The Opportunist

Chapter Ten



The Present





Sunday morning I wake in my bed, my hair reeking of sweat and cigarettes. I groan, roll over, and vomit into my trashcan. My trashcan? I didn’t remember putting it there. Then I hear the toilet flush.

My God-Caleb!

I collapse against my pillow and put my hand over my eyes.

“Hey there gorgeous,” Caleb walks in carrying a tray and smiling sunshine all over the room. I groan again and hide my face in a pillow. Last night: Alcohol, betrayal by a friend, an embarrassing phone call.

“I am so sorry I called you. I don’t know what I was thinking,” I croak.

“Don’t be,” he says placing the tray on my nightstand. “I feel honored that I was your first choice.” He picks up a glass of water and a little white pill and places them both in my hand. I hang my head in shame and snack on my thumb nail.

“I brought you some toast too—if you’re up to it.” I take one look at the bread and butter and my stomach churns. I shake my head and he quickly removes the tray.

My hero.

“I called the motel this morning,” he says not looking at me. I bolt upright in bed and feel my head spin. “Your friend checked out last night. Apparently, he was in hurry to get out of town,” he leans against the wall and looks at me through his lashes. If I wasn’t so nauseous, I would have smiled at the sight of him in my bedroom.

“Some friend, huh?” I toy with my comforter.

“It wasn’t your fault. Men like that should be castrated.” I nod and sniff my agreement. “But, if he ever comes near you again Olivia, I’m going to kill him.”

I liked that. I liked that a lot.



The ‘Friends’ theme song is playing from my small television when I get out of the shower. I shuffle into the living room in my robe and slippers and stand around like I don’t know where to sit. Caleb scoots over to make room on the couch for me and I curl into the corner. I decide to make some semblance toward being honest.

“I like you Caleb,” I blurt and then I cover my face with my hands in embarrassment. “That sounded like a fifth grade confession.”

He looks up from the TV, his gold eyes laughing.



“Do you want to go steady?”



I punch him on the arm.



“I’m not being funny. This is serious. We are not a good idea. You don’t know who you are and I know exactly who I am, which is why you should probably be running for your life.”

“You don’t really want me to do that.” He is being half serious now or at least he isn’t smiling anymore.

“No. But it would be the best thing.” I am ringing my hands in the sleeves of my gown. I feel nervous and sick to my stomach, plus the way he’s looking at me isn’t making things easier.

“You are bouncing me around like a yo-yo here,” he says placing both of his hands on his knees, as if he is getting ready to stand up.

“I know,” I say quickly, “I’m thinking that I am not the kind of girl you want to be friends with.”

“I don’t just want to be friend with you.”

I have a moment; my vision swings in and out of focus and my wretched, evil heart swells up like a balloon. I am so confused. I should not be doing this to him, but I want to. I rub my temples. This was all too complicated and unfair. After three long years, I have what I want and it isn’t real. He doesn’t know who I am, and if he did, he wouldn’t be sitting in my living room.

I blow air through my nose. Good Olivia is begging me to break things off with him for good. She remembers airport f*cking blue and paint on the ceiling and what happens when those memories blow through your empty life and remind you of how cold things are. We turn back to the TV, both of us embarrassed and awkward. Caleb leaves a couple of hours later sucking the hope from my lungs as he goes.

“Lock all the doors, and call me if you need me, okay?” I nod biting my bottom lip. I don’t want to be alone but I am too embarrassed to ask him to stay longer.

“I’ll see you tomorrow.” I will him to stay, gazing up at his beautiful face. He seems to hesitate, and for a moment, I think it’s working.

“What’s wrong?” I whisper. Please don’t let him remember. Please let him remember.

“Nothing…it’s just that I feel like we’ve done this before—déjà vu, you know?”

I do know, because this is the way our goodbyes went when we were together. He never stayed the night because I never let him.



“Well, bye.”



“Bye,” I say.



I make myself a cup of tea and settle onto the sofa. I lost him once because of my inner rottenness. My lies started unraveling one after another until he was so weighed down by the size of them, he looked me in the eyes and said goodbye forever. I remember feeling numb as I watched him leave, and then for the rest of the day, until I realized he wasn’t coming back. Ever. That was when the walls of my emotional dam came crashing down around me. The hurt I experienced was so potent and searing for the first six months, dominating each day like a sore throat. After that, it became a constant ache, an absence that never left your bones. Caleb’s gone, Caleb’s gone, Caleb’s gone….

