After swimming lessons were finished, Saturday was spent poring over notes for crim. Brandon and I had come up with a great system to be ready for it: the two of us would spend today individually reading notes, as well as preparing a practice multiple choice test for the other to do. On Sunday after lessons, we would exchange our tests, and then go over any doubts either of us still had. I felt fairly confident by the time I was walking in to lessons on Sunday, and from the look on Brandon's face I could tell he did, too.
"All set?" he smirked.
"Try me," I grinned. "You finished making your test?"
He nodded. "Added the last couple of questions this morning. 75 questions, just like the real one will be tomorrow. I'm assuming you made the same?"
"Of course," I said. "I'll give you my exam after lessons are done, right now I have to get in the mindset for something more pressing."
"Something to do with Carrie?" he asked with a grin.
I smiled, and shook my head. "I'm at work, man," I said, "and for the next four hours, I have a job to do. Starting with the monster." I pointed in the direction of the kids waiting for lessons, where Carson Platt was already standing. Brandon chuckled.
"I forgot about that," he admitted. "Yeah, go deal with that first, and if you haven't lost your mind by the end of lessons, you'll be able to handle my test with no problems."
I grinned as I opened the door to the pool deck for the start of lessons. "You overestimate your paper, I'll be able to handle it regardless of what Carson Platt says or does!" He mock-scowled at me, but both of us laughed before I left the office.
Lessons went around the same as they always did, with Carson seemingly doing everything in his power to get on my very last nerve, but I was more used to him now, so it was becoming easier and easier to deal with his tantrums with every passing week. As usual, none of the other kids in my lessons caused me any trouble.
"Alright," I said to Brandon after lessons were over, "are we studying at my house?"
"Sure," he replied. After grabbing some lunch from Subway, we went back to my house and set up our laptops in the rec room. We agreed to do the practice tests together, and time them so as to ensure we weren't taking too long.
"Okay," I said after an hour had passed. "I'm finished with your test." I glanced at him and burst out laughing; his cheeks were puffed and he was frowning in concentration. "Are you struggling with something?" I asked with exaggerated politeness.
"I'm blanking on this one question about the Criminal Code!" he answered, looking annoyed.
"Well, you still have twenty minutes to go, so no rush," I said, leaning back on the couch and relaxing. "Worst comes to worst, guess an answer and move on to the next one, I did that for some of your questions. Then if I had time at the end, I went back and focused on the tricky questions at that time."
"I wish I'd done that for this test," he grunted. "I still have twelve questions to go because if I got stuck on a question, I just kept trying to figure it out before moving on to another."
"Try my way, it might help," I suggested. There was silence again for the next ten minutes, and finally a sound like air being let out of a balloon came from him. "Were you holding your breath?" I grinned.
"I just finished this test," he said. "Alright, let's check our answers." We compared our answers with the solution keys we had also made; I had gotten six questions wrong, while Brandon had incorrectly answered eight. "That's good enough for me!" he said cheerfully, and I nodded in agreement.
"Yeah, I don't care if I get a few questions wrong," I replied. "That's my studying done then."
Brandon stood up. "Yeah, think I'm done too. I better go home and finish studying for psych now." I grinned widely, recalling that he had another midterm tomorrow after our crim one was finished.
"Good luck," I said, "if you want any help preparing, I can ask you questions from the lecture notes, considering I have them too."
"I might ask for your help later on tonight, have to finish reading the notes first," he said, and left. With all my studying finished, I decided to finish off the chapter I had started on Friday. I had written primarily about the party Brandon had hosted in September when his mother had been away for a week, because I remembered that this had been the time when I had first begun to have an inkling behind the connection between him and Cam, after a heated discussion about relationships with a couple of the other lifeguards.
For the next hour, I sat at my laptop putting the finishing touches on the chapter and then sent it to Carrie, just as I always did for any chapter before uploading it. Since the rest of the family was busy, I stayed downstairs and occupied myself on the Xbox to pass time, until Sid came downstairs and joined me around five in the evening. "All done studying?" he asked.
"Been done for hours," I replied. "What have you been up to?"
"Just a little bit of homework, but I kept getting distracted by YouTube," he said, grinning.
"Ah, that YouTube," I chuckled. "It's like it doesn't even care about people, always up to no good." He laughed too, and joined me for a few games on the Xbox.
