TEN
“I can’t believe that was really Cameron McGregor!” my father enthuses as the echo of a slamming door reverberates through my apartment. “Wait’ll I tell the guys at the club—they’ll totally flip out. Epic.”
Because my parents are Los Angeles natives, uttering words like epic to describe a two-minute telephone conversation with a stranger is par for the course. Pretty much everyone I grew up with in our small beach community takes great liberties with the English language, as do their parents, who practice yoga and get Botox and eat disgusting things like kale salads and generally act as if aging is something that only happens to people less in tune with the healing energy of the cosmos.
“So he actually is famous,” I muse, turning off the oven because the meat loaf is finally done.
“Are you kidding?” My father scoffs. “He’s like, the athlete of all athletes! How do you not know this, honey?”
“Because I hate organized sports and everyone who plays organized sports and would rather burn my eyes out with acid than be forced to watch or read anything to do with organized sports.”
My father thinks for a moment. “Yes, I recall when your sister was on the volleyball and swim teams in high school, you refused to go to any of her meets.”
Right. Because inevitably I’d be stared at by people comparing me to my beautiful, popular, overachieving sibling and be forced to spend hours suffering through whispered comments behind hands such as, That can’t really be Jacqueline’s sister! Was she adopted?
Pushing away the vile memory, I beg, “Please tell me he’s not more famous than Michael Jordan.”
My father laughs. “He’s way more famous than Michael Jordan! He’s basically the most famous athlete on the planet.”
Mr. Bingley jumps up onto the chair Cam vacated and looks around wistfully, and I need another glass of wine.
Then my father is gone, and my mother is yammering in my ear like a mental patient without even drawing a breath.
“Holy cow Joellen how could you not tell me Cameron McGregor was living in your building that is crazy and you have him in your apartment oh my goodness wait till I tell Cindy she’ll die.”
“You’re forbidden from telling anyone, Mom, especially that blabbermouth Cindy! It’ll be all over Twitter within half an hour!”
She ignores me because her postmenopausal hormones are resurrecting themselves from the dead. “Is he as gorgeous in person as he is in photos? Is he really as muscular as he looks on TV? What about his hair? Does he have good ha—”
“Mother. Focus. He’s a person, not a sex object.”
The sound of the receiver being tapped against a wall comes over the line, followed by my mother’s sarcastic voice. “I’m sorry, we seem to have a bad connection. I thought I just heard my daughter say that Cameron McGregor, the sex object to end all sex objects, is not a sex object.”
For some bizarre reason, I feel a little defensive of the Mountain. “He’s actually pretty smart, if you want the truth. He’s very intuitive, and he’s got an amazing vocabulary.”
Her silence is thundering. I sigh and relent. “Okay, fine. Yes, he’s muscular. And he has good hair. Satisfied?”
“No, I’m not satisfied! Details, sweetie, details!”
“I never thought I’d hear myself speak these words, Mother, but I think you’re overdue for some sexy times with Dad.”
Her voice drops, and she starts talking to me in that “we’re best girlfriends” tone that drives me up a wall. “I’ll tell you what, sweetie, your father is in for some big fun tonight, because Mama’s hot tamale is en fuego at the thought of Cameron McGregor in the flesh!”
“I have to go now. My mental breakdown is calling.”
“My God, that Scottish brogue.” Her shiver of delight is audible. “And a sense of humor, too!”
“What did he say that was funny?”
“That you two were in love!”
“Oh, that. Yeah, he’s a real laugh a minute,” I say drily, shaking my head. Then something strikes me. “Why was that funny?”
My mother laughs. “Oh, honey! As if a man like that could fall in love with you!”
That hurts so much it leaves me breathless. When I’m silent too long, my mother realizes her mistake.
“I didn’t mean it like that, sweetie—”
“I know exactly how you meant it.”
Her voice turns firm. “Joellen, don’t do that.”
“Do what? Feel insulted when someone insults me?”
“Turn a harmless comment into one of your personal pity parties!”
I stand there with my mouth open, unable to speak because I’m so angry, and so disappointed in myself that I’m letting myself be affected by this ancient family shit once again.
In a steady, quiet voice, I say, “Mom, my dinner’s ready. Thanks for the call. I’ll talk to you next week.”
I hang up before she can reply and spend a few long seconds swallowing down the lump in my throat until I’m sure I can safely speak without crying. Then I take the meat loaf out of the oven, make the mashed potatoes and gravy, and head over to McGregor’s with everything on a platter.
When he opens the door, neither of us smiles.
I hold out the platter like a consolation prize to the losing team in a bake-off, even though it’s me who’s the loser. “This is yours.”
He looks at it, then back up at me. “I wasn’t gonna turn the music on.”
“You know what? It’s okay if you do. Who am I to tell you how to live your life?”
We stare at each other, the air electric with unspoken words. He makes no move to take the platter from my hands, so I set it on the carpet at his feet, then straighten and look him in the eye.
“Five o’clock,” I say firmly. “I’ll see you then.”
