“I’m not sure. She hasn’t said anything outright, but from how she was acting, I suspect she likes him. A couple of the boys came over to chat with them after, and she went red as a tomato.”
“Not sure how I feel about this.” Camden proceeds to brush his teeth, his mouth filled with foam when he bends to spit in the sink and finally moves so his face is in frame, meeting my gaze. “I need a full name, address, and report card.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“You have access to that stuff, right?”
“I’m not going to ask the secretaries for his report card, you weirdo.”
He rolls his eyes and rinses out his mouth before asking, “What good are you, then?”
“Nothing besides your live-in sex doll.”
His smug smile drips with arrogance. “That’s right, baby.” Then he washes his face and lotions up. When I first learned of his skincare routine, I was really impressed. He takes care of himself. He’ll probably look better than me when we’re eighty.
I stay quiet, waiting until he finishes, taking out his contacts and putting on his glasses, and I don’t mind. I like being with him, even fifteen hundred miles away. Staying on the phone with him while he gets ready for bed is as close as we can be to doing it together in person.
“I miss you,” he says once he flops on the bed, lights off, save for one in the corner. Being a veteran player, and one of the top performers on the team, he’s given deference for a single room, as opposed to other players who have to share.
“I miss you too,” I reply with a yawn as I stick my handunder the pillow, and he smiles, moving closer to the screen as if to inspect my surroundings.
“Are you on my side of the bed?”
“Yes. I like sleeping here because it smells like you.”
He rolls, positioning the phone like we’re in bed together, and hums as if he likes my answer, but he doesn’t respond. Neither one of us talks for a while. Merely lying in each other’s presence.
“Your brother brought up how you haven’t been home all week.”
“He asked me about it too.”
“I was tempted to tell him,” Camden says quietly, a secret.
“That I’m your live-in sex doll,” I tease, but he ignores it.
“That I love you. I was so close to telling him that even if you weren’t too tenderhearted to leave me and my sister alone this last week, I still want you around. Forever. I love you and want you in my house every day.”
I rub at the sudden tightness in my chest, blinking away the stinging in my eyes. “I love you too.”
“But I’m afraid that one of these days you’re going to wake up and realize what a piece of shit I am, and I’m afraid if I talk to your brother, he’ll tell me what I already know—that I don’t deserve you.”
“Camden, no, I?—”
“The thing is, though, I don’t care. I don’t deserve you, but I don’t care. I want you, for myself. You’re mine, Nadine.”
“I’m yours,” I repeat. “And you do deserve me. At least, if what you say is true.”
“It is.” Then he backtracks with a playful quirk to his lips. “Which part?”
I give in to my own smile. “The part where you want to take care of me. When you said the other night you want to make a life with me and buy a big house with room for a couple of kids and a dog.”
“I never agreed to a dog,” he mutters grumpily, and I laugh.
“You deserve me if you stand by your promise to support me in my career and give me the space to be me, even when your life is so big.”
“I do. I swear. These past few months, you’ve already given me so much, it would take me decades to repay you, and I plan on spending the rest of my life accruing interest on my debt. I look forward to it. Paying back all the love you’ve given me tenfold.”
“Then you deserve me.”
