Page 2 of The Fix

Cami was in no mood for a party. And yet there she was, clad in a bikini with a Jell-O shot in hand as a boisterous game of chicken fight was being played in the pool next to her.

Her boyfriend, Hollis, had invited every member of the varsity football team and cheerleading squad to his house for a pool party.

It appeared they were all having the time of their lives.

Except her. Buck up. What is wrong with you?

Except that she knew exactly what was wrong with her.

She’d been plagued by a deep fatigue and lingering nausea for the last week. And her period was MIA.

She plastered on a smile as she gazed around nonchalantly and then, confident no one was looking her way, dropped the small plastic cup filled with spiked red Jell-O into a hydrangea bush.

The sun beat down on her bare shoulders, and a fellow cheerleader on one of the O-line’s shoulders let out a shriek of laughter as she was knocked into the water by the whack of a pool noodle.

“Hey, Cam,” Tia said as she approached, handing her another Jell-O shot. Great. Her friend tipped her head back and used her tongue to scoop out the shot, and then swallowed and grinned.

“Here, have mine too,” Cami said. “I’m not feeling it.”

Tia’s brows dipped, and she peered more closely at Cami. “Are you okay?” Tia asked, adjusting her bikini top that had ridden up. “You do look slightly green.”

Cami gave her a halfhearted smile and stepped to the side to avoid the incoming tsunami caused by a linebacker who’d just cannonballed into the deep end. “I’m fine. I think I just ate something that didn’t agree with me.”

“I hope it wasn’t one of the hot dogs. I saw Ray drop half the package on the ground, and then throw them on the grill anyway. He assured me ‘fire cleanses.’” She did air quotes and rolled her eyes.

Cami barely suppressed a grimace as she looked away. The talk of hot dogs had notched her nausea up at least a few levels. A couple more and Tia’s French pedicure would be covered in vomit. “I need to use the bathroom. I’ll be back.”

“Okay—”

Cami dipped around a group of guys goofing about near the covered patio and headed for the pool house. “Hey, Cam, what’s the rush?” Kent, the team’s fullback, asked, his head tilting as he leaned to the side to make a show of checking out her ass.

“Secret mission. I’m not at liberty to discuss it,” she shot over her shoulder with a flirty wink.

“Sounds hot.” His laugh drifted behind her as she turned into the air-conditioned space.

She walked to the bathroom at the back and locked the door behind her.

“Damn,” she muttered when she found that her period was still MIA.

“Don’t panic.” There might be other explanations than the one she was most worried about.

Cheerleading practice had been intense lately, and she’d been working out more than usual.

Plus, finals were coming up, and she’d been stressed.

Her dad expected her to maintain a 4.0 GPA on top of all her extracurriculars, which—back to current concerns—included sex with her boyfriend for an entire weekend last month when his parents were away on business.

She’d lied to her mom and dad and told them she was sleeping over at Tia’s.

She’d gone on the pill, though, and she hadn’t missed one. She’d protected herself. She’d been smart .

So where the hell is my period?

Cami washed her hands and then grabbed the hand towel hanging next to the sink and stared at her reflection.

Tia was right—she looked like she might have eaten an ant-covered hot dog.

Oh God, don’t think of that food item. She pressed her lips together and pulled in a breath through her nose.

Other than appearing a little peaked, as her mom would say, she looked like herself—glossy auburn hair pulled back in a ponytail, wide hazel eyes, and a face and body that had caught the attention of the star quarterback of their high school football team.

Hollis Barclay III was arguably perfect—rich, gorgeous, and obviously headed for greatness—and Cami was the envy of all the girls in school, likely of all the girls in the small town of Aspen Cove, Virginia.

God, he’d freak if—

She tossed the towel aside and turned away from her reflection. Nope. She wasn’t going to spin out of control. This might be—it probably was —a false alarm.

The sounds of music and raucous laughter filtered in from outside, and for a minute she considered staying right there, where it wasn’t hot and noisy and where she wasn’t expected to be chatty and giggly and fun .

But she couldn’t hide inside indefinitely either.

And it was almost time for her to go anyway.

