Finding Dell (13 page)

“Can I take you out to breakfast tomorrow?”

I hesitated.
I’m not a consolation prize
, I thought.

I replied, “I’ll see what I think in the morning.”

Readjusting my cold fingers on my umbrella, I held it above my head and turned to walk away. I knew I wasn’t reacting right, even at the moment. After a few steps, I stopped and looked over my shoulder.

His back was turned to me. The streetlight glowed a vibrant violet, and the rain looked almost velvety.

Cam whipped his umbrella into the street, catching his palm on a broken spoke. Even at the distance, I could see blood gush from his palm, pooling with rainwater and falling freely from his empty hand. I saw him wince, either from the cut or the cold.

Just as Cam had stopped and looked into my eyes for so many moments before, unable to say anything, I stood on the sidewalk staring after him. Rain ricocheted off my umbrella and the tender nylon bent, threatening to cave in with the pressure.

I ignored the cold rainwater seeping steadily into my shoes as I watched Cam walk away from me. My heart folded in on itself with every inch his shoulders slumped to the wet pavement.

Feeling my heart ache in my chest made me realize that I had
feelings for Cam.
Why didn’t I tell him I could be with him?
I wondered. If Cam and I had been actors in a movie, he’d followed the script and I refused to take the romantic cues. It was a movie moment—not perfectly choreographed, but the raw emotion was there.

I couldn’t tell if I was just changing my mind about him because he was trying so hard, or if my affection was genuine. I wondered what to trust when I couldn’t trust my own feelings.

Long after Cam walked out of view, I stood on the sidewalk staring at the broken umbrella in the street, reconsidering every action I had just taken, replaying our conversation in my head.

Eventually, I realized I was shivering and I turned in the direction of Paso Fino. I entered the room and glanced around, grateful that Natalie was out. I stripped off my soaked clothes, leaving them to form a dripping pool on the lavender rug.

In the bathroom, I turned the faucet to the hottest water setting and sat down on the floor of the shower stall. My naked knees awkwardly knocked over a can of shaving cream and a tube of conditioner, both lining the walls of the yellow tiled shower.

I let the hot water warm me as the steam formed a heavy fog in the small bathroom. I felt like the right thing to do was to cry. I wanted to make sure I knew I was making a mistake by letting Cam walk away.

Consider your options
, I thought.
Who are you waiting for?

My mind flicked over to Will. Will, who I hadn’t even spoken to since I’d seen him at Dean’s party, when he was oblivious to the girl on his lap fondling his perfect hair. Will, who forgot to tell me he wasn’t moving into Paso Fino as we had planned.

I let the hot water wash over me as I tried to figure out why I couldn’t let Will go, and why I’d let a romantic hero walk away into the rain without a word of dissent.

I settled on a time last spring, when I lay in bed with Will. He played songs on his computer while I adjusted his fan, trying to get the best angle so he would be cool during the night but so I wouldn’t get chilly from the insistent breeze. Finally content with the song and the position of the fan, we settled into a comfortable cuddle.

“This is my favorite song,” I murmured into his shoulder.

He took my hand under the navy sheets. “I know,” he said.

When the song ended, he shook loose from my embrace and kneeled in front of the glowing computer screen once again.

“What are you looking for?” I asked sleepily.

Will turned and looked up at me for a long moment before he closed his laptop abruptly and crawled back into his spot between me and the fan.

“Nothing. I have everything I’m looking for right here.”

The hot water still pounded on my knees, my shoulders, my back. It plastered my long hair over my eyes and I couldn’t tell the difference because I was still crying. I didn’t make a sound, but inside my mind screamed with objections and contradictions about everything I thought about what was right with Will.

My mind was so loud that I didn’t hear the bathroom door crack open from Ruby’s side of the dorm.

“Dell?” a timid voice carried through the water.

I didn’t respond.

“Sweetie, it’s none of my business, but I know you’re crying in here. Come into my room when you’re ready and we’ll talk.” A pause. “Hey, Madeleine? I love you, and you’re strong enough to handle any shit these guys throw at you.”

