Chapter Twenty-One
Paul sits on a rec hall couch and drops his head into his hands. I shove the bows and arrows away and snap the lock into place. “Need a bucket or something?”
He shakes his head and pats the cushion next to him. I slip into the space and snuggle into his shoulder. “Seriously. What’s up? You were fine, then bam. You’re not. I’m getting worried.”
He rests chin on me. “I wish I was still in the getting stage of worried.”
I weave our fingers together. “Are you nervous about your interview?”
His chest deflates in a quiet sigh. “In a way.”
I tilt my face toward his. “In what way?”
Our eyes meet for an instant before his lids shut. They crease with the force of keeping them closed. “In the way that I’m afraid I’m screwing everything up.”
My hand creeps behind his back and I wrap him in a hug. He squeezes me tight. “You’re not screwing everything up,” I say. “You’re doing what’s going to make you happy.”
He clears his throat. “What if it doesn’t though?”
I pull away. Pinch his chin between my thumb and finger. Turn his face to mine. “Then you find something that does.”
“It’s not that simple.” He takes my fingers off his chin and wraps them in his camp-worn hand.
“Starting fresh is that simple. It’s just hard.” I breathe out to the count of ten and lower my shoulders with each passing second. “Do you want to know how I ended up here? I mean, the whole story?”
His head jerks up. “There’s more to it than you’ve told me?”
“Of course. Seeing clients in love was nothing new. What was new was that I didn’t care.” Paul tucks a strand of hair behind my ear and I disentangle my body from his. I pull my hair into a messy ponytail.
“The Millers were obsessing over gold or rose gold and I was doing everything I could to sway them into making the change. Even though she’d come to me on day one with gold as her number one color. Even though rose gold would look ridiculous next to the centerpieces and flowers she’d chosen. Because then, maybe I could convince her to change those, too. I was counting the overtime pay I’d get if they changed it all instead of giving a shit about what would actually make them happy.”
I dig my fingers into my knotted shoulder muscles. “I was living at that hotel, busting my ass for these weddings, and I didn’t care. Not about the couples. Not about what they wanted or what would make their day special. They were just numbers in my spreadsheets and on my checks. That’s why I Googled camp while they talked. Not because I was nostalgic about my own plans, but because I wanted to laugh at my naivety. I wanted to laugh at the starry-eyed person I’d been. At the me who thought weddings actually meant something.”
Paul shifts on the couch and motions for me to sit in front of him. His thumbs dig into the rocks that form my shoulders. “They do mean something,” he says.
“I know.” I close my eyes against the pain in all my muscles. “I didn’t laugh at myself when I saw camp. I cried. And I quit that day.”
He alternates between deep massage and soothing rubs. “Why did you cry?”
My muscles melt under his touch. “Because I was too burned out from making other people’s dreams come true to even remember that I used to have some, too.”
Paul’s hands wrap around my hips and he pulls me back against his chest. His arms lie heavy over my shoulders. “What were they? You know, before. With Dan.”
“I wanted kids. A house in the suburbs. I was going to work from home and make, I don’t know, roast beef and mashed potatoes every night.”
“And that’s not what you want anymore?”
A single laugh escapes my chest. “No. Hell no. I’m not sure I even wanted it then. Not really. I mean, big picture, it was all fine and good. But potty-training small versions of myself sounds like a cruel joke. And mashed potatoes make me gassy.”
His chest shakes with laughter. “Are you always this honest?”
The corners of my mouth turn up. “Usually. But really, I just don’t like misunderstandings. They take too much energy. Too many years.”
He wraps his arms around my waist and holds me close. “Like you thinking I only liked your body.”
My head bumps his chest when I nod.
His fingers tighten on my sides and his cheek rubs against mine. “I won’t lie. I love looking at you, and touching you, and feeling you under me. But that’s not all I like about you. Not then, and not now. Your body is just one of your many awesome parts. Do you believe me?”
