I force myself to keep my eyes closed and regulate my breathing, waiting for Cam to climb back into bed beside me. When five more minutes pass, I risk peeking, and find the room still empty.
Can he really be up already? And where the hell would he have gone?
I roll over to the night table on my side of the bed to get my cell phone.
Where is my phone?
I definitely left it here, I know because I wanted it handy to check the time to make sure I got up early enough, and I didn't want to have to pull out of Cam's arms to see the cable box, for fear my movement might wake him. I slip out of bed and look all over for it - under the night table, under the bed, under my pillow, but it's nowhere.
Great. No Cam and no phone.
I tiptoe into the hall, still in just Cam's football tee shirt, but the bathroom door is wide open, clearly showing the empty room. I pad downstairs and find the kitchen empty, along with the rest of the house. I check the garage, thinking he may be working out - probably beating the sand out of his punching bag again - but it, too, is deserted.
I hurry back upstairs, increasingly unnerved.Where the hell is he?
I grab one of his portable landline phones and dial his cell, but it goes straight to voicemail without even ringing. I pull on my sweatpants, thinking he must have gone next door to my house for some unsurmisable reason. It's strange that he didn't leave me a note, but he probably assumed I'd still be asleep when he returned, just like I did of him.
Then I realize I didn't even look for a note. I walk over to his desk knowing that if Cam did leave one, it would be in his journal, which he would have left open to the appropriate page for me to find. He used to leave notes there for me before we were old enough to have cell phones, and the habit didn't die when the reason for it did.
But his desk is empty.Where the hell is his journal?
I distinctly remember him getting up last night to write, and then abandoning it on his desk when I asked him to come back to bed.
I look around again, my brows pinched together in confusion, and then I see it. Cam's journal is open on the foot of his side of the bed. It's completely out of character for him to just leave it so carelessly around like this. He treats that thing like a priceless treasure.
A quick glance shows me that there is no note, just a long - and judging by his handwriting - rushed and angry, journal entry. I quickly avert my eyes, knowing that he would never want me to read one of his journal entries, and in my hasty glance, I saw my name, so I know it's about me.
Of course it's about you!
I cringe, knowing that Cam got up in the middle of the night to vent because of me. Knowing that he was so preoccupied about me and Robin, and everything I told him last night, that he forwent sleep to unload in his journal. I never wanted to be a burden to my best friend, and now, I fear, that's exactly what I've become.
But where the fuck is he?
I try his cell from the landline once more with the same frustrating result.
I don't know what to do next. I need to get to the sheriff's station soon, or my plan won't work.
I war with myself. I know that Cam's last journal entry might give me a clue as to where he went, but I've never betrayed his trust in the fourteen years we've been best friends, and I really don't want to start now. I change my mind back and forth at least twenty times before I compromise with myself. I decide I will read just the last sentence, because if the information I need is in there, that's likely where it is, and if it's not, then I'll just need to find him some other way.
I sit down, careful not to even touch the journal in case he remembers exactly how he'd left it and catches me in my transgression that way. I'm incredibly anxious - I've never read one of Cam's personal journal entries before, ever; I've only ever read his stories, and only with his express permission.
The last sentence reads:
It's a long run-on sentence, completely unlike Cam, and there's no period, making it look as if he stopped writing abruptly. I sit here for a moment, perplexed, before the panic sets in.
My phone.
Where the fuck is my phone?!
And then I see the corner of it peeking out from beneath the journal, and I realize that Cam did, in fact, look through my phone. Which means he saw Robin's messages. I don't know why this bothers me so much, honestly, they just confirm the story I already described to him. In detail. So he'll see Robin insisting that I belong to him, analyzing my "daddy issues", calling mestupid, so what?
I try to convince myself I believe this - that I'm not suffocating from shame knowing that Cam, my best friend and the person I love and respect most in the world, saw firsthand how I've been letting my boyfriend treat and talk to me, as he said, for months.
And then my heart stops.
My breath catches in my throat and a wave of nausea rolls through me as I finally realize where Cam is. I grab my keys and try his cell again as I rush out of the house, pausing only to pull on one of Cam's hoodies that hangs on the stair rail and shove my feet into a random pair of his mom's shoes before running to my jeep. Cam's phone goes straight to voicemail again so I hit redial as I pull out into the rain.
Damn it's still coming down hard.
