Sick Day (21 page)

4:45 PM

B
ack at the Yacht Club, I thank Josh for his help today. While I carry on a quick and light-hearted conversation with him about my impending unemployment, I notice that Hope and Gordo have started walking toward the Tesla. Unable to trust their conversation, I finish up with Josh and hurry off.

“Hey, Cam!” Josh calls after me.

I glance back at him and notice the big smile on his face.

“Good luck.”

Waving my appreciation, I continue after Gordo and Hope. I reach them a few feet from the car, sliding into position next to Hope. Their chat fades into silence.

“Hope I’m not interrupting anything,” I blurt.

More silence.

At the Tesla, Gordo fiddles with his iPhone, and the door handles pop out. But before he pulls on his to get inside, he throws me an upward nod and asks where he’s taking us next. “The day is almost over, Cam.”

Hope slides into the passenger seat and shuts her door, not all that interested in hearing where our conversation will lead or how it will end.

Gordo laughs, shaking his head at me. He pats the roof of the car that nearly ended his marriage three years ago.

“Such an optimist, Gordo,” I tell him, sighing.

“You don’t really think she’s going to miss her flight next week, do you?” he asks me, his eyebrows tightening toward the bridge of his nose.

“She’s mine.” But I’m not so sure about my own words.

“No,” he says, shaking his head with a condescending grin on his face. “In fact, she’s not yours, Cam. She’s her own woman. Maybe that’s why you’re setting yourself up for failure.” He reaches down for the door handle. “I’m not sticking around, wherever it is that I’m dropping you two off. I’m done. And next week, once she gets on that plane and you’re stuck at home with nothing but a Visa bill that you can’t pay because your over-schooled ass got greedy for some sour derivative positions…” He shakes his head again, the disgust obvious. “You’re on your own, Cam. You know Riley doesn’t deserve this.”

“You’re right,” I say, my voice tightening into a narrow hiss. “Riley doesn’t deserve this. She doesn’t. But neither do I. And until I’m with Hope, the real Cam, the real
me
doesn’t exist. What’s so hard to understand about that?”

He points at me, annoyed. “You really don’t know how stupid you are, do you?” He shakes his head. “I hope Riley never comes back, that she doesn’t give you a second—no, a
third
chance. That girl is a fucking angel, and you’re doing this. It’s pathetic, a shame.”

“I have nothing to say to that, except you’re right. Riley won’t come back to me. And that’s probably why she left. She knows. And she’s done sharing.”

He chuckles. “Yeah. Sharing you with someone who doesn’t want you. Smart move.” He opens his door, indicating the end to our conversation.

I glance back toward Josh’s boat and see him sweeping the deck, tidying up like he can’t afford to pay someone to do that kind of grunt work for him. I feel alone in this moment, my heart beating a mile a minute as I reach down and open the rear passenger side door. Sliding into the cool cabin, I refuse to look in the mirror where I know I’ll find Gordon’s prying glare.

“Where to, Cam?” he asks, point-blank.

Staring out the window, I remember that split-decision moment when I returned home to Riley after my trip to Miami three years ago. I wonder how my life would look today had I taken a different approach, namely the one that involved apologizing rather than asking for Riley’s forgiveness. If I had decided to chase Hope back then, I would not be mentally preparing myself for these two things in my imminent future: the goodbye Hope has never said to me and the divorce papers that Riley will inevitably send.

“Cam, are you awake back there?” He taps the steering wheel in impatience.

Without moving my attention from the window, I rely on my mistakes from three years ago to give everyone else what they want. “The train station,” I say. “It’s getting late. Hope needs to get home.”

} i {

High School

T
he summer before college, I came to two interesting conclusions about myself. The first was I would never love anyone quite as much as I loved Hope McManus. The second happened somewhere between the blowjob in the front seat of my father’s Jeep Grand Cherokee and the crème brulee dessert at Olive Garden, where we decided to share our last meal as an uneducated couple. For us, this was a nice dinner because it wasn’t fast food.

“You’re pretty calm about all of this,” I told her, feeding her a chunk of the dessert’s hard surface layer. The way she took my spoon into her mouth and closed her eyes made me want her again. She had a magical way about her, a way that made the rest of the world around us disappear. Whenever we were together, all I saw was Hope and her beauty.

“You belong to me,” she said once she swallowed what was in her mouth, grabbing my hand and giving it a firm squeeze. With her other hand, she stroked each of my fingers, leaving a numbing tingle in the wake of each pass.

Hope raised her attention, locking her eyes on mine. Despite all of her confidence, I saw her insecurities; I had spent most of our high school career loving each one of them and proving to her that they made me love her even more fiercely than I had before she shared them with me.

