“I may not have to report to an office everyday, but I’m putting in tons of hours building this thing up. I don’t know, I’m just not in a place to date right now.”
“You’re just saying that because that college student broke your heart.”
“He didn’t break…that was months ago.”
“You need to move on.”
But what if he didn’t want to? Their phone call last month did not go as he planned, but he sensed a glimmer of something that he couldn’t let go of so fast.
“You need both, a career and a person that you love,” Lucy said.“I don’t love my job. It is what it is. I don’t hate it, but it’s not my passion. But it allows me to get home to my family every night at a decent hour. And that’s my life’s passion.”
“Not all of us have four wonderful kids and a wonderful husband.”
“Oh, they drive me crazy, but I couldn’t imagine life without them. It can be scary, but exhilarating,” she said with a knowing smile.
“You want me to give up my business to find the man of my dreams?”
“No. The business and personal life will never be in perfect harmony, but err toward the personal. When you find people you love, who love you back, you hold onto them. Hence why I dragged you out here for coffee.”
Φ
Walker drove around after meeting Lucy, no destination in mind. Streets whizzed past. He hadn’t done this since he was a teenager. His new business filled him with joy, but it didn’t fill him completely. There was a pocket of emptiness, right around his heart. He tried. He tried to win Cameron back, but the kid had Hollywood on the brain.
He wound up driving past the Browerton campus. New students and their overprotective parents roamed the sidewalks with maps. Kids helped each other move boxes into the dorms. That was the weird thing about the fall. It had only been five months since Cameron left, but school starting up made it feel like a whole year had passed.
Walker pulled over and found a space on a street where upperclassmen knew to park because it wasn’t permit only. After all this time, not everything had changed. He strolled into the heart of campus. He could walk these paths with his eyes closed. They were imprinted onto his brain.
Students buzzed around him. Meeting up. Taping flyers to the sidewalk. Handing out flyers on the street. Nothing but future and potential lay ahead of them. And ahead of Walker, too. The Future was relative, he realized.
His feet had taken him to the library. It was extra quiet inside. Nobody had homework yet. He remembered taking Cameron here eons ago. Walker dipped into the Time Machine Hallway and strolled down the stone floor to Waring Library. He pulled open the giant double doors and breathed in its musty smell.
This place was all memories, past and present. There he was with Doug, sneaking a quick makeout session away from their straight comrades by the records. There was Cameron leaning against a pole, hanging on Walker’s every word. Walker closed his eyes and let himself get possessed by memories. They were so close, but just out of reach.
No trip to the music library would be complete without a trip to the musical theater bookcase. Walker squatted down and pushed back the shelf. He found his and Doug’s heart. It would be there forever, a time capsule of those years. They weren’t wasted. They were but one road in his path, filled with good times and bad.
But then he saw a new one just as he was about to stand up. It stuck out for its freshness compared to the years-old etchings around it.
C.B. + W.R.
Walker ran his fingers over the letters. He had trouble breathing, and his heart was going a mile a minute. He traced his fingers in the C, then in the B.
“Well, damn,” he said. “You really do love me.”
CHAPTER thirty-Nine
Cameron
Cameron lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. He’d been up for half the night already and was waiting for the sun to catch up with him. Last night, he’d had drinks with an assistant. They went through the same motions. The same conversations. But listening to this assistant, Cameron had been struck by how much the guy cared, genuinely cared. He listed off projects his boss was working on. He discussed industry gossip about whose head was on the chopping block. His eyes blazed with passion. Passion that Cameron thought he had.
That passion dimmed each time he went to the movies, when he saw terrible films that had once been great screenplays. He also saw the first poster forStairmaster: The Movie, starring Daniel Day-Lewis as the voice of Stairmaster, coming Memorial Day weekend. When he greeted writers coming in to pitch Arthur their latest project, he viewed them with a mix of pity and jealousy. Their beautiful words were about to be ripped apart, but at least they had the chance to share them.
He called his mom, who answered sprightly. It was nine a.m. where she lived, and she probably got plenty of sleep.
“Cameron, you’re calling so early.”
“I wanted to catch you.”
“What’s wrong? Let’s talk.”