Even now that he was back in my life, I still felt his absence. My time, I knew, was borrowed and soon the fierce pain would start again. It would only be a matter of time when he found out about our past and my sausage link of lies.

I decide to seize the day. If my time is short, I might as well be with him as much as I possibly can. I pick up the phone and punch in the number to his condo. He didn’t answer, so I chirp a message into his machine asking him to call me back, which he does, about ten minutes later.

“Olivia? You okay?”

“I’m fine, just fine,” I wave away his concern like he can see me. “I’m coming over,” I say quickly. “I’d rather not be alone and you promised me dinner anyway.”

I wait, holding my breath.



There is a pause, during which I fold in both of my lips and squeeze my eyes shut. Maybe he has plans with Leah.



“Great,” he says finally. “Do you like steak?”



“I’m all about the meat.” I flinch when he laughs. “Give me the directions.” I jot down the series of highways and streets he is rattling of, and toss my pen aside. I know the building he is describing. It was the type of thing you couldn’t help but look at as you drove across the waterway to get to the string of ritzy café’s and boutiques that lined the beach. It had at least thirty floors, a chunk of real estate that glittered like OZ.

When I arrive, I hand the keys to my Bug over to the valet attendant and step into the chilly lobby.

A doorman greets me. His eyes start at my feet and climb slowly to my face. I had seen this look a million times from Caleb’s friends. I was among them, but not one of them. Their eyes were tuned into Laboutin and Gucci, so when I showed up in my off-the-rack clothing, their looks glazed over like I bored them. Most of their conversations began, “When I was vacationing in Italy last year…” or “Daddy ’s new sailboat….” to which I would be the silent listener, having never left Florida, especially not on my dead beat daddy’s toy schooner. My daddy was the guy who threw his empty beer bottles at other men’s good fortune.

When I complained about it to Caleb, he tutored me on the art of snobbery.



“Look at them like you know their secrets and you find them boring.”



The first time I looked down my nose at an heiress, she asked me where I’d bought my shoes.





“Payless,” I replied. “funny isn’t it, that our shoes are identical, yet the price you paid for yours could feed a small country for a month?” Caleb had choked on his shrimp cocktail and the heiress had never spoken to me again. I’d felt a sick power. You didn’t have to be rich and important to intimidate someone, you just had to be judgmental.

I don’t look directly at the doorman, but I blink rapidly in his direction like he’s annoying me. He smiles.

“Are you visiting Miss?” Are you veeesiting, mees?

“Caleb Drake,” I say. “Can you tell him that Olivia’s here?” Just then I hear the elevator door slide open and Ricky Ricardo nods to someone over my shoulder.

“Olivia,” Caleb says, putting his hand on the small of my back. I jolt at his touch.

He smiles at the doorman.

“This guy cheats at Poker. Completely swindled me out of a hundred dollars last week.” The little jerk beams in response. Why was it that attention from Caleb turned people into living glowworms?

“Sir? It was the most honest hundred dollars I’ve ever made.”



Caleb smirks and leads me to the elevator.



“You hang out with the staff?” I ask as the doors closed behind us.



“I play poker with them on Tuesdays,” he says looking at me sideways. “What? I like them. No pretenses. Besides, I don’t remember any of my other friends.” He lets me step out of the elevator first and then follows behind me. I get the feeling he is looking at my butt.

“It’s beautiful—this place.”



He makes a face. “Not really homey is it? It’s a little macho-bachelor.”



“Well, you are both of those things, so it fits.”



“I’m sure I could have bought a house for what I paid for this.”

“And a minivan,” I grin.



He grimaces. “That I’m not so sure about.”



“This is it,” he says stopping at 749. “Do not be intimidated by the eighteen foot ceilings and the plasma televisions—they are impressive, but not to be feared.”

I follow his shoulders into the living room.

His condo is impressive. The foyer, as it turns out, is as large as my bedroom. It is bare except for the massive chandelier that hangs over the butter cream tiles. I feel classy by osmosis. He leads me into the living room which, just as he promised, has impossibly high ceilings. The entire main wall is a window, which shows a view of the ocean.

“Now, tell me,” I say stopping to admire a painting, “did mommy help you decorate or did you just hire someone?”



