“You didn’t bring anything else inside, did you?” he asked.
“No. My backpack’s in Kendall car. My wig’s . . . oh, my wig’s in there.” I pointed to Max’s car. “And Rasta Penguin, of course.” I laughed. He didn’t.
“Okay, good.”
The cold, detached way he said this felt like a palm slapping my face. The sting of it shot through the rest of my body and rendered me silent.
Camden motioned for me to follow him to the car. It felt stupid to do it, but even stupider to sit there on the porch. I watched his slumping shoulders as we walked and wanted to grab them, shake them, demanding Why are you doing this? I swallowed hard. Holding it together, holding it back.
After we were both in the car, I turned to him. He was purposely not meeting my glance.
“Camden,” I finally choked out.
“Hey,” he said.
“Did I do something wrong?”
He looked at me quickly, then away.
“What do you mean?”
“Please don’t pretend,” was all I could say.
Camden exhaled sharply as he backed up the car, then remained silent as he turned us around and headed down the driveway. I kept staring at his mouth, waiting for it to do something.
Finally, I looked at his eyes, and saw that they were shiny with tears.
“Camden?” I asked.
“I shouldn’t have asked you to come home with me. I shouldn’t have asked you to stay.” There was something hollow about his voice now.
There were a million smart, witty, true things I could have countered with, but instead all I had was, “I wanted to stay.”
“My problems shouldn’t be your problems, Ari. At least not at this point, where we barely know each other. I’m sorry I brought you into them.”
“You were happy to bring me into them,” I said. I had to keep going. I had to say it, because he clearly wasn’t going to. “Happy, that is, until I told you about last summer.”
His knuckles on the steering wheel tightened, then relaxed. He took a long, slow, deep breath.
At last he said softly, “I’m not this perfect guy.”
“I don’t want you to be.” Then I realized it was true. If I’d wanted him to be perfect, I would have kept him in the distance, framed as something I could admire from far away.
“I’m not even any of the things you thought I was. You’re going to be disappointed.”
“I won’t . . .”
“Do you know how many times my mom thought she was experiencing love at first sight and went chasing after some guy? And you know how often she was wrong about him? Always.”
“You clearly have a low opinion of your mother,” I said angrily. “And now, me.”
Camden shook his head in that Camdenish way again.
“No, no, I didn’t mean it like that. I’m just leery of this whole ‘instant love’ idea some people have. How much it can hurt, in the end.” He glanced quickly at me. “And I guess it scares me, that you saw that stuff in me. Because I don’t see it in myself.”
He took one hand off the steering wheel long enough to wipe a tear, then put it back.
“You’ll have to tell me how to get to Kendall’s,” he said.
“Camden . . .”
“I want to stop talking about this right now.”
So it would be like that. I stared out the window, not able to look at him anymore.
“Make a right at the next intersection,” I murmured.
That was the rest of the drive. Directions, turns, stops. Silence except the sounds of the car, the turn signal clicking and the squeak of the brakes. When we pulled into Kendall’s driveway, I grabbed my wig and jumped out, slammed the door without saying good-bye. I left the penguin behind.
By the time Kendall opened the front door, I finally dared to turn around and see that Camden had actually, truly driven away.
And then I finally let myself cry.
14
“He’s fucked up,” said Kendall as she cleared a seat at the breakfast counter and pushed a glass of water toward me.
“I’m such an idiot,” I said as I swallowed down my medication. “Why would I tell him about last summer?”
“Do not blame yourself here! I won’t let you blame yourself.”
I sighed. “Okay. Yeah. He’s fucked up. So am I.”
“So am I,” said Kendall. “So are we all. But that is not how you handle it when you’re weirded out or have low self-esteem or whatever. It’s in the manual.”
I couldn’t help but smile. She was so good at doing that to me. “There’s a manual?”
Kendall shrugged. “It just came out. I’ll lend you my copy.” She paused. “So, what exactly happened? Did you . . . sleep with him?”
“No! I mean, well, yes. We slept. Nothing more. Nothing that would be on, like, a sex checklist.” Kendall gave me an odd yet somehow relieved look. “That’s in a different manual.”