After everyone else had gone to bed that night, I lay awake as always, playing games on my laptop to try and ensure my mind didn't get caught in the trap of overthinking and creating horrible mental situations, until a familiar text tone sounded from my phone shortly after midnight. I picked up the phone, surprised that Carrie was still up at this time, but smiled; she had said that she liked the chapter, and agreed with the things I had said in the discussion that had occurred at Brandon's party.
'I'm glad you liked it, I just felt like they weren't being completely fair in that talk,' I typed back. There was no answer for a few minutes, and I thought perhaps she had fallen asleep. But just as I turned back to my laptop, she sent a reply. I could tell it was a long one, and opened it with interest.
'I agree,' she had said. 'I just think both sides can make mistakes, because neither gender is perfect. The girls at that party definitely went overboard with it, but the only thing in their defence is that sometimes it's easier to let yourself believe the guy never did anything right, than to admit that you may have lost the one guy you thought really cared for you. Could just be their messed up way of trying to move on, you know how it can be easier to lay blame on others than to accept that you yourself could have been a part of some problem lol'.
I sat for a minute before realizing I hadn't replied back to her. We talked for a little while longer before she said she was gonna get some sleep. After saying goodnight, I went back to her earlier messages and re-read them, lost in thought. These conversations with her, both through texts and in person, were slowly allowing me to piece together, bit by bit, what she was thinking about and how she felt. What she had said about laying the blame on others and it being difficult to accept blame made me wonder... Did she feel that way about Jack? Perhaps some small lingering part of her felt that she was responsible for their breakup, and she still had some feelings for him. I knew that intense heartbreak could cause people's judgement to be altered at times; I had forced myself by now not to think about the one moment which had caused that for me, which had happened a few months before I had met Carrie, but now I started beginning to realize that she was right. I blamed myself every day for what had happened that day, despite the fact that those around me had kept telling me in the immediate wake of the incident that I had no blame in it.
But that was the difference between my incident and Carrie's breakup: Carrie was not at fault for her breakup with Jack, but I knew that I was at fault for what had happened to me over three years ago, on that cold December day.
* * *
"Jesus, you look like shit!" Brandon exclaimed when I opened the front door for him on Monday afternoon.
"Good thing I'm not entering in a beauty contest then," I answered, letting him in. I neglected to mention that after the conversation with Carrie last night, I had failed to get a single minute of sleep.
"Surely you're not that nervous about today's test?" he went on in the same incredulous tone. "You know your shit, you killed my practice exam!"
"I'm not nervous at all," I said truthfully. He clearly didn't believe me, judging by his next words.
"Let's play some FIFA so that you're more relaxed before the midterm," he said. Though I didn't particularly want to, I appreciated that he wanted to help, and took him up on the suggestion. We played for a couple of hours, and I let him win a lot more than usual, without making it seem obvious. "I must be finally getting better!" he grinned as we were heading up to the university later.
I mustered a smile. "Yeah, I couldn't handle you for those games! You sure you didn't waste time practicing to beat me instead of preparing for psych?"
He laughed. "I swear I haven't turned on the Xbox at my place all weekend!"
As we entered our regular crim classroom, I forced myself to focus on the midterm; I was sure this one wouldn't be as easy as sociology was, so while I may have gotten away with a decent mark on Friday, I sure as hell wouldn't today if I wasn't concentrated. "Good luck," I muttered to Brandon as Steve Coker began distributing the test papers to everyone.
"You too, man," he grinned. "Chill, it'll be a piece of cake!" Overall, he was quite right, I felt. A lot of the questions were very obvious, as Caitie had hinted they would in Thursday's law lecture, while even the tricky ones weren't too bad. Brandon and I were among the first ones finished and, after handing in our midterms to Steve, we exited the classroom quietly and made our way to the main cafeteria, seating ourselves on a couple of leather couches.
"That could have been a lot worse," I remarked. "Only took us forty-five minutes!"
"Yeah it was easy," he grinned. "Wanna take my psych one for me? I'm feeling lazy!"
"Sure, if you teach Carson Platt for me for every Sunday for the rest of this session," I chuckled.
He looked horrified. "Nah, no deal, no thanks, nuh-uh!" he said, shaking his head vehemently. Taking out his laptop, he began doing some final revision for psych as he had about half an hour until he had to be in the classroom. I let him get on with it while I browsed aimlessly through Facebook and Twitter.
