Love Me With Lies 03 Thief (19 page)

We walk to a small restaurant that sells only the fish they catch. It’s right on the water. Olivia’s nose is sunburned and I see a scattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose and her cheeks. She orders a margarita and swears it’s the best she’s ever had.

She’s chatty after two. We walk into the shops and she tells me about her life in Texas.

“Southern belles,” she assures me, “are the deadliest of all creatures on God’s earth. If they don’t like you, they won’t even look at you when you speak to them. And then they’ll give you a compliment with the most vicious insult hiding underneath.”

I laughed. “How did you deal with that?”

“Not well. I held back on the compliments and just openly insulted them.”

“I’m getting uncomfortable just thinking about it,” I admit. When Olivia unleashes an insult you feel like you’re being assaulted by word bullets. Very uncomfortable experience.

She screws up her face. “Cammie said I was the anti-Texan. She wanted me out of the south because she said I was ruining the integrity of it.”

“Oh, Cammie.”

She smiles so big. I know how much she values her best friend. I wonder what she’d say if she knew Cammie’s part in keeping me away. It doesn’t matter. I’ll never tell her anyway.

We’re looking at goofy Tampa Bay tshirts when she suddenly says, “I still have my
Cats About Georgia
sweatshirt.”

“Me too. Let’s get one of these. We can have an entire wardrobe of stolen getaway clothes.”

She chooses two tshirts with palm trees on them, in the most god-awful shade of teal I’ve ever seen.
Hearts in Tampa Bay
, they say.

I groan. “Look at those nice, fitted ones.” I point to a shirt I’d actually feel good about wearing in public, and she frowns.

“What’s the fun in that?” She goes to the bathroom and puts on her new purchase, then makes me do the same. Five minutes later, we are walking hand in hand down the boardwalk in matching ugly tshirts.

I love it.

After graduation Cammie moved back to Texas. It was fairly easy to find her — all I had to do was follow her brightly lit social media trail. I signed up for Facebook. She ignored my first five messages and then after my sixth attempt, sent one short message back.

WTF, Caleb.

She wants to be left alone.

BACK THE FUCK OFF!

Did you get your memory back?

Fuck it. I don’t care.

In other words, Cammie wasn’t going to help me. I considered flying to Texas, but I had no idea where Cammie lived. Her profile was set to private and she blocked me. I felt like a stalker. I tried the college next, but even with my connections in the administration office, Olivia hadn’t left them with a forwarding address. I went through my other options: I could hire a private detective … or I could leave her alone. That’s what she wanted, after all. She wouldn’t have left unless she was really done this time.

It hurt. More than the way she left the first time. The first time I had been angry. The anger made me feel self-righteous, which saw me through the first year after our breakup. The second year I felt numb.

The third year I questioned everything. This time felt different. It felt more real, like no matter what we did, we would never be together. Maybe after we had sex, she realized she wasn’t in love with me anymore. Maybe I was presumptuous in thinking she ever was. I was in love with her more, if that was even possible. I had to find her. One more time. Just one.

One fake Facebook profile later and I was part of Cammie’s extensive network of
priends
. Her entire cache of photos was a click away, and yet I sat staring at my computer screen for a good fifteen minutes before I was able to look through them. I was afraid to see Olivia’s life — how easy it was for her to move on without me. I searched anyway, through the endless dragging line of party pictures. Olivia had a special knack for avoiding the camera. I thought I caught her hair sometimes in the corner of a shot, or off in the blurry background, but I was still so drunk off her I was probably seeing her everywhere she wasn’t. For all I knew, Olivia was in Sri Lanka with the Peace Corps. Was the Peace Corps in Sri Lanka?

Fuck

Cammie was living in Grapevine. I would go there. Talk to her. Maybe she’d tell me where Olivia was. She couldn’t shut me down if I was standing in front of her. I rubbed a hand across my face. Who was I kidding? This was Cammie. She made blonde look like a color of combat. I waited a month, wrestling with the fact that Olivia probably wanted to be left alone, and my need to convince her that she didn’t.

Finally, I asked Steve for the time off. He was reluctant to give it to me since I’d taken a four-month leave of absence during the amnesia stint. When I told him it was about Olivia, he relented.

I drove. One thousand, two hundred and ninety miles of Coldplay, Keane and Nine Inch Nails. I stopped at diners along the way. Places where the waitresses’ names were Judy and Nancy, and the bouffant had never gone out of style. I liked it. Florida needed a character makeover. It was wearing on me: the pretentiousness, the heat, the absence of Olivia. Maybe it only felt like home if she was there. I had a feeling she would have liked Nancy and Judy too. If she was in Grapevine and I could convince her to come home with me, I’d bring her back this way. Have her eat fried chicken and macaroni and cheese on a tabletop that was stained with so many coffee cup rings, it was starting to look like a design. We’d eat until we were in a grease coma and then we’d find a cheap motel and argue about where to have sex because she didn’t trust the cleanliness of the sheets. I’d kiss her until she forgot about the sheets, and we’d be happy. Finally happy.

