One of his shoulders lifts in a shrug. “In a practical sense, nothing. My parents are supportive, it’d be good for my résumé, won’t delay graduation or anything. It’s…well, it’s me holding me back, more than anything. I’m not sure if I can handle a year in a foreign country alone. I worry if I try something that huge and out of my element, jump straight into the deep end, my anxiety will get real bad, real fast, knocking me right back to where I was before we moved home to stay.”
There’s a tightness pulling at my chest, coupled with that sinking feeling in my gut that comes on when I realize I might’ve horribly misjudged a situation. Right before he moved home to Indiana was…I remember West struggling with some stuff toward the end of our friendship. His parents’ marriage was on shaky ground, the decision to stop moving the family around so much part of a plan to salvage things. His normal state of cautious worrywart seemed heightened, bit by bit, as we got older, but I’d mainly chalked it up to his family life stressing him out. It didn’t change our dynamic, and I was too wrapped up in my growing feelings for him to pay mind to much else. Did my Crush Goggles put a rosy filter over a time that, for West, was actually pretty dark?
“West,” I venture slowly into what feels like stormy seas. “What do you mean, ‘where you were’ back then?”
His gaze, which had gone unfocused, snaps to mine once more. For a second, his expression is blank before he appears to remember himself, rememberourselves and the shaky ground on which we stand, and it clouds over.
“Cam, once again,whatare you doing here?” He sounds tired, dejected maybe, more than angry. “What are we doing here? You can’t shut me down when I want to talk about our past, tell me you haven’t missed our friendship and don’t want it back, then seek me out the next day and expect me to tell you shit only my therapist knows. I can’t do this whiplash.”
And I can’t even argue with that. He’s right—I’m the human version of that cursed shower upstairs, with my hot-and-cold routine. I know I’m allowed to have a lot of mixed feelings as I figure out how I want to deal with West and all our history. But it isn’t fair to expect him to always be here, ready to accept however I feel like treating him at any given hour of the day.
I get to my feet unsteadily. He leans forward with his elbows resting on his knees, head hanging so his eyes don’t track my exit from the room.
Just when I make it to the door, I manage to offer to his back, for what little it might be worth, “I’m sorry.”
Chapter Eight
West
While I’d thought it wouldbe extremely tough to avoid Cammie at the villa, I forgot one important detail—she’s an outdoor cat.
In the couple of days since she found me in the library, the only brief flashes of red hair I’ve seen have been out a window, overlooking the terrazzo outside the dining room, or walking down the path that leads to Villa di Bronzo. Only at night, once the sun’s down, have I heard signs of life through the thin wall between our rooms.
Admittedly, I’m not in my room much, either. After a half hour of thorough experimentation my first day here, I discovered the Wi-Fi signal is significantly stronger in the library than anywhere else on the Villa Russo property. As if I need any more reason to spend the bulk of my time there, no one else seems to know and/or care that it exists.
It’s been ideal for my purposes. My freshman year at EloraCollege, a tiny liberal arts school in middle-of-nowhere Wisconsin, my closest friends became a group of guys who had a lot of classes together, all part of the small but mighty computer science and math majors. They got me into this programming challenge called Project Euclid, a website with a bunch of high-level math problems that require you to write code to solve them.
The problems are numbered, so it’s like you’re moving through the levels of a game. Our group chat has mostly become each person updating the others as they progress through the problems, this informal contest with one another to see who can solve the most the fastest. Sometimes we’ll voice chat if someone’s stuck and wants to know how another person wrote their code. Other times we’ll just hang out and catch up while playing video games, giving our brains a break.
I didn’t anticipate how much I’d crave this tether to home, what a comfort it’s been as I try to find my footing in a less familiar place, amid a lot of strangers.
The confidence boost from being at least five problems ahead of the other guys doesn’t hurt, either.
So we seem to be finding our routines and haunts, Cammie and me, and successfully keeping the two separate. But an unintended side effect of avoiding her is not seeing much of my dad, either. I try to hide my surprise when he points this out at breakfast one morning. I don’t think he’d love to hear that the distance between us just feels like business as usual. Since I did come here in part to make up for all that lost time with Dad, I agree to go out to dinner with him on Saturday night.
It’s now Saturday afternoon, quickly approaching the time we agreed to meet downstairs, and I’m overdue for a shower if I’m going to look halfway presentable in public. I grab the same small mesh caddy I used for taking my stuff to the communal showers at school, a change of clothes one step up from library loungewear, and my towel, thrown over one shoulder, before heading down the hall.
Only to stop short at the doorway to the tiled room, my path blocked by a small figure. Cammie Lovett, frozen in place, like she has a severe case of showerphobia.
I could still back away—probably should, if I know what’s good for both of us.
But I was really counting on this shower.
“Is everything…okay?” I try.
Cammie spins on me. “What? Yeah, I’m fine. Lost in thought. Are you…Did you need to use one of the showers?”
It’s a prime opportunity for a “Nope, I’m auditioning for an indie film about a man who spends a year living in a communal shower—just trying to get in character.” But something weird is going on with her, and I don’t have time to provoke a pointless fight.
“Yeah. Were you about to…? Or could I…?” I point over her shoulder, assuming that finishing either question is unnecessary. An assumption I rethink when Cammie’s head turns to see where I’m pointing.
“Oh, right. No, yeah, I’m—” Her laugh is breathy as she looks back at me with a shake of her head. “I was about to…Well, first I went downstairs to use my mom’s shower, but shewasn’t in her room when I knocked, so I’ve been weighing whether I’m desperate enough to try with one of these again.”
My confusion is getting harder to conceal. “ ‘Try’? Did you not succeed the last time?”
“Depends on your definition of success,” she jokes with a grimace. “Why, have you not had trouble? Or have you just not showered yet?”
She takes a half step back with a judgmental scan of my body, like she’s just noticed some nonexistent cloud of dirt cloaking me. “Yes, I’ve taken a shower, damn. But I haven’t noticed anything particularly challenging about it.”
