“Cam,” I say.
“AJ, don’t argue,” she says, with an accompanying smile. “This is what’s best. I promise.” She leans over and kisses my cheek. “Oh, and thank you for the sweet gesture, Brink. No one has ever done something so ridiculous for me.”
Brink laughs. “I am here to shock and awe.” He places his hands behind his head and lifts his feet up to sit sideways on the seat.
Cammy opens her bag and retrieves a white box. “Here. I brought this for us.”
“What is it?” I ask.
“Open it,” she tells me. I sit down in one of the seats and pull her down with me, creating a little privacy from Brink. I open the box, finding a cupcake with a “Happy Birthday” candy piece in the center. My heart feels as though it’s splitting back open from the wound that has hardly healed and I look up at her, finding the same pain swimming through her eyes. Cammy takes my hand within hers and squeezes tightly. “I hope she’s happy,” Cammy says.
“She is. She has to be. That’s why we’re going through pain, so she can be happy. It’s what good parents do, right?” I tell her, saying what I’ve done my best to convince myself of over the past year.
Cammy shakes her head and wraps a strand of hair behind her ear. “Send me a postcard,” she says while placing a kiss on my cheek. “And have fun, okay?”
I’m hardly able to agree before she makes her way off of the shuttle.
The thought that this could be another long or permanent goodbye makes my stomach hurt. I hate feeling like this because I think this might be it for me. This pain. It’s too much to continue living through.
She’s letting me go so I can live.
I have to let her go, so she can live too.
I stand up and glance over at Brink. “Bud, can you hold this shuttle for like five minutes? I just—”
Brink glances at his watch. “Yeah, we’re early. You have a few. You okay?”
“No.”
I step off the shuttle, running after her. “Cam!”
Her golden-brown waves spiral around her head as she stops and turns. “No way, AJ. You need to go and enjoy yourself,” she scolds me.
“Cammy,” I say, breathlessly, as I reach her.
“Yeah,” she asks with a small smile.
“I think we need to break things off now before it gets to be too much. It’s already too hard to handle. I need to be with you and I can’t be. This hurts too much. Missing our daughter, and you—it’s all too much.” What am I doing? Is this considered self-defense? God, I’m such an asshole. She just drove all the way up here with a goddamn cupcake for our daughter’s birthday, and now she probably thinks I’m saying this because she’s taking an interview over going to Cancun with me. “But it’s not because you can’t come to Cancun with me—”
“AJ,” she says, placing her hand up, gesturing me to stop. “I understand. Even though we had kind of taken a break, I was still thinking about you every minute of every day. It was one of the reasons why I came up here to see you—it had to be face to face and not over the phone.”
“You came up here to make our breakup official and you were going to leave without saying anything?”
She shrugs. “I didn’t want to ruin your trip. I figured it could wait until you got back.”
“So this is it, then,” I tell her.
“We kind of broke up before I left for D.C., then again three months later. Both times, we said goodbye, but it never felt like a goodbye. I still love you. I think I always will, and it’s making it hard for me to move on, so I’ve stayed still, thinking this could actually work in some alternate world. I know it can’t, though.” Her words sound like every thought I’ve had over the past six months. I’ve had drunken moments where I’ve forced myself to pretend like this girl didn’t leave her imprint on my life, but she’s a part of it forever, no matter what. Though, we aren’t in a place or at a time where we can be together.
“I’ve felt the same way,” I tell her. “This hurts, though, Cam. Does this mean we’re not going to talk anymore?” We shouldn't. It’ll make it worse.
“I—”
“Don’t answer me. I know what the answer should be,” I tell her.
She leaps toward me and squeezes me tightly, like a child holding a teddy bear during a thunderstorm. “I really, really do love you with all of my heart, AJ, but I think this is what we’re supposed to do right now.”
I hold her with the same amount of strength that she’s showing me. “I love you, Cam. I always will. No matter what life brings either of us, you will always be a part of my thoughts—my life, even if you aren’t beside me. Plus, goodbye doesn’t have to mean forever.”
Her back shudders beneath my grip and I know she’s crying. “I’m sorry for everything,” she says.
“I’m sorry for…everything too,” I tell her.
We say this often because we call our daughter… everything.
CHAPTER ELEVEN