All Yours: A Second Chance Romance Read online

  But it still sucked. It didn’t seem fair that I couldn’t find a guy who liked me, made me laugh, gave me space, but was there for me and let me be there for him when he needed it.

  I mean, basically a guy like Cam, but who I could get naked with.

  And you couldn’t get naked with Cam?

  I felt myself grimace, and drew a look from the librarian who monitored the front door.

  Cam was off limits. Not only was he my best friend—had been my best friend for something like fifteen years—but he definitely wasn’t interested in me. Cam preferred his women less (intelligent) complicated than me. And he wasn’t the kind of guy who liked to choose just one of anything. Ever since high school he’d kept some undefined number of girls in orbit around him. I called them his satellites. He always had one he called his girlfriend, and he took her places and treated her well, but none of them lasted very long. And as soon as one was gone her spot in the lineup was filled by another.

  He wouldn’t be satisfied with just me. And no way was I going to be one of Cam Simons’ satellites.

  I pushed out the doors and into the Oklahoma night. The weather had taken a turn for the better, and even at midnight the air was warm and the sky was clear. I took a deep breath and tried to dispel the fatigue from my body. Out of reflex born of watching too many crime shows, I scanned my surroundings for suspicious characters. Again I thought of calling Cam. But I was already on my way and I didn’t want to wait. He’d be pissed in the morning if he found out, but c’est la vie.

  It occurred to me that I could call Eric. He’d drop whatever he was doing to come see that I was safe. But no. He was training for a fight in three weeks, and I didn’t want to interfere with his sleep.

  I’d walk alone.

  I was halfway down the steps when a voice behind me said, “Jesus, you are not very observant.”

  A squeak escaped my throat and I whirled. Cam stood behind me, one corner of his mouth cocked up in a half grin. “You’re lucky I’m not a masher.”

  I punched him on the shoulder, my heart pounding in my throat. “You dick!”

  “You have no idea, but the offer’s always open.” That was Cam. No matter how out of bounds we were for each other, his banter was always full of innuendo. “You know I’d have been pissed in the morning if you’d walked home at this time of night by yourself.” His words were light, but his eyes got briefly serious.

  “I didn’t want to bother you.” We started down the steps. Despite the scare, I was grateful for his presence. “What were you even doing out here?”

  “Waiting for you.”

  I glanced at him, but he was looking straight ahead.

  “Why?”

  Now he did look at me, his eyebrow cocked. “Because I know you’re a dope and that you wouldn’t call me even though I told you to call me when you need a ride home.”

  “I thought you’d be with…Brandi?”

  He made a face. “You mean Candi?” Cam shook his head. “She was so last November.”

  “Staci, then?”

  He pointed into the parking lot and we turned that way. I could make out the Mercedes in the distance under one of the lamps.

  “Closer,” he said. “But she was Miss February.”

  I put up my hands. “You win. I admit that I don’t know the name of the current one.” Regardless of Cam’s insistence, I refused to call any of them his “girlfriend.” A girlfriend is someone who sticks around for more than a few weeks.

  “There is no current one.”

  I very nearly stumbled. “Malfunction. Input does not compute.”

  Cam grinned. He’d always taken my breath away with that smile, even in the second grade. But that was just a natural biological reaction. Good looking people with beautiful smiles just have an affect on people. That was all.

  “I love it when you talk sexy computer at me.” His smile turned wicked, and I felt a momentary thrumming in my stomach. Also perfectly natural. Biology, I reminded myself.

  Now that I thought about it, I couldn’t remember Cam with another woman in several months. Not since bombshell Brandi—er, Candi…Staci, when we all met for dinner months ago.

  I looked over at him, concerned. “Are you unwell?”

  He took his key fob from his pocket and the Mercedes chirped at us, flashing its lights twice.

  “Nope,” he said. “I’m fine as powdered sugar.”

  “What’s the deal then, playboy? You losing your touch?”

  He shook his head. “Probably not. I don’t know. Don’t care, really.”

