think I’m fine, that I’m over losing every adult I loved. Then, at times like this, I realize the truth all over again.

  The heart never lets go. The ache, the yearning, it never goes away.

  “I . . . I’m sorry, Cami.”

  When he says my nickname with such tenderness, my cheeks quiver. I told him once I hated being called Cami, and he made it his mission to change my mind about it. So he said it every chance he got. “I am so grateful to have a whole village we count on, like Jaz and the food truck community, but it really sucks not having family.”

  “I get it.” Drew rests a hand in the space between us, palm up. At any other time, with any other person, I would have found this cheesy, a simple ploy to make a pass at me. But this time, with him, it’s the perfect gesture. I rest my palm on his. He closes his hand over mine, a measure of both comfort and protection, and I feel it all over my body. It allows me to take a deep breath, and then to exhale.

  “Would your grandmother have approved of my mac and cheese?” he asks. And sure enough, the memory flies back of him setting off the smoke alarms in the classroom.

  “Burned pasta and all?” I roll my eyes, despite my sudden rush of feelings. “Yeah, she would have, because she’d know you put in the effort.”

  He returns a smile that shows no judgment, and I remember why I liked this guy so much. He knows exactly what to say and when.

  “Coit Tower,” the cabbie says, snapping me out of my melancholy. “I have to stop here. The road’s blocked.”

  “Will you wait for us, sir?” He hands Mr. Lee cash, and the man nods. “Ready?” Drew asks me, his voice daring.

  “Yeah, sure.” I’m glad for the break. So far, our conversations have deviated from first-date typical.

  Stop, Camille. This is not a date.

  “One . . . two . . . three . . .” Drew flies out of his door before I can unbuckle my seat belt. He pops my door open and extends his hand. When I’m tugged into the cold night air, my sad thoughts slip away. The street is blanketed with people. The smell of garlic from the Italian restaurants in North Beach brings up mouthwatering memories of Nonna’s bustling kitchen. With his fingers interlaced in mine, we run up the hill, Drew in the lead. We stop and start, dart left and right, jump over people’s legs stretched out on the sidewalk. And just like that, I’m a little girl again, giggling uncontrollably. I am rejuvenated.

  Drew stops, out of breath, and I fall into him laughing. His eyes flick upward, toward Coit Tower, jutting 210 feet into the sky, on top of a steep hill. Art deco, cylindrical, and glowing white from spotlights and the full moon, it becomes our beacon. “Two hundred yards, max,” he says.

  Our fingers are still entwined and my heart races like a hummingbird’s. Then I remember. “Crap.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “These might pose a challenge.” I gesture downward at my pointy ankle boots. “Two-inch heels. You’re lucky to have gotten that small sprint out of me.”

  “Then I’ll carry you.”

  “No way!” I slog past him. We’re almost at the hill’s crest. My feet are starting to cramp, and my lungs can’t catch up. I attempt to slow my breathing: in through the nose, out through the mouth.

  Drew halts, then points to his back. “Our cabbie’s gonna take my money and run if we keep moving like molasses.”

  “I am not getting on your back.”

  “Yes. Yes you will.”

  “I don�
�t think you can tell me what to do.”

  “My surprise isn’t going to work if we’re late.” He sticks out his bottom lip. “C’mon.”

  Curious, and feeling his urgency, I concede. “Oh . . . fine.” I grab his shoulders from behind and hitch myself onto his back, and all the while I imagine myself as a one-ton elephant. Except he easily hooks his arms around my legs, and instead I feel tiny, like a koala joey on its mother’s back.

  He coughs dramatically. “You have your arm hooked around my neck like a noose.”

  “Start walking or I might be tempted,” I say from above without any true malice. With my legs wrapped around him, temptation is all I feel. It feels too good to be this close to him, and I don’t know if it’s the memory of us together that’s spurring me to tighten my legs around his waist or if I am so desperate for these feelings. Of being giddy and doing something I haven’t planned to a T.