Around quarter past six, he got up. "Heading out?" I said.
"Yup, you still gonna be here when I'm done?" he asked, hoisting his bag over his shoulder.
"I should be, if I go anywhere else I'll let you know, just shoot me a message when you're finished the midterm. Good luck!"
He left, and I went back to my laptop. After a while, I got sick of the silence and switched to listening to music on my phone with my eyes closed; it felt like no time at all before I received a message from Brandon, saying that he was finished, but when I checked the time, I saw to my surprise that nearly an hour had elapsed since the start of his midterm. Opening my eyes, I saw him sitting on the couch beside me.
"Whatcha listening to?" he grinned.
"Music," I replied slowly. "How long have you been sitting here?"
"About ten seconds," said Brandon. "Did you fall asleep?"
I nodded and sat up straighter. "I think I must have. Wanna get going?"
"Tired," he grinned lazily. "Let's just hang out here for a little while, then we'll go."
"Fine by me," I chuckled. I was about to close my eyes again but then looked a little closer at Brandon. "What's on your mind?"
His smile vanished, to be replaced by a look of surprise. "Huh? What makes you think there's anything on my mind?"
"I can just tell," I said simply. "What's up?"
"You know what this weekend is?" he said after a little pause. I wracked my brains, wondering if it had something to do with work, but then I remembered what the date was.
"You mean Valentine's Day this Saturday?" I inquired, and he nodded but didn't say anything. "What about it?"
"I dunno what to do for Cam to celebrate!" he said, looking perturbed. I looked at him piercingly, and he stared back helplessly.
"Think," I said finally. "You guys have been dating for about a month and a half, you guys have spent time together in the evenings at your house, and hers, at times. Has there ever been any mention of something she enjoys? Think."
"It's not that easy," he protested. "I don't have your level of memory! I can't remember every little conversational detail Cam and I shared the way you remember things about you and Carrie!"
"You're thinking about it the wrong way," I said calmly. "This has nothing to do with how good your memory is or isn't. This is your girl, Brandon. Your girl! She's with you because you understand her better than anyone else, family notwithstanding."
"I never thought about it like that," he admitted slowly. "Okay, hold on, let me think." I watched, and held back a laugh, as his face screwed up in concentration. A minute or so later, he smiled. "I know what to do."
"Can I take a guess?" I grinned.
"Go for it," he chuckled, "but I dunno how you're gonna be able to figure it out!"
"I'm not," I said. "My guess is based on what I would do for Carrie." He motioned for me to go on and I did. "Well, Carrie has always been a fun-loving kind of girl, but she has other sides too. So I would think of either having an evening where maybe we try cooking or baking something together, or building an indoor blanket fort and watch movies and listen to music of her choice."
His jaw dropped. "I just thought of the fort!" he gasped. "I shit you not, that's the idea I just had! Fort and movies!"
I grinned. "What a coincidence! Go for it, if you think she'll like it."
Brandon shook his head in disbelief as we made our way out to the parking lot. "Can't believe we had the same idea. Too bad you aren't with Carrie right now, or you could start planning this too."
"At least you can plan your Valentine's Day now," I chuckled.
"By the way," he said, looking tentative, "would you mind if I steal an idea from you?"
I was at a loss. "What idea?"
"The cooking thing," he said. "Maybe I combine the two ideas for one awesome evening? Would you mind if I did that?"
I burst out laughing. "It's not a copyrighted idea, man! Do whatever you want, those were just my ideas of what I'd do for Carrie. I don't even know if she'd like it, it's just my hunch!" He nodded thanks, and we said no more about Valentine's Day for the rest of the drive.
"Well, I'll see you on Wednesday," he said as he pulled up beside my driveway.
I got out of his van and nodded. "Yup, same as usual! By the way, make sure you let me know whether your plan this weekend is a success or not!"
"Of course," he chuckled. "That was a given!" I was about to close the door so he could go, but he stopped me, now looking a little more serious. "Really, man, try to get together with Carrie. You have so many good ideas and you'd make her so happy. I don't mean just for something like Valentine's, but in general too! Try, won't you?"
"Of course," I smiled. "Remember, no one wants this more than me!" He smiled too and nodded, and drove off, while I headed into my house, wondering if the time would ever come when I could do something special for Carrie for Valentine's Day.