  Now I stopped. “Excuse me. Who are you and what have you done with my friend?”

  Cam turned. His face was lit up in a street light, and a completely unfamiliar expression rested on his face.

  He looked uncomfortable.

  “Just been thinking, that’s all.” His blue eyes were locked onto mine. I almost—almost—wanted to look away, but I don’t know if I could have in that moment. There was a weight behind his eyes, and his words came out in a careful, considered way that was unlike him.

  “’Bout what?” I prompted.

  Cam shrugged one shoulder. “I just realized that I’ve never really liked any of the women I’ve dated. And you’re supposed to at least like the person you date, right?”

  I couldn’t for the life of me explain why, but my mouth was suddenly dry and my breathing was shallow, high in my chest.

  “That’s the idea, Cam.”

  He took a step toward me. His broad shoulders seemed to eclipse everything. Everything but his eyes. And his mouth. I had never been so aware of the way his lips moved. “I’ve only ever really liked one girl,” he said.

  “Cam—”

  And then he was leaning toward me, his head lowered. And I should have turned away. I should have put up a hand between us. But blame it on being tired. Blame it on being lonely. Blame it on the fact that I knew exactly how Cam felt. That there was only one guy I really liked, but he was off limits because he was my friend. Blame it on whatever, but I tilted my head back.

  Cam kissed me, and it was like lightning jolted through my mind. His lips were soft and sugary and they touched mine with the lightest of brushes, as if he cared so much about this moment that he was worried that it might break if he pushed too hard. For me, everything lurched into clarity.

  This was right.

  I put my arms around his neck and pulled him to me.

  Release This Restricting Notion

  Aimee

  When I’m chilled to the bone, I can usually count on a hot shower to warm me up. But this time, the shower doesn’t stand a chance.

  I checked my email as soon as I got home. It’s not the most productive habit, but it’s one I developed a couple years ago when my dad was sick. Constantly checking for updates, hoping for improvement, dreading bad news. Sometimes hope won out, but usually it was dread. The habit just naturally continued after he was gone, and just about the time I thought it might be a good idea to stop…Mom gave me another reason to obsessively check my inbox.

  Most days I don’t hear anything. Today, however, as I was sitting in class, wending my way through the mysteries of Malthusian economics, my aunt Suzette sent me a note to find when I arrived home, drenched and dripping. “A note.” Funny thing to call a message that immediately settles on your shoulders with the weight of a battleship, telling you that everything you’re doing and trying to do will, in a soon-to-arrive point of termination, not possibly be enough. A few choice parts stood out in my mind. “…condition is worsening…” and, “…cannot continue to provide the kind of care…” and some number of dollars that was well beyond my reach that would give my mother what she needed for a little while longer.

  So the shower, no matter how hot I turn the knob, does nothing to take the chill out of the center of me. I lean my head against the tile and hug myself. And I shake. And I cry.

  While Dad was sick, Mom took care of him. At first she was there, as she had been for most of
their marriage, to cook for him and tell him not to worry, that he was going to be fit as a fiddle soon. And later, when it was obvious he wasn’t going to be fit as a fiddle, she helped him hoist his girth from his chair to guide him to bed. And when he could no longer sleep lying down, she helped him to the bathroom. Bathed him. Cleaned his sick.

  And smiled at him the whole time, because he was hers and she was his.

  Mom gave him his medicine and changed the wound dressing when the dialysis implant became infected. Held his hand and told him to “just get through this part and the pain will get better.” She only really got a break from the physical load when hospice care took over for the final downhill slide, but of course the emotional burden was still there.

  She could never call it a burden, though. Would never acknowledge that taking care of her husband as he died a long, painful death from some undiagnosable autoimmune disease was anything other than what she expected of herself as his wife. To her, love was never a burden, even when it was killing her.

