“Have you heard from Cammy?” Hunter asks. “Is she settling in to George Washington okay?”
“I guess so,” I tell him.
“Oh,” he says.
“If it’s meant to be—” Ellie shouts over him.
“I know,” I interrupt.
“I know how much she means to you…even if you still won’t admit that you two are together. No guy could just be friends with a girl like Cammy.” I somewhat expect Hunter to get the wind knocked out of him for that comment but he continues, “With that said, the next four years will come and go, and then your life will go in the direction it’s supposed to, so if that means you end up with your ‘best friend’ as we’ll call her, then that’s how it’ll happen.”
“Could take longer,” Ellie said. “Don’t give up hope.”
“Coming from you two, this is so helpful. With all of your lifelong experience in dating and loss, maybe you should write a book,” I tell them.
“Babe, we could totally write a book,” Hunter tells Ellie. “We can title it: ‘What It’s Like to Find Your Wife at Five.”
“Aw, that’s so cute! We should do that!” Ellie agrees.
“Yes, it would be an inspiration to all five-year-olds,” I add in. “PS: You guys need to get a life.”
“We have one,” Ellie says. “Together, forever. Awwwwww.”
“Before I puke, I need to get off the phone,” I say. They do this on purpose. They’ve been doing this on purpose for years ever since the very first time I pretended to gag when they kissed in front of me. I know they don’t act like this when they’re not in my presence, but they don’t give it up when they are. Right now, I just feel jealous that their relationship survived the odds, and here they are, planning their lifelong road to happiness until death do they part and all that crap. It’s not fair.
“Have a good time, bro. Call if you need anything,” Hunter tells me.
“And call me if you need girl advice; I’m good at that,” Ellie says.
“Yeah, find your wife when you’re five years old. I think that’s all the advice I’ll ever need from you, Ell.”
“Love you, AJ,” she says.
“Yeah, yeah, love you too, sis.”
“Peace, bro! Live it up. It’s your time!” Hunter shouts before the call ends.
Now that I got all of the goodbyes out of the way, there’s no reason for anyone else to ask me about Cammy because no one at school knows her. So it’s time to move forward and if she wants to move with me, she can; otherwise, I’ll set her free and all that crap I always hear about.
Hunter and Ellie’s call took up the rest of my trip, and I’m pulling into the campus full of thousands of lost looks—mine being one of them.
I park the truck and hop out, feeling my phone buzz again. Who the hell is it this time? Everyone has said good luck and goodbye. I take it out and see Cammy’s name light up the screen. My fingers can’t move fast enough to press accept.
“Hey,” I say eagerly.
“I’m so sorry I’ve been so hard to talk to this past week,” she says. “It’s been crazy here with orientation and meeting so many people, but I wanted to tell you good luck. Speaking from my week’s worth of experience, I know you’re going to have a blast.”
“I miss you, Cam.”
“AJ, I miss you so, so, so much that it hurts to see your name pop up on my phone.”
“It hurts to not see your name pop up on my phone,” I tell her.
“I know. I’m sorry. You know I love you. I know you love me. Let’s keep that and enjoy this time we decided to give ourselves.” I think she’s referring to us not running off together, rather than giving our daughter up for adoption. “No one knows our secrets now, and it’s kind of nice.”
“Yeah,” I agree out loud, but silently, I disagree. I know all of our secrets, and they will forever hurt me.
“Call me tonight and let me know how orientation went. But if you end up going to a freshman welcoming party or something, you don’t have to worry about calling me. I want you to have fun.”
“You got it,” I say, taking my first load of bags out of the truck’s bed.
“Love you, AJ.”
“Love you, Cam.”
With the bags slung over my shoulders, I make my way to the dorm I was assigned to and head up the five floors to room 5-0-5 where I should meet some dude named Brink.
The second I walk into my new ridiculously empty room complete with four white ceramic walls and two prison-looking beds, I see…Brink, and I’m foreseeing exactly how the next eight months of my life are going to play out. I place my bags down on the emptier of the two beds, and he tosses a beer into my hands before he even introduces himself. “Thank the fucking holy college grail, you look like a normal son-of-a-bitch. Please tell me you’re a normal son-of-a-bitch?”
“We can go with normal,” I say with a raised brow. “You?”
“Normal here too.”