It’s not quite working yet. I probably should have told Cammie to her face, and I wince at the prospect that I’ve contributed to some permanent trauma around handwritten correspondence that she might have from now on. But I knew if I saw her, I couldn’t go through with this. I would lose my resolve and decide to stay, even if it was a bad idea. If it meant smothering her, adding stress to a time when she has more than enough of it. It’s probably just as good for me, this distance—it could help me from getting too attached too soon.
But who am I kidding? I’m already so attached, the mark she’s left on me couldn’t be removed with industrial-strength cleaner. Maybe not even a magic wand, if those were real. What do I think leaving is going to do to me, other than send me into a lonely, depressive state?
No, I’m not doing this for myself. It’s for Cam, to give her a chance to process the roller coaster of her life right now, and decide if she really wants me to ride it out with her. Even if the thought that she might not want that makes me want to throw myself into the darkest underground tunnels of Villa di Bronzo and wait for them to collapse on me.
I already miss the sound of her voice, the mischievous twinkle in her eyes when she pokes fun at me, the way she says my name.
“West!”
I don’t know why she’s yelling it in my memory, when that’s not my favorite way to hear it in reality, but—
“West!”
Wait. That Cammie is not in my head.
“Weston! Jacobs!”
My eyes pop open, and my head whips around to see that not only are we somehow still on the long gravel drive from Villa Russo to the main road, but there is also a slightly unhinged—if still ridiculously beautiful—girl running at full tilt toward the taxi.
“Hey, hold on, stop the car,” I say frantically to Luigi, inexplicably making the time-out motion with my hands, like that will mean anything to him. But my panic must be obvious enough to transcend the language barrier, because Luigi brakes, hard and sudden.
Cammie, for her part, does not brake, only stopping her chase when she more or less body-slams the trunk of the taxi, splaying herself across it like a bug on a windshield.
A little more drama than necessary, given that the car had already stopped, but what else would I expect? The thought brings an irrepressible smile to my face, but it falls when I see the anger on hers. She peels herself off the trunk and stomps around to one of the rear passenger doors, then flings it open.
“Just where do you think you’re going?”
She looks damn near as angry as she got the other night, when I had to restrain her before she tore Johnny Russo’s face off. Oh god, have I just made her hate me more than the guy she called an “incel-ass bitch”? It’s a low I didn’t think was reachable.
“I told you—the airport,” I say weakly, knowing I’m done for before she even starts in on me.
“You didn’ttellme anything,” she says, whipping a folded piece of paper out of the back pocket of her shorts and brandishing it at me like a weapon. “You wrote me this weak-ass explanation of your totally misguided idea about what I need, without, oh, I don’t know, consulting me on the matter! So what did I have to do?”
I have just enough sense to recognize a rhetorical question when it’s yelled in my face, and keep my mouth shut accordingly.
“Run, Weston. And I am not a born runner, even with the right shoes, which”—she lifts a foot in the air to display the rubber flip-flop hanging off her foot by its one unbroken strap—“these are most certainly not. So of course one broke before I made it twenty feet past the front door! You know what happened then, as I hobbled half barefoot down this gravel road?”
A pause for her to turn and show me her upper arm, where a splatter of something white is slowly dripping downward.
“A bird shat on me. A bird. In the big, endless blue sky above, with endless other places from which it could’ve done its business. Chose the particular patch of real estate over my shoulder. Totake a gigantic dump. And to think, I thought rock bottom was running into your ex-best-friend-and-first-kisswho broke your heart, for the first time in three years, and having him greet you with ‘you look like shit.’ But no! There is an even rockier bottom, where I look, quite literally, like shit.”
I clench my jaw, unsure whether I’m keeping from defending myself and possibly making this worse, or laughing and definitely making it worse.
“Do you think I’m unintelligent, Weston?” Cammie asks just before using the car door for leverage to swing herself into the back seat beside me, careful to keep the shit-shoulder off the upholstery. My eyes flick to Luigi, who does not seem the least bit fazed. Rather, he gives a happy “buongiorno, signorina,” as if he and Cammie are old friends, and her “buongiorno, Luigi, mio amico!” is equally delighted.
Then her gaze goes flat as it falls back on me. I have to remind myself what she last asked. Was that a trick question?
“Of course not,” I answer carefully.
“Then why do you think I would start up a relationship—one that’s been, as far as I can tell, really damn good so far, at least in our second attempt—with someone who was any of the silly things you’ve described in here?” She waves the letter. “Have you considered, you handsome, sometimes smart, infuriating man, that I am with you because you are already all the things I want? Including so many that I didn’t even realize I needed, until I found them in you. And that I want you closer, not farther away, while I sort out my life, and whatever effort it takes to be together, even long-distance or while we’ve both got a lot of other shit going on, you are worth every bit of it?Weare worth it, okay?”
Warmth spreads through my chest, pricks at the back of my eyelids as she goes on. “And you don’t even acknowledge how much you’ve done for me this summer. You not only helped me find my dad, but you’ve also shown me how to love myself as I am, apart from my family situation or one hurtful rejection or any other factor that doesn’t have to define me. I knew it in theory before, but I feel it now because of you.” Her hand presses to her heart and mine leaps in response.
“You are the calm to my storm and I like to think that, sometimes, I can bring a little storm to your calm, just to shake things up, while also letting you know you’re safe and protected and cared for, and…I just…I love you, okay? I still do, even when you do goofy shit like try to flee the country to set me free or whatever. But I am not about to let us repeat history, go our separate ways without so much as a conversation, both miserable and alone and—”
I take a page out of Cammie’s playbook, leaning forward and cutting off her words with my kiss. The world narrows to the place where my lips meet hers. Our breaths mingle, each of us pulling the other in like we’re each other’s cool glass of limonata after a long day of traipsing around in the Italian summer heat, refreshing and sweet and exactly what we need. I need this with her in an endless supply, always in arm’s reach.
I don’t know how I ever thought I could walk away from this feeling, from the rightness that is the two of us together. I knew, logically, that we’ve started something real and good, something I don’t want to let go. But I’ve spent a long time convinced that space away from me is the best thing I can giveto Cammie, when life gets tough, and I guess old habits die hard. I needed to hear it from her, needed to feel the truth in her words when she says that she wants me by her side, wants to be the best versions of our flawed selves together. I needed to feel the strength and certainty in the love she has for me, and she’s made that happen.