He slowly nods. When I go back across the hall and close my door, he’s still standing there, staring at me.
Anyone who’d like to know what hell is like should spend an early morning exercising in freezing temperatures with a professional athlete who has an endless supply of energy and no soul.
“Keep up!” Cam barks over his shoulder at me as I lag behind him on the sidewalk, breath steaming white from my nose and open mouth, sweat pouring into my eyes, my will to live quickly being extinguished.
“Must. Stop. Death. Imminent.” My wheezing and staggering frightens a flock of pigeons into screeching flight from their perch on the back of a bus bench.
Cam turns around and trots back to me. He hasn’t even broken a sweat, the heartless bastard. “Joellen,” he begins patiently. “We’re two blocks from the apartment.”
“Oh my God! I made it two whole blocks?” I wonder how the heck I’m getting back and decide I’ll take a cab. If we don’t have to call an ambulance first.
Cam runs a tidy circle around me as I stagger, just to be a prick. “How did this happen? You’ve got the cardiovascular system of a ninety-year-old!”
I holler, “I told you I was allergic to exercise!”
He trots the other way around me, backward. “I thought you were joking.”
I wave an arm at him wildly, hoping to smack him a good one, but miss because the man is the devil and he can’t be caught.
“Are you always this ornery in the mornin’?”
“Don’t you dare taunt me, devil man.” I gasp for air as my gelatinous legs continue their horrific quest to keep me upright and headed forward. I think I might be going blind. “What was in that green goop you forced me to drink before we left? Poison?”
Cam does ten jumping jacks before he answers. “Yep. It’s an old Scottish tradition. A draught of poison just after wakin’. If it doesn’t kill you, it’ll put hair on your chest.”
“Oh goody.” Gasp. Wheeze. “Just what I need.” Wheeze. Cough. “Hair on my chest.”
Shadowboxing around me, dancing on his toes so flurries of snow sparkle around his flashing feet, Cam threatens, “If you’re about to follow that little speech with somethin’ derogatory about your looks, I’ll kick your arse six ways to Sunday, lassie.”
I make a sound that reminds me of the death rattle bad actors make right before they expire dramatically in the movies. Only mine is authentic. “That dang dog again! I’m really starting to hate that dog!”
Cam chuckles. He looks annoyingly good in his stupid sweats outfit, the picture of health and well-being, while I look like an old armchair someone threw out a window into an alley hoping it would be picked up with the trash but instead was colonized by rodents. Thank God the sun isn’t up yet, because the possibility an alarmed citizen would call animal control to come and collect me as soon as they caught sight of my hideous visage is high.
“I can’t believe you voluntarily do this every day. For free. Not at gunpoint.”
Cam lifts the waistband of his hoodie, exposing acres of rippling abdominal muscles. “All for a good cause.”
I wipe the sweat from my brow with the back of my hand. “Do you hold yourself tightly in bed at night while whispering sweet nothings into your own ear?”
“Think of pretty boy. Visualize his face when you walk into the holiday party in a sexy dress, lookin’ all toned and bedazzlin’.”
I huff and puff, pondering the image he’s put into my head. “Toned is good. Skinny is better.”
“Wrong! Strong is the goal, lass, not skinny. A man doesn’t wanna grab onto a sack of rattlin’ bones when he’s in the mood. He wants a nice, thick, juicy woman with buttery curves, sizzlin’ hot and tasty.”
“You literally just described my perfect steak.”
“My mum always said you can’t trust a skinny woman. Skinny body, skinny heart, skinny love.”
“I think I love your mother.”
“Aye,” says Cam softly. “She was easy to love.”
Was. That drains the last bit of energy from my legs. I stagger to a stop, holding my side and panting, and look at Cam. He’s refusing to look at me for some reason, keeping his face averted as he jogs in place a few feet away.
“She passed away?”
A curt nod is his only answer.
“I’m sorry.”
He swallows, squinting up at a streetlamp. In the cold yellow glow, his face is all stark angles and planes. The sharp cut of his jaw. The razor-straight nose. The dark hollows beneath his full cheekbones.
The pain on his face is another sharp feature, etched there like carvings in glass.
“Hundred years ago. Ancient history. But thanks.”
His voice is low and raw, and I’ve never seen him so naked. Without the usual bravado he wears like a suit of armor, he seems like a stranger all over again, one darker and more complicated, and far more compelling.
But the moment is gone as quickly as it came when Cam turns to me with a brilliant smile. “Quit your lollygaggin’, lass, and pick up your feet! We’re only just gettin’ started!”
He turns and jogs away down the sidewalk into the predawn gloom, his back straight and his head high, his step lively.
But it’s too late. I’ve peeked behind the golden curtain. I’ve glimpsed the real man behind the Great and Powerful Oz.
“I see you, Cameron McGregor,” I whisper to the empty street as a garbage truck rumbles by. I draw a stinging lungful of diesel fumes and force my legs to move once again. Then I’m jogging behind Cam, my will renewed, the pain in my body pushed to the periphery of my awareness by the single thought crowding out everything else in my head.
I see you.