She looks wounded, but this time I don’t break.
“I told you,” I say carefully, “I can’t do anything like that with you or—”
“Or I’ll have to let you own me,” she finishes my sentence angrily, “yeah, I remember what you said, but what does that mean exactly: let you own me?”
I think Camryn knows exactly what it means, but she wants to be sure of it herself.
Wait a second…she’s playing games with me; either that or she still doesn’t know what she wants, sexually or otherwise and she’s just as confused and reluctant as I am.
CAMRYN
HE PASSED MY TEST. I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t want to have sex with him, or pleasure him in other ways like he did for me—I totally want to do all of those things with him. But really I wanted to see if he would take the bait. He didn’t.
And now I’m terrified of him.
I’m terrified because of how I feel about him. I shouldn’t feel this way and I hate myself for it.
I said I would never do it. I promised myself I wouldn’t….
Trying to gain some sense of lighthearted normalcy back in our conversation, I smile gently at him. All I want to do is take back the offer and go back to how we were before I brought it up, except with the knowledge I have now: Andrew Parrish respects me and wants me in ways that I don’t think I can give him.
I bring my knees toward me, propping my feet on the leather seat. I don’t want him to answer my last question: what does it mean to let him own me? I hope he forgets that I asked at all. I already know what it means, or at least I think I do: to own me is to be with him, the way I was with Ian. Except with Andrew I believe in my heart that I could fall in love with him, true love. So easily I could. Already I can’t stand the thought of being away from him. Already all of the faces in my daydreams have been replaced with Andrew’s face. And already, I dread the day our road trip ends, when he has to go back to Galveston or to Wyoming and to leave me behind.
Why does it scare me? And where did this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach come from all of a sudden?
“I’m sorry, babe, I really am. I didn’t mean to hurt you. Not in any way.”
I look up and over at him and then I shake my head hard. “You haven’t hurt me. Please don’t think you hurt me.”
I go on:
“Andrew, the truth is…,” I take a very deep breath. He’s having a hard time keeping his eyes on the road now. “…the truth is that I—well, first off, I won’t lie and say that pleasuring you isn’t something that I wouldn’t do—I would do it. But I want you to know that I’m glad you refused me.”
I think he understands. I can see it in his face.
He smiles gently and reaches out his hand to me. I take it and scoot over next to him and he wraps his arm around my shoulder. I tilt my chin upward to see him and drape my fingers over his thigh.
He is so beautiful to me….
“You scare me,” I finally say.
My admission sparks a faint reaction in his eyes.
“I said I would never do this; you have to understand. I promised myself that I would never get close to anyone again.”
I feel his arm harden around my arm and the beating of his heart has picked up speed; it thumps rapidly against the side of my throat.
Then a grin slides across his mouth and he says, “Are you in love with me, Camryn Bennett?”
I blush super-hard and twist my lips into a hard line, pressing my face deeper against his hard pec.
“Not yet,” I say with a smile in my voice, “but I’m gettin’ there.”
“You’re so full of shit,” he says, squeezing my arm a little tighter.
He kisses the top of my hair.
“Yeah, I know,” I say with the same amount of jest in my voice as was in his and then my voice trails, “I know….”
~~~
I get my very first glimpse of New Orleans from afar: Lake Pontchartrain and eventually the sprawling landscape of cottages and townhouses and bungalows. I’m in awe of it: from the Superdome, which I’ll always be able to recognize after seeing it all over the news during Katrina, to the giant, expansive oak trees that are creepy and beautiful and old, and to the people shuffling along the streets of the French Quarter, though I think most of them are tourists.
And as we drive along, I’m mesmerized by the familiar balconies, which wrap around the entire length of many of the buildings. They look just like they do on TV, except that Mardi Gras isn’t going on and no one’s flashing their boobs or throwing beads from the balconies.
Andrew smiles over at me, seeing how excited I am to be here.
“I love it already,” I say, curling back up next to him after practically pressing my face against the window looking out at everything for the past several minutes.
“It’s a great city.” He beams, proudly; I wonder just how intimate he is with this place.
“I try to come every year,” he says, “usually Mardi Gras, but anytime of the year is good, I think.”
“Oh, so you usually come when there are boobs.” I wink at him.
“Guilty!” he says, moving both hands from the steering wheel and holding them up in surrender.
We get two rooms at the Holiday Inn in walking distance to the famous Bourbon Street. I almost told him to just get a single room with two beds this time, but I stopped myself. No, Camryn, you’re just feeding the desire. Don’t move into a room with him. Stop this while you can.
And for a moment as we stood side by side at the counter when the clerk asked how he could ‘help us’, Andrew had paused and I got the strangest feeling from it. But we ended up with side-by-side king rooms, like always.
I head toward mine and he strolls over to his. We look at each other in the hallway with our keycards in our hands.
“I’m gonna hop in the shower,” he says, holding the guitar in one hand, “but whenever you’re ready, just come on over and let me know.”
I nod and we smile at each other before we disappear inside our rooms.