I crossed over the Texas state line and decided to hit up a motel before I went to see Cammie. I needed to shave … shower. Look mildly presentable. Then I thought,
Fuck it
. Cammie could see me exactly how I was, dirty and miserable. I drove the rest of the way to her townhouse and pulled into her driveway just as the sun was coming up. The townhouse was cream with brick facing. There were flower boxes on the windows, overflowing with lavender. It was too charming for Cammie. I considered waiting a few hours, getting breakfast before I knocked. Cammie was a notorious late riser. In the end, I figured it was best to catch her off guard. She might tell me more that way.

I parked up the block and walked to her front door. I was about to ring the bell when a car turned the corner and headed down the street toward where I was standing. I stopped to look at it and had the eerie feeling that it was headed for Cammie’s. I had two options … I could walk back up the driveway and risk passing the car as it turned in, or I could slip around the side of the townhouse and wait. I chose the second option. Cammie had an end unit, and I stood with my back pressed to the side of her house, looking at the neighbors’ fence. The neighbors had a Yorkie. I could see it sniffing around the fence.

Yorkies were yappy dogs. If it caught sight of me, it would no doubt bark until someone came outside to see what was wrong.

The car turned into the driveway, just as I guessed. I heard a door slam and the shuffling of feet as they walked up to the door.
It’s probably Cammie,
I thought. Coming back from some guy’s house where she spent the night. It wasn’t Cammie. I heard two voices. One of them was Olivia’s; the other belonged to a man. I almost launched myself around the side of the house and toward her, when the front door opened and I heard Cammie squeal.

“You guys so had sex!” she said.

Olivia’s laugh was forced. The bastard — whoever he was — was laughing along with Cammie.

“It’s none of your goddamn business,” I heard Olivia snap. “Now, get out of my way. I have to get ready for class.”

Class!
I felt myself slumping down the wall. Of course. She was in law school. She’d met a guy. Already. She wasn’t even thinking about me, and here I was driving thousands of miles to get her back.

What a fucking joke.

Cammie must have retreated back into the house, because I heard Olivia turn around at the door and thank him.

“I’ll see you tonight,” she said. “Thanks for last night. I needed it.”

I heard the distinct sound of kissing before he walked back to his car and drove away. I stayed there for five more minutes, partially seething, partially hurting, partially feeling like a pathetic fucking ass, before I knocked on the door.

Cammie opened the door wearing nothing but a t-shirt with a picture of John Wayne on the front of it. She was holding a coffee mug, but she almost dropped it when she saw me. I lifted it from her limp hand and took a sip.

“Oh. My. God.”

She stepped outside, pulling the door closed behind her.

“I want to see her,” I said. “Now.”

“Are you crazy? Showing up here like this?”

“Go get her,” I said. I handed her coffee back, and she stared at me like I was asking her to give me an organ.

“No,” she said finally. “I’m not letting you do this to her again.”

“Do what?”

“Play games with her head,” she snapped. “She’s fine. She’s happy. She needs to be left alone.”

“She needs me, Cammie. She belongs with me.”

For a minute I thought she was going to slap me. She took a vicious sip of her coffee instead.

“Uh-uh.” She lifted one finger away from her cup and pointed it at me. “You’re a lying, cheating scumbag. She needs something better than you.”

I mentally backed up a step. That was true, mostly. But, I could be better for her. I could be what she needed, because I loved her.

“No one can love her like me,” I said. “Now, move aside, before I move you. Because I’m going in there-”

She considered this for a moment before stepping aside. “Fine,” she said.

I opened the door, took my first step into the foyer…

To my left was the kitchen and what looked like the living room, to my right was the stairs. I headed for the stairs. I was three up, when I heard Cammie call after me.

“She was pregnant, you know.”

I stopped.

“What?”

“After your little rendezvous under the moonlight.”

I looked back at her, my heart suddenly pounding wildly in my chest. My mind went to that night. I hadn’t used a condom. I hadn’t pulled out. I felt tingling all over my body.
She was pregnant. Was … was … was …

“Was?”

Cammie pulled her lips tight and raised her eyebrows. What was she suggesting? I felt an ache start in my chest and spread outward. Why would she? How could she?

“It’s better that you leave her alone,” she said. “There isn’t just water under your bridge, there’s maggots and shit and dead bodies. Now, get the fuck out of my house before I call the police.”

She didn’t have to tell me twice. I was done. Done. Forever. Never again.

We go back to the hotel and get ready for dinner. She showers first and then puts on her makeup and does her hair while I take my turn. So far we haven’t kissed. The only contact we’ve had was when we held hands earlier. I wait on the balcony while she gets dressed. When she comes out to tell me she’s ready, my eyes glaze over.

“You’re staring,” she says.

“Yeah…”

“You’re making me feel awkward.”

“You’re making me hard.”

Her mouth gapes.

“Naked feelings, Duchess! You’re in a tight black dress, and I know how good it feels to be inside you.”

Her face looks even more startled than a second ago. She spins to walk away, but I catch her and pull her against me.

“You’re wearing that dress simply because you like it. You don’t dress to make men look at you — you hate men. But, your body is ridiculous and it happens anyway. You walk and your hips sway from side to side, but you don’t walk that way to get attention, it’s just the way you move — and everyone looks. Everyone. And when you listen to people speak, you unconsciously bite your lower lip and then let your teeth slide across it. And when you order wine at dinner, you play with the stem of your wine glass. You run your fingers up and down. You are sex and you don’t even know it. Which makes you even sexier. So, when I think dirty thoughts, forgive me. I’m just under your spell like everyone else.”