Two Truths and a Lie(97)

Cam wasn’t completely green when it came to the opposite sex, obvs. But he had heretofore dated girls like Shelby McIntyre: sincere, smart, pretty-but-not-so-pretty-you-couldn’t-concentrate-on-anything-else girls, girls who took their sports and their grades as seriously as he took golf and his own grades. AP Bio girls, girls who made his mother sigh with happiness and say things like, “I like her, Cameron. You hang on to that one.”

And then Alexa Thornhill came hurtling into his world, with her contemptuous smirk and her YouTube channel and her perfect, perfect body, and her skin that smelled like lavender, and her way of looking at him from underneath her lashes.

At Salisbury Beach the other night they had spread a blanket far back, close to the dunes. It was twilight. The sand belonged to the dog owners, the water to the whales or the sharks, if you believed the rumors. Nobody was paying them any heed. They took it easy at first, some kissing, some through-the-clothes stuff, more kissing, then it all started to heat up. Alexa was wearing one of her sundresses that fell to midthigh when she was standing, but inched up alluringly, up and up, when she was prone, offering, when the moon allowed, a glimpse of lace panties in virginal white. She pressed harder against him as they kissed, and, with his hand on the captivating protrusion of her hip bone, he thought he could die a happy man.

And then she had said, “It’s my first time, Cam.”

He couldn’t be the first. Of course she had slept with Tyler. Right? Hadn’t she?

“No,” she said, shrugging her beautiful, beautiful shoulders in answer to his questions. And into his neck she whispered, “You’re the first.”

He said, “Are you sure? Are you absolutely one hundred percent sure you want this?” Because he’d been raised by two solid parents and he’d come of age in the #metoo movement and he understood his responsibilities to retain decency in a world that didn’t always value it.

“Yes,” she said. “I want this.”

The awkward fumbling with the condom was the worst part of the whole business, especially considering the sand, but obviously necessary, and when that part was done he put one thumb on each of her perfect temples, and he asked one more time: “Okay?”

“Yes,” she said, “okay.”

And he didn’t understand anyone who thought Alexa Thornhill wasn’t nice. What people didn’t see about Alexa was that beneath her tough exterior, beneath her beauty, she was actually smart and funny and even vulnerable, tender, like a lobster that had shed its old shell and hadn’t yet grown a new one.



He paused the television to answer the phone. His heart jumped when he saw Alexa’s name on the screen.

“Hey,” he said. “What’s up? Are you done babysitting? You can come over here, if you want, nobody’s here, my parents are at—”

She cut him off. “I’m not done babysitting,” she said. “I called to warn you. Tyler’s coming. To talk to you. He’s on his way now, from my house.”

Cam stood up, disturbing Sammy, who roused and looked blearily up at Cam, offended. The remote fell to the floor.

“Tyler?” said Cam. “Tyler is coming here?”

“He’s all worked up,” Alexa said. “He came over here and he was, like, threatening you, and then he took my mom’s keys, right from the bowl, and then he just took off in her car—”

“Wait,” said Cam. “Where’s your mom?”

“She’s at Brooke’s end-of-summer party. I had her car here. And Tyler is on the warpath. He’s drunk or something. High. I don’t know. It’s like he’s coming to challenge you for me. He called me his girl. Blech. How gross is that? And now I think he wants to fight you for me.”

“He’s coming to fight me?” A decade ago, Cam was briefly obsessed with martial arts; he went thrice weekly to Tokyo Joe’s on the Bridge Road, where he’d made his way to the junior advanced level. But he was not, in general, a fighter. Tyler played lacrosse; he was a big guy, six one, at least, and strong. “And he’s driving drunk?”

“Maybe high. Just don’t engage with him, okay? And don’t let him drive away, it’s not safe.”

Adrenaline surged through Cam. He stepped on the remote, and the Masters recording unpaused. Mickelson putted. Thirty-four years old, and he’d finally won his first major tournament. The crowd went wild. “Got it,” he said.

“Do whatever you have to do, just take the keys and hang on to them. Promise? I really need you to promise.”

“I promise,” said Cam. “I’ll take the keys; I won’t let him drive home. What should I do with Tyler, though? Is there somebody I should call?”

“Throw him in the bushes, I don’t care.”

“I’ll bring the car back to you. How about that?”

“No! No, Cam, don’t do that.”

“Why not? Are you okay, Alexa? You sound scared. Are you scared about something, besides Tyler?”

“Just stay where you are, okay, Cam? I’ll call you later, and we’ll deal with the car. Just take the keys, and stay where you are.”

She disconnected the call, and now Cam’s doorbell was ringing, and ringing, and in between rings someone was pounding on his door.



To call their exchange brief was a bit of an understatement, like calling a long iron shot into the wind moderately challenging.