Not five minutes in and I hear my phone buzzing around inside my purse. Pretty sure it’s my mom, I pull it out and am prepared to answer and tell her that I’m still alive and I’m having a good time, but I see that it’s not her.
It’s Natalie.
My hand just freezes around the phone as I stare down at the glowing screen. Should I answer it, or not? Well, I better figure it out quick.
“Hello?”
“Cam?” Natalie says in a careful voice on the other end.
I can’t get any words out yet. I’m not sure if enough time has passed that I should be pretend-unforgiving, or if I should be nice.
“Are you there?” she asks when I don’t say anything else.
“Yeah, Nat, I’m here.”
She sighs and makes that weird whiney, moaning sound she always does when she’s nervous about saying or doing something.
“I’m a total fucking bitch,” she says. “I know that and I’m a horrible best friend and I should be groveling at your feet right now for forgiveness, but I…well, that was the plan, but your mom said you were in…Virginia? What the hell are you doing in Virginia?”
I plop down on the bed and kick my flip-flops off.
“I’m not in Virginia,” I say, “but don’t tell my mom or anyone else.”
“Well then where are you? And where could you be for over a week?”
Wow, has it only been a week? It feels like I’ve been on the road with Andrew for a month at least.
“I’m in New Orleans, but it’s a long story.”
“Ummm, well, hell-o?” she says sarcastically, “I’ve got plenty of time.”
Getting irritated with her quickly, I sigh and say, “Natalie, you’re the one who called me. And if I remember correctly, you’re the one who called me a lying bitch and didn’t believe me when I told you what Damon did. I’m sorry, but I don’t think jumping right back into being best friends and acting like nothing happened, is t
he best thing right now.”
“I know, you’re right and I’m sorry.” She pauses to gather her thoughts and I can hear the tab on a can of soda crack open in the background. She takes a small sip. “It wasn’t that I didn’t believe you, Cam, I was just really hurt. Damon is a bastard. I dumped him.”
“Why, because you caught him cheating in the act as opposed to believing your best friend since second grade when she tells you he’s a pig?”
“I deserved that,” she says, “but no, I didn’t catch him cheating. I just realized I missed my best friend and that I committed the worst crime against the Code of Best Friends. I finally confronted him about it and of course he lied, but I just kept nagging at him about it because I wanted him to admit it to me. Not because I needed the validation from him, but I just…Cam, I just wanted him to tell me the truth. I wanted it to come from him.”
I hear the pain in her voice. I know she means what she’s saying and I intend to fully forgive her, but I’m not ready to let her know I forgive her enough to tell her about Andrew. I don’t know what it is, but it’s like the only person that exists in my world right now is Andrew. I love Natalie with all my heart, but I’m not ready for her to know yet. I’m not ready to share him with her. She has a way of…cheapening an experience, if that’s fair to say.
“Look, Nat,” I say, “I don’t hate you and I want to forgive you, but it’s going to take some time; you really hurt me.”
“I understand,” she says, but I detect the disappointment in her voice, too. Natalie has always been an impatient, instant-gratification kind of girl.
“Well, are you alright?” she asks. “I can’t imagine why you’d run off to New Orleans of all places—is this hurricane season?”
I hear the shower running in Andrew’s room.
“Yeah, I’m doing great,” I say, thinking about Andrew. “To tell you the truth, Nat, I’ve never felt so alive and as happy as I have been this past week.”
“Oh my God…it’s a guy! You’re with a guy, aren’t you? Camryn Marybeth Bennett, you fucking bitch you better not keep these things from me!”
That’s exactly what I mean by cheapening the experience.
“What’s his name?” She gasps loudly as though the answer to the world’s mysteries just fell into her lap. “You got laid! Is he hot?”
“Natalie, please,” I shut my eyes and pretend she’s a mature twenty-year-old and not still stuck on the high school campus. “I’m not gonna talk about this with you right now, alright? Just give me a few days and I’ll call you and let you know how things are going, but please—”
“I’ll take it!” she says, agreeing, but not at all getting the hint that she needs to tone her enthusiasm down a notch. “As long as you’re OK and you don’t still hate me, I’ll take it.”
“Thank you.”
Finally, she comes down from her horny gossip cloud:
“I really am sorry, Cam. I can’t say it enough.”
“I know. I believe you. And when I call you later, you can also tell me what happened with Damon. If you want to.”
“Alright,” she says, “sounds good.”
“I’ll talk to you later….and Nat?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m really glad you called. I’ve missed you a lot.”
“Me too.”
We hang up and I just stare at the phone for a minute until my thoughts of Natalie fade into my thoughts of Andrew. Just like I said: all of the faces in my daydreams have become Andrew’s face.
I take a shower and put on a pair of jeans which still haven’t been washed, but they don’t stink so I guess it’s OK for now. But if I don’t get my clothes washed soon I’m going to be hitting another department store for something new. I’m just glad I packed twelve pairs of clean panties in that duffle bag of mine.