“I don’t know,” he shrugs. “But word is—I dated a decorator just to get the free swag.”



“Is that so?” I reach out and touch a finger to the cover of a giant atlas that was resting on his mantle.



“This is the kitchen,” he says leading me into a room full of stainless steel. He leads me into a hallway and pauses before opening the door.

“My office.”

I peek around his shoulder into a room that was cased ceiling high in bookshelves. My stomach clenches in excitement and I felt an urgent need to pee. Books. Wonderful, magnificent books.

“You read all of these?”

“I hope not. That would indicate I had absolutely no life pre-amnesia.”

“I don’t know,” I say, my eyes sweeping over the titles. “I think you’d enjoy a good classic…maybe Great Expectations.” I pluck it from his bookshelf and place it in his hands. He pulls a face, but doesn’t put it back, placing on his desk instead.

A framed picture of Leah sits strategically placed, probably by her, next to his computer monitor. I glare at it. It’s one of those posed studio pictures that the photographer painstakingly tried to make look natural. Leah was looking slightly to the left of the camera, and her mouth was pouty and slightly open. “Kiss me, I’m a beautiful whore,” it says in black and white.



“I want to have a huge office one day,” he says, following my eyes to a picture of Leah. “More books-that I don’t read- a fireplace, and one of those big, arched doorways with the heavy knockers.”

“Are you going to hang that picture up in your new office?” I ask. It hurts to see her there, so fixated in his life.



Caleb shrugs and looks at me in interest.



“Depends. The girl in the frame might be different. I do have a thing for brunettes.”



I pull a face at him.



“And my bedroom…”



His sheets are black silk and they lay rumpled and unmade. It makes me sick to think of all the women that have rolled around in his sheets.

“Where’s the bathroom?” I say in weak voice. He leads me to through the bedroom and watches me stare. There is a shower with six different shower heads and sunken bath that could easily fit five people. There is even a small wine bar built in the corner. He laughs at my expression.

“This is my favorite room too.”

“Wow,” I say.

“Well, if you spend the night sometime you can have the privilege of using it.” All the blood rushes to my head.

We land up back in the living room. I slump onto the couch while Caleb goes to fetch a bottle of wine from the kitchen. He comes back with two glasses balanced in one hand and a bottle of red in the other.

He fills our glasses and hands me one, his fingers brushing against mine in the process.

When he disappears from the room to start dinner, I pour the wine down my throat like a shot and refill my glass. I half expect either Leah or his memory to make an appearance at any second and I don’t want to be sober when it happens.

“So, can I see this ring you bought for your sweet little girlfriend?” I say when he walks back into the room. I don’t know why I ask this but I’m sure the wine has made me bolder.



“Why do you want to see the ring?” he looks at me from under his lashes.

Hmmm, because I want to see what could have been mine.

“Curiosity. I’m a girl and I like jewelry. You don’t have to show me, if you don’t want to.”

He disappears into the bedroom and comes back carrying a small blue box. Tiffany’s. How predictable.

“Whoa baby,” I say cracking open the lid. It is a carat past enormous. The most beautiful and obnoxious bauble I have ever seen. Well, aside from Cammie anyway….

“This thing needs its own zip code.”



“Try it on.” He buffers the box at me and my hand automatically pushes it away.



“Isn’t it bad luck to try on someone else’s ring?”



“Bad luck for the bride, I think,” he taunts.



“In that case…” I say reaching for it. “Wait!” I pull my hand back. “You have to propose first.” I hand him the box and sit back waiting for the show.

“Everything has to be a production with you doesn’t it?” he says standing up and turning his back to me. “Ask and you shall receive.” When he spins back around his features are twitchy and nervous.

“Bravo,” I clap my hands.

“Olivia,” he begins. I look at him in mock surprise. Then suddenly he is serious…or he seems so. I catch my breath. “You belong with me. Do you believe me?” I feel my sweat glands open.



Holding my breath, I nod. This is supposed to be for laughs, but it doesn’t sound funny, it sounds like something I will be replaying years from now—when I am sitting alone in a room full of cats.

“Will you marry me, Olivia? You are the only woman I know how to love. The only woman I want to love.” He doesn’t lower himself to his knee and he doesn’t need to. I am rocking on the edge of an emotional meltdown as is.

I know I was supposed to give some sort of response. I grope for my wit, but my mind is as dry as my mouth.

