A Missing Heart(41)

“We had a visitor this morning,” she begins, talking softly into the phone. I look down at my watch, verifying that it’s only nine. What visitor would be stopping by before nine?

“A visitor? Like a delivery guy?” I laugh. “Mom, what’s going on? Spit it out.”

“Hunter’s here now. Maybe…can you put that job on hold for a few hours?”

“What? Why is Hunter there?” What the hell is going on?

“I called him,” she says.

“Mom, you’re starting to worry me. Can you give me something to go on here, please?”

I hear the receiver of the phone rustle against something, and I’m quick to realize it’s the phone being passed over to someone. “AJ,” Hunter says. “Get on over here for a bit. We’re ahead of the schedule with that house anyway, so we have some time to spare.”

“What is going on, man?” I demand with anger. “What’s with the guessing games?”

“We’re not going to get into this over the phone.” I hang up on Hunter, because now I’m getting pissed. I pick my toolbox back up, carry it over, chuck it into the bed of my truck and hit the road, going way faster than I should. For the life of me, I can’t figure out what would be so important that I need to leave the job, or for the fact that they won’t tell me what’s going on over the phone.

It’s a good twenty minutes before I make it to Mom and Dad’s, and I find a white BMW X6 in the driveway, situated in front of Hunter’s truck. We don’t know anyone with a vehicle that expensive. It must be a salesman or something; although, I’m not sure what would be so important about that.

I get out of the truck, letting the door slam behind me as I make my way up to the front door. Letting myself in, I walk through the foyer and into the family room where I hear—happy voices.

When I round the corner, it takes less than a minute to piece everything together—who I’m looking at.

Everyone is staring at me, and I’m confused, but at the same time, I’m not confused. “Wha— Uh, oh, oh my God. Holy—wow…Cammy?” The name feels unfamiliar leaving the tip of my tongue. I have tried my hardest to forget about her. I have tried my hardest not to mention her name or wonder what she’s doing, who she’s with, if she is happy, and if she thinks about me as much as I think about her. Damn, she’s f*cking gorgeous. She was beautiful and hot, every dude’s living dream, when we were in high school, but now she’s like some elite goddess. Maybe that’s not the right phrase, but I don’t know if I have the words in my vocabulary to describe what she looks like. The golden brown waves she once had now have streaks of burgundy tones. Her lips are covered in red, her lashes are darker than black, which match her dress pants that contrast with the stark white shirt she’s wearing. Heels. Cammy never wore heels. But the ones she has on now must be at least four inches high.

She stands up, showcasing her perfectly toned and slim body, then offers a hesitant grin. “AJ,” she says softly.

“Wow.” Wow, as in, you look like a million bucks and I have torn jeans, a white shirt that I might have shrunk in the wash last week, and a hairstyle that needed a haircut three weeks ago. “Yeah, I look like ass,” I laugh.

She shakes her head, and her smile grows wider. “That’s not what I was going to say,” she replies, through a gentle laugh.

“And we’re going to give you two some time to catch up,” Hunter says, pulling Mom off the couch. He needs to be pulling Dad up too, because he’s sitting there, happier than a pig in mud, with his arms crossed over his chest and his left leg draped over his right. Dad lives for this shit. I don’t know why he doesn’t plant his butt down in front of the TV and watch soaps with Mom all day. At least that way, he’d get his fill of drama.

It takes a minute for the three of them to clear out of the room, leaving Cammy and I standing toe to toe.

“It’s been a long time,” I tell her.

“You look, geez, you filled out,” she says through nervous laughter.

“Yeah, I work out,” I joke, curling my bicep. I’m fooling around, but she’s biting down on her bottom lip. Okay, she shouldn’t do that. Please, stop doing that. How has it been so long, and at the same time it feels like no time has passed.

“I’m sorry I cut things off cold turkey,” she says, referring to our conversation before I left for Cancun. When I returned, I knew I had made a huge mistake and realized I wasn’t ready to give up the fight. She was, though. Cammy never answered another one of my calls again. “I had to, or it would have made things really hard.”

“Things were really hard,” I tell her.

She looks down at my hand and lifts it up in front of my face as she presses a finger into my wedding band. I’m trying to ignore the warmth of her fingers clamped around my hand, but it’s like a song that reminds you of a moment in time. Her touch brings it all back for me. “Clearly you’re doing okay now,” she says as a smile touches her lips.

What I want to tell her is, she has no idea how not okay I am, but it’s not the time to air out all of my dirty laundry.

With the focus on my marriage, the thought of what her life has become enters my mind. Selfishly scared to see something similar on her finger, I force myself to look down and take her hand, immediately intimidated by what must be a four carat diamond ring. “And you, not too shabby, Cam.”