After a minute of mindlessly kissing the lips I still love, she pulls away, smiling at me with an undefined expression. “I want you to go to Cancun. We’ll make plans for the summer,” she says. “The last thing I want to do is hold you back. It’s the reason why I gave everything up in the first place.” She laughs a little at her statement, but it’s not funny at all.
They say your heart grows attached to the first person you sleep with, which I can understand, and if so many people think that general idea is true, what does it say for those who have a child together and then lose the child? It’s like I gave half of my heart to Cammy and the other to our daughter, leaving me with a big empty hole in my chest. I can’t let go of her. Literally. I have her hands locked in mine, and my head is nodding before I can even get the words out. “I’m not leaving you after you came all this way.”
“Yes, you are. You are going to experience Cancun and everything you’re supposed to experience during spring break.”
“Cam,” I laugh. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“This...is the least I can do for you,” she says, definitively.
“Ugh!” Brink groans from five feet away. “You two are killing me!”
“Isn’t my roommate awesome?” I joke with Cam.
Brink sighs again. “Give me your phone,” he says to me. I give him a questioning look and toss him my cell. “Give me a minute, lover boy.”
“What’s he doing?” Cammy asks under her breath.
“With Brink, there is absolutely no way of ever knowing what he is doing. I’ve learned to sort of just roll with the punches when he’s around.”
Brink left the common area with my phone about ten minutes ago. He’s been pacing behind the glass doors in front of the main elevators for the last ten minutes, and now he’s now pushing back through the doors. “Hey, I think your shuttle is here,” I mouth to him. He’s still talking to someone on my phone, though, and he shoos me away. Brink steps up to Cammy and removes her bag from her shoulder and throws it over his own, still continuing his conversation to whoever the hell he’s talking to.
Brink walks outside to the shuttle bus with Cammy’s bag and steps inside of the vehicle. “What the hell?”
“What is he doing?” Cammy asks, as we follow him out the front door.
Both of us step onto the shuttle so I can retrieve our stuff, and at the same time, Brink ends the call before sitting down in one of the blue cushioned seats. With his hands folded over his lap, he looks over at me casually and asks, “What’s up?”
“What are you doing?” I ask him.
“Going to Cancun,” he says with an outlandish expression, as if I were nuts for asking.
“Can I have my phone and Cammy’s bag please?” Why is he such a tool sometimes?
“Sure, but you can find it in Cancun,” he says with a quick wink.
“Dude, look, I’m really sorry about all of this. I can’t just leave Cammy behind, though.”
“Look, guys. Brink, can I have my bag? I’ll leave you AJ in return. He can use the trip, but I’m going to head back to D.C.”
“You’re coming with us,” Brink says with a smug grin.
“Thank you, but I could hardly afford to drive here,” she says politely. This breaks my heart a little, since I hate that she had to spend whatever money she had to drive here, and I greeted her the way I did. Then just to make matters worse, she was selfless enough to tell me to go on this stupid trip anyway. I’m a jackass who never deserved this girl in the first place.
“I bought you a ticket. Don’t worry about it, chica—oh, that’s Spanish for girl, you should know that because we’re going to Mexico, and they don’t speak English. Oh crap, do you have a passport? I didn’t even think to ask!”
Brink also didn’t think to ask if she wanted to go to Cancun. Yet, Cammy is smiling. “I do, I always have it in my purse. I considered running away once, and I figured if I was going to do that, I might need a passport. Haven’t separated from it since.” She took that whole running away business seriously, and I didn’t. We never got too deep into the conversation on where we’d run away to, but she mentioned Canada. I loved the idea at that moment. I’ve always loved any idea Cammy has had.
“How long is the trip?” she asks. It’s something I should have considered asking too.
“Eight days. We’ll be back a week from Sunday.”
Cammy sits down on the seat we’re standing beside and places her hands over her eyes. “Crap. Crap. Crap.”
“What’s wrong?” I ask her.
“I’m supposed to meet with the dean next Friday to discuss a possible job placement for the summer. It’s a pretty big deal.”
“The ticket is refundable for the next thirty minutes. My pops knows people at the airline we’re flying with. No harm, no foul if you can’t go,” Brink says.
Cammy grinds her jaw back and forth for a long minute. “You folks ready to go?” the driver asks.
“I hate this whole ‘becoming an adult’ thing,” Cammy says, standing from her seat. “If I miss the interview, it will be next to one of the dumbest things I’ve ever done.”
I nod, “I agree. I’ll stay here with you, and you can leave when you need to.”
“No,” she says sternly. “Brink, make sure he has a good time, and stay out of trouble, both of you.”