Taking Flight (22 page)

“So you’re really going to break up with him?” I asked her as I followed her through the living room. Wendy and David were in their bedroom, which I suspected was David’s way of trying to keep Wendy away from Cammie while I broke the news. “He didn’t break up with you when you cheated on him. It probably
should
be a relationship death sentence… but it doesn’t have to be if you want him around for whatever reason.”

She spun around, her hand on the knob of the back door, and I stopped abruptly, surprised and half-expecting her to chastise me. But she was smiling at me instead, albeit sadly. “Peter’s family is just as bad as mine, Lauren. He’s under a lot of pressure too. We both made mistakes. If he doesn’t break up with me, I don’t know what I’ll do. I don’t know a lot of things right now. I’m glad that you get that keeping him around was important to me even if he wasn’t exactly my type, but… can we just go outside and forget about this stuff for a little while?”

She ducked outside without waiting for a response, and I grudgingly followed after her. Luckily, it was still just drizzling, and I only got mildly damp following Cammie out to the stables. When we were safely under cover, she headed for Aerosmith’s stall. “What are you doing?” I asked.

“I would think you’d know by now,” she retorted, smirking, and led him out into the rain.

*   *   *

So I found myself huddling alone under a tree a few minutes later, shivering slightly as Aerosmith pawed at the ground a few feet away. In the center of what had become Our Clearing, Cammie had removed her shoes and was standing still, her face tilted up toward the sky and her tongue outstretched to catch the falling droplets of water. It’d started raining harder since we’d gotten here. Her parents, it occurred to me, were probably wondering where on earth we’d gone.

“Cammie, we should get back soon!” I called out, but she just spun around and spread her arms out to her sides, dousing herself with splashes from puddles of water with every shift of her feet. I couldn’t fathom how she wasn’t freezing yet. “The things I do for this girl,” I mumbled to no one, shuddering harder. I was literally huddled under a tree in the middle of nowhere during an increasingly heavy downpour, soaking wet, in order to watch a recently-pseudo-dumped blonde girl dance around and drink rain. Caitlyn would die of laughter if she could see me now.

Cammie, meanwhile, had elected to splash her way on over to me. Her mascara, carefully applied this morning, was running, and her hair was plastered to her head, but she was grinning widely and there was a spring in her step I’d never seen before. She nearly collided with me and I had to place my hands on her arms to steady her. “I’ve never seen you this happy before,” I admitted, somewhat surprised.

She laughed at me. “It’s weird. I thought if I ever lost Peter the world would end. I put so much effort into keeping him around because I knew I wouldn’t be as popular anymore and because my mom would be disappointed… I couldn’t be the one to get broken up with. But this isn’t my fault.
He’s
the ass. Even if I was the ass first, he’s the ass now. Mom won’t blame me if I end it.”

I nodded, smiling back at her. “You kind of seem like your mind’s made up, then.”

“Yeah.” She nodded back. “Yeah, I think so. It just hit me that I could really be free. And best of all…” She spun away from me and exclaimed to the empty woods, “I don’t have to have bad sex anymore!”

“Oh my God,” I mumbled, clapping a hand to my forehead even as my chest panged at the reminder. “You’re so crazy.”

“I don’t care.” She pulled away from me and backed up into the clearing again, and, arms outstretched to her sides, shrugged her shoulders overdramatically. “I really do not care about anything right now. It feels like a weight the size of an elephant has been lifted from my shoulders.”

“Getting to put your own happiness over other people’s is fun,” I agreed. “You should try it more often. I’ve been trying to tell you this.”

She was quiet for a moment, her smile fading as she examined me critically. Finally, she demanded, “Come out here, Lauren. C’mon.”

“It’s cold,” I protested.

“The rain’s kind of warm. Please?”

I took a deep breath, held back an eye-roll, and finally stepped out into the rain. Cammie smiled and pulled me forward, out into the middle of the clearing. My hair, which had been somewhat sheltered by the tree line, immediately grew damp again, along with the rest of my body. But I did feel warmer.

“Why did you and Maddie stop hanging out?” Cammie asked me, still gripping me by the hand, and my blood abruptly turned to ice. I looked back at her, wide-eyed and completely caught off guard.