Ruby eased the door shut again. I started to ease myself up until I was standing, leaning against the yellow wall while the scalding water beat down on a different expanse of skin. I
grabbed one of Natalie’s shampoos and lathered my hair slowly, thoughtfully. Images of men floated in my mind, disjointed phrases of speech and text messages blurred together, and I felt like everything was a desperate jumble of uncertainty and longing and bad choices.

I thought back to when Ruby told me I was addicted to Will, hooked on the feeling he gave me. When I thought of junkies, I pictured them cold and shivering in an alley, battered by their strong cravings and weak willpower. But how different was I from them right now? Crying on the shower floor, I felt desperate and weak, aching for the thing that made me happy once. I felt like a victim, but I didn’t know who to blame. Was it anyone’s fault but my own that I was too optimistic about love? I thought about what Will would think if he saw me now.
Pathetic and needy
, I thought.
No wonder he left me
.

A few minutes later, I pulled aside the chevron-printed shower curtain and toweled off, slipping into my bathrobe that I’d left on the hook behind the door. Instead of returning to my room, I let myself into Ruby’s room.

I curled up into a ball on the extra bed belonging to her dropout roommate, my wet hair painting the sheets a deeper blue where my troubled head lay.

Ruby got up from her desk chair and pulled a fleece blanket from her bed. She draped the blanket over me and flicked the lights off before she returned to her desk, where she turned on her desk light and resumed studying in the dim glow, to the muffled sounds of my whimpering cries until I fell into an uneasy sleep.

Tiny silver pellets shimmered like metallic confetti on the large window in Ruby’s room. The heavy rain from the night had subsided, but the skies were still gray.

I tossed and turned all night. Fitful sleep clouded my mind like the sky outside. I was more confused than ever on what to do about Cam.

I woke up earlier than usual for a Saturday morning and tiptoed through the bathroom to my room.

Natalie lay on top of her bedcovers, fully dressed, phone in hand as she slept.
She must have come home last night and fallen asleep waiting for a call from Jesse
, I thought. She spent most nights with him; whether she was ingratiating herself with him or just avoiding me, I didn’t know. A vulnerability touched her as she slept. For a moment, I wanted to wake her and tell her about last night and wait for her knowing hug, the type she would have given last year when I never wondered if we were best friends, when it was a given.

A sudden longing overtook me and I reached for my phone.
I’ll only go with Cam if Will doesn’t answer
, I bargained. I dialed Will and held a hand over the phone to muffle the endless, mocking ring. When his voicemail message clicked on and I heard his familiar drawl, I winced, instantly regretting the call. I tossed the phone onto the bed.

I padded to the closet, bundled my arms with clothes, and returned to Ruby’s room to wait for Cam’s inevitable call. He would insist on his breakfast invitation if only to overshadow my hesitation the night before.

Cam picked me up in his beige Saturn a few minutes late. The car shuddered to a stop and a worrisome clanking persisted as he drove through campus.

He didn’t say much, but he poked the radio buttons every few seconds.

Making an enormous effort to avoid the subject of last night, the rain, or the engineering building, I flitted from topic
to topic, willing myself to relax. At this rate, I would run out of things to talk about before breakfast.

Once we parked and were seated in Mary Lou’s Diner on the Pass, Cam started to relax. Over pancakes and orange juice and sausage we talked about how his roommate, Gus, studied aviation flight, and how ambitious he was until he discovered online gaming earlier in the semester. We talked about how pretentious Cam’s cinema classmates were, and shared anecdotes of the curiosities of the artistic. We talked about how passionate Natalie was about horses and equine science, dedicated enough to move cross-country to study it.

“I enjoy graphic design, but I don’t know that I’m as committed to it as Natalie is to equine science. I just don’t have that level of passion.”

Cam leaned forward over his syrupy plate.

“Dell, everything about your energy screams passion. With Natalie, I bet you can see her eyes light up when she talks about horses. With you, your eyes light up when you talk about everything. You’re wholly passionate about life. For you to lose your passion would be a fatality.”

I watched Cam’s eyes light up across the table and realized, at that moment, I was his passion.

“What moves you, Cam?”