I cup my hands over his. “I think I might.”
“Good.” His chest expands to capacity and he breathes out slowly. “But I need to tell you something.”
I lift his hand to my lips and hug his arm to my chest. “What’s wrong? You can trust me, Paul-o.”
His breath is hot against my shoulder. “I know I can. You’ve been straight with me since you got here.”
The efforts of his massage go to waste. “And you haven’t been?”
“Not entirely,” he says. “But I want to change that. I want to be as honest with you as you’ve been with me.”
The ache in my shoulders spreads to my gut. “Go on.”
He clears his throat. “When we were talking before, about me and Tanya and how we were only a summer thing. I didn’t lie to you. We did break up that summer. But we broke up again.” His voice is low. “Halfway through my teaching degree.”
I turn in his arms. My eyebrows knit together. “But you told me you didn’t stay in touch.”
His forehead is creased. Jaw tight. “We didn’t, honestly we didn’t. But we ran into each other, totally randomly, when we were twenty.”
“So, your college girlfriend. Your last serious relationship.” I cock my head. “It was Tanya?”
Paul sucks in a breath and nods.
My heart beats a low thump in my chest. I swallow hard. “So you were together for years?”
He rubs the back of his neck. “Yeah.”
I turn to sit cross-legged in front of him, using every second the move gives me to untangle my thoughts. “But you broke up, what, over five years ago?”
His throat jumps. “Something like that.”
I rub his cold hands in mine until the sixteen-year-old inside me stops stomping her feet at the injustice of it. Until my adult self turns down the monitor on the drum in my chest. Until the side of me that lives in logic and numbers reminds me that dwelling on something five years in the past means wasting the six days left in the present. I lean forward and caress his lower lip with mine. “Thank you for clarifying.”
His throat bobs. “That’s not a—”
I touch his cheek and the heaviness of his fear seeps through my flesh. It weighs me down in a way that grounds me in the present and binds me to this couch. To this man. “We have six days left. Less actually, with your interview tomorrow. And I don’t really feel like wasting them on ancient history. Do you?”
He shakes his head. “No, but—”
“No buts.” I press my finger to his lips. “Not unless it’s used as a synonym for ass. Deal?”
I hold my muscles still as his eyes search my face. Finally, he nods. My hand drops to my lap and I let my gaze rove around the room. I focus on the futon-like couches lining the walls. The fireplace dominating one wall. Anything but of the swirling cloud in my head.
I calculate the height of the ceilings and tell myself that he was just nervous because he thought I’d stop putting out. That this pull between us is purely sexual and he’s not ready to give it up. That we’re practical, fitting tongue into groove like these wood floors. A rogue thought shoots from the storm and reminds me that these planks are worn. Well-loved. And still going strong. But I shift my eyes fast and they snag on the wall above the fireplace. “Something’s different.”
Paul follows my gaze. Then he plants a kiss on my forehead and crosses to a modern control panel, partially hidden by the mantel. A screen descends from the ceiling at the press of a button.
“No. Way.” I crane my neck and spot a projector on the far wall. Which was definitely not there when we hid from rain as kids. Or had multi-cabin slumber parties that year the stomach flu came to camp. “You turned the rec hall into a movie theater?”
“Sure did. You try getting kids through a week without any screen time at all. They go through a serious withdrawal, so I compromised.” He pulls a bin from beneath a couch and beckons me over with a tilt of his head. “Movies about taking risks and working together for a greater good. I normally let them watch one per week, unless it’s raining or the kids are being hellions and the staff need a much-deserved break.”
I rest my hand on his back to read the titles before pinching a movie from between the others. “Please explain how a British spy movie is about working together for a greater good?”
He grins. “It’s about saving the world!”
“And screwing your way through half the population,” I laugh.
Paul takes the movie from me and puts it back in alphabetical order. “Fine. That one’s actually mine. It’s a holdover from when my buddies used to come up on weekends during the off-season.”