  Over the course of weeks after he died, I could visibly see her release the iron will that had held her upright for the previous months. Her skin slackened. Her hair, always a vibrant auburn like mine, soon felt like straw and turned mostly gray almost overnight. She stayed in bed longer and longer. Always insisting she would be fine. When she patted my hand to reassure me, the skin felt loose and over-smooth.

  This was last summer. Only four months ago. I almost didn’t go back to school. But Mom insisted. “You do this for your dad, and you do it for me. We both worked very hard to get you where you are now.” It was the firmest her voice had been in months.

  Mom’s sister moved in to take care of her, and I did as Mom wished. And, being honest, it was what I wanted, too. I was so close. One more year and I would have my degree and the job with the Chicago firm, and then I could afford to take care of Mom the way she needed. This is what I told myself.

  Things worked out until they didn’t. Mom sank into absent-mindedness, then into breaks of dementia. Aunt Suzette woke one night to find my mother not in her bed and went on a frantic search through the house, then yard, then neighborhood to find her. In the end, police found her in the local park at three a.m., rocking on a bench in her nightgown. When the officer shined his flashlight on her she looked up with a bright hope in her eyes. “Mason?” she said.

  That was my father’s name.

  “Ma’am?” the young cop said.

  “I don’t think I can smile any more, sweetie. I think I’m all used up.”

  And now my aunt has emailed me, letting me know that she won’t be able to handle my mom’s increasing need for supervision. I will have to hire a full time nurse to care for her. That, or put her in a nursing home.

  I can’t afford either. And so I sink to the floor of the shower, hug my knees, and cry.

  ***

  No matter how much I don’t want to get out of the shower, eventually I have to. There is a shift to be worked if I want to continue to pay my own rent, and an accounting test to study for, and miles to go before I sleep. So I pull myself together, get out, dry off, and dress. I put on my watch, which I always set on top of the dresser, and I see the picture of my old beagle, Mortimer. His head is cocked to the side and one ear dangles toward the grass beneath him and the other has flopped over his eye. I caress the rough frame with the tips of my fingers.

  Cam made me that frame. It was a nothing, he said, an ugly thing he made as a project in high school wood shop. But I knew it was possibly the only thing Cam ever made with his own two hands and even though it was rough and the joints didn’t quite fit together and the glass pane rattled with the vibration any time someone walked across the floor, I treasured it. For years it held a photo of the two of us from the Bartlesville High School senior trip. In it, Cam has his arm around me. Wind blows both of our hair to the right of the frame, and the Grand Canyon yawns in the background. We were only friends at the time, but anyone I’ve ever shown the picture to since, man or woman, takes one look at it and insists we were lovers when it was taken.

  Not yet, I always think.

  And not any more, I think now.

  I snap the clasp on my watch and walk out into the kitchen. The refrigerator is basically empty except for some leftover Italian takeout and a carton of orange juice. I splash some OJ into a plastic cup and down it in three swallows. The cup crumples in my fingers and I toss it into the trash can beside the front door. And that’s when I see the note.

  A scrap of lined paper, torn from a small notebook. The kind Cam always carries with him so he’ll never be at a loss when some girl gives him her phone number. I know what it is before I pick it up, if not exactly what it says. It’s damp, and warped in places where big drops of water soaked in. The ink runs in places. I entertain the brief fantasy that those drops of water are tears.

  It would serve him right, the prick.

  But of course that’s not the case. Cam isn’t the crying type.

  He’s also not the type to leave a note like this, even brief as it is.

  “Please call me. I need you.”

  I need you.

  Something flutters in my stomach and my heart speeds up a notch. Before I even think about it, my feet take me to the kitchen table and my hand picks up my phone. Pulls up his name in my contacts. I stare at it a minute, chewing my lip.

  I miss him. I’ve missed him ever since I broke up with him months ago. Every day. But maybe it’s the cold, wet day. Maybe it’s the email from my aunt and my desperate inability to take care of my mother. Maybe it’s a lot of things, but I look at his name until my vision gets blurry and my throat feels thick, and I just feel so goddamn lonely. I don’t know what Cam needs, but right now I need somebody.

