“Where are we?”
“Just wait.” Cameron purposely parked at the far end of the lot, facing a giant tree so I can’t guess where we are. I know we haven’t left the Outer Banks, but that’s the only hint I’ve been given.
“You ready?” Cameron asks. I nod.
He leads me to a paved trail where three kids are running around, jumping over the single-chain fence lining the path. An older woman—their grandmother, maybe—sits on a bench, taking pictures. We walk past them, over a short hill, and I see it.
The lighthouse stands proud on the shore, the keeper’s house just in front of it, tall reeds flanking both sides. A black spiral reaches around the tower to the top. Beyond it, the ocean is gray and white-capped, the sky a pale blue with wispy clouds stretching across it.
“Wow,” is all I can say.
“Cape Hatteras. You ready to go in?”
“Are you serious?” I bounce on the balls of my feet, making the camera bag swing wildly. It hits my tattoo, and I grimace. “Ow.”
“Let me take that.” Cameron slips the bag from my shoulder and loops it across his chest. We step up to the front of the lighthouse where a man in a tan park services shirt stands waiting.
“We the only ones?” Cameron asks.
The man nods toward the path and says, “I think so. The kids seemed a bit freaked out by the idea of going in.”
Cameron hands the man some money and receives two tickets in return. I almost argue, but my purse is back in the car, and I know Cameron would wave away my money anyway. He’s already made it perfectly clear that he’s ignoring my request to pay for this trip myself. We wait another minute or two for any stragglers, and when no one shows up, the man opens the door.
“I’m Rick by the way,” he says. “I guess I’m your personal tour guide this afternoon. Usually, this tour is self-guided, but I have to check out the lighthouse anyway, to make sure nobody left their stuff behind. Y’all ready to climb? We’ve got two hundred fifty-seven steps ahead of us.”
With that he starts climbing the seemingly endless staircase, and Cameron gestures for me to ascend next. He takes up the rear. We climb and climb and climb, Rick occasionally pointing out bits of the lighthouse walls, telling anecdotes about its construction, but mostly only our breath, heavy, fills the air. Forever we rise, turning and turning and turning, until we can see the lamp at the top. It’s massive, a bulb surrounded by a mirrored casing. Windows circle the walls. We finally spill up onto the platform. I gasp. From up here, the ocean looks eternal. I cross to the eastern window and stare out over the water. A few boats dot the horizon, and I can just make out the shapes of people on the beaches below. “This is amazing.”
“Y’all want to know how the light works?”
“Yeah,” Cameron says immediately, and Rick launches into his explanation. It’s interesting, I’m sure—Cameron is hanging on to Rick’s every word—but I can’t make myself listen. Everything up here is surreal. I buzz with excitement. I can’t believe I’m here, at the top of a lighthouse, living Storm’s dream.
This morning seems so far away already, like parasailing happened a lifetime ago. Without a word, I take Aunt Morgan’s giant camera from Cameron and raise it to my eye, taking more pictures than I’ll ever actually need. Next to me, Cameron snaps even more with his phone.
Cameron steps up next to me, just close enough for our arms to brush. “It’s pretty neat, isn’t it?” I nod.
Rick clears his throat behind us. “I’ve gotta head back down,” he says, “but if you two promise not to stay too long, you can hang out for a minute before I lock up for the evening.”
“Thank you, Rick,” Cameron says.
“And don’t touch the glass.” He turns to leave, but Cameron calls for him to wait.
He holds the Polaroid camera out to Rick. “Would you get a picture for us?”
Nodding, Rick takes the camera, eying it curiously. We stand together beside the giant bulb. I smile, and Rick clicks the shutter. Then he hands the camera back to Cameron and descends the stairs.
Cameron holds the picture at his side, facing toward his pants. We watch the ocean roll beneath us as we wait for the image to develop. After longer than necessary, he turns the picture upward. In it, Cameron is giving me bunny ears, his tongue sticking out.
“Nice,” I say.
“Just keeping it real.”
