It’s weird, when something flatters you at the same time that it makes you want to scream.
I tried to keep myself calm. “I’m sorry to hear that, but as you recall, nobody forced you to go.”
“I did. I forced me. Too bad I gave in.”
I swallowed again, as quietly as I could so he couldn’t hear. “Then come back.”
“I don’t think I can.”
“Okay, then.” I let my voice sound sharp, annoyed. “So you’re calling me because . . .”
“I want you to come here.”
“Here,” I said stupidly.
“To Vermont.”
I had no response for that.
“You’d love it, Ari,” added Camden. “There are hiking trails and lakes and a big hammock outside my mom’s cabin. We could just be together, without the others. And without the bullshit.”
I was so angry, still, but he spliced these images together like a trailer for an amazing-looking movie.
“Are you talking about a weekend?”
“You could stay longer than a weekend. You could stay . . . Hell, you could stay until school starts.”
I shook the movie trailer out of my head. Why was he doing this to me? And why was I letting him? There was no way I’d be allowed to see that movie, much less live it.
“Camden, I’m grounded. And even if I weren’t, my parents would never let me make a trip like that with you.”
“Maybe they would if they knew how important it was to both of us.”
“Right. Um, I don’t think so.”
“Then come anyway. You know that saying: ‘Act now, beg forgiveness later.’”
“I’d like to know how often things worked out for whoever made that up,” I said, trying to keep it together. “Besides, I have responsibilities here.”
“Let them hire a babysitter. Let them hire someone else to sell craft supplies.”
“Camden . . .”
“You don’t have to keep giving them free labor. They’ll be okay without you.” Camden paused and his tone got low. “But I may not be.”
Ugh. I could even picture his expression when he said this, and how it would make me want to throw my arms around him and kiss hard and long until I’d given him everything I thought he needed. No fair.
“Camden,” I whispered again, then asked the next question that came to mind: “Are you coming back?”
I listened to him slowly breathe in, then out. “I don’t know. My mom’s been invited to stay on through the fall.”
“So . . . you’d stay with her?”
His voice broke apart now.
“Ari, ‘with her’ is one place I know I belong.”
“You could belong to me, too,” I said.
“Hence me inviting you up here.”
I was back to being angry.
“Do you understand that you’re asking me to choose between my family and you? The same way you felt like you were being forced to choose between your family and me?”
He was quiet a moment. “I guess you’re right.”
“You say you want to belong to something, but that means you have to follow some rules you may not like. It means you have to do some work.”
“I’m not good with those two things.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“See, last summer you thought I was perfect. I’m not perfect.”
No, he wasn’t perfect. But through my anger right then, I realized this: I loved him still. I loved him more, even. Because I loved what his imperfections were teaching me.
“Ari,” said Camden into my silence. “You’ve saved me a little. Can you keep doing that, please?”
Maybe that was it. The thing. What he and I were all about.
I lowered my voice to match his and asked, “What do you need saving from, Camden?”
“Myself.”
“Don’t we all need that kind of saving?”
“Let’s save each other, then.”
“In Vermont.”
“What better place?”
“You should start writing their travel brochures.”
He laughed, then said, as casually as breath, “I love you.”
I froze. I’d been hoping to hear that for so long. I thought it would bring all the answers, but it only created more questions.
There was suddenly another thing I knew for sure.
“I can’t save you, Camden. Just like you can’t save me. It’s kind of something we have to do ourselves.”
I heard him exhale. “We can help each other though, right? That’s allowed?”
Arrrgh. He wasn’t getting it. If we had this connection, why couldn’t he see what I so clearly did? “And how are you going to help me, Camden? What are you going to give me?”
“What do you mean?”
“Look at our situations. Who has the freedom to go and be wherever they choose at the moment?”
He was quiet.
“If you can’t give that . . .” I felt my resolve weakening. “I can’t be with someone who’s only going to take. Who’s not going to step up.”
Camden was still quiet.
My thoughts were a tangled knot of sadness and frustration and anger and desire, but in the middle of that knot I could see a clean space. A little loop of understanding of what I needed to do next. I focused on that.
“Good-bye, Camden,” I said into that loop, and hung up.