His words made me ache for him, that he didn’t have relatives. It must be so hard; I couldn’t even imagine. Then that sympathy turned to an odd kind of joy, that he would want to have children. I had to remind myself that his words had no bearing on me or my future life.
Then, as if she somehow sensed that hypothetical grandchildren were being discussed, my mother called. I couldn’t let her know what was happening.
“You have to be quiet,” I told him, very stern in my warning. I shifted my tone as I picked up and said brightly, “Hi, Mom!”
His eyes got comically large and he mouthed, “It’s your mom?” He held out his palms, moving his fingers back and forth like he wanted me to hand my phone to him. Fat chance.
“Hi, sweetheart! How are things going?”
I glanced over at Camden. My mother would have a coronary if she could see that he was here. “Good. I’m just getting ready for bed.”
“I was calling to see if any progress had been made. How’s Camden?”
His eyes lit up and he started to speak. I clamped my hand down over his mouth.
“Fine, I guess.”
He mumbled something against my hand and I tried not to think about how soft and warm his lips were on my skin. I had to close my eyes against the sensation.
My mom was talking, but I wasn’t registering anything that she was saying.
“Sounds great, Mom. I need to get going. I’ve got sunrise yoga and need to get to bed. I’ll call you later!” I hung up the phone and waited a moment to see if she’d call back. When she didn’t, I slowly moved my hand away from Camden.
“That wasn’t funny,” I told him.
“It was from my perspective,” he said, still clearly enjoying himself. “Your mom likes me.”
“That’s not really saying much. My mom likes anyone who has the potential to impregnate me.” These words were out of my mouth before I could wish them back inside my head, because it brought back that thick, weighted feeling. Where we were both feeling something, but I had to deny that it was happening.
“Why not tell her I was here?” he asked, and it was more than just simple curiosity. He was asking me something that I couldn’t answer, because I had feelings about him that I wasn’t ready to share, so I kept things light.
“Because she would have flown here to hog-tie you and force you to marry me.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad.”
I knew he was kidding, and maybe it was because I was in this wedding environment, or just because of how attractive he was, but there was a superdumb part of me that wanted to believe such a thing was possible.
When I didn’t argue with him, he added, “You totally lied to your mom.”
I wished I could shrug it off, but he wasn’t wrong. “It was necessary. Sometimes, in my life, I have to do that to protect people I care about.” It felt like a major confession, the closest I’d come to telling him the truth.
We finished up the rest of the food, and he did indeed allow me to have some of his fries. They were a little cold, but I didn’t even care. Camden cleared the trays and plates from the bed and he lay down on his side, facing me. “Let’s play a game,” he said.
“What kind of game?” I asked. I lay down across from him.
“The kind where you tell me something.”
“Like what?”
“Something about you that I don’t know,” he said, and then added, “I don’t want to know about how much you can bench-press, either. Something real. Something you haven’t told someone else. Maybe what you were going to tell me earlier before the food arrived.”
“I can’t even bench-press the bar, so there’s nothing to tell you about that,” I said, aiming for lightness when all I felt was a slight sense of dread. Would Camden think less of me if I told him why I didn’t trust men?
“In our game we can trade truths,” he said. “You tell me something, I’ll tell you something.”
Why? I wanted to ask him, but wasn’t sure I was ready for the answer. Because deep down, I knew why. “How will we know if we’re actually saying the truth?”
“We’re going to have to trust each other.”
It was a big ask, even if he didn’t know that.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll play.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I took in a centering breath, then spoke. “Right after I graduated from college, I was offered a job in one of the most prestigious brokerages in New York. There were ten of us hired at the same time, and I was the only woman. I loved everything about it. Including my thirty-five-year-old boss, who took a liking to me.”