He’s standing closer now, so close. If I were to lean back, his chest would break my fall. He sets the camera and picture on the ledge, next to an expanse of knobs and buttons. When he draws his arm back, he takes my hand in his, twirling me around to face him.
Has he always been this tall, or is it just because we are so close now? I tilt my head up to see his face. “Today was awesome,” I whisper.
In response, he leans down. His nose brushes against the side of mine, tickling. Our lips meet. The kiss is tentative, hesitant—so soft it’s almost not a kiss at all. Once, twice, three times, his lips feather across mine. And then I melt into him.
He wraps his arms around my waist, holding me tight, and I snake one hand to the back of his head; the other I brace flat against his chest, sandwiched in the warmth between us. My mouth opens, and his tongue slips between my lips.
My heart leaps around my chest, a bird fighting to get free of its cage. I pull Cameron’s lower lip into my mouth, teasing it with my teeth, and he groans softly, the sound vibrating into my palm.
When we break apart, my hands are shaking. “Whoa,” I whisper.
“Yeah.”
“We should, um… we should get going.”
“Yeah,” he says again. He bends down and places one last soft kiss on my lips before, hand in hand, we descend the lighthouse stairs.
Chapter 23
#5: Meet my soulmate. Fall in love.
The words stare at me from my lap. I’m curled up in a chair next to the window, the curtain propped open just enough for me to see the notebook pages in the light from the streetlamps. Cameron is on the bed snoring softly, one arm thrown over the empty space on my side of the bed. The clock next to him reads 5:22 a.m.
I can’t sleep.
After we left the lighthouse yesterday, we spent the rest of the afternoon and evening on the beach. We played in the ocean, made sandcastles. Made out in the waves, our bodies slick against one another, salt water bobbing around our shoulders. For dinner we went to a seafood restaurant near the beach, sat at a window overlooking the sound, and ate by candlelight. The day was perfect—the evening, if possible, better. Back at the hotel, we fell into bed and tangled in the sheets, our lips hungry for each other. We kissed deep into the night, the rush of excitement keeping us awake until, finally, we drifted off in each other’s arms.
Then I woke up, and anxiety set in. What was I thinking? This was Cameron. The boy next door—Storm’s best friend.
My lips are still tender with the memory of his kisses, but my stomach is knotted, tight, with what we’ve done. How could we, even for a moment, get so lost in each other that we forgot her?
The sheets rustle. Cameron rolls over, his eyes barely open. They lock on me, briefly, then squint at the clock. “What are you doing up?” he asks, his voice thick with sleep.
“Couldn’t sleep.”
He pulls the covers open. “Come here.” His smile is soft and sleepy, and his eyes unfocused.
I look at the journal again. Meet my soulmate. Why are those words crossed out, replaced with Fall in love? They are so similar, but a million miles apart, too. I’ve never really believed in the idea of soulmates, of just one person for each of us, but Storm must have. Why else would she have written that?
“Anna?”
I’m standing before I even know what I’m doing, crossing the small room and crawling into his arms. His embrace is warm. Safe. His lips press to the top of my head, and I lay my cheek against his chest, listen to his heartbeat, steady and slow. I lace my leg between his and draw circles on his shoulder with my finger.
“What’s going on?” he asks. I feel the question, rumbling through his chest below me, more than hear it.
“Nothing.”
“Anna?”
“Just thinking about Storm,” I say.
His breathing stops only for a second, but it’s long enough for me to notice. My finger freezes midcircle.
He clears his throat. “Is it because Storm and I… because we?…”
My heart stops, stalls in my chest, and then jump-starts into high gear. How could I have forgotten? Storm and Cameron were in bed how we are now, tangled together, skin to skin, sweaty… he said almost, that it didn’t actually happen, but still.
I bolt upright, extracting myself from his arms. I run to the bathroom. Locking the door, I sit on the toilet lid, my elbows on my knees and my hands in my hair. My stomach roils. I focus on my breath.
