Sick Day (22 page)

College—Freshman Year

T
he airport felt abandoned at this time of morning, with only a few other people present. No one else from my high school had decided to go to Northwestern. Then again, I was that guy who was always spending time with his girlfriend. My friendships could’ve been deeper, but it would’ve meant sacrificing what none of the others would ever know—Hope’s love.

My parents embraced me, my mother cried. I searched the airport for signs of Hope, but I didn’t see her. I figured she had slept in, and I never questioned that she wanted to hurt me by not coming to say goodbye. I never questioned any of her motives back then because I had no reason.

“You should get through security,” my father told me, giving me a gentle nudge. “Safe travels.”

I started toward the checkpoint and chanced one more glance down the length of the airport. Nothing.

When I checked on my parents, I saw that they were walking away as well. That moment was the loneliest, darkest, and scariest I had ever known. For the first time ever, I felt like Hope had abandoned me, right there at the airport. And all that lay ahead of me was, well…life. And that life was lonely, dark, and scary.

But then—

“Cameron!”

I turned around and in a scene straight out of a romance movie, Hope ran into my arms, leaping up and allowing me to catch her while she buried her face and wrapped her legs around me. She called it a spider-monkey, the way she leaped into the air and used all of her limbs to seize me with the promise of never letting go. I couldn’t help but smile, a stupid big grin like we were being reunited rather than saying goodbye.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” she sobbed, her tears soaking through my jacket.

“You said you weren’t going to cry.”

“Then don’t look at me, goob!” a watery laugh escaped her grinning lips.

“I’m not. But I can still hear it in your voice.”

She laughed and eventually released me.

“I already miss you,” I said quietly.

“I already miss you morether.”

Huh
? “That’s not a word, Hope.”

Hope shrugged and accused me of not “getting it.” She reached out and took my hand, her face breaking up again, the tears pooling in her hazel eyes—
I’ll miss those fucking eyes
. “My life without you, Cameron? It’s not worth breathing.”

“Nah, don’t say that,” I told her, trying to lighten the mood.

She gave me an elaborate nod, then pressed her hand to my chest. “It’s true. But even without you in my everyday, I’ll know that each breath I take will bring us closer. So I won’t stop living, because ‘closer’ is better than never.”

“I breathe for you, too.”

“I know,” she admitted, looking back up to my face with those heartbroken eyes. “And if you stop, I’ll know because it’ll break me. Don’t break me, Cameron.”

I chuckled. “How could I ever stop? I love you more than air.”

We kissed and she pulled away, starting to take backward steps, but I grabbed her wrist and yanked her back.

“I love you, Hope.”

“I can’t wait for Christmas, you know that, right? To hold you and be held by you again. And that’s when I’ll say ‘I love you’ again.”

“Then Christmas break can’t come quickly enough, can it?” I asked, squeezing her a little tighter.

She shook her head. “It can’t.” She squared her shoulders and nodded past me at the TSA security checkpoint. “You better not miss that flight.”

I held on to her hand a little longer, just long enough to memorize the feeling. And when I released her, she gave a final smile before turning and walking away.

“Goodbye, Hope.”

She didn’t glance back; she just kept walking, keeping her chin up and raising a hand to indicate that she had heard me. But she never said it, never said goodbye.

}
i {

T
he Chicago snow impressed me. I had never known that cold temperatures could literally cause pain, but the cold here had left me aching. It was very different from the ache I had felt for the past three months while missing Hope; this climactic ache was something I could survive fairly easily by turning up the heat or cocooning myself in a thick comforter.

I cancelled my flight home for Christmas break back in November. I hadn’t heard from Hope since the end of October. Part of that reason could’ve been my fault for not responding to some of her crazy emails and phone calls, but to see how easily she could continue without contacting me…it hurt.

The cold also made me lonely. Ever since the snow started, I missed more class than I had in my entire high school career.

“Merry Christmas, Cam,” someone said, poking their head into the dorm room and hurrying off. The stranger was all dressed up in a heavy jacket, scarf, and the kind of hat that gangsters wore.

I gave a silent wave and returned to some of the assigned reading we had been given for the holiday break. I was a couple of hours into reading a few chapters and marking up the text with a highlighter when I heard the brush of paper along the floor. I got up from the bed and walked to the door, noticing the envelope.

Mail?

I flipped it over. The return address belonged to Hope McManus’s parents’. Despite the implications, I tore the envelope open and found a single page.

i believe

i
believe you live once and that better opportunities are lost on second chances.

i
believe true love is about as real as Santa Claus, but ‘tis the season, so let’s play this game...

i
believe that you fall in “love” with the person who lets you love him or her the way you want, on your terms.

i
believe if someone  says he “loves” you more than air, he’s lying to you.

i
believe that “love” is not about forgiveness, it’s about acceptance, and acceptance keeps relationships alive.

i
believe in the stories that are never told.

i
believe that if you have to “fight” for love, you’re trying to force a square peg into a round hole.

i
believe that your flaws are what make you beautiful. Deal with it.

i
believe that two people are just that—two people.

i
believe that two married people are two individuals with one shared goal and one shared delusion.

i
believe delusions are a good thing until you start getting drugs, threesomes, and whips involved. Stay pure.

i
believe that in your heart, you have blood not love, and that blood is to the heart what ideas (not love) are to the mind.