The wine speaks for me. I kiss him, because he is close and there is no other response good enough. It is just a brush of lips, warm and hasty. He freezes and stares at me with his eyebrows cocked in surprise.

“I would have given you diamonds a week ago, if I knew it would get me that.”

I shrug.

He lifts my finger and studies Leah’s diamond. “It looks…..”

“Silly,” I finish for him. “Here, take it,” I tug at the band and it rams into my knuckle. I try again. It is…stuck.



“Crap!” I moan. “I am so sorry Caleb. This was such a stupid idea.”

“Don’t apologize. Your fingers are probably just swollen. Give it some time and we’ll try again later.” And then he disappears into the kitchen to see to dinner and I am left on the couch with half a bottle of wine and Strawberry Shortcake’s ring on my finger.

“I don’t get it. How can you think so differently from before?” I ask while we sit eating dinner at his dining room table. I am buzzing from the wine and my tongue feels dangerously loose. “You don’t like the ring you chose, before the amnesia, you don’t like the girlfriend ….or your condo. How can the same person be someone else entirely?”

“No one said anything about not liking the girlfriend. What might have been my taste then is not so now.”

“So the amnesia made you a different person?”

“Maybe or maybe the amnesia revealed that I’m not the person I was pretending to be.”

He is right. The years that he went missing from my life, he’d morphed into a professional bachelor, right down to his cheesy, silk sheets. It wasn’t my Caleb. The one who had put that purple blob of paint on my ceiling.

“Do you love Leah?” The words are out of my mouth before I have the chance to swallow them. My mouth tastes bitter.



“She’s lovely. Very kind and sophisticated. She always says the right thing at the right time. But I can’t seem to summon the things that I’m supposed to be feeling for her.”

“Maybe those feelings were never there in the first place.”

“Do you ever think that maybe you’re crossing the line?” He puts down his silverware and rests his elbows on the table.

“Hey, we’re just two strangers getting to know each other. There are no lines yet.” I push back from the table and cross my arms. My mood had soured like old milk and I wanted to fight.

“Truce,” he says holding up his hands. Before I can agree, he grabs our dinner plates and hustles into the kitchen.

I help him stack the dishes in the washer and then Caleb retrieves some ice from the kitchen and holds it on my finger.

I watch his fingers work through languid eyes. His next move almost makes me faint. He is trying to explain the rules of football to me, which I am pretending to care about, when he reaches for my finger and gently puts it into his mouth. The ring slides off easily this time. He takes it from his lips and replaces it in the box without another word. He carries it back into the bedroom and I clench and unclench my fist.

“I need to go,” I say, standing up.

“Don’t,” he says.

My phone starts ringing and I let go of his eyes to dig around in my purse. My phone hardly ever rings. I only have it for emergencies and Cammie. I expect to see her number when I look at the screen, but instead it’s Rosebud’s.

“Some-a-one breaks your apartment,” she yells when I pick up.



“Calm down Rose, I don’t understand—what?”



“Some-a-one breaks your house!” she yells, like I had asked her to turn up the volume instead of speak clearly.



I shake my head, which is still infused with wine. Then it clicks. Someone broke into my apartment.



“I’ll be right there.” I hang up and look at Caleb. “Someone broke into my apartment,” I repeat Rosebud’s words. Caleb grabs his car keys.

“I’ll drive you,” he says steering me towards the door. He drives faster than I would and I am grateful for it. I think about Pickles, who I had forgotten to ask Rosebud about. I silently pray that she is okay. Caleb walks me to my door where two police officers are waiting.

“Are you Olivia Kaspen?” the older of the officers asks. He is dead-eyed and pockmarked.



“Yes. My dog?” I try peering around them, but their uniformed bodies create a barrier between me and my front door.



“May we see some identification?” I pull my driver’s license out of my purse and hand it to him.



Satisfied, the officer steps aside. “Your neighbor has your dog,” he says a little more kindly. I breathe a sigh of relief.



I check to make sure Caleb is tagging behind me and step over the threshold. I don’t know what I am expecting to see. But, it wasn’t this. Everything a thief would want to steal is still there; television, DVD player, stereo. I blink confused and then my eyes catch the chaos formerly known as my home. Everything is smashed. Everything. Pictures, knickknacks, lamps. My sofa had been slashed open and the stuffing is pooling out like white vomit. I hear myself make a noise that is part sob—part wail. Caleb takes hold of my hand and I cling to him. I move from room to room my eyes bleeding tears as I survey the damage, or rather the annihilation of everything that I own. My coffee table is the only piece of furniture that remains unbroken; however, the intruder has taken the time to carve the word “SLUT” into the wood.

