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Chapter Fifteen

Josh

I took it as a good sign that Campbell had agreed to meet me. I felt like a little shit, abandoning Devon, but he seemed genuinely excited to hang out with my family for some reason even though they had decided to play a game of touch football like we were the Kennedys or some fucking thing. I laughed at the thought of our family ever including a US president. The only time my parents had shown more than a passing interest in politics was a few years ago, when the school asked them to hold a faculty party for a visiting professor who was then also in Congress. We all thought it was weird at the time, but it turned out the guy was a big fan of my father’s poetry. That guy had managed to advance his political career in a pretty spectacular fashion.

After breakfast, I told my family and Devon that I was going to rest, and my mother gave me a scathing look that said, remember this next time you decide to drink so much . I went upstairs but just to take a quick shower. I could still smell the beer on me, soaking out through my pores, so I let the hot water wash over me as I tried to remember the evening before.

Snippets came back to me, but I was pretty sure they were not in chronological order. Vance holding court over a bunch of students, Noah procuring us beer. Me reaching up to grab a cup from Campbell’s hand, and, oh shit, did I try to push him so he would spill it on himself?

I remembered Cam standing in the archway of the kitchen. It was as if the world had stopped when I’d left his room the week before, and it started up again with him framed in that doorway. Only instead of the immense joy and relief I felt in seeing him, he looked at me like I’d kicked his puppy. A cloudy haze covered the scene in my mind. I remembered yelling after him. He should have heard me, but all he did was walk away. Is that really what had happened?

“Fuck.” I exited the shower, got dressed, and texted Devon before sneaking out the back of the house and through the forest where I could cut across campus to my dorm.

Cam was sitting in the lobby, hunched over, his head resting in his palms. Memories of him hunched over and walking away from me the night before flooded back.

“You could hear me calling you last night, couldn’t you?”

“Yes,” he said as he stood, knowing exactly what I was asking. He took a step toward me, but I turned to look at the person staffing the front desk. We were the only people there, and she was watching us.

“Come on,” I said and led him to the stairs.

We didn’t talk as we headed to my room. We sure as shit didn’t stop to kiss in the stairwell. We didn’t frolic or run or worry about who would see us. The dorm was basically empty for the holiday weekend anyway.

I unlocked the door and pulled Cam’s move, holding the knob so he had to walk past me to enter. Catching his scent, I worried that I still smelled like beer despite basically turning the bathroom into a sauna.

Cam sat on my bed, and I sat on Devon’s.

“I was really drunk,” I pleaded, not even trying to keep emotion out of my voice. “I’m sorry if I said something stupid. And I’m sorry for whatever I did last week to make you ignore me.”

“You didn’t do anything. I just … I’ve realized that this hooking up thing, it’s really hard for me. I don’t think I’m a hookup kind of guy.”

Of course that was true. I’d be a fool if I didn’t know that the guy that waited until he was twenty to have sex wouldn’t be the same guy who could be in a casual relationship. That it was everything I wanted to hear didn’t matter, because it sounded much more like the start of a breakup speech than a pronouncement of his undying love.

“I could have handled it better,” he confessed. “Last week, after you stayed over, I panicked. I figured you wouldn’t mind too much if I took a step back. I’m not a hookup guy, but you are.” He whispered the next part as if it was difficult to say. “I guess I just figured you wouldn’t miss me too much. But still, I shouldn’t have ghosted you.”

“You didn’t.” I sounded pathetic. “You came back,” I said hopefully.

“It’s just, I like talking with you. So much. And I like being with you. So much.” I could see the stress his words were causing him, and I knew what that meant for him and his game. He ran his fingers through his hair, and that was the final tell.

I had to let him go. I knew in that moment that I had to walk away. My heart felt like it was about to explode from my chest; like it was fighting to make its way across my crappy dorm room and wrap itself around his. I watched him worry his hair while I thought of the right thing to say. Something about our stupid project. Something about staying friends, something about always remembering him, something about becoming a Buffalo Blizzard fan. I opened my mouth, but no words came out.

Cam opened his at the same time and asked, “Who was the guy?”

“At the party? Do you mean my roommate? That was just Devon.”

“No. Not him. The guy you walked in with. With the hat,” he muttered.

I racked my brain and finally realized what Campbell must have seen. Vance and me, walking in arm in arm.

I chuckled, happy to clear up his confusion, speaking quickly when my laugh caused a furrow in Cam’s brow. “I told you I have a million brothers. That was Vance. He’s not much for parties. I still don’t know how my sister talked him into coming with us. When we got there? That was just me dragging him in, making sure he didn’t turn around and head right back home.”