“And you belong to me,” I replied, my throat a little tight. Damn, she hid those insecurities a lot better than I could.

“Don’t forget it, Cameron.” She released my hand and quickly claimed the spoon, scooping the last of the crème
brulee into her mouth.

“
Goob!” I said, maybe a little too loudly, but her evil laughter eclipsed whatever disruption my name-calling may have caused.

After paying the bill, we left the restaurant with my arm around her waist and hers around me. The older couples we passed in the front waiting area smiled at us like I was the high school quarterback with the lead cheerleader on his arm. We were no such thing.

“I love you, Cameron,” she said, giggling. “And someday, you’ll be my husband.”

I kissed the side of her head. “That day won’t come soon enough.”

“Five years isn’t a long time.” She rolled her eyes at me.

“Long enough.”

I opened the Grand Cherokee’s passenger door, but before she climbed up into the cabin, she hooked her fingers into the waist of my pants and put that lost-looking smile on her lips.

“Kiss me, Cameron,” she whispered.

I obeyed her. I could never say no
to Hope, it wasn’t worth it. As our tongues danced, I felt her fingers running through my hair, but they may as well have been running through my soul. I knew there would never be a replacement for this girl.

“I think you’re my air, too,” she panted, the first to pull away. Her eyes opened slowly, and her love-drunk glaze told me everything I needed to know—she would never find a replacement for me either.

“You can’t steal that,” I warned her with a playful grin. “The air thing, that’s all mine.”

“Shut up,
goob. You stole that from someone, and you know it.”

I grinned. “Nope.”

“You’re a fucking plagiarist,” she accused me, punching me lightly in the abdomen before climbing inside and shutting the passenger door with a light-hearted eye roll.

“I don’t know about this five-year plan, Hope,” I said, hesitating as I settled behind the steering wheel and pulled my seatbelt across my lap.

She stared into her lap, fidgeting with her fingers. “It’s a promise, not a plan.” Her voice came out so quietly; she had to repeat the words.

“And promises aren’t made to be broken, right?”

“Broken promises are called lies,” she answered without missing a beat.

I drove her home in silence, the mountains dark against the pale, night sky. While many of our friends were out partying during their last weekend before moving into their college dorms next week, Hope and I had opted for this “last dinner” together. In fact, our entire summer vacation had been spent together, drinking in every possible minute together because we both knew how difficult the absence would be.

At her parents’ house, I parked on the street and killed the engine. The lights were blazing in every window on the main level, but then again it was only eight PM, not midnight. Plus, it was Friday; even my ancient parents lasted later than midnight on a Friday night.

“What are you going to do now?” Hope asked.

“Still have some packing.” I chuckled, because it wasn’t the packing I feared. “Why do airlines book flights so fucking early?” I shook my head. I feared the silence, the moments where I could think about the next five years without her in my life. Packing was a fucking breeze.

“I won’t cry, Cameron,” she promised.

“I know.” Now it was my turn to look into my lap. “You sure you’ll be there?”

“Yes.” She touched my face, closing her eyes like she wanted to memorize every angle, ever corner the way a blind person might. “I would never forgive myself if I missed saying goodbye.”

“Then don’t,” I blurted. Five years was a long time, especially when we only had four years of school ahead of us.

She raised an eyebrow.

“Come with me. Fly to Chicago, let’s see the city together, let’s spend the weekend in jazz clubs and making fun of the freshwater beaches. And the cold weather. Fuck it, Hope, come with me. I’ll get a job, I’ll—”

She kissed me to silence me. “It’s okay, we’ll get through this.”

“So you’re coming with me?”

She laughed, shaking her head. “Maybe you should come with me, Cameron. I’ve got the higher earning potential as a chartered accountant. Plus, I’m not flying out until Tuesday, so we’d have more time together here.” She winked at me. “Just saying.”

My gut told me to take that offer, to run away with her because she was right. She was always right. And knowing my own personal work ethic this past year, despite the straight A’s and respectable GPA, the idea of skipping out on school wasn’t entirely foreign to me. Nothing else would please me as much as spending my entire days with and for Hope.

“Let’s not turn this into a night of tears and sadness, Cameron. Come open my door and hug me one last time so I can dream about you tonight, so I can wake up tomorrow morning and meet you at the airport at four-thirty to say one more goodbye before I see you again at Christmas.”

I searched her eyes for some kind of fault line in that solid determination of hers. I saw none.
Okay. Okay, I can do this.