  Drew grunts when we get to the door of the monument. His face is damp and his upper-body muscles are flexed, and I imagine us in a version of this position, naked. Heat shoots between my legs, and I’m so freaking glad he can’t see me. My face is probably glowing red.

  “Are you tired yet?” I tease, but I don’t move to jump off. His grip on my legs hasn’t faltered either, and frankly, I don’t want to let go.

  “You kidding? This is the preworkout. I eat this workout for breakfast. In fact, I can probably do another round.” He turns, but after he takes two steps down the hill, we both realize that going down with me piggybacking may not be a good idea. At the same time he says, “Whoa,” I say, “Let me off!”

  It’s too late. I—we—tip.

  “Wait . . . ease up . . .” he says. He lets go of my feet, and his hands maneuver me so I’m in front, my legs finding safety by wrapping around his waist. In a heroic move that adds an extra scoop of excitement to the adrenaline already coursing through my veins, he breaks my fall with his arm and lands on top of me. We both explode in laughter.

  “You definitely ate this workout.” I relax into the ground because, why the hell not? This has been a dreamy, unpredictable night.

  “Are you okay?” Drew asks. A circular medal on a thin gold chain escaped from his shirt and hovers above my chest. His eyes darken as he searches my face.

  Breathe, Camille, I remind myself. Beg myself. “Uh-huh. Bet this ground’s been stepped on by half the world. I’m pretty sure there will be gum in my hair.”

  “Nope, still perfect.” His hands pat down the top of my head and his fingers thread through my hair, the movement so intimate and gentle that it leaves me breathless. “Can you make it to the top?”

  Swallowing what feels like a ball of rubber bands, I say, “Psh, are you really asking me that?”

  He rolls off and pulls me up to standing. “Then let’s go. We’ve got two minutes.”

  “Two minutes to what?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Seconds later, I meet him at the door of the monument. He’s fiddling with the latch to no avail, so he bumps his shoulders against the glass.

  I point out the obvious. “It’s probably closed, you know?”

  “Har-har.” He nods to my right. “Let’s see if there is another way around.”

  I follow him over a berm, around a low-lying wall, and behind a mural barrier. And then finally—the skyline of the city.

  “Now,” he whispers.

  Above the low hum of the traffic, the people, and the planes passing overhead, a bell chimes. Then two, then three. Soon, surround-sound church bells, signaling the start of the new day, sweep over the breadth of my view.

  “Wow.” With music as my guide, I follow the path of Market Street and the twinkling outline of the Bay Bridge. I scan to the Transamerica Building, which cuts the ombré of the night sky down to the yellow of the city lights. Sights now enhanced, brought to greater depth and meaning.

  “Right?” he whispers next to me.

  “Beautiful.”

  “She is definitely beautiful.”

  My breath hitches at Drew’s statement. He leans back against the barrier, his back to the city lights. His eyes are solely on me.

  This man and I know nothing about each other as adults except for what we’ve revealed in the last hour. He knows nothing of my dreams and hopes. I don’t understand the life he’s chosen. And yet I’m bound to him with leftover feelings that are so innocent and pure, feelings I’m not sure where to place now that they’ve been pulled from memories packed away.

  One thing is sure. Right now is perfect.

  I approach him, place my hands on his chest.

  He rests his fingers lightly on my waist. “Camille—”

  I stop him with a kiss. Tonight has been crazy, magical, fuzzy, and weird, and I don’t want to think about consequences, my overloaded plate of responsibilities, of everything waiting for me down there, in the city below.

  Squashing logic and trepidation, I pull Drew closer and melt into the familiarity and safety of the man who used to be the star of my dreams.

  4

  DREW

  If this were any other woman, in any other place, for any other kind of hookup, I wouldn’t be thinking this much. I’d have simply gone with her flow, allowed our actions to unfold. The relationship consequence would be a nonissue. There wouldn’t be pressure to do right.

  But this is Camille. And with her lips on mine, I can’t stop hoping I’m not messing this up.

