Everett laughs, leaning forward to grab my hand and yank me down next to him in the matching purple bean bag chair, a cloud of dust puffing out around me and making me cough when I land.
“If you even think about doing that, I’ll tell all your friends about the time you drank your weight in beer and almost threw up on me.”
“Hey, I didn’t throw up on you; that’s all that really matters.”
“You were looking pretty green. It was touch and go there for a while.”
If you only knew it wasn’t the beer making me nauseous, but the thought that I might die from wanting you to kiss me so badly that night.
“Did you bring me up here just to talk about all of my bad decisions as a teenager?” I ask.
He shakes his head at me and pushes himself off the bean bag chair. I watch in silence as he pulls up the loose floorboard between his legs and my heart starts beating so fast I’m afraid it might jump right out of my chest.
“What are you doing?” I ask nervously, hoping to God he doesn’t think it’s time for us to open up our boxes and look at all the wishes we made over the years. “We promised we wouldn’t look at those things until we were old and gray. I am neither old, nor gray, thank you very much, and I don’t think this is a good idea.”
I’m rambling like an idiot, but I can’t help it. He cannot open up my box of wishes. I will be completely mortified. Even more than the night I almost threw up on him.
“Don’t worry, I remember the pact we made when we were kids, the three of us sitting in a circle and linking our pinky fingers together, swearing that we’d never look at another person’s wishes or open another person’s box, until we were all old people, to find out if any of them came true,” Everett says with his back still to me.
I hold my breath until he reaches into the hole in the floor and pulls out just his box, resting it on his thighs as he moves back to his chair.
“Were you ever tempted to come up here by yourself and read through our wishes?” Everett asks, shaking his box, all the little paper wishes rattling around inside.
“Nope, never. Pinky swears are binding and punishable by death,” I tell him, hoping to God he doesn’t start reading his wishes and expect me to do the same.
“This is probably going to sound stupid, but this is one of the things I missed when I was gone,” he tells me with a shrug, running his hands over all the glittery puff paint and stickers I used to decorate the thing back when we were kids. “Even though the other doctors I was with always made a big deal out of birthdays no matter where we were stationed, it just felt like any other day. It never felt like my birthday without our annual summer tradition.”
He looks up and gives me a sheepish smile, and dammit if I don’t want to start crying all over again. I’m touched that he missed this, something he and Aiden used to always tease me about, and I always assumed they only did just to humor me. And I’m brokenhearted that Everett never got to make any wishes the four years he was gone.
“I know you and Aiden still got to do this every year, and there’s probably some kind of wish law about making up for lost time and doing four wishes at once, but I don’t care. It’s tradition, and I’d like to make my wishes now,” he tells me, reaching to the other side of where he’s sitting.
I hear the sound of plastic crinkling and glasses clinking together, and when he turns back to face me, he’s holding up a six-pack of Grape Crush in bottles and a bag of Fritos.
Getting up quickly from my chair, I move to the other side of the treehouse, where there’s a small end table in the corner with a lamp on top of it. Pulling open the drawer in the front, I grab the star-shaped notepad and pen and move back over to Everett, kneeling down next to him and handing them to him.
Setting the snacks down, he wraps his hands around the items, his fingers resting on top of mine, but I don’t let go right away.
“We didn’t,” I tell him quietly as we both continue to hold the notepad and pen. “Do this every year, I mean.”
His eyes stay locked on mine, and his thumb starts rubbing back and forth over my knuckles as I continue.
“We tried that first summer after you left, but it didn’t feel right making our wishes without you here, so we never came back again.”
And it killed me. God, it killed me to be here without you and try to pretend like everything was okay.
I finally drop my hand and let Everett have the notepad and pen when the way his thumb kept moving over my knuckles started to distract me and I almost said my thoughts out loud.
Looking away from him, my eyes move around the room as I remember the night of my first birthday after Everett left, when Aiden and I thought it would be easy to come up here and do what we’d always done. As soon as we sat down in the middle of the room, neither one of us could bring ourselves to even pull up the floorboard and take my box out. I’d never been more thankful that Aiden could read me like a book, and made up an excuse for us to leave before I broke down in tears and made a fool of myself. It was a flimsy excuse, but it worked.
“Shit. I forgot the snacks. We can’t do this without our tasty treats or your wish won’t come true. And then THAT wish would taint all the other wishes when you put it in the box, and it would be complete wish anarchy. We can’t have wish anarchy, kid. Let’s blow this Popsicle stand, find a bar, and get completely wasted instead.”
I laugh softly when I think about how Aiden dragged me to not one, but four different bars in Charleston and, true to his word, got me completely wasted.
Everett looks at me questioningly. “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing. I was just thinking about Aiden. You’ll be happy to know that he was the recipient of my puke that night. I threw up in his lap,” I tell him, my smile faltering when pain flashes across Everett’s face and he quickly looks down at his lap and starts tapping the pen against the notepad.
“I’m sorry. I should have realized bringing you up here would be hard. We don’t have to do this.”