“What? Why?”

“People have been saying for a while that she came onto you and you rejected her,” Cammie admitted. “I mean, even I can tell she’s been angry at you for a while now. It makes sense. I’ve been waiting for you to talk to me about it. Why haven’t you?”

“That’s an awful rumor,” I replied, dodging the question. “People just assumed that?”

“So that’s not what happened,” she guessed.

I glanced away from her, letting out a heavy sigh. “Look, Cammie, it’s pouring out. This isn’t exactly the ideal place to have a meaningful discussion.”

“The way she’s treating you is the way she used to treat me. It was like I didn’t exist.” She raised her eyes to look into mine. “You’re all about being yourself. Not being someone who makes themselves into whatever anyone else wants them to be.” I didn’t understand where she was going with this. Not at first. But then she swallowed hard, and, avoiding my eyes, added, “If you like her, Lauren, it’s okay.”

My lips parted with surprise and I choked on my own words as I struggled to deny it. But I could feel my cheeks heating up. “It wasn’t like that. We’re not even friends anymore.”

“So she wanted to date you and you weren’t interested,” Cammie guessed. She eyed my flushed cheeks for a moment, and then added, “But you like girls. In all the time you’ve been here, you’ve never talked about boys. Not boys you’ve met here, not boys you were with back in Los Angeles. Not by name, anyway. And you never go into detail. I’m right, aren’t I? If I wasn’t, you’d have told me what happened with Maddie by now.”

I pulled away from her and immediately headed back toward the tree line. “I’m leaving.” I could feel my cheeks burning brighter and brighter, and although a part of me knew not only that I was lucky to have kept it from Cammie for this long, but also that she was okay with it, the rest of me was fleeing on instinct.

“Lauren, wait,” Cammie sighed from somewhere behind me, and before I could break out into a run, she caught my arm and forced me to stand still by the edge of the trees, still several yards from her horse. “Just talk to me. You can be honest with me, okay?”

“Oh, like you could with me?” I blurted. “I had to figure out most things on my own. You figure this out and think you can pass judgment? I’m in a small town in the South, Cammie; do you really think I’m going to be open about my sexuality here?”

“I just thought you knew you could trust me,” she replied, her voice quiet.

“I can, but considering you’ve literally freaking memorized the Bible verse that demeans gay people,
and
you don’t like Maddie, there wasn’t and isn’t much you can do to prove we’re seeing eye to eye here.”

She chewed on her lip, looking near tears, much to my surprise. At first I convinced myself it was the rain, but then she sniffed and wiped at her eyes. Trying to break the tension, I quipped, “It’s raining. That’s not going to help.”

“Shut up,” she murmured, pushing me slightly. My back hit the tree behind me and I winced. “I’m sorry,” she added, her voice still quiet.

We stood in silence for what felt like minutes, Cammie looking everywhere but at me, and at last I spoke first. “Cammie, I haven’t been able to talk to anyone the way I talk to you in a while. You’re so important to me. You’re getting me through this trip. But I couldn’t tell you everything.”

“I know,” she agreed. “It’s not-… I mean, I get it. I’m just…” she paused, and then finished, “confused.”

“About what?”

“Why Maddie?” she surprised me by asking. “Was it because I told you she liked girls?”

I nodded simply. “Yeah.”

“So that’s it? That’s the criteria?
Any
girl who’d be up for it?”

I ran a hand through my damp hair. “I don’t know, Cammie. I don’t know how I feel about it anymore. Being a slut’s kind of tiring.” I forced a laugh, and she gave me a small smile. We didn’t break eye contact as I added, “I guess sometimes I think it’d be nice to love someone. To be able to tell them anything and everything and… I don’t know, learn all of their pet peeves and favorite books and movies and where their ticklish spots are. But as nice as it’d be, I figure it’s equally scary. If you leave your heart in someone else’s hands it’s so much easier to get it broken. And sometimes I think it could be worth it, but then I tell myself I’m being crazy and to just cut myself off emotionally because it’s easier.” I shrugged my shoulders and let out a sigh.