“This doesn’t look like a robbery,” I hear Caleb say to one of the officers. I slip into the bedroom before I can hear his reply. I step over my mutilated clothes and into my closet.



My memory box is laying topsy-turvy on the floor. I drop to my knees and begin rummaging through the bric-a-brac, running my fingers over each object in relief as I recover it. Almost everything is there. Almost. I press my palms to my eye sockets and rock on my haunches. Why? Why? Only one person would have a use for what is missing. She is the devil’s spawn, evil, with red hair and motives as big as Ursula the sea witches’ ass.

My head automatically turns in Caleb’s direction. Time. I was out of time. She was on her way to his condo now, no doubt, the evidence clutched in her hands. I start shaking. I am not ready. I can’t say goodbye yet.

“Miss?” the police officer is standing at the closet door, looking down at me. “We need you to fill out a report, to let us know what they took?” I see Caleb push past him and walk carefully around my ruined belongings. He lifts me from the floor and leads me back into the living room, his hands are like anchors on my arms.

I feel anger bubbling beneath my eyes, my nose, and my mouth. It is coursing through my limbs and doing a tap dance across my abdomen. I want to grab that bitch by her skinny little chicken neck and squeeze until she pops. I grope with my calm and turn to the policemen.

“They didn’t take anything,” I say waving my hand at the television. “This wasn’t a robbery.”

“Do you know anyone who would want to do something like this, Ms. Kaspen? An ex-boyfriend perhaps?” he says stealing a glance at Caleb. Did I? I grind my teeth. I can tell him everything right here, right now—beat the bitch to the punch.

Caleb is looking at me intently. I open my mouth to say something, but he beats me to it.

“Tell them about Jim, Olivia,” he says gently.

Jim? No—Jim would never do something this precise. No, this was a woman’s work. The detail impeccable.

“It wasn’t Jim,” I say. “Let’s go get Pickles.”



After they leave, Caleb takes my hand and tenderly says, “I want you to stay at my place tonight.”

I have no intention of doing any such thing but I am on mute until I can stew up a plan. We lock up and go over to Rosebud’s apartment, where Pickles throws herself at me with rabid hysteria. Rosebud clucks around me like a mother hen, touching and prodding until I grab both of her hands and assure her I am fine.

“Wait here,” she says disappearing into the kitchen. I know what is coming. The moment she first laid eyes on me, Rosebud decided that I needed taking care of. Her first gift had been a tarnished hunting knife that belonged to her dear, dead Bernie.

“If someone breaks in, you use this,” she jabbed the knife in demonstration, slicing at the air, and then handed it to me, hilt first. I was honored and mortified, but ended up stashing the knife underneath my bed.

Now, every time she sees me, she runs back into her apartment to fetch some half-eaten or lovingly used item she had set aside for me. I don’t have the heart to refuse.

She stumbles out of the kitchen carrying a massive bag of oranges and pushes them against my chest. Caleb raises an eyebrow in question and I shrug.

“Thanks Rosie.”

“No proby,” she winks at me. And then in a very loud whisper, “You steal this boy’s heart. Make him marry you.” I glance up at Caleb who is pretending to study Rose’s framed needlework. He is trying not to smile.

I kiss Rosebud’s wrinkled cheek and we leave. Caleb takes my oranges and gives me a smile that I don’t understand.



“What?”



“Nothing.”



“Tell me...”





He shrugs. “Her—you. It was very sweet.”



I blush.



We climb into his car and ease onto the highway. I count the streetlights tying to think of a way to steer him away from Leah.

When we pull off at his exit, I am swearing under my breath. We are blocks away from his high-rise and if I don't want to be caught. I have to do something—and fast.

“Can you pull over?”



“What? Are you sick?” I shake my head as he steers us into a shopping plaza. “Olivia?”



We are parked helter-skelter in a Wendy’s parking lot, and I am inappropriately thinking about a Frosty. Then I get an idea.



“Can we go camping? To that place you saw in that magazine?”



After we get a Frosty? I add in my head.

