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For the next hour, we open boxes and separate. Sometimes Camden calls out the contents to me if he’s not sure what to do with it.
“There’s a bunch of paperbacks by some author named Johanna Lindsey,” he says.
I nod my head toward the donate pile. “Those are old romance books of mine. I read digitally now.”
“Romance, huh?” Camden says, picking one with Fabio on the cover, his hair blowing in the wind as he stares down at a busty temptress in his arms. “Any good?”
“Oh yeah,” I say as I flip through some old tax returns, deeming them too old to keep. I put them aside as they’ll need to be shredded.
“I’ve got Christmas decorations in these boxes.” I look up from my task to see Camden has five boxes before him. “I’m going to put them on one of the lower shelves so you can easily get them down.”
“That works.” I lift another box onto the counter so I don’t have to bend over. I lift the lid carefully, afraid of spiders but luckily it’s too cold. Inside I see a bunch of photos I’d printed over the years using an online service. Many I put in picture frames, but I always went overboard and would store the others, promising myself I’d make scrap albums one day.
I pull one of the packets out and flip through them. It’s Travis’s fifth birthday party. We had it at the house and because he’s a July kid, it was a pool party. There are several action shots of Travis and his dad doing cannonballs, kids chasing each other with water guns and a huge sheet cake with Travis blowing out the candles.
Setting it aside, I pull out another envelope and lift the flap cover. I find photos of a winter girls’ weekend I went on with some of the other hockey wives to Miami. I think I was probably twenty-one, maybe twenty-two. Some of those wives left when their husbands got traded, others when their husbands died in the plane crash. I flip through the photos of us in sexy dresses, out clubbing for the night. Others with us on the beach, sipping fruity cocktails. That was so much fun and I miss things like that.
The next envelope is a Titans’ party. I can’t remember what it was for, but everyone’s dressed up, the men in suits and the ladies in cocktail dresses. I flip through them and halt on one of Mitch and Camden together.
“Hey… look at this,” I say as I pull it free.
Camden comes up behind me, looking over my shoulder as I hand him the photo. I continue flipping through and lo and behold, there’s one of Camden, Mitch and Hendrix together. I hand that one back without looking at him, feeling the glossy photo slide from my grasp as he takes it.
I pull the rest of the pictures free and turn to face Camden. I lean back against the countertop as I flip through them. “Here’s Brienne and Adam.”
Camden takes it, a smile forming. “You should give her a copy of this.”
“Totally. And you should keep that one of you and Mitch.”
Shaking his head, Camden hands me the pictures. “No, I couldn’t.”
“I insist.” I take the photos, pull the one of him and Mitch and force it back on him.
He nods almost imperceptibly as he accepts it and my head dips back down as I thumb through others. I share them one at a time as we reminisce.
“This was a charity dinner for the Boys and Girls Club,” Camden says. “Remember… someone hired that really weird magician to perform.”
“Oh my God,” I say, a cackle escaping my mouth. “And remember he tried to use Teemu’s wife as his assistant and she freaked out when he told her he was going to saw her in half?”
Camden laughs at the memory. “She didn’t speak the greatest English and I think it was a mistake for him to mime what he was going to do with the saw.”
I laugh so hard I almost pee, remembering how Motina shrieked. “And then Teemu got upset because he wasn’t sure what was going on.”
“Apparently they don’t have many magicians in Lithuania.” Camden chortles.
I drag a knuckle under my eye because tears are forming from laughing so hard and my eyes lock with Camden’s. There’s a quiet between us right now that feels like the fizz of champagne bubbles. Leftover happiness from good memories buzzing around.
Smiling, I straighten the photos to slide them back into the envelope. “I love good memories.”
“Yeah,” Camden says gruffly as he turns away, tucking the photo I gave him in the back pocket of his jeans. “Sometimes I forget about them, though.”
“It can be hard to pull them forth,” I commiserate. “Especially when our thoughts are overflowing with so many other things.”
“Hmm,” he says, bending over to grab one of the Christmas boxes. He doesn’t say anything else and I watch him a moment. He’s purposely checking out of the conversation.
“How have you been doing?” I ask bluntly.
Camden places the box on a shelf and faces me. “What do you mean?”