“This would be one of the reasons I’m in therapy, I guess. Anyway, regardless, I know Maddie wasn’t the right person for any of that, if that’s what you’re asking. Maybe someone else could be, I don’t know. I’m probably too screwed up to love someone the right way anyway, so there’s that. Sorry, I’m totally rambling.”

“A little.” She smiled again, eyes still not leaving mine. “But it’s okay.” I wondered fleetingly when she’d moved closer. I could see every freckle on the bridge of her nose and splashed across her upper cheeks. “I think you’d make a great girlfriend. You just have to try,” she told me. She was so close. I could feel her breath on my face. My brain was working overtime to try and decipher what exactly she was doing, but, pathetically, all it could process was her name.

“Cammie?” I managed to mumble. Her hand slid to my cheek and her eyes closed. Mine fluttered shut when I felt her lips brush against the corner of my mouth. She kissed me there, half on my lips, half on the skin of my cheek, and my heart hammered in my chest.

She stepped closer, her stomach and chest flush against me, and her nose brushed across my cheek as her mouth hovered millimeters from mine. My brain function was gone; I didn’t know what she wanted. A sign that this was okay? A confirmation that this was what I wanted too?

Too?
was the last thought I had before she kissed me again. I forgot my back was pressed into the hard bark of a tree; I forgot that it was raining heavily around and on us; I forgot that there was an impatient and equally-soaked horse just yards away. Cammie filled my senses and I wrapped my arms around her waist, too hesitant to actually grip her or force her closer. Her hands were soft on my cheeks, and I was so lost in the feel of her lips and body against mine. It was different than kissing other girls had ever been. It was
so
different.

She kept me close as we kissed over and over, and soon her hand was fumbling its way under my shirt and clutching at my waist. I kissed her harder, tightening my hold on her, and then abruptly panicked as hundreds of thoughts came spilling into my brain at once. I pulled away, accidentally banging my head against the tree in the process. “Shit,” I mumbled instinctively, reaching up to feel my head. I saw stars, and as I blinked them away, Cammie reached up with me, wide-eyed.

“Oh my God, are you okay?”

“Fine. It’s fine. I’m fine,” I stuttered, looking anywhere but at her. “Sorry. I mean—”

“Okay. Okay, you’re sure?”

“Yeah.”

She swallowed hard and we fell silent. I opened and closed my mouth several times, trying to find the right words, and then eventually let out a slow breath.

Cammie’d just kissed me. I pinched myself to make sure this wasn’t some elaborate dream, and then sank back against the tree. “Wow,” I murmured, mostly to myself, but I could tell from the shift in Cammie’s behavior that she’d heard me. She was hiding a smile as she turned away to squint through the trees at Aerosmith. When I realized she wasn’t going to say anything else, I pushed through the awkwardness and just went for it. “You just kissed me.”

She bit her lip and avoided my eyes. “I’m aware.”

“Soooo…” a thought occurred to me and my heart sank. “Was this, like, a ‘woo-hoo I’m free from Peter’ rebellion type of thing, or…?”

She shook her head and cleared her throat, still refusing to look at me. “No.”

“Spur of the moment ‘why the hell not’ kind of thing?”

“No, Lauren.”

“’Why not try a girl out since it didn’t work out with-‘?”

“Oh my God, stop,” she laughed, flushing bright red. “Just stop.”

I chewed on the inside of my cheek. “Okay. I’ll stop.” I looked around us abruptly, shuddering. “It’s still raining. If we’re gonna have this talk, can we please do it somewhere else?”

*   *   *

With Aerosmith safely in his stall, Cammie and I sat down together on the floor of the stable. We’d barely made it back here in one piece. Mostly because wrapping my arms around her waist felt strange now. Looking her in the eyes felt strange now too.

She spoke after some time, her voice so quiet I could barely hear her over the rain. “When I was eight, I had this friend. We were inseparable. Closer than most girls were. One day I told my parents I wanted to marry her. My mom wasn’t too happy about that, and I got this massive lecture about how girls belong with boys and God doesn’t like girls to be with other girls. All the stuff you’d expect from someone like her, you know? My parents think I’ve forgotten about that, but I always remembered.” She shrugged her shoulders. “For the most part… I always knew.”