  So much of her is still the same. She has the same goodness, determination, and strength. A glance from her strips me of my defenses, as if she can still see through all of my shenanigans. But there’s a lot I don’t know about this woman, like how she takes her coffee. If she ended up learning how to skateboard, or if she got to the top of the Eiffel Tower by graduation. And the big things. Like, did she go to college? What does she do for a living specifically? Where does she live?

  Does someone else have access to these lips, to this kind of intimacy with her?

  I can’t even. That singular thought tenses every muscle in my body. My hold on her waist tightens, making sure my brain isn’t imagining all of this.

  I want to know more. I need to know more.

  Our kiss becomes combustible. Like fire, it spreads through me, all consuming. Our tongues crash and tangle. They spar like hunter and prey, neither backing down. My fingers climb up her neck and embed in her silky hair. With a sigh, she hooks hers around the loop of my jeans and presses our abdomens closer. My body answers back with an erection that’s going to be the death of me if I don’t find release.

  I guide her by her waist, switch places so her back is against the half wall. I lean in while grabbing the underside of her thigh. Although she’s wearing jeans, I can imagine the heat of her skin, fire I want to burn in. My mind wanders to thoughts of us without all of these barriers. Stupid clothes.

  “I don’t think I can be a gentleman for much longer.” I suck in a breath as her hands come forward to the buckle of my belt.

  “I don’t think I asked you to be one.” She jerks me closer.

  “Thank you for the clarification.” My exploring mouth follows wherever my hand touches, tongue grateful for her permission. Camille’s earlobes, the side of her neck, the upper part of her chest. Anywhere exposed I can get to without actually removing clothes.

  Except clothes are definitely coming off now. Her jeans come undone, exposing the curve of her ass. She lifts my shirt and splays her hand on my abs, making every painstaking second of the Army’s physical training worth it. Her shirt flies off, revealing curves I want to discover and taste an inch at a time. I want her scent all over me. Lifting her onto the wall, I kiss my way down her neck, then bury myself in her breasts and breathe in. Sliding my fingers along the inside of her bra, I cup both breasts. So perfect and soft.

  When I’m met with desire in her deep, ebony eyes,
a protectiveness surges through me. I want to be the only one who can give her this kind of pleasure.

  “You are beautiful, Miss Marino.” My voice doesn’t sound like my own. I don’t mean to inject so much awe in my words. That kind of openness is my Kryptonite, but I’ve been knocked off guard.

  She wraps both legs around me while I support her, one arm around her back, and the other below her ass. She pulls my shirt off and brings me to her. Skin against skin.

  At that moment, the skyline screams with a whirl of sirens from a fire truck speeding by. It jolts me awake, bringing my high back down to earth. A clarity descends over me like night vision.

  We’re in public, rounding second base.

  Which is the first step in messing up.

  Get ahold of yourself, Bautista. Breathe.

  “We need to stop.”

  “Wh-what?” Camille pulls back, eyes huge.

  I register her disappointment. So I plant a kiss on her lips, chaste and apologetic. “It’s cold, and we’re outside. Come home with me?”

  “I don’t know—”

  “My apartment is a few blocks from here.” Meeting her eyes, I risk another dare. “It’s not a tourist spot, but it’s got a fantastic view. We don’t have to do anything. We can hang out. Or more. I’m game for that, too.”

  Excruciating seconds pass as I wait for her answer.

  Part 2

  GATHER THE INGREDIENTS

  You don’t have to do everything from scratch. Nobody wants to make puff pastry!

  —Ina Garten

  5

  CAMILLE

  Somewhere, beyond my reach, a muffled buzz snatches me from the dark. It’s a buzz peppered with the sound of bells, incessant and nagging, and it pulls me into the thin fog of consciousness.

  My phone alarm. Which means it’s morning. The day’s thoughts rush to me: my hair in a bun, apron tied securely at my back, feet in patent leather kitchen clogs. The hopeful sound of the truck’s engine turning over.