Her dad was leaving on a business trip in the morning, and she’d already told Hollis she had plans with her family.

Just one more hour. You can do it.

She left the bathroom just as a few of the other cheerleaders burst through the door of the pool house, singsonging hellos to her as they passed by. She brought forth her carefree grin and greeted them back.

When she stepped out into the bright late-summer day, the glare of sun blinded her momentarily, so that she squinted and turned her head as she waited for her eyes to adjust. When they did, her gaze was focused on the tops of the swaying trees in the Barclays’ side yard.

All too soon, the leaves would be changing and the pool parties would come to an end, to be replaced by tailgating and bonfires. Eyes raised, she walked in the direction of the trees, away from the party and into the shade of a patio overhang that was situated next to the pool house.

As she watched those swaying trees, Cami felt an odd dwindling inside that she could only attribute to the impending end of one season as it shifted into another.

But she also had this sense that it wasn’t exactly that, and though she couldn’t pinpoint it now, she’d be able to later .

.. the way she sometimes looked back at a moment she’d experienced in her childhood that she hadn’t known then was the final sled ride down a particular hill, or the last sleepover with her sister on her grandpa’s porch before he passed away . ..

Movement behind a large potted plant to her right broke her from her reverie.

She turned and leaned around the foliage to see Rex Lowe sitting in a patio chair that was mostly hidden behind the vegetation-filled planter.

“Oh, hi. What are you doing hiding over here?” she asked.

She realized the question had come out mildly rude, but he’d surprised her during a vulnerable moment, and though it might be irrational, she felt spied upon.

“I might ask you the same thing,” he returned.

She bristled slightly because his comment had hit the target, but the expression on his face disarmed her.

It was sort of shy, and just a little teasing, and he appeared nervous, if the way he’d straightened his back and was blinking as he waited for her response was any indication.

She released a breath and stepped all the way around the planter so she was even more hidden, like him.

“I’m not really in the mood for”—she waved her hand in the direction of the pool, where the splashing and squeals of delight were ongoing—“that.” She wasn’t sure why she’d offered that level of honesty except, well, if anyone got it , it would be the boy safely concealed in the corner behind a plant.

He smiled on a breath. “Yeah, me neither. If you take one more small step to your right, no one can see you from any angle. I’ve done the equations.”

She chuckled softly as she considered him.

Rex Lowe had been on her periphery since middle school, but she didn’t think she’d ever really taken a minute to look at him.

He was one of those people who’d just always been background noise.

He was a good-looking guy, but not in the way Hollis was—all toned muscle, cocky swagger, and megawatt smile.

Rex’s bangs were too long and flopped over his forehead in a sheet of ebony that hid his eyes, and he clearly didn’t care much about his style.

He typically looked like he’d dug in the bottom of his laundry hamper for something to wear, and sometimes his pants were a hair too short.

He smelled vaguely like cigarette smoke, though she’d never seen him light up anywhere.

Most likely he lived with a smoker. He had some acne on his cheeks and tended to walk slightly hunched over with his hands stuffed in his pockets like he was trying to make himself smaller.

Cami’s eyes moved to the notebook on his lap, the top page filled with numbers and symbols that she didn’t recognize. “So now you’re what ... devising an escape plan?” she asked, tipping her chin toward whatever he was working on.

He let out a laugh that sounded vaguely surprised, as though she was the last person he’d expected to amuse him in any way. He looked down at his paper filled with equations or whatever and then back at her. “What? You think it’s overkill?” he asked, his lip quirking.

She couldn’t help smiling back. “Probably, considering you could just”—she pointed past the opposite side of the patio—“walk out that gate.”

His smile grew, and their gazes caught before he cleared his throat and looked away. “I have a tendency to complicate things.”

And just like she’d caught him by surprise when she’d made him laugh, she hadn’t expected him to say something like that, something worth pondering, to be honest. It struck her, right then and there, how shallow the conversations she’d grown used to really were, how most of her interactions boiled down to throwaway comments tossed at others with a wink and a smile.

Meaningless. Boring. “Hmm,” she murmured, “that’s interesting because I have a tendency to simplify things. ”