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“Cameron—”
My phone starts ringing. I peer over to see my mom’s face, and my stomach clenches. She’s video chatting me. Reaching over, I pull on the sweater I had on yesterday and then grab my phone. As soon as I can see her on the screen, I say, “Merry Christmas!”
“Merry Christmas!” She and Dad say at the same time.
“I wish you were with us,” Mom says, pouting.
Cameron sneaks off the bed. You can clearly see the pillows and headboard behind me, so I suppose it would be a bad thing if he video chatted with me. I’m sure that would stir up questions.
“Speaking of that,” my father says. The phone shakes as he takes it. “Mom and I want to buy you a plane ticket so you can fly home tomorrow. Flights are going in and out again.”
“Oh,” I say, gaze darting toward Cam. He’s standing by the side of the bed facing away from me. “You’re not flying out here?”
“We got thinking about it, and Christmas is over. I’d rather come in the summer, so we don’t have to deal with all the flight issues.”
My mouth goes dry. “But Grandma Junie,” I retort. “Plus, it’s really beautiful in the winter. Cam—Uncle Cam took me to the winter fair, and the town is so—”
“Won’t they be taking all that down soon though?” Mom asks. “I mean, the holiday is practically over.”
I glance toward Cameron. He’s not even looking at me. He’s just standing there. I can’t see his face. I can’t tell what he’s feeling. Or thinking. Nothing. As for me, I’m freaking out. I’m suddenly faced with reality, and I don’t want to be. “I mean, probably,” I tell her. “But I have no idea.”
“Oh,” my dad says. He reaches out of view of the camera and brings up a letter. It takes several tries, but he finally gets it centered in front of the screen. “This came for you.” It’s a letter from my school. “Do you want us to open it?”
“Sure,” I say, biting my lip. My skin feels like it’s crawling. This isn’t how I wanted this morning to go down. Now, my parents aren’t coming. They’re talking about me leaving, which we wereallsupposed to be leaving in a few days anyway, but that was before all of this happened. I’d put leaving out of my mind the last couple of days.
Dad gets the letter open and starts reading. “It says something about a TA position. Congratulations, you’ve been selected to—” he starts to read.
“You’re kidding!” I shout, my body vibrates for a completely different reason. I’d almost forgotten I’d applied for that teaching assistant position because I thought it was a longshot.
“Nope,” my father says, pushing his glasses back up his nose. “It’s from a Professor Warren.”
“Oh my God,” I say, kicking my feet and smiling. He’s one of the most decorated professors in my department.This is amazing!
I peer over at Cameron to see that he’s finally turned to stare at me. He has a soft smile on his face, but it looks sad.
I take a deep breath to calm myself down.
This is good. Great even, so why do I feel like shit right now?
twenty
Cam hasn’t askedme if I’m going home yet. I dodged about ten calls from my mom because I’m sure she wants an answer. Christmas day was full of this strained sort of co-existence between him and me. We laughed. We joked. We made dinner together and fed the guests a proper Christmas meal, but there was this underlying talk that needs to be had that kept everything just short of perfect.
Football was on the TV all day. And I meanallday. Watching him watch football was an experience. He said words I didn’t even know existed. His passion for the game is certainly still there.
Later that night, he took me to bed again, but as I feel the bed next to me now, the sun’s rays shining in through the window, he’s not here. There’s no morning coffee or feeling him pull me tight to his chest. However, I can sniff out bacon, which is odd since the last time he attempted to make bacon all by himself, he burnt the crap out of it.
I force myself to get out of bed. My brain feels like mush. After checking my phone, I see that my mom has already called me this morning. I’m stuck. Half of me wants to stay. Half of me wants to go. Since I got this TA position, it’s possible they’ll want me to return to campus early. I might only have days.
I know what I need to do. I know what old Lilianne would do, but I’m procrastinating. I’m…just not into it.
Hurrying in the shower, I get ready in record time and speed walk to the kitchen with my hair still wet. I push the door open and stop in my tracks. A woman stands in the kitchen cutting up potatoes. She glances up, and I recognize her as the cook who was leaving the first day I got here. “Good morning, Honey. I’ll have breakfast right out.”
“Oh, I’m not—” I cut myself off. I was going to say, I’m not a guest, but is that what I am now? “I’m Cameron’s niece,” I tell her, and my tongue feels like it’s stuck to the roof of my mouth, not wanting the words to come out. These last couple of days, I was so much more, and it felt so right.
“That’s right,” she says happily. “I forgot you would be here. You’re the one who must have helped him through things here because Lord knows he wouldn’t have been able to do it himself.” She laughs softly to herself and shakes her head. “Well, this morning, you get to have me do it all, so why don’t you go take a seat at one of the tables?”
She’s just trying to be nice, but for some reason, it feels like she stabbed a knife into my gut. Turning, I walk back into the dining room. The door swings closed, and I stare at the empty tables, almost lost.