Caleb’s brow furrows and I wither in my seat. He is going to say no, tell me I am weird and crazy.

“Please,” I say closing my eyes, “I just want to be far, far away…” from Leah and the truth.

“It’s an eight hour drive. Are you sure you want to do that?”



My eyes snap open and I nod fiercely.



“I can take some time off of work. We can buy what we need when we get there. Let‘s just go…please.”



He is rolling things over in his mind, I can see it in the slow movement of his eyes-he looks at his hands, at me, at the steering wheel, and then he nods.

“Okay. If that’s what you want...”



I send my deepest thanks to God and smile.



“I do. Thank you. Let’s go now, right now.”



“Now? Really without anything?”



“Well, I don’t have anything to take anyway. You saw my closet. Let’s just make it an adventure.”



Caleb turns the car around and I lean back in my seat wanting to cry. A little while longer—please God, just give me a little more time.

The highway spreads out like licorice before us. Caleb opens the windows allowing the wind to rush in, frisking us with her fingers. We are leaving Florida. Leaving my vandalized home and leaving Caleb’s vindictive lover. I am safe…for now.

“Caleb?” I reach out and touch his arm. “Thank you.”



“Don’t thank me,” he says softly, “this is for both of us.”



“Okay,” I say, though I have no idea what he means. “Hey, can we stop and get a Frosty?”



We drive the eight hour trip to Georgia in seven. For most of the trip, we remain in a comfortable quiet. I fret over Leah and the mess I left behind in my apartment. I take to biting my nails but Caleb keeps swatting my hands away from my mouth. I look for something to harp at him about, some bad habit or annoying vice but he is all smooth edges.

I fall asleep and when I wake up Caleb is gone. I lift my head to peer out of the window and see that we are at a rest stop. I snuggle back down and wait for him to come back. I hear him coming, walking in a quickstep along the asphalt. He takes care to be as quiet as possible with the door and keys, so as not to wake me. He doesn’t start the car right away and I can feel his eyes on my face. I wait, wondering if he will wake me up to ask if I need to use the restroom. He doesn’t. Eventually the engine hums to life and I feel his hand shifting the gears near my knees.

We arrive at Quiet Waters Park, just as the pink tinged sun is lifting herself out of her slumber. The trees are wearing their fall coats, clashing oranges, reds, and yellows. We bump roughly on the gravel as he steers us toward the park entrance. I feel the full skosh of my deceit when I see the park—just as it was the last time we were here. I wonder in dismay if someone will recognize me from our last trip and dismiss the idea as absurd. The last time we were here was three years ago and the chances that the same employees would still be manning the campsite is silly, not to mention the fact that they saw hundreds of faces each year. Caleb parks outside of the rental office and turns off the radio.

“It’s cold here,” I laugh hugging my knees to my chest.



He rolls his eyes. “This is Georgia-not Michigan.”



“Still,” I say slyly. “We have no blankets or clothes, so we might need to use body heat to keep warm.”



His eyes pop. I laugh at his reaction and shove him out the open door.



“Go!” I instruct, pointing at the office. Caleb takes a few faltering steps backwards—still looking at me in mock surprise, then turns around and jogs into the small structure.

I settle back in my seat, proud of my crassitude.

Caleb exits the building about ten minutes later with an older woman trailing behind him. When he reaches the car, she throws up a hand and waves at him like he’s an A-list celebrity. Her jowls flap around like pillowcases and I snicker. He is forever making friends…or fans. Amnesia apparently does not change everything about a person.

“They don’t allow tents here,” he tells me, but they have these structures that they rent out. Looks like a tent, but bigger and it has wood floors.”





I already know this. The first time he deceived me into coming here, he told me that we would be staying in a luxury cabin. I packed my bags, excited to be leaving Florida, something I had never done before, and wondered whether or not our ‘cabin’ would have a fireplace. When we pulled up to the camp grounds, I looked around for the cabin in anticipation.

“Where is it?” I had asked, craning my neck to peer into the trees. All I saw were tepee-like tents. Maybe the cabins were further back into the woods. Caleb had smiled at me and parked his car in front of one of the tepees. He laughed when my face turned white.

“I thought we were staying in a cabin,” I had said, folding my arms across my chest.

“Trust me, this is posh camping, Duchess. Usually you have to erect your own tent and the floor is just thin canvas beneath you.”