“Used to?” I select another title and flip the case so I can read the description.
“The novelty wore off when they started to pair up and spent most the weekend complaining about the lack of Wi-Fi.” He pops a disk into the player. “What about you? What do your friends think of you moving up here?”
I tap the case on my leg. “I’d like to think they’d care if they, you know, existed.”
He stills the tapping and catches my eye. It’s all the prompt I need.
“With Dan, well...” I snap the movie case open and closed. “He liked to hang out with his people. And I was just so enthralled by the fact that he wanted to spend time with me at all that I went along with it. I put off calling my friends with the hope that I’d get to see him. Or I’d ditch plans with them at the last minute when he called. And, well, do that enough times and friends will stop calling you too.”
“Shit.” Paul’s eyes soften.
“Yep. Then I got promoted a couple weeks after the split, and the whole ‘who gets to keep the friends’ battle was easily his when I threw myself into work and was never around to meet up with anyone. Not like that group would have wanted to keep hanging out with me anyway. But they were all I had in the friend department by then, so...” My shoulders rise in a shrug I can’t complete.
“What about the friends from before this douche pulled the emotional isolation bullshit?”
I roll my head from shoulder to shoulder and break eye contact. “I burned those bridges when I picked a smooth-talking, narcissistic asshole over them. But it’s fine. Lesson learned and whatever.” I crouch next to him and slide the movie back into place. “Who won your battle?”
“What battle?”
“For friends. Did you get them, or did Tanya?”
He looks at the projector screen and pauses. “We never had that fight.”
“Lucky.” I thumb through the titles without looking at them.
“You broke your deal again.”
“What?” I look up to find his eyes on me. His hand rubbing the back of his neck.
“Your deal not to talk about the past. I think you need to—that we need to—because as much as you try to separate the two, you can’t. It all bleeds together, you know? Where we are now all goes back to where we were then. And I like where we are, Amy. I like you, and me, and whatever we’re doing here, so I need to lay it all out. Come clean so we don’t waste a second of the time we have together by, I don’t know, being on different channels and missing each other entirely. So, here it is.” He runs his hand down his face. “Tanya and I never battled over friends because we kept all of them. She and I are still friends. That’s how I know she’s married, and how I know she has a kid. We still talk. A lot.”
“Is that it?”
“Almost. Her husband is Laurie. He’s a teacher I met during college, and it’s his school I’m going to interview at tomorrow.”
“And then his house you’re going to stay at. With Tanya.”
His forehead wrinkles and he bites his lip. “And their kid.”
I laugh. Actually laugh—about Tanya. With Paul. “This is what you were so scared to tell me that you almost puked?”
“You’re not mad?”
“Mad that people like you and you like them? Of course not.” I flick through the movies. “I might be a little jealous though. Not because of Tanya,” I add quickly, “but that you guys stayed friends. I mean, that you have people you care about enough to stay friends with even though life happens.” I lick my lips. “You know, these last days together have been more friend-like than I’ve had in a long time. It’s been nice.”
Paul fumbles with the remote. Looks up. “These days have been anything but friend-like, Amy.”
My chest tightens but any response is cut off by bad music building to a crescendo from the speakers. “Holy crap. Is this what I think it is?”
He grins. “If you think it’s Sleepaway Camp, then yes. Yes, it is.”
I snap my eyes up to the familiar shoddy camera work. “No way.”
“Yes way.” He wiggles his eyebrows. “You scared?”
“Hell no.” I rock to my feet. My brain spins. Forms plans. Forces out the creeping loneliness that work always holds at bay. “But if we’re watching cheesy eighties horror movies, we’re doing it right. Hit pause.”
The music stops and I offer a hand to pull him up. This is it. What I need. Something to plan. To organize. To make my own.
“What do you have in mind?” he asks.
“Rec hall slumber party,” I say. “Adult-style.”