I'm heading home after work when I get an impromptu call from Cameron. As I take the phone from my pocket, I expect it to be Mel or Gen or even one of my sisters. When I see it's him, I take a second to answer in an attempt not to seem eager. I press the phone to my ear, mentally prepare myself, and say: "yes, Cameron?"
"You're out of work, right?" He jumps straight into the conversation. I pull my phone away and glance at the time, noting that it's 5:06.
"Yes and I have been for 6 minutes but I have a feeling you already knew that." I fight off a small smile at his excitement. It's been a week since we had dinner at my apartment and I drunkenly explained my family life to him. He hasn't made anything awkward and he hasn't brought it up but just the simple fact that he knows is putting me on edge. Don't bother asking me why because I couldn't begin to tell you. I still can't figure out if I told him out of comfort or because there was alcohol coursing through my veins and felt the need to overshare, as drunken people usually do.
"You're right. I did," he blurts casually before falling further into discussion. "Anyway, do you have plans tonight? Are you going to a party? Are you hanging out with Rex? Or Danny?"
I wonder what's causing him to talk to me like an overeager little brother. "I'm not sure yet, Cam. Why?" I wonder as I turn a corner.
"Well, if you aren't busy, I wanted to know if we could hang out," cue his nervous backtracking, "but if you're busy then it's okay."
"We can hang out." I continue on my way home. "What'd you have in mind?"
"Well, assuming this is last minute and it's only been a week since we last hung out so you probably don't want to go out with me just yet, maybe we can just hang out at your place. Unless, of course, you've changed your mind about being seen in public with me."
Seeing as what he's said is a lot to take in, I go with a more casual response. "My place it is," I conclude. "What time?"
"What time works for you?" I purse my lips.
"Eight is good." I know that providing him with a time any later will just come off as suspicious. Besides, if Mel and Gen go out, it won't be until about nine o'clock. Hopefully, they'll be too busy getting ready to notice me sneaking him in.
"Cool." I contemplate asking what he has in mind. I decide against it and instead, let out a quiet breath.
"I'll see you then." After hanging up, I shove my phone back in my pocket and think about what I'm going to wear.
Mel and Gen don't bother me until I'm in the shower. My hair is barely wet when a pounding comes from the door. "I'm coming in!" Mel announces and I don't bother saying anything. I listen as the door opens but doesn't close, which isn't surprising. Mel is known for leaving the door ajar when she pees.
"Are we going out tonight?" Gen asks from outside the bathroom, I'm assuming.
"Uh..." Mel probably turns to face the shower, "Fee?"
"I'm not," here comes the series of questions, "but if you guys want to, that's cool."
"Rex?" Gen pipes curiously.
"Danny?" Mel wonders in the same tone.
"Cam." My confession gets satisfied noises from both of them. I roll my eyes and continue to rub shampoo throughout my hair.
"Are you guys going on a date?" Mel continues to question after flushing the toilet.
"No, we're actually hanging out here." Gen gasps dramatically at my revelation.
"He's coming here?