I start to put on makeup and do the usual, but then I let my fingers rest on the bathroom sink and I look at myself in the mirror, trying to see what Andrew sees. He’s almost seen me at my absolute worst: no makeup, circles under my eyes after being awake on the road for so long, nasty breath, wild, grungy hair—I smile thinking about it and then picture him standing behind me, right now, in the mirror. I see his mouth buried in the curve of my neck and his hard arms wrapped around my body from behind, his fingers pressing against my ribs.
There’s a knock on my room door, snapping me out of my daydream.
“Are you ready?” Andrew asks when I open the door for him.
He comes the rest of the way into the room.
“Where are we going, anyway?” I ask walking back into the bathroom where my makeup is. “And I need some clean clothes. Seriously.”
He walks up behind me and it shocks me a little because it almost feels like that daydream I was having moments ago. I start to put on mascara, leaning over the sink toward the mirror. I squint the left eye while applying mascara to the right eye while Andrew checks out my butt. He’s not being secret about it at all. He wants me to see him being bad. I roll my eyes at him and go back to my mascara, switching to the other eye.
“There’s a laundry facility on the twelfth floor,” he says.
He locks his hands around my hips and looks at me in the mirror with a devilish grin and his bottom lip pinned between his teeth.
I swing around.
“Then that’s the first place we’re going,” I say.
“What?” He looks disappointed. “No, I want to go out, walk around the town, have a few beers, see a few bands play. I don’t want to do laundry.”
“Oh, quit whining,” I say and turn around back to the mirror whipping my lipstick out of my bag. “It’s not even two o’clock in the afternoon—you’re not one of those beer-for-breakfast guys, are you?”
He flinches and presses his palm against his heart, pretending to be wounded. “Absolutely not! I wait at least until lunch.”
I shake my head and push him out of the bathroom; toothy, dimpled smile and all, and then shut the door with him on the other side.
“What was that for?” he says through the door.
“I have to pee!”
“Well, I wouldn’t have looked!”
“Go get your dirty clothes from your room, Andrew!”
“But—”
“Now, Andrew! Or, we’re not going out later!”
I can picture his bottom lip puckered out, though of course that’s totally not what he’s doing. He’s grinning a hole through that damn door.
“Fine!” he says and then I hear the room door open and then shut behind him.
When I’m done in the bathroom, I gather up all of my dirty laundry and stuff it into my sling bag and I slip on my flip-flops.
23
WE DO LAUNDRY FIRST and while we’re there I do fold everything after I take it out of the dryer, rather than shoving it all back into the bags. He tries to protest, but I get my way this time. Afterwards, we hit the town and he takes me everywhere, even to the St. Louis cemetery where the tombs are above ground and I’ve never seen anything like that before. We walk together all the way down Canal Street toward the World Trade Center New Orleans and the ocean where we find a much-needed Starbucks. We talk forever over coffee and I tell him that I got a call from Natalie last night. And we go on and on about her and Damon, who Andrew has grown quickly to detest.
Later we pass up a steak house which Andrew tries to get me to stop with him at by throwing that deal I made with him back on the bus in my face. But I’m not the slightest bit hungry and try to explain to a whimpering steak-deprived Andrew that I have to be ready for a big meal if he wants me to enjoy a steak.
And we find a mall: The Shops at Canal Place, where I am actually excited to go after being stuck wearing the same boring clothes for the past week.
“But we just did laundry,” Andrew protests as we head inside. “What do you need new clothes for?”
I hoist my purse strap on the opposite shoulder and grab him by the elbow.
“If we’re going out ton
ight,” I say, dragging him along, “then I want to find something cute that looks halfway decent.”
“But what you’re wearing now is cute as hell,” he argues.
“I just want a new pair of jeans and a top,” I say then stop and look at him. “You can help me pick it out.”
That got his attention.
“Alright,” he says, smiling.
I pull him along again. “But don’t get your hopes up,” I say, jerking his arm in emphasis, “I said you can help, not choose.”
“You sure are getting your way a lot today,” he says. “You should know, babe, I’ll only let you get away with so much before I start playing my cards.”
“What cards do you think you have to play exactly?” I question with confidence because I think he’s bluffing.
He purses his lips when I glance over and my confidence is starting to drain.
“If you recall,” he says all sophisticatedly, “you’re still on whatever-I-say duty.”
Confidence lost.
He grins and jerks my arm towards him this time.
“And since you already let me go down on you once,” he adds and my eyes widen, “I think I could tell you to lie back and spread your legs and you’d have to listen, right?”
I can barely move my eyes around to see if anyone walking by had heard him. Andrew didn’t exactly say that in a whisper, but I wouldn’t expect as much.
Then he slows our pace and leans in toward my ear and says quietly, “If you don’t let me have my way with something simpler soon, I might have to torture you again with my tongue between your legs.” His breath on my ear, combined with his wetness-inducing words, sends shivers up the side of my neck. “Ball’s in your court, babe.”
He pulls away and I want to slap that grin off his face, but he’d probably like it.
Dilemma? Let him have his way with something simple, or keep getting my way and him ‘torture’ me later? Hmmm. I guess I’m more of a masochist than I thought.