“Let’s go find lunch,” I say. She pulls out her makeup bag, but I take it from her.
“Just be all around naked today, feelings and face.”
Her mouth twitches to smile, but she won’t let it. I see it in her eyes though. That’s plenty for me.
We walk to a small restaurant that sells only the fish they catch. It’s right on the water. Olivia’s nose is sunburned and I see a scattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose and her cheeks. She orders a margarita and swears it’s the best she’s ever had.
She’s chatty after two. We walk into the shops and she tells me about her life in Texas.
“Southern belles,” she assures me, “are the deadliest of all creatures on God’s earth. If they don’t like you, they won’t even look at you when you speak to them. And then they’ll give you a compliment with the most vicious insult hiding underneath.”
I laughed. “How did you deal with that?”
“Not well. I held back on the compliments and just openly insulted them.”
“I’m getting uncomfortable just thinking about it,” I admit. When Olivia unleashes an insult you feel like you’re being assaulted by word bullets. Very uncomfortable experience.
She screws up her face. “Cammie said I was the anti-Texan. She wanted me out of the south because she said I was ruining the integrity of it.”
“Oh, Cammie.”
She smiles so big. I know how much she values her best friend. I wonder what she’d say if she knew Cammie’s part in keeping me away. It doesn’t matter. I’ll never tell her anyway.
We’re looking at goofy Tampa Bay tshirts when she suddenly says, “I still have my Cats About Georgia sweatshirt.”
“Me too. Let’s get one of these. We can have an entire wardrobe of stolen getaway clothes.”
She chooses two tshirts with palm trees on them, in the most god-awful shade of teal I’ve ever seen. Hearts in Tampa Bay, they say.
I groan. “Look at those nice, fitted ones.” I point to a shirt I’d actually feel good about wearing in public, and she frowns.
“What’s the fun in that?” She goes to the bathroom and puts on her new purchase, then makes me do the same. Five minutes later, we are walking hand in hand down the boardwalk in matching ugly tshirts.I love it.
Chapter Twenty-One
After graduation Cammie moved back to Texas. It was fairly easy to find her — all I had to do was follow her brightly lit social media trail. I signed up for Facebook. She ignored my first five messages and then after my sixth attempt, sent one short message back.
WTF, Caleb.
She wants to be left alone.
BACK THE FUCK OFF!
Did you get your memory back?
Fuck it. I don’t care.
In other words, Cammie wasn’t going to help me. I considered flying to Texas, but I had no idea where Cammie lived. Her profile was set to private and she blocked me. I felt like a stalker. I tried the college next, but even with my connections in the administration office, Olivia hadn’t left them with a forwarding address. I went through my other options: I could hire a private detective … or I could leave her alone. That’s what she wanted, after all. She wouldn’t have left unless she was really done this time.
It hurt. More than the way she left the first time. The first time I had been angry. The anger made me feel self-righteous, which saw me through the first year after our breakup. The second year I felt numb.
The third year I questioned everything. This time felt different. It felt more real, like no matter what we did, we would never be together. Maybe after we had sex, she realized she wasn’t in love with me anymore. Maybe I was presumptuous in thinking she ever was. I was in love with her more, if that was even possible. I had to find her. One more time. Just one.
One fake Facebook profile later and I was part of Cammie’s extensive network of priends. Her entire cache of photos was a click away, and yet I sat staring at my computer screen for a good fifteen minutes before I was able to look through them. I was afraid to see Olivia’s life — how easy it was for her to move on without me. I searched anyway, through the endless dragging line of party pictures. Olivia had a special knack for avoiding the camera. I thought I caught her hair sometimes in the corner of a shot, or off in the blurry background, but I was still so drunk off her I was probably seeing her everywhere she wasn’t. For all I knew, Olivia was in Sri Lanka with the Peace Corps. Was the Peace Corps in Sri Lanka?
Fuck
Cammie was living in Grapevine. I would go there. Talk to her. Maybe she’d tell me where Olivia was. She couldn’t shut me down if I was standing in front of her. I rubbed a hand across my face. Who was I kidding? This was Cammie. She made blonde look like a color of combat. I waited a month, wrestling with the fact that Olivia probably wanted to be left alone, and my need to convince her that she didn’t.
Finally, I asked Steve for the time off. He was reluctant to give it to me since I’d taken a four-month leave of absence during the amnesia stint. When I told him it was about Olivia, he relented.
I drove. One thousand, two hundred and ninety miles of Coldplay, Keane and Nine Inch Nails. I stopped at diners along the way. Places where the waitresses’ names were Judy and Nancy, and the bouffant had never gone out of style. I liked it. Florida needed a character makeover. It was wearing on me: the pretentiousness, the heat, the absence of Olivia. Maybe it only felt like home if she was there. I had a feeling she would have liked Nancy and Judy too. If she was in Grapevine and I could convince her to come home with me, I’d bring her back this way. Have her eat fried chicken and macaroni and cheese on a tabletop that was stained with so many coffee cup rings, it was starting to look like a design. We’d eat until we were in a grease coma and then we’d find a cheap motel and argue about where to have sex because she didn’t trust the cleanliness of the sheets. I’d kiss her until she forgot about the sheets, and we’d be happy. Finally happy.
I crossed over the Texas state line and decided to hit up a motel before I went to see Cammie. I needed to shave … shower. Look mildly presentable. Then I thought, Fuck it. Cammie could see me exactly how I was, dirty and miserable. I drove the rest of the way to her townhouse and pulled into her driveway just as the sun was coming up. The townhouse was cream with brick facing. There were flower boxes on the windows, overflowing with lavender. It was too charming for Cammie. I considered waiting a few hours, getting breakfast before I knocked. Cammie was a notorious late riser. In the end, I figured it was best to catch her off guard. She might tell me more that way.