I got out of my parents’ SUV and opened Hope’s door for her. She fell straight into my arms and held me tighter than anyone else ever had or ever would again. And it felt perfect, too. Because I wasn’t so sure she would make it to the airport the next morning.

}
i {

Present Day

5:15 PM

G
ordon stops the Tesla outside Ogilvie Transportation Center. Masses of people pour into the building, eager to get home for the Labor Day weekend after a long Friday at the office. It surprises to me to see how few people called in sick today, like I did.

“It was a pleasure seeing you again, Hope,” Gordon says, extending his hand to her. It seems like it’s a half-goodbye and half-peace offering. “Safe travels and good luck.” That part sounded like “good riddance” to me.

Hope shakes his hand and thanks him for the wishes, which sounds like “fuck you, too” to me. And then she glances into the backseat, her face as fierce and determined as ever. “Take care, Cameron.” But I know better. I know Hope. I’ve drunk her in for my entire life. She’s my sustenance, and I know that fierce and determined is masking something softer.

I open my door in response; it feels like the right thing to do after such a long day of running up against a door that never opened. “I’ll wait for the train with you. I think you’ll miss the three-four-seven, so we’ll have at least fifteen minutes before the three-four-nine.” I allow a beat before adding, “One last goodbye.” Then I step out of the Tesla without looking back.

Within seconds, Hope joins me, standing so close I can feel the energy radiating off her body.

“I told you this wasn’t a good idea, Cameron,” she tells me as we walk into the train station. “But you wanted one last day. You got it. Are you happy?”

Nodding in agreement, I squeeze past a couple of people reading the board for their track. “I got what I wanted. And now I just want to say good…” I swallow the lump in my throat. She doesn’t press for me to finish the word, so I let it go.

We stroll deeper into the train station, heading toward the escalators that will bring us to the tracks, then Hope steers off course and sits on a bench against the wall. I walk over to her and sit down as well.

“What was this?” she asks for the millionth time, and her voice comes out in one exhausted breath. “Cameron, you said you’d let me go, but you said you’d never quit, you’d never let go, and I don’t know what to believe after today.”

“I don’t know—”

“It was nice, by the way.” She gives my knee an encouraging, friendly pat. “Everything you did, it was magical, it was the Disney of big people, the fairy tale I never got as a child. The way you transformed those parts from
Our Story
, brought them to life for me. Half of the time today, I wondered if you and Emma were somehow conspiring against me.” She laughs at her own comments. “Anyway, it was sweet of you to recreate that, to give me this last goodbye.”

“You really believe that shit, don’t you?”

“What shit, goob?” She punches my shoulder, harder than any prior assault.

“That goodbyes are forever?”

Hanging her head, she allows a depressing nod. “When Emma shared her story with me, the one her so-called ‘soul mate’ wrote for her, I thought you were that guy. Oliver was one hundred percent you, Cameron. Everything from his profession to his choice of espresso bar. There was so much of you, of
us
in there, it was so obvious to me that you had created this story and given it to Emma to share with me.”

I shake my head, chuckling at a part of my past that would always belong there. “I’m sorry, I don’t know anyone named Emma. A
Katja, yes, but definitely no Emmas.” I chuckle again. “And as for the writing, I haven’t written anything outside of analysis reports in well over a decade.”

“I know,” she admits, rolling her eyes and staring up at the tall ceiling. “In a weird twist of fate, I ended up meeting the guy who wrote
Our Story
; his company worked with my firm at the time. Anyway, when Emma gave me the short novel I shared with you, three years ago? I almost died after reading it.”

We watch the people hurrying to their trains. The clock rolls past 5:35, and then I feel her hand slide into mine. When I glance over at her, I find something she kept hidden from me all day today.

Hope.

Herself.

I want to hold her like I held her two months ago when she came back to my apartment, like I did three years ago in Miami, and that weekend in her hotel room. More than anything, I just want to be
with
her, close to her. Close enough that we can hold hands, and I don’t have to second-guess what she’s thinking and feeling. I want Hope because anything less is not life. Without her, I’m not living; I merely exist.

“You missed the three-four-nine,” I point out, bringing her hand to my lips and kissing each of her knuckles. I don’t even care if she stays; I’m in love with this instant, this moment.

“I know.” She laughs, then lowers her voice to a whisper as she plants her head on my shoulder. “I might miss the next one, too.”

Eight minutes later, she misses the 351 just like she suggested, but I don’t brag about it because this is my time,
our
time. I glance at her, though. And I see her perfect smile before she asks a question I never expected from her today.

“Why did you marry her, Cameron? Can you tell me?”

}
i {