“He asked me to hook up with him and when I demanded dinner first, he challenged me to a round of Beer Sex Trivia and then we negotiated a settlement that included pre-sex dating.”
“So it wasn’t the Notebook …”
“Look, I know that Cam’s interested in you. He said so. And I know that he’s happy for me and Braden too, even if it was weird at first. You just need to spend more time together. Braden’s parents are out of town this weekend and it’s just his younger brother at their place. His mom invited us to stay over. They have a pool and there’s a music festival going on near there on Saturday. Mark, Adam, and Cam are invited. You should come too.”
“I told Lily that I would hang around with her this weekend and I don’t want to ditch her. Now that her parents are living in Florida she doesn’t have anywhere to go on weekends and I think she needs more socialization. She works in a law library and she spends every night in her apartment writing her books. She’s going to start hoarding stuff and having deep conversations with the neighbor’s cat if she doesn’t get out more.”
Bruno yipped. He didn’t like cats. Whenever he saw one he would follow it around and give it what I’m sure he imagined were very intimidating looks. Wait - he followed it around. Okay, time to test out my new idea.
“The thing is, Jess, I may need some help anyway. I think somebody may be following me. It could be the person who left the notes.”
“Following you?” She sat up straighter and looked concerned and I hoped that I wasn’t getting her all worked up for nothing.
“Yeah, it could be nothing but I just got this weird feeling. Anyway, I was thinking that I shouldn’t keep this stuff to myself anymore after what happened last night and so maybe we could all discuss it or something over the weekend. In fact, why don’t we invite Lily along too?”
“You know that she and Adam don’t get along?”
“Oh that’s right.” I paused. “Definitely invite her then.”
“You don’t think anyone would mind that you’re inviting all these people to Senator Pierce’s house while he’s away?” she asked with a laugh.
“Of course not,” I replied. Probably not. I stood up and tucked Bruno under my arm. “Now, I’ve got to grab some more clothes.” I headed down a short hallway to my room and Jess followed me in and sat down on my bed. I put Bruno down and grabbed my suit bag, tossing it on a chair. I would kind of miss this room too when I moved. It was small and cozy and crammed with books just like my room in my parents’ brownstone in New York.
“So, what was Cam like in college anyway?” Jess asked as I moved around my room figuring out what I needed. I paused and thought about her question for a minute, remembering our days together at Yale. What was Cam like then?
“He had lots of friends and he got involved in all kinds of activities. He was very intelligent, but not intellectual, more the cute, fun, easy-going kind of guy. He was in a fraternity and he was very popular.”
“You were close?” she asked and I hesitated. We hadn’t really gotten into a lot of detail about Cameron’s and my former relationship.
“We hung out together a lot,” I replied, hoping that maybe we were done talking about it.
“What did you do when you hung out?” Okay, we weren’t done talking about it. What, was she cross-examining me? I quickly started grabbing toiletries and tossing them into an overnight bag like I had sixty seconds to evacuate the building.
“Um, sometimes we went out to eat or to the movies. Sometimes we just talked,” I said while digging around frantically in my closet. Obviously, I still felt a little uncomfortable talking about this, for some reason.
“But you weren’t dating? I only ask because you did the same stuff with the g*y guy you supposedly were dating. The only difference was that you actually had sex with Cam.”
“We were friends,” I answered as I shredded a few garments in my haste. “And I told you, we only had sex that one night.” I rifled through my blouses, grabbed one and tossed it in the general direction of my suit bag. If one considered five feet away the general direction.
“But never anything other than that? Not even a little fooling around?”
“No. Just that one night.” I came barreling out of the closet and started frantically digging through my underwear drawer. For something. Not really sure what.
“Gabrielle, stop! Step away from the dresser! You do not need your bathing suit to spend the night at Braden’s apartment! And for the record, you probably don’t need the shoe polish that you packed either.” I stopped digging, put the bathing suit down, turned and slowly walked over to sit next to her on my bed in defeat. The Grand freaking Inquisitor over here wasn’t giving up. What in the hell difference did it make now anyway?
“There was sexual tension between us but nothing happened other than that one night.”
“So, what happened that night?”
“There was one of those moments, the kind where you look at somebody and think, ‘wow I really want to kiss him.’ So I kissed him. And he kissed me back and he just kind of took it from there. I was planning to tell him that I was a virgin, but I really liked what we were doing, and I seemed to be holding my own pretty well,” I said defensively.
“I think you should have mentioned it, honey.”
“Ug! I know,” I admitted, banging my head a few times against the bedpost. “Anyway, he freaked out when he realized the next day that he had deflowered one of his closest friends. I said that I wanted to date him and then he freaked out more. In retrospect, I probably should have mentioned that before I kissed him.”
“And he should have handled it better, even at nineteen. There were more sensitive ways to tell a good friend that you didn’t want a romantic relationship.”
“He said that he was confused, and that he did want to be involved with me romantically but he couldn’t deal with those feelings at that moment, because he was really down on himself at the time. Afterward, when I wouldn’t talk to him, he figured he had damaged our relationship beyond repair, so he just decided to leave me alone.”
“This is like a bad movie,” she said, shaking her head.
“Everything seems more dramatic when you’re a teenager. It’s hormones and chemicals from all the Clearasil and Axe body spray. At least that’s my hypothesis.”