A soft rap sounds at the door. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I manage to say, my voice shaky. “Just not feeling so great.”
“Can I get you something?”
“No. I’ll be out in a minute.”
I wait for five before I splash cold water on my face, force myself to pull it together. It’s just Cameron. So we kissed. It’s not like neither of us has kissed someone before. This doesn’t have to be a big deal. Last night was an accident, a fluke, a combination of adrenaline and high emotions coming together into something that never should’ve happened. It’s in the past, and now we can move on to finish the list. I can do this.
But when I walk out of the bathroom and see him sitting on the bed in his pajamas, with one side of his hair sticking up, a look of concern etched on his face, there’s a tug, a lurch, deep in my gut, and excitement rises in me. I can’t help it.
“Better?”
“Yeah. Sorry.” I sit next to him, lean into his side as he wraps an arm around me. My breathing becomes a bit quicker, shallower. This shouldn’t be happening, I know, but it is. I’m falling for Cameron Andrews. And despite the thousand reasons I shouldn’t, despite freaking out just moments before, I let myself.
“You wanna drive?” Cameron asks after we leave the hotel lobby. He dangles the car keys in front of me, one eyebrow raised comically high. I snatch them from his grasp and run to the car, leaving him behind.
I’m already in the driver’s seat, the car rumbling around me as Cameron stows our bags in the trunk. He climbs into the seat next to me then leans across the midconsole and gives me a quick kiss. “Where to now?”
I shrug. “South? We’re bound to get to Carolina Beach eventually, right?”
“Sounds good to me.”
I kill the engine three times trying to back out of our spot, then once more while leaving the parking lot, but eventually we make it onto the road. The drive through town is brutal—this place has more stop signs than any tiny beach hamlet should—but I manage to get us all the way to the highway without any more problems. I smile smugly at Cameron.
It lasts for about an hour, this easy driving, until I slow down for a truck. The car shudders, reminding me to downshift. Clutch to the floor, I pull the car from fourth to third.
The grinding sound is horrible.
I try again, and I hear the same grind. I push the gearshift back to fourth, but the result is no better.
“Clutch,” Cameron says groggily.
“I’m pushing the clutch!” Panic is rising in me. I pump the clutch, trying any gear I can. Finally, with a hiccup, the car pops into second. It jumps forward, the engine revving. Automatically, I shove the clutch to the floor again. Braking, I pull to the side of the road.
The car jumps in the gravel, and I stomp on the pedal even harder. I’m about to shove it through the floorboard and, just as I’m sure the engine is going to die, Cameron pops the stick shift out of gear and into neutral. We stop, the engine rumbling softly.
“What just happened?” Cameron asks.
Setting the parking brake, I lean back and press my palms to my eyes. “I have no idea. Everything was fine, but then it just started to freak out.”
“What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything!” I yell.
Cameron eases my hands from my face. “Calm down. I’m not saying you did anything wrong. I just need to know what happened so I can try to figure out what’s going on with the car.”
“I was just driving along, and then this truck was going really slow, so I tried to downshift, and…”
Cameron is nodding slowly. “Press the clutch,” he says.
I do. Once it’s to the floor, Cameron works through the gears, trying out every one and producing that same metallic grind in each. “Clutch is out.”
“What does that mean? We’re just stuck here?”
“No. But it does mean I need to drive now, okay?”
We switch seats without speaking, and Cameron kills the engine and puts the car into first gear. He signals and waits for traffic to lighten up. Finally, he says, “Ready?” I nod, and he starts the engine.
The car rolls slowly at first then jumps forward onto the road. When Cameron shifts to second, the gears grind again, so he waits a moment and tries again. The stick pops into gear. The car shakes a little, but we keep moving. The transitions to third and fourth gears go smoothly, and we’re back on the road.
“You are a genius.”
“I try.” He reaches across the console and wraps my hand in his. I turn mine over, and our fingers intertwine, our hands resting on my upper thigh. “I think I saw a sign back there for New Bern. We can make a pit stop and see if we can get the car fixed.”
