“Sorry kid, what your mom says goes.” Con ruffled her dark hair. He looked from her eyes to mine, then blew out a low whistle. “Man, it’s eerie.”
“What’s eerie?” Emma demanded.
“Your eyes, kid. They’re just like your dad’s.”
Emma looked at me. I widened my eyes at her, making her laugh. “What doeseeriemean?” she asked me.
“Uh,” I glanced at Cami.
“It meansbeautiful,” she stepped in. “You and your dad have the most beautiful green eyes.”
Emma was pleased by this. She made me kneel down so she could examine my eyes up close. After she nearly gouged them out a few times with her fingernails, I stood up. “Okay, time to eat.”
I’d suggested coming over to Con and Lily’s place mostly just to get a change of scenery. I hadn’t even thought about how good it would feel to spend some time with my closest friend. It was the first time since Cami came back into my life that things started to feel normal again. Better than normal. I felt some of the tension that had lived in my muscles for weeks starting to dissolve.
At eight, Lily let Emma help put Harper to bed, and Con got up to do dishes.
“We can go soon if we need to get Emma to bed,” I said to Cami in a low voice.
She shook her head. “Let’s stay. Emma can stay up a little later tonight.”
When Harper was down and the dishes were done, we turned on the TV for Emma and moved out to the patio. Con showed Cami around, pointing out the different plants he had growing.
I heard her talking enthusiastically about the plants she’d had in Hawaii and what she thought she could grow here, if she had enough space. I caught Con’s eye once, silently warning him not to tell her about the house yet. He nodded, getting the message. I didn’t know why exactly I hadn’t told Cami about the house. Things had gotten more complicated since we started sharing a bed again. I didn’t want her to get the wrong idea and get scared off.
I was buying the house for her and Emma, but not because I expected us to be some happy family like Daniel Tiger, or like Con and Lily for that matter. I just knew I couldn’t keep them trapped in my bachelor pad forever. They were both too wild for that. Emma needed a place to run, and Cami needed a place for her garden, and the house made sense.
It wasn’t for any other reason.
At least, that was what I kept telling myself. I had a feeling Con would call it bullshit, but he didn’t understand. This thing with Lily had actually worked out for him. Against all odds, they’d figured it out. Not everyone got that lucky. Sometimes it was just too complicated to get resolved with some simplistichappily ever afterending.
I noticed that when we were all four sitting down, grouped around the fire table, Cami watched Con and Lily with avid interest. She wasn’t just listening to what they were saying, she was fascinated by them. I wondered if it was because they’d made it work even though their age difference was even bigger than mine and hers.
“How did you two meet?” she asked casually.
Con and Lily looked at each other. “It’s a long story,” Con said slowly.
“It’s not that long actually,” Lily said, equally slowly. “It’s just…complicated.”
Cami waited hopefully.
“Well, it was basically one big HR violation,” Con said. “She was an intern at The Walker Agency, and then she was my temporary executive assistant.”
“It sounds worse than it was,” Lily said, her cheeks flushing pink as she told Cami the whole story.
I already knew the story. I’d lived it with Con, seen him fight it, seen him cave. I’d never told him so, but I’d expected it to be a fiasco. Lily was almost exactly the same age that Cami had been when we first got together, and I wanted to tell him to look at how that had turned out. When I saw him falling in love with her, I hadn’t been happy for him. She was too young, like Cami had been. I was sure that one day, without warning, she’d be gone, just like Cami.
She had run, but he’d gone after her.
Looking at Cami now, glowing in the firelight, her dark eyes shining with the romance of Lily’s story, I wondered what would have happened if I’d gone after her. If I’d gone to an ecovillage in Turin and realized that was bullshit. Tracked her down. I could have done it. I had the resources. What had stopped me?
My pride, for one.
A sense of inevitability, for another. I’d told her all along it could never work. Would never work. I blamed Cami for fulfilling my prophecy that I’d make a lousy father, but I was the one who had put that thought in her head in the first place. How many times had I told her I didn’t want a family? How many times had I told her – without coming right out and saying it – that I didn’t need her. That if she left, I wouldn’t come after her?
Regret tasted bitter, rising up in my throat like bile. I’d been so sure I knew best, but Con and Lily had proved me wrong. And now Cami was back, proving me wrong again.
I did need her.