Page 60 of Hamartia

She frowns at that. “What do you think I am doing here, Rapha? Trying to save our relationship. Checking you are alive. Making sure I am not paranoid and insane.”

“But you were in Sydney.” I point out. Like she was unaware. “When did you get here?”

Some look comes into her eyes that makes me feel cold and a little sick.

“I landed at seven. Got to the hotel just after nine.”

I know what’s coming before it does, and a cold sweat rises to the skin at the back of my neck.

“Of course, they wouldn’t let me into your room even though they knew who I was. Who you were. Not hotel policy,” she quotes. “They called up though.”

I know I’ve got two options right then: lie and say that she knows how deeply I sleep when I’m drunk or high. Or tell the truth and admit that I didn’t sleep in my hotel room last night.

I decide on a third. Silence.Coward.

“There was no answer, and your phone was turned off, so I waited in the lobby.” She doesn’t say that she saw me come in because she knows I know she did. “Where were you?”

I hold her eye as long as I can. While I run through all the scenarios in my head of what she might say or do if I tell her the truth. If I explain to the one person aside from my mother who knows me the best and gets me the most what the fuck is going on right now.

But I can’t find the words. I know the longer it goes without me answering her question only makes it worse, but I’m confident there’s no best way out of this. Not for her. Definitely not for me.

I swallow. Lick over my dry lips. It’s enough of an answer for her because she lets out a horribly fragile breath and shakes her head, turning away from me. As I take a step towards her, my phone vibrates in my pocket. I had turned my phone off last night. I’d been trying to conserve energy after having it on me all day. I’d forgot to ask Jae for a charger. I’d only switched it back on as I’d packed. It doesn’t have much juice left in it; I know that much. I can also guess who’s just messaged me. Have I been up here longer than ten minutes?

“Cam, I’m sorry,” I start, and she whips round to face me.

Angry silent tears streaming down her face. I feel like the biggest piece of shit that’s ever existed. Maybe I am.

“Babe…look…I’m sorry I’ve ghosted. I just needed some space to think. I’ve been feeling….fuck, I don’t even know. But I’m gonna head home, see my mom. Try and forget everything that I’m supposed to be and do and just try and figure it out. I didn’t want to say all this over the phone, when you were out there working, alone…”

It sounds all over the place, but not untrue, not disingenuous. But Camille looks lost in it. Sad and angry and lost. “I don’t know what’s going on with me right now, okay…none of this is your fault.” I drag a hand through my hair.

“Are you in love with her?” she asks, surprisingly calm.

I blink. “What? Who? No, it’s not like that. There is no…her. It’s more than that…it’s…me. It’s…”

Him.

Fuck, this is the worst I’ve ever felt. This right here. Like someone’s peeling my skin open with a paring knife, slow and torturous.

“Then you were not with another woman last night?” Her tone is taught, hopeful.

I shake my head feeling like a liar and a charlatan and a coward all at the same time.

She lets out a soft breath, shoulders dropping with relief she has no right to feel. She nods and fixes me with a new kind of look.

“I don’t understand where this has come from? We were good. We were happy, no?”

I nod. “I was happy…I was. But we’re young, Cam. Like, stupidly young. The same age he was when he decided he wanted a wife and a family, and the same age when he decided he didn’t.”

Six months between that first decision and that second decision and my whole life had been tainted because of it.

“Twenty-four is too young to be standing in front of our friends and family and saying we wanna be together forever. I mean you’re older, I know, but I still feel like a kid most days. And kids should not be anyone’s husband. It’s crazy. We’d be crazy to do that, don’t you think? When we’re still trying to figure out who we are? Who we want to be?”

I’m rambling now but she’s listening, and she doesn’t look quite as hopeless as she did and so I think—hope—maybe she agrees with me.

“So, this is about the wedding? You don’t want to get married?” She makes a very French noise. “Rapha, puppy, I don’t care about the wedding. You proposed to me? I said yes because I love you and because I thought it was what you wanted, what you needed. But we don’t need to get married.” She laughs, sounding relieved as she comes toward me. “We can take our time, focus on us or our careers or whatever, if that is what you want.”

She reaches out to touch me, her hand threading through my hair. Jae had done something similar this morning. It had felt just as comforting as this does. I close my eyes and lean into her touch. I feel selfish for taking it.