i
believe that happy endings happen in real life when I fall asleep, thinking of my children’s smiles.

i
believe that all stories are written for me—that same story means something different for you, and that’s okay.

i
believe in freedom for everyone; everyone has the right to hunt or to hide, or both.

i
believe that mothers are sacred and anyone who tells a mother what to do has self-esteem issues.

i
believe that true character gets revealed in actions, not in what someone says about him or herself.

i
believe that promises are one word, and any one word means nothing.

i
believe that if you never hurt, you never find happiness; the bigger you hurt, the bigger your happiness.

i
believe in friendships that last a lifetime and in friends that support you even when you are dead wrong.

i
believe that most of the decisions you make are the wrong ones. Celebrate your victories. Celebrate hard.

i
believe that if you can make decisions objectively, you will never be wrong. Or hurt. Or happy.

i
believe that we cry for ourselves, not for others.

i
believe that tears are a lot like rage—you need to get that poison out of your system periodically or it will kill you.

i
believe that when you die, you die alone, and

i
believe that goodbyes are forever.

I had to read the poem several times over. I knew it had broken her heart to put all these words on paper, but the only line that really mattered was the last one. I memorized as much as I could, afraid to fold this last piece of her away and get on with whatever waited for me on the other side of Hope McManus.

Because I now believed that goodbyes are forever, too. And goodbye was the last thing I had said to her before flying to Chicago.

} i {

T
hat night, with the dorm mostly empty, I left campus and walked a few blocks to a small sushi restaurant in a plaza that a few of the others in the dorm had talked about. It was a new restaurant, and the fish had a reputation for being fresh. Plus, the booths offered a bit of privacy, which was what I wanted. And not what I got. Instead, the table where the hostess seated me was at the window, allowing me a view of the parking lot. Not exactly scenic, but I didn’t care. I wanted to eat and re-read the poem Hope had sent. The place was pretty quiet with students being away. I wanted to figure out the rest of my life, wanted some silence and a nice raw fish dinner.

At least, it started out that way, but roughly midway through my dragon rolls, I noticed a blonde walking past my window—the prettiest scenery all evening. She wore a black fabric jacket that stretched halfway down her thighs with a wide, fashionable collar. Her skirt with black tights had me wondering whether she wore anything underneath that jacket.

Of course, she caught me gawking at her perfectly sculpted legs. She stopped and faced me, placing her hands on her hips, while simultaneously shooting me a disgusted glare that had her face all twisted up.

I raised my hands in an apology, mouthing ‘
Not what it looks like
,’ but she rolled her eyes and kept walking to the convenience store next door.

Shoving another roll into my mouth, I tried to forget how I had just embarrassed myself. And it worked, for the most part—aided by some wasabi that hit my tongue at the wrong angle—but I couldn’t forget her face, her pale blonde hair that fell over her shoulders in long, wavy strokes. And of course those eyes, their vibrancy, and the way they looked vulnerable and all-knowing at the same time.

I was still staring out the window, chewing on my meal when the blonde walked by again, her eyes digging into me with enough energy that I couldn’t help but look up and meet her stare. She reached into her jacket and opened a pack of cigarettes, which she had clearly just purchased. Pressing a cigarette between her lips, she watched me as she lit up and sucked in a few deep breaths.

And then she started coughing, eventually losing her shit, leaning forward on her knees like she might get sick or pass out. Then she spit the cigarette on the ground. She crushed it with her boot, and when she raised her attention to me again, I started laughing.

She smiled as well, the first sign that she had forgiven me for gawking at her legs earlier. I gave a mild wave before returning to my meal, and I noticed her walking away in my peripheral vision. The first thought I had was,
I fucking miss Hope.

But before I could think on it for too long, I heard those boots strutting up to my window table. I tried to ignore her, but her perfume sailed to me like the salt off the ocean breeze, barely present, yet I knew it was there. And if that wasn’t enough, her blonde hair seemed to glow in the reflection of the glass.

“You’re not a smoker,” I stated the obvious, keeping my face buried in the sushi so she couldn’t see the smile she had aroused, a smile that should not have existed without Hope’s presence.

“You’re not a
perv,” she answered.

I chuckled quietly, well aware that sometimes it was best to stay silent rather than risk ruining a good thing.

“Can I sit?”

I nodded. “I’d like that.”

As she slid into the booth across from me, she opened her black jacket to reveal the white blouse underneath. It looked formal, very nice.

“You’re right,” I told her. “I’m not a
perv.”

She giggled and looked good doing it. “And I’m not a smoker.”

“I’m Cam.”

“I’m Riley.”

We laughed. My appetite waned after that single conversation, and I realized the meal I had ordered was far too ambitious for me. I offered her a roll, and when she gave me an affirmative nod, I fed it to her with the chopsticks. I had never fed a stranger before, but something about Riley felt familiar, maybe it was the smile that erased all of the bad in the world. She was a new beginning.

That was how I met Riley, the woman with hair so blonde you swore she was Heaven’s equivalent to a Wal-Mart greeter, and legs so fine the only thing you could imagine was what they would feel like wrapped around you, around your neck.

Just like that, Hope fell into a compartment of my mind that I could forget about, the one that allowed me to try and accept that goodbyes were indeed forever.

I never asked why Riley wanted to take up smoking that night, and she never brought it up. 

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