  And that’s not right.

  I need Cam.

  But I don’t trust his note.

  Need isn’t something Cam feels for people. He’s never felt it toward anyone he dated, he didn’t feel it toward me when we were together. Anything he’s ever wanted has been handed to him on a platter.

  If he wanted a car, he bought it.

  If he wanted better grades, he bought those, too.

  If he wanted a girl, he had the looks, the charm, and daddy’s money to snap his fingers and take his pick.

  And he picked you for a while, didn’t he?

  Sure. Until my life got too real for him.

  Is that really the way it happened?

  I shut off that train of thought before it could go much further. Other things to worry about.

  I need you.

  Bullshit. Cam wants something from me.

  I turn off my phone and put it in my purse.

  Time to go to work.

  Cam

  Of course, she doesn’t call. I can’t really say that I expected her to, but it still stings. I had hoped that…

  But hope doesn’t really factor into this situation, does it? What I have going on is something my father would call a “challenge,” and it isn’t just going to sort itself out. I straighten my tie tack in the mirror. It’s the silver one in the shape of my initials that Aimee made for me in a jewelry class one summer. It’s doesn’t sit flat on the tie because the solder holding the pin in place is lumped up on one side. I tell myself I’m wearing it because she’ll want to see it, but if I’m being completely honest I might admit that it’s the only tie tack I ever wear.

  One evening, almost a year ago, I met Aimee at our favorite restaurant wearing a cream colored linen shirt. About halfway through the meal she bit her lip and gave me “that look,” the good one that meant she was in a Christmas mood…either thinking about something naughty, or something nice. Or maybe both. I don’t ever get self-conscious, or nervous, about much of anything. But I have to admit, sometimes when Aimee gave me that look my mouth would go dry. Because I knew I would probably never actually be the kind of man who would deserve to be looked at that way by a woman like her.

  “What?” I said.

  Her ey
es slid half closed and her lips parted just slightly, so I could see the barest glint of light reflected from her front teeth. “That shirt,” she said. “It makes you look like you belong in movies.”

  I smirked, because that’s just the kind of prick I am. “All my shirts make me look like I belong in movies. More to the point, I make my shirts look like they belong in movies.”

  She didn’t even respond. Just strafed her gaze up and down me as if I was a horse she was thinking about buying. She chewed her lasagna slowly. “No,” she drawled. “It’s definitely that shirt. That shirt makes you damn hot.”

  Later, she practically tore it off me. Remembering that brings a half smile to my lips.

  That is the exact shirt I am wearing now. Check myself out in the bedroom mirror.

  Yep. I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. Demille. I blow myself a kiss.

  I debate whether to wear one of the navy blazers that hang in my walk-in closet, or one of the leather jackets. It will be better to stand out in this crowd, I think. That is an uncomfortable thought. I’m all about making an entrance, but being flashy in O’Donnelly’s is asking for trouble. But fuck it. I grab one of the navies and pull it on.

  My roommate, Eric, is standing at the kitchen counter eating a plate of spaghetti. The guy is always eating. Metabolism like a goddamn fighter jet. As I pass by on my way to the door he says, his mouth full of noodles, “Where are you off to dressed like that?”

  I pause, my hand on the doorknob. Not quite sure what to say. Then I flash him my best grin. “I’m off to buy a wife.”

  He makes his face carefully blank. A dab of spaghetti sauce sits on the corner of his mouth. “What?”

  I turn to face him, attempt to make my face as stern as his. “Eric, it is time for me to marry, and I am going out to purchase the marital attentions of a woman.”

  He pauses with a forkful of food halfway to his mouth. “You know you can’t do that, right?”

  Eric, though I love him like a brother, is one of those insufferables with an excess of social conscience. He sees it as part of his life mission to serve as my moral guide, nudging me toward outcomes that he sees as “humane” or “validating of others’ humanity” or some such nonsense.