He held my gaze as his lips curved into a mischievous, childlike smile. He reached into his wallet and set a bill onto the table. He pushed himself up from the Formica tabletop, his chair scraping the linoleum of the small diner.

“Hop in the car and I’ll show you.”

In the car, he got in the driver’s seat and leaned across the passenger’s side, opening the door for me from the inside.

I gave him a curious look and got in. He began to drive, his foot on the gas before I had even fully closed the door.

● ● ●

The sun struggled to break free from the clouds all afternoon, never quite succeeding. Oaks and hickories were wet with rain from the night before, the ground deeply saturated. Deer threatened to jump out on the winding road through the forest that led to a small grove with a parking lot nearby.

We walked across the cracked macadam onto a gravel path, carefully avoiding the wet, waving grass. We walked in step for several minutes. I fell back to let Cam lead the way and followed him through the path lined with bending brush until we reached a large clearing with a water tower. Cam walked to the tower and gestured to a staircase that wound around the thick base.

“You want me to go up there?” I asked, eyeing the tall structure. “I’m getting dizzy just tilting my head that far back to look at it!”

Cam laughed and headed up the narrow staircase despite my reluctance.

“Just hold onto the handrail and you’ll be fine.”

He made his way up the slender stairs with confidence while I hesitated a few steps behind him, clutching the rail tighter with each step.

When we got to the top, Cam led me to the guardrail at the edge of the water tower. The wind was stronger at this height, and also colder. It whipped my long hair into my face, but I refused to let go of the rail to smooth it back behind my ear.

When I finally lifted my eyes from the steel grating on the platform floor, my breath caught in my throat. I could see for miles. The trees looked like colorful sprinkles on a lush evergreen-hued backdrop. It was November, and while all the leaves would have fallen a month ago up north, here deep reds and sultry ambers flirted with chocolate limbs as stubborn trees refused to give up their leaves. The sun tried to make one last
break through the clouds, its most valiant effort of the day. Afternoon rays glinted off the glimmering leaves, and the forest hummed with vibrancy.

“This is my favorite place in the world,” Cam said softly, interrupting my silent awe. “You asked what moves me. This is it.”

I cast a sidelong glance at Cam, studying his profile. His dark hair ruffled in the wind. The grays of the overcast sky accentuated his thoughtful eyes and my heart twisted in confusion. Why couldn’t I figure out how I felt about him? Staring at him now, I felt like I barely knew him.

“What do you want to be when you grow up, Cam?”

A filmmaker, I guessed. A traveler, maybe; Cam seemed the type to embark on a solo trip around the world and write a soul-searching, best-selling memoir about it later.

“A dad,” he said. “I want enough kids to make a soccer team. A gaggle of kids.”

I turned my head, willing eye contact with him, but he gazed out at the crawling landscape, toward the mossy crags and cliffs that seemed so uncharacteristic of the Midwest but which defined northern Kentucky.

“Dell, I want you to know,” he started, “that I’m planning to break it off over Thanksgiving, and I don’t want that to be for nothing.”

I sucked in a deep breath and gripped the handrail, unable to make eye contact with him anymore. His boldness startled me, but I appreciated his straightforward, take-charge attitude.

“I’m not nothing,” I whispered.

“No, you’re everything. You’re everything I’ve been looking forward to,” Cam said.

He turned to me, but I kept my face to the wind and my hair whipped around my eyes, obscuring my view of the towering
trees with flaming leaves. I closed my eyes and listened to the howling wind while I felt Cam’s eyes bore into me, searching for something. His hand rested on my arm.

“I wasn’t ready for you at first. I need a second chance.”

“I don’t know if I give second chances.”

It was a lie. I’d given Alex more than one chance, and I would give Will a thousand second chances if things would work out with him.

“If you won’t give me a second chance, then I’m not done with my first yet.” Cam took my hand. “Dell, when we get back from Thanksgiving break, everything will change.”

I looked from his hand, the unfamiliar hand that I didn’t expect to hold mine, to the variegated leaves on the trees below the water tower, and I chose to believe him. At that moment, I realized that change is the constant and if I loosened my grip on the past I might have a chance at enjoying the moment.