I grunted, and stared at the tent miserably. He had tricked me.

Despite my initial horror, it turned out to be the best weekend of my life, and I would be forever addicted to ‘posh’ camping.





“Let’s go buy fur coats,” Caleb says blasting the heat. I nod and stare contentedly out of the window.

We find a Super Wal-Mart a few miles away, leave Pickles in the car, while Caleb puts his arm around me as we run for the doors. People stare at us like we have antennae growing from our heads. Some of them are in shorts.

“Its arctic cold out here,” I say to Caleb, and he smiles like I’m silly.

“Not to them.”

I am freezing, even though it’s at least fifty degrees out, and I wonder what it feels like to be in snow. I think of asking Caleb about snow but then I remember he doesn’t have any memory of it.

We head to the clothing department first. Caleb finds a matching pair of sweatshirts with kittens on the front that says, “I’m Cat’s About Georgia.”

“We are getting these,” he says throwing them in the cart.



I look at them in mortification and shake my head.



“How’s a girl supposed to look pretty wearing something like that?”



He tweaks my nose.



“You would look pretty wearing burlap and mud.”



I turn away to hide my smile.



We fill our cart with underwear, sweatpants, and socks and then head over to the food aisles.





By the time we stand in line to pay, we have enough food for two weeks. Caleb pulls out his credit card and refuses to take any money from me. We pull our sweatshirts over our heads next to the free magazine rack in the foyer and then dash to the car with our bags.

“Breakfast,” Caleb says tossing me a can of boiled peanuts. I pull a face.



“I’m pretty sure I saw a McDonalds back that way.” I pass the can back to him.



“No way,” he shoves it at my chest, “we are doing this the right way. Eat your peanuts!”



“The right way,” I mumble. “Is that why you bought an electric heater?” He looks at me out of the corner of his eye and I see a smile creeping at the corners of his lips. He always liked it when I sassed him.

We pull into our temporary gravel driveway around nine and begin lugging our supplies into the tent. I set up inside, stripping our new sleeping bags of their tags and arranging them on opposite sides of the small space we are sharing. I glance outside the tent and see Caleb arranging logs to make a fire. After a moment of watching his strong arms tug and pull, I yank the sleeping bags closer together. I might as well stay as close as I can—while I can.

Once the fire is lively and spitting, we each grab a semi-chilled bottle of beer and cozy up on our rainbow striped beach chairs.



“So does this feel familiar?” I ask, stroking Pickle’s head. He furrows his brow and shakes his head.



“No. But, it feels good. I like being here with you.”



I sigh. Ditto.

“What are you going to do about your apartment?” he asks not looking at me.



“Start new I guess. I don’t really want to think about it. It’s depressing,” I pull the lid off of the can of boiled peanuts and fish one out.

“We can both start over,” he flips the cap off another bottle of beer and lifts it to his lips. I watch him quietly waiting for him to continue.

“I’m going to start living my life the way I want to live it,” he tells me. “I’m not really sure who I was before the accident, but by the looks of things I was pretty miserable.”

I down the rest of my beer and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. I wonder idly if he was miserable because of me. Was it possible that right before his accident that he was still affected by my betrayal?

I think of Leah and I wonder if she is waiting at his condo, waiting to crack me open like the bad egg I am. Maybe I should have let it happen. It would have expedited the inevitable. I could tell him right now, but then I’d have to share a car with him back to Florida. Eight hours of torture. I deserve it. I open my mouth, the truth burning behind my lips to be let out. I can say it all quickly and then take cover. I toy with the idea of calling Cammie to come get me. I look at Caleb just as he stands up and stretches.

“Bathroom?” he says, scratching his chest. I point to a building that sits like a grubby egg-carton in the middle of the campgrounds. It is communal and it stinks like bleach. I watch him until he disappears into the building and go to the car to look for the bag of dog food that we bought. I am digging around in the backseat when I hear a rattling noise. I pull myself up and peer over the seat. His phone is lying on the passenger side floorboard. It is vibrating and from where I am I can see the name “Leah” flashing on the screen. Glancing over my shoulder I check to make sure he is still in the bathroom and snatch up the phone.

Seventeen missed calls—all from Leah. Wow! She is really gunning for me. I see my wrecked apartment in my mind and I shudder. If Caleb sees how many times she’s called, he will surely call her back. He is too considerate of a person to let her worry. I shut my eyes. I can’t let that happen. I hold down the power button and watch the screen turn black. Then I shove the phone into my pocket.