I quickly shuffle around on my knees until I’m in between his legs, and I rest my hands on top of his thighs.
“No, I want to do this. Aiden would want us to. In fact, he’d probably be a little pissed if we didn’t.”
Everett doesn’t look up at me, and I realize he’s staring at my hands on his thighs. I feel them flex under my palms and I quickly snatch them away and scramble over to my bean bag chair. I know we’re pretending to be husband and wife and have to constantly touch for Stratford’s benefit, but he’s not here right now. Touching Everett in any way when we’re alone is too much for my heart and my head to handle. My heart is instantly thrown back into the past, back to a time where I would have given anything to be able to touch him whenever I wanted. But my head is constantly reminding me this is all an act, and imagining it’s anything other than that will break me. I’m not that foolish young girl anymore. I’m an adult with responsibilities and I don’t have time to waste on wishing things could be different.
“I miss him. I miss him every day, but he’d want us to do this,” I reassure Everett again.
He closes his eyes and I watch a muscle tick in his jaw as he remains quiet for a few minutes, and I wish there was something I could do to make him feel less sad and less guilty about not being here when Aiden died. I got to say good-bye to him at the end of his illness, and at the funeral, but Everett never got that closure, and I can’t imagine what that must be doing to him.
Everett finally opens his eyes, and I silently watch him flip through the notepad, quickly scribbling four wishes, on four different star-shaped pieces of paper. He rips them off the top of the pad, lifts the lid on his box, and tosses them inside before securing the lid back on top. Leaning forward, he places his box back inside the hole, nestled between mine and Aiden’s boxes, and then replaces the floorboard on top of them.
He grabs the bag of Fritos, tears it open, and sets it down on the floor between us, then reaches into the cardboard container and grabs two bott
les of Crush, twisting off both of the caps before handing one over to me.
Turning to face me, he tips his bottle toward me and I clink mine against it.
“Happy four years of belated birthday wishes, Everett. I hope they come true,” I tell him.
“Doubtful, but thank you.”
As I bring the bottle up to my mouth and take a sip of the cold, grape-flavored soda, I want to ask him why he would say something like that. Why he’d want to come up here and continue with this tradition if he doesn’t really believe in it, but I’m too busy silently apologizing to Aiden, hoping that wherever he is, he can hear me and forgive me for the thoughts running through my head, brought on by Everett.
I’m sorry I made you miss out on four years of wishes, even if you were only humoring me.
I’m sorry if I ever made you feel like you were never enough.
And I’m sorry…so sorry, that being here without you right now isn’t half as hard as being here without Everett was.
Chapter 20
Everett
The glow from the crackling fire shines on Cameron’s face as she stares into the burning logs and embers. She’s so damn beautiful no matter what she’s doing, but I know this picture of her, so comfortable and relaxed after a long, stressful weekend, is going to be burned into my brain for a long time.
Before Stratford went back to the main house an hour ago when all the campers left to go home, he’d been sitting right across the fire pit, looking through the flames at us while we conducted the camp’s usual end-of-the-weekend bonfire. The workers told stories, sang songs with the kids, and set up a table filled with s’mores fixings and helped them make as many as they could stuff in their mouths. Knowing Stratford’s eyes were on us, remembering everything he told me about how watching another couple in love makes him happy, and knowing how exhausted Cameron was after the long weekend, I leaned down and grabbed her feet, pulling her legs up onto my lap. I tossed her flip-flops onto the ground and gave her a much-needed foot massage.
Even though the time for putting on a show has passed since Stratford is long gone and probably tucked away in his bed by now, I don’t want to move from this position. She’s sitting sideways in her chair, staring at the fire, and her legs are still in my lap, my hands now resting on her shins. I know I’m supposed to be concentrating on trying to be her best friend again and nothing else, but I can’t stop wanting to touch her.
Taking her up to the treehouse the other day was a good idea at the time. I wanted to do something we always did as friends, but I quickly realized how stupid that idea was when it made her think of Aiden and the ring on her hand sparkled when she placed it on my thigh, reminding me what he was to her.
I’ve spent so much time thinking about him and allowing myself to grieve him since I got sober. I’ve spent months making myself remember all the good times and what a great friend he was and letting go of the guilt that I wasn’t here, knowing he’d want me to be happy and stop being so sad all the time. It wasn’t until I saw the sorrow on Cameron’s face and the sparkle from that fucking ring that remembering him started to make me feel like it did when I was drunk all the time—spiteful, pissed off, and angry. And then I felt like an asshole for being jealous of how much she missed him and how happy she looked when she spoke of him. I tried my hardest to hide it, but she knew something was wrong when I couldn’t even speak, let alone look at her. I couldn’t stand to see the misery on her face, thinking about the man she loved. It hurts twice as much that he was my best friend, and I feel like I’m dishonoring his memory by being pissed at him all the time. It makes me feel like the shittiest friend in the world because I know, if given the choice between Aiden being back here right now, alive and well and full of life, or Cameron sitting next to me, still unsure of our friendship and keeping me at a safe distance, I’d pick Cameron every time. I’d pick these few quiet moments, this small handful of days faking it with her, over a lifetime of friendship with Aiden.