“Oh.” Campbell laughed as well but it was strained, not free and happy. I ached. Because I wanted to be the one to make him laugh with abandon, but I knew I was the reason he wasn’t. “Not a date then?” he said softly, sounding sad.

“No, not a date.” My tone matched his, but I tried for a more neutral one when I blurted, “Our project is due in two weeks.” It was as good a place to start as any, providing as it did, a concrete deadline.

“I know.”

“I think … I mean. I want us to be friends, Cam. But you’re right. You’re not into hookups, and this was just a hookup.” I wanted to take the words back as I was saying them. My heart screamed lies, lies, lies so loudly that I was surprised Cam couldn’t hear it.

I focused my thoughts and my breaking heart on Cam, remembering him dancing on the ice in front of his goal, exuding that complex mix of focus and abandon.

I stood with purpose, walking over to kiss his cheek. “We can finish up the project by emailing back and forth. I’m almost done editing episode five; we just need to review everything we’ve got and decide what episode six should be. Think about it and let me know. Okay? We probably have enough stuff recorded, or we can meet online or something.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

He stood but didn’t move for a minute. I could see a million thoughts running over his face, all of them a distraction from what he needed to be thinking about. He said none of them, instead nodding in determination and heading for the door.

“Oh, and Cam?”

“Yes.” His hand was on the knob, and he turned to look at me.

“Have a good game next week.” His entire face collapsed when he understood what I was saying, that for the first time this season, I wouldn’t be there for a Badgers home game. He nodded again and left.

He guided the door closed so it wouldn’t slam. “Goodbye, my prince,” I said, knowing I’d done the right thing, even when it hurt so much.

I stayed in the dorm room for a while, tears rolling down my face as I cursed the closet and the NHL and his possibly ignorant parents. I blamed all of those things for taking Campbell from me. If it hadn’t been for them, I could have told him the truth. Confessed that I’d left the hookup scene behind the day I met him. That I’d left it behind for him.

I imagined being with him, coming clean to Devon instead of pretending I was still wearing a rut in the Guys4Guys app. Walking hand in hand through the forest to introduce him to my parents and inviting him to their holiday party to meet my brothers and sister. Watching him circle the ice with Vera’s tiny hand in his huge one. The thoughts made me smile even as the pain in my chest tightened.

I walked around campus for a while and eventually got a coffee at Arise. The new barista was cute, but I didn’t care.

I made it back to my parents’ house and ran into Devon in the foyer, looking flushed. I felt really guilty for leaving him and opened my mouth to apologize, but the empathetic look of concern on his face at seeing me, dejected and tearstained, had me saying, “I don’t want to talk about it,” instead.

“Fair enough,” Devon replied. I started talking anyway.

“I should have stuck to our whole playing-the-field, one-night-stand motto. It’s worked for us for the last three years. Nothing wrong with having fun in college, right?”

Devon looked utterly shocked at my confession, and I felt like I was letting him down by not having shared with him what was going on with me or maybe for changing my ways, like I’d become some different person behind his back.

“Holy shit, dude. You really care about him, don’t you?”

“Yeah, well, it doesn’t fucking matter, does it?” I felt the tears bubbling up again, so I changed the subject, asking Devon if he was up for hanging out with my family that night. I would have understood if he’d rather go out, but I told him I was going to hang out at home. Devon seemed eager for more Marchetti-Gordon family-fun time, so we stayed in that evening.

Game night was just another excuse to drink heavily and eat pizza that my parents had paid for, this time in the comfort of my own home. The early part of the evening was spent playing games that included my niece, but when my parents took her with them to sleep in her new pop-up tent in their room, a more adult card game was pulled from the shelf. There was lots of laughing and enough noise that I was surprised one of my parents didn’t come out and chastise us. Devon fit in like he was one of us, which made sense because I'd thought of him like a brother practically from the first day we met.

As the evening wound down, I passed Jamie on the way from the kitchen. “Important to hydrate,” he announced awkwardly, a glass of water in hand. “You’ll feel better in the morning.” He closed the doors of the den behind him, a goofy smile on his flushed face.

“Yes, Dad,” I snarked at him as the doors closed. Next I caught Devon exiting the bathroom, looking flushed as well, which surprised me because Devon and I got drunk together a lot, and he didn’t usually look like he did stepping out of that bathroom: like he was glowing or some shit.

“You should hydrate,” I advised him. “You’ll feel better in the morning.”

