Secret Lucidity(47)

“Cam, calm down.” He steps toward me with his hands outstretched, but it isn’t him I want touching me. “I can’t understand you when you’re upset like this.”

He runs his hands down my arms, and it’s now I notice my whole body’s shaking. I sit on my bed and take in a few deep breaths, fighting against the adrenaline spewing into my system. The moment my heart rate begins to drop, the itch to release returns with a vengeance.

When the bed dips, I look to Kroy, who’s sitting next me and ask, “What are you even doing here?”

“I just stopped by to see if you were home and I heard the screaming. The door was unlocked—but—what the hell happened?”

“I came home—” I catch my slip and quickly cover with a lie, “I ran out to grab a coffee and when I got back some guy was leaving. I didn’t even know she had someone over last night.”

“Okay?” he questions, not catching on.

“She had sex with some random in my dad’s bed, Kroy!”

“Shit.”

“I lost it. I mean, I’ve been dealing with her crap and avoiding her as much as possible, but seeing that guy . . . I just snapped.”

He doesn’t say anything, and I don’t blame him. There is no right thing to say so silence is better. All I want right now is to taste the bite of the razor and then run back to David’s house, but I can’t. It’s already risky enough that I’m there so much, knowing a few kids from school live in his neighborhood.

“You want to come over to my house? Get out of here for a while?”

“Do you mind?” Anywhere is better than here at the moment.

“Of course not.”

“I’m going to take a quick shower first,” I tell him, knowing I won’t be able to kick what my body craves until I give in and satisfy it into temporary dormancy. “I’ll come over in a bit, okay?”

He’s a fool to my deception, and when I hear the front door close, I lock myself in the bathroom and add another bad memory tally to join all the others.

Forty-five minutes later, when I leave my room, I can hear my mother weeping while cleaning up the glass from the busted vodka bottle. Not one piece of me feels sorry for her anymore. There was a time that I used to though. No matter how drunk or how mean she was to me, a part of me empathized with her pain, because I felt it too. But that tenderness for her has hardened to steel.

I walk down to Kroy’s house, and when I knock, his mother answers.

“Camellia, dear. How are you?” says the woman who tended to my busted up knees when a six-year-old Kroy insisted he pull me behind his bike with nothing more than a jump rope and a pair of roller skates.

“Good,” I force a smile as I walk in, but I keep my bruised cheek turned away from her. It’s bad enough that Kroy knows, I don’t need his mom asking questions as well.

“Mom,” Kroy says when he comes into the room. “Cam and I are going to be in the media room.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Yeah. Just tell Bailey so she doesn’t bother us,” he responds about his little sister.

Ignoring her concern about Kroy’s insistence that we be alone, I follow him upstairs to the movie room, which is the same room we’d often make out in. It’s strange to be back in such familiar surroundings. It brings to the forefront how much has changed in the past few months.

“How are you feeling?” he asks as we sit in one of the leather loveseats. He touches the crest of my cheek, and I flinch away. “This looks really bad. You need ice?”

“I’m fine. I took some Tylenol at home.” I slip off my coat and lay it over the arm on the seat next to me. “I just can’t believe her.”

“It’s really fucked up.”

“Can we not talk about it?”

“Yeah. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“You didn’t. I just . . . I just don’t want to talk about her.”

“Movie?” he suggests. “I’ll let you pick this time.”

I smile at the guy I thought I had fallen in love with, but I realize that maybe my mother was right. That we were merely toying around with the idea of love. Because what I shared with him doesn’t even come close to what I have with David. With David, there isn’t a shred of doubt that I love him and that the love is real. He makes the ashes of my heart beat in a way I never thought possible. And I doubt its cadence will ever go back to what it was before him.

I sink back into the plush cushions and get comfortable. I half pay attention to the movie; I’m too busy replaying the past few days in my head. Memories of David’s hands and mouth on my most secret parts, touching me in ways I’ve never been touched. The exquisite pain of having him inside me. The tender moments afterward when he would hold me and talk to me like no man has.

Thoughts of David drift me so far away that, when lips brush against mine, I almost kiss back. The touch is familiar, but isn’t David’s, and I startle.

“What are you doing?” I jump, pushing against Kroy’s shoulders.

“What’s the big deal?”

“Kroy, I don’t—we aren’t—” My words fumble.

“Relax, Cam. It’s just me.”

“We can’t do this.”