I need to get this shit in check before I fuck everything up with her again. But sometimes, the way she looks at me…Jesus, it confuses the hell out of me. Especially when I’m sitting here wondering if she sat here by the fire like this with Aiden. If he ever rubbed her feet after a long weekend, kept his hands on her at all times because he couldn’t stand not touching her. I’m so sick of everything always coming back to my own insecurities and jealousy that I’m starting to annoy myself.
“I’m so tired, even my hair hurts,” Cameron says with a sigh, turning her head away from the fire to look over at me with a smile. “You don’t look as exhausted as I feel. How is that possible?”
Because you keep me so on edge, I feel like I’ll never sleep again.
“You get used to feeling tired all the time sleeping on cots in the middle of rain forests, and figuring out how to work through it since no one gives a shit about how exhausted you are when there’s people who are sick and dying and need you to help them.”
My fingers start gently massaging into her calves, and the little moan of pleasure that comes out of her mouth shoots right to my dick, making me want to shove her legs off my lap, jump up, and run the fuck away to try and get my head back on straight.
“I know you missed our annual birthday tradition while you were gone, but what else did you miss?” she asks, opening her eyes to look at me again while I continue working the kinks out of her legs, because I’m a glutton for punishment.
“Color,” I immediately reply.
She laughs, lifting her head up from the back of her chair to look at me quizzically.
“I have to say, Stratford’s weird outfit choices are growing on me,” I tell her.
I gave her a condensed version of what he told me about why he has so many strange rules about where his money goes during a few minutes we had alone earlier while he was talking to Seth.
“You have no idea how beige being in those medical tents all the time is, especially when we were in the desert. The sand is beige, the tents are beige, our scrubs were beige…even half of the food is beige. I missed reds and purples and especially bright green,” I explain with a shrug.
Especially bright green because it’s the color of your eyes. Goddammit I missed looking into those eyes.
“Okay. What else?”
I take a minute to think about all the things I missed when I was overseas, knowing Cameron was at the top of that list, but I’m not about to tell her that. She knows I regret pushing her away and why, even if it wasn’t the full truth. If I don’t keep things light and easy right now, I’ll be tempted to spit out a whole bunch of shit I shouldn’t.
Like how I forced myself to stop being in love with her a long time ago, but there’s no way in hell I could ever stop wanting her.
“The brisket from Lewis Barbecue. I used to dream about that shit.”
“They do have really good barbecue. That’s a good one. What else?” she asks.
I rub my palms gently up and down her legs while we talk, knowing I’m just torturing myself, but I can’t help it. It feels good to be sitting here with her talking like friends. Friends do things like this, right? I can touch her legs without it getting weird, and it’s not like she’s doing anything to move away or getting pissed at me for touching her. I’m reestablishing our friendship, that’s it. I’m showing her she can still talk to me like she used to and she can trust me to be a good friend to her.
“Magnolia blossoms. And don’t laugh at me because it sounds girly as shit, but I missed the smell of those things. I even missed how everyone in this town decorates every damn table with those stupid mason jars filled with magnolia blossoms,” I state.
“I’m not going to laugh at you. The smell of magnolia blossoms is my favorite smell in the world.”
I already know this, since she wears perfume that smells like them. Not only did I used to dream about brisket from Lewis Barbecue, but I used to dream about that damned scent. It would wake me up out of a dead sleep, and even in the middle of a w
ar-torn country, I could swear Cameron was right there next to me.
Knowing I need to move things away from the dangerous territory they’re heading, I think of something I know will make her laugh.
I rest my head on the back of the chair, staring up at the night sky, and let out a sigh.
“But the one thing I missed most of all, the one thing I couldn’t stop dreaming about…was Guns and Posers.”
Cameron’s laughter echoes around the clearing in the woods, and I turn my head, giving her an outraged look.
“Don’t laugh at my misery, Cameron. It was torture going four years without them in my life. You have no idea the struggle.”
“I should have known you’d miss that stupid eighties cover band most of all. How many times did you drag us to every bar in Charleston to hear them play?” she asks.
“Clearly not enough since you still haven’t learned to appreciate their brilliance.”
“You’re insane. Just for that, I’m going to look up their schedule and take you to their next performance immediately. Maybe now that you’re older and wiser, you’ll realize how much they actually suck. I might have to break into my savings account so we have enough money to get completely trashed. You can’t listen to them sing unless you’re drunk.”
I start to laugh, but watch as her eyes widen in shock and she brings a hand up to cover her mouth. I realize what she just said, and know that after whatever Jason told her about me, she thinks she said something wrong, and I know it’s time to give her more truths.
“Cam, it’s fine,” I reassure her.
“I’m sorry. That was a stupid thing to say,” she whispers, dropping her hand from her mouth.
“I’m telling you, it’s fine. I’m fine. I wasn’t for a while, but I am now.”