“You can’t keep driving it like this? Seems to be working.”
“It’s too hard on the transmission. It’ll get us to town, but we shouldn’t try to push it too far until we can get a new clutch.”
Cameron revs the engine high whenever he needs to downshift, moving the stick slowly until it pops into gear when he upshifts. It takes us two hours to get to New Bern, and once there, we stop at the first mechanic’s shop we pass.
It’s a small shop with just enough room for two garage bays and a lobby housing three chairs. One bay has an old pickup lifted in it, and the other is, happily, empty. Cameron pulls the car in front of the empty bay, careful to pop it into neutral before shutting off the engine.
Almost immediately, a weather-beaten man in greasy coveralls is standing next to the car. “What can I do ya for?” he asks once we are out of the car.
“Clutch went out between here and the Outer Banks,” Cameron explains. “Any chance you can squeeze us in for a fix?”
“What year?”
“1970.”
The man whistles. “That’s a great car you got there, kid. We don’t see many of these old Carlos around here. We’re kinda swamped, though. Y’all got a couple days?”
Cameron looks at the empty bay then at me, and I nod. What other choice do we have? We could look for another shop, but the car was acting pretty shaky by the time we rolled into town, and I’m not sure how much farther we should push it.
We follow the man into the lobby and watch as he navigates through several screens on the computer. “All right,” he says after a couple minutes. “We can get a new clutch here pretty easy, but it’s going to be Monday morning before we can get the work done. Maybe Sunday if we’re lucky.”
I look at the open sign hanging on the front door, standard Monday–Friday hours listed on it, with Saturdays by appointment only. “Are you open on Sunday? I don’t want you to have to come in just for us.”
“Oh yeah. We don’t take new cars, but we got a guy who’s one of those Seventh-day Adventists. Does the church stuff on Saturday, so he comes in on Sundays to finish up extra work.”
“Sounds good,” Cameron says. “How much is this going to cost us?”
“The part’ll run you about one-fifty, and I’m guessing labor will be about four hundred unless we find something in there that causes problems.”
In the back of my mind, I can see the money draini
ng from my savings account. The credit card Mom and Dad gave me a year ago is in my purse if things get desperate, but they’ll see anything I charge, so it’s not an option I want to pursue.
Cameron passes our keys to the man and the three of us walk out to the car to get our bags as he points out a place down the street, where we can catch a bus that’ll take us into the center of town. We walk toward the bench he indicated, and I pull out my phone.
“Hey, banana!”
“Hey, Aunt Morgan,” I say, my voice not nearly as chipper as hers. “We’re in New Bern.”
“Wow. Don’t sound too excited about that.”
“The clutch went out,” I say, “so we’re stuck here for a couple days.”
“Ouch. That sounds expensive.”
“Yeah. Hey… can you maybe look for a room for us? Something not too expensive? We’re waiting for a bus but we have no idea where we’re actually going, and I really don’t want to deal with it right now.” After Bender House, it’s easier to have Aunt Morgan rent for us anyway.
“Sure thing. How long do you think you’ll be there?”
“The mechanic said they won’t finish till Monday, so through the weekend, I guess.”
“All right. I’ll figure something out. Talk to you soon.”
“Thanks, Aunt Morgan.” I hang up and drop my phone into my purse. Cameron is rubbing my arm, soft strokes on my bare skin. I snuggle closer to him. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“You better be,” he says with a laugh, “or you would’ve been completely stranded back there.”
“Shut up. Not just because of that.” I crane my neck, reaching my lips for his, and kiss him, soft and slow.
My phone ringing breaks us apart, and I scramble to get it, heat flooding my cheeks.
“Hey, what’d you find?” My voice is breathless.
“Okay, so rooms around New Bern are hard to find. But I got you one at the Bradham B&B.”
“Bed and Breakfast? How expensive is that going to be?”
“Don’t worry about it. My treat.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
Someone Else's Summer Page 14
