And he’d never really realized it until right now. Until being back with her in this damn truck.
Finally, she blurted, “Meaningless. My job really only has meaningless emergencies.”
She shut her mouth again, like she hadn’t meant to tell the truth.
“Meaningless?” he repeated, and she shot him a sideways glance.
“Nice try.”
“What?”
“I remember you told me how all the counselors and therapists you went to when you were a kid tried to get you to open up.”
“I did?” Of course he had. He’d told her all his secrets. The teenage Cameron had been a real blabbermouth.
“Repeat the most important word in the sentence, but like it’s a question.”
“Question?” he asked.
“Stop!” she cried, and he finally smiled. “It’s…you know, a little telling that you thought the most important word in my sentence was meaningless.”
The heater was doing enough of its job that she pulled off her mittens and worried the wrist of one of them with her fingers.
“I’m trying to change things,” she said and then shook her head like she hadn’t been planning on saying that. “Make the show into something else. Something we could all be proud of.”
“And?”
“They’re reviewing my pitch,” she said, smiling a little. And he could tell she was hedging her bets. “But signs look good. It would be for next year.”
“What’s your pitch?” he asked.
“It doesn’t…you can’t be that interested.”
He was interested in everything about her. “Of course I am. Lay it on me.”
She explained her idea of putting people with different ideas and philosophies and religions and backgrounds in a series of booths so they couldn’t see each other, and instead of answering questions about what made them different, they had to answer questions about what made them similar.
“Things like their favorite food their mother made, the name of their first pet, what they did on summer vacation when they were young. What they wanted to be when they grew up. Things they’re scared of, things like that.”
“So they talk about what they have in common, rather than what they stand in opposition to.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I feel like we’re all so divided.”
“You’re assuming people have the same kind of childhood,” he said. And he could feel her focus. “I didn’t have a pet. My mom didn’t make me food I loved.”
“You’re right. I’ve thought about this, but I’m not sure how to resolve the issue. Except maybe to just let it be an issue. Maybe that is how we open people’s eyes to how privilege works.”
“That’s a lot to ask of reality television. It’s really ambitious.”
“I think there’s room to ask more of television. We’ve sunk down to the lowest common denominator. I think we can ask more of television and more of our viewers.”
“That’s the Josie I remember,” he said with a smile.
“I’m calling it Common Ground. And maybe it is too ambitious or big, but I’m ready for something exciting, even if it means making it on my own.”
“Josie,” he said and then didn’t know what else to say. Or how to put what he felt about her into words. “It’s a complicated, amazing idea.”
You’re amazing.
“I feel like your show manages to bring people of different backgrounds together over food and coffee,” she said.
“I don’t have a show.”
“Come on, Five Questions is totally a show. You have, like, a million subscribers, Cameron.”
“I really don’t know how that happened.”
“Oh my god, that you somehow stumbled into YouTube success is the most Cameron thing I’ve ever heard.”
She was smiling at him and he was smiling at her, and for a moment, bright and hot, it was like every moment since she kissed him on her graduation night to now had never happened. And those things that had happened to the two of them over the course of living their lives had been shared.
She wasn’t a stranger. She was his best friend. Had been. Back when he’d had that kind of thing.
And he didn’t look away. And she didn’t, either. And his longing for her, for what they might have been, was painful. Excruciating.
“You’ve really made a name for yourself,” she said quietly into the loaded air.
“That’s what I’m told.”
“You know something?” She laughed. “Fuck that.”
“What?”
“Yeah, fuck that oh I just stumbled onto something and I’m just lucky and I’m not paying attention to the money.”
“What are you talking about?” He laughed.
“You don’t have all those followers without paying attention.” He glanced over at her and she raised an eyebrow. “I’m just saying you can cut the act. With me. You can be honest. I know exactly what that kind of success takes and how hard you have to work to keep it.”
With me. You can be honest.
“So?” She knew the drill. The energy around these self-made stars and everyone trying to capitalize on it.
“YouTube and Netflix keep calling me in for meetings,” he said.
“They want to do a show?” she asked
“Yeah.”
“And you?”
“I like what I’m doing.”
Her silence was telling. So was the way she was staring at him. “What?” he asked with a laugh.
“What what?” She shrugged one shoulder.
“You want to say something and you’re stopping yourself.”
“I don’t…” The coyness fell away for a moment. “I don’t know you well enough to tell you your business—”
He put a hand out, stretched it across the back of the seat and touched her shoulder. Just slipped his hand over her coat, and he could only feel the shape of her beneath that coat.
She shifted and his fingers, icy cold, touched the hot skin of her neck and they both gasped.
He pulled away, put both hands back around the steering wheel.
“You knew me better than anyone else.” He shrugged.
“That was a long time ago,” she said.
“Was it?” He glanced over at her. “Because it doesn’t feel like it. Not tonight.”
What the hell are you doing? This whole conversation felt like it was tempting fate in a way fate did not need to be tempted. The past was the past.
“Being back,” he said into the quiet truck. “I can still feel that teenager I was when I first got here.” He pressed his hand against his chest as if showing her where that kid was hiding out.
“You mean Chaz?” she joked. It was the name he tried to get everyone to call him for about five minutes when he first arrived. Max had put the kibosh on that real quick.
“Yeah, him.” Her grin was bright white in the gloom of the twilight. “All that posturing. All that fear. How badly I wanted Alice and Max to…” He stopped and whistled. But the words he was going to say hung in the air as clearly as if he’d shouted them.