“Yes, Dad,” he replied, and I chuckled before turning serious.

“Hey, man. Listen for a sec.”

Drunk Devon cupped a hand around his ear and swung his head in an exaggerated fashion.

“Asshole.” I put my hands on his shoulders to stop his stupid swaying. “Can you be serious for a minute, or are you too drunk?”

“Yes to both!”

“Good enough.”

“The guy I may or may not have mentioned when I was a little out of it last night.”

“I know who you mean.” Devon nodded at me in that I’m drunk, so my face better show that I’m serious kind of way.

“He’s not out of the closet, so …”

“Yeah. I figured. That sucks, but is it a deal-breaker for you?”

I let go of Devon’s shoulders, and he followed me up the stairs to the guest room that my family called the gym even though it hadn’t housed exercise equipment in years.

“I mean, if you care about the guy, what’s one little secret?” Devon opined, like it was the most important question ever asked.

“It’s one big secret, but it’s not that. It’s … he’s just really driven. Focused. I’d just be in the way. A distraction.”

“Fucking hockey,” Devon muttered, and he went right to the bathroom even though he had just used the one downstairs.

“Dude. Hurry up. I gotta go.”

“I’m just brushing my teeth.” He opened the door. “The more the merrier.”

“I’ll wait.”

Devon was leaving me after the winter break. Okay, that sounded more dramatic than it really was. He’d gotten a one-month internship, and Jamie had generously offered for Devon to stay at his place. Campbell wasn't the first person I’d gotten close to who was focused and driven. Devon had known what he wanted for a long time, and he was going for it over the first month of the new year, interning for an international financial firm on Wall Street.

I’d be starting our last semester without my best friend as the program ran past the first weeks of school. Devon would have to keep up with his course work while he was away.

In my already pissy mood, the thought of missing out on our last first days of the semester had me overly upset. I did my best to hide it from Devon, who was ridiculously excited about going to New York City. I spent the holidays at home, attended a New Year’s Eve party with some of my old high school friends, and left just after midnight, thinking about the only person I wanted to be kissing.

Cam had had two terrible games after Thanksgiving, and our final podcast, which we culled together by emailing back and forth and sharing files online, ended the series with a whimper instead of a bang, though our professor really liked it and encouraged us to actually post it online. Neither of us had reached out to the other to make that happen. Despite a few rough games for Cam, his team had taken up his slack, and the playoffs were a possibility for the Badgers.

I didn’t go to the games, but I did follow them, listening to the broadcast from the campus website. I couldn’t believe that the prospect of the playoffs or of an NHL contract was weighing Campbell down, not with how hard he’d worked to get to that point and how well he’d played, the night representatives of the Blizzard had been in the audience. But what else could it be that had him playing so poorly?

Much as I knew staying away was the right answer, I cared too much about him not to try and help. That’s how I found myself in the waiting room of the physical therapy office one afternoon.

The front desk clerk was hesitant to get Daine for me, but in the end, she called back, and Diane came out to meet me with a hug.

“I’m worried about him,” I began, “and I don’t have Noah’s number, or yours.”

We were sitting on those crappy waiting-room chairs, and the row shifted as Diane swiveled toward me and tucked her legs underneath her.

“You have his number, don’t you?”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I would just be a distraction for him.” Much as I thought Diane might have suspected some of what was going on between us, it wasn’t my place to out Campbell, so I trod lightly.

“We were just project partners.” She glared at me.

“Okay, we became friends.” She glared again but let it slide as I glared back. “I know how important the NHL is to him, and if there’s anything I could do to help …”

“The NHL isn’t the only important thing.”

“Trust me. To him it is.”

We were dancing around the truth, and Diane continued in that vein.

“Well, then, if the NHL is all that matters, and he’s crapping the bed, maybe think about what changed after that stellar game he had,” she said softly.

“So much has changed, Diane. The scout came, and …”

“And …”

“And his future is almost set. He’s this close.” My fingers measured in centimeters how close I thought Cam was to living his dream. “I don’t understand. I got out of his way precisely so this wouldn’t happen!”

“And it happened anyway,” Diane said patiently as she put a sympathetic hand on my knee.

“I’ll talk to Cam, Josh. But please think about, maybe, reaching out to him yourself.”

I did think about it. Sometimes it felt like all I thought about. But I stopped myself every time. I couldn’t compromise Campbell’s future. I wouldn’t.

That’s why I was both surprised and thrilled when Cam reached out to me instead, and more than a little confused when he invited me to an event that I knew had ended the day before.