“Hey, Willow! Charity.” Tillie’s tone didn’t mince words.
“It’s so nice to see you, Tillie!” Charity responded with an Oscar-worthy smile and nose wrinkle.
“Hmmm,” Tillie responded, then took our order. “So is there any truth to the rumors about you and Cam?” she asked me outright once we were finished.
“Rumors?” I asked after nearly sputtering my water all over the table.
“Oh, that you two are hot and heavy, seeing that you’re his restoration girl?” Tillie sized me up with a smile.
I had to be seeing things.
“I’m not sure what you mean by hot and heavy, but yes, I’m helping him with the restorations. Cam and I have been friends since I was born, Tillie.”
“Of course. Right. Stupid rumors. Especially when you’re Sullivan’s girl.” She flushed, the color reaching her cheeks as she looked at her notepad.
“Except Sullivan’s dead.” Charity put my thoughts to words with a shrug. “So it really wouldn’t matter, would it?”
“Right. Of course. So does that mean Cam’s…available?” She drew out that last word so long it may as well have been its own sentence.
“You could probably ask him,” I suggested. I was liking Tillie a whole lot less.
“Right! Okay, I’ll have these right out!” She flounced away in her fifties skirt, her blond ponytail swishing in time with her hips.
“Usually I worry about Tillie spitting in my food, but I think you may have usurped me in the hated-Bradley-girl hierarchy.”
“Everyone is weird today.” I swirled my straw through my ice water.
“Normal weird or Alba weird?” Charity asked.
“Over-the-top Alba weird, and Genevieve Dawson was downright mean on the street.”
“Okay, well, you’re using up your Milkshake on Genevieve Dawson. Start talking.” She stared me down.
Calling Milkshake was never to be taken advantage of. It was only for the moments your sister, and only your sister, would do.
I talked.
I started at Cam’s arrival, pausing only when Tillie brought us our food. Then I continued.
Charity didn’t say a single word, simply sat across from me, eating her burger and fries and sipping on a chocolate shake. There was no judgment in her eyes, like I would have gotten if I’d talked to Mom. No giddy excitement, like I would have received if I were talking to Thea.
She just nodded every now and then, holding up a finger if anyone came close enough to listen, and that gave me the courage to empty it all out. The kiss. Sullivan’s death. All of it.
There was a sacred understanding that we were a combination-free vault. Secrets went in. Nothing came out. We were uncrackable. And when one of us called a Milkshake, the other stopped whatever she was doing, no questions asked.
We’d sipped on Bigg’s shakes on our parents’ deck the night Charity whispered that she was pregnant.
“And then he said, ‘It was Mom’s name on his lips, when I knew mine would have been yours,’” I finished.
The straw fell into her shake, but her mouth held the same shape as she stared at me.
“Say something,” I urged.
“He seriously said that? Not just all of it but that last sentence?”
I nodded and took a drink of my salted caramel shake. “What do you think he meant? I’m thinking it has to be that if he had been in Sullivan’s place, right?” At least that was what I’d told myself just about every hour since he’d dropped that line on me. The rest of the story had been hard to hear, but not the earth-shattering confession he had tried to make it. I knew Cam could never have been responsible for Sullivan’s death.
But now I knew just how responsible he actually felt, and that came with the knowledge that he’d use that guilt to freeze me out if I gave him the chance.
“I think he meant exactly that. If he had been the one dying, he would have said your name.” She sagged against the seat, like I’d knocked the wind out of her. “Man, I never in a million years thought Camden Daniels had a romantic bone in his body.”
“Romantic? No, just logical, because if he’d been Sullivan, then he would have been dating me, and that makes sense.” My words slowed, and I drank again, but my milkshake didn’t taste quite as sweet with that next sip.
“Wait, what?” she questioned, sitting up straighter. “I think we’re crossing wires here, or you’re purposefully trying to misunderstand.”
“Misunderstand? No. I mean, I guess there was this part of me that always hoped…” I couldn’t say the words out loud.
“That you’d end up with Cam?” Charity asked quietly.
I dragged my eyes to hers but couldn’t nod. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t answer that basic question, because it would rip apart the very foundations I stood on.
It was okay to be friends with Cam. Okay to be best friends with Cam. Okay to watch movies with him, hike with him, read with him, sit quietly with him while we grew up. Okay to be defended by him and defend him. Okay to sleep next to him the night his mom died and hold his hand during the funeral. We’d been kids.
Maybe it was even okay to kiss him. I was probably one of the only girls in Alba who hadn’t kissed him as a teenager.
But it was most definitely not okay to envision any kind of future.
Charity watched me until she sighed and shook her head. “You two are a damned Shakespearean tragedy. It’s slightly entertaining yet incredibly painful to watch.”
“You’re not helping,” I accused.
“Short of holding up a mirror, I’m not sure what else you’d like me to do, Willow. That man is in love with you and always has been. And no, before you open that fool mouth, I am not talking about Sullivan. I’m talking about Camden. And no, he doesn’t just treat you like the little girl who grew up next door. I grew up next door to them, too. I went swimming and hiking, too. I rode the same school bus and went to the same parties. If you can’t accept what he blatantly told you, then you’re half the problem, and we’re going to need a lot more ice cream.” She held up her nearly empty milkshake glass.
“You think that he meant if he were the one dying, and it was his head in Sullivan’s lap, that he would have called out for me?” I whispered. Any second now I was going to look down and see a scarlet A on my chest for even thinking it.
“Yes.”
“You really think Camden is in love with me?”
“Yes.”