“Olivia?” I spin around. My heart is beating so fast, I can feel it pounding in my kneecaps. Did he see what I did?



I open my mouth to make some excuse, when he interrupts me.



“Let’s go for a walk,” he says.



A walk.



“A walk?”



“It’ll warm you up,” he holds out his hand and I take it. I have once again escaped the inevitable.



I grit my teeth as we walk. This whole escape-by-the-skin-of-your-teeth scenario was getting old.

Caleb’s phone feels like a wad of guilt against my thigh. I pray that he doesn’t see the bulge and make sure that he walks on the opposite side of where it is hidden.

Later, when we are back at our tent, I tell him that I need to call my boss.



“I need to tell her that I won’t be able to work for a few days,” I explain.



“Sure. Take your time. I’ll...uh….” He points a finger down the hill.



“Wander around?” I laugh.



He pulls a face and heads off.



I wait until he is a safe distance away and I head toward the lake. My sneakers suck at the mud and make revolting noises.



My message to Bernie takes only a minute. I briefly explain about the break in and promise to call back in a few days. I hit the end button and glance over my shoulder. Caleb is nowhere in sight. I pull his cell phone from my pocket and power it on. Two messages. I jab at the voicemail key and hold the phone to my ear. A voice asks for the password. Shit. I type in his birth date and the voice tells me that the password is incorrect. I try his birth year and bingo!

First message.

“Caleb, it’s Leah. Look…we really need to talk. I have some very interesting news for you. It’s about your new little friend Olivia. She’s not who you think. Give me a call back as soon as you can,” a pause, then, “I love you.”

The second message was left thirty minutes after the first.

“It’s Leah again. I’m really starting to get worried. I’m at your place and it looks like you left in a hurry. I just really need to talk to you babe. Call me.” I make a face and snap the phone closed. She has a key to his condo. Why didn’t I suspect she’d have a key? She was probably snooping around in his apartment while he was in the hospital after the accident. The little tramp has probably already seen her ring!

I glare at the phone, weighing my options. It has to go. It was the phone or it was me.

I walk down the little dirt incline that leads to the water’s slimy edge and watch the mosquitoes dance drunkenly along its surface.

“Leah,” I say looking down at Caleb’s phone. “Not yet.” And then I throw it into the water.

“Olivia, Have you seen my phone?”



I am crouched over a can of beans trying to manipulate the cheap can opener we’d bought. I drop both of them.



“Shit,” I say sidestepping the brown mess that is creeping across the ground towards my toes.



Caleb grabs another can from our stash and opens it for me.



He dumps it into our hot pot.



“You can use my phone. It’s over there on my sleeping bag.”

Caleb takes two strides to where I point and lowers himself to his haunches.



“I could have sworn my phone was in the car….”



“Maybe you dropped it at Wal-Mart,” I suggest over my shoulder.



“Yeah…”



I hold my breath while he dials and pray that he isn’t calling Leah.



“Mum,” I hear him say and I slump against Pickles in relief.



“No, no, I’m fine. I just decided to take a little trip…she did? What did she want?”

I didn’t think about Leah calling his parent’s house.

“…Oh, but she didn’t tell you why?…well, I’ll be back in a couple of days, I’ll talk to her then…Yes I’m sure mum. Love you too.” I watch his face carefully. He looks worried.

“Hey,” I say taking my telephone from his hand and stuffing it in my purse.



“Come flirt with me while I heat these beans up.”



I grabbed his hand and pulled him towards the plug outlet.





For the next four days, we stay cozened in our tent as the temperature drops to forty. We eat cup o’ noodles and fight over who got to sleep next to the portable heater. When it grows dark outside we pull our beach chairs together and wrap ourselves in blankets to watch the fire. Caleb keeps bringing up my failure to fill out my law school applications and I respond with a jab about his failure to propose to Leah. By the time we crawl into our separate sleeping bags at night, we have stupid smiles plastered on our faces. Every night Caleb engages me in an exchange that makes my toes tingle underneath all four pairs of my socks.

“Olivia?”



“Yes, Caleb?”



“Are you going to dream about me tonight?”



“Shut up.”



And then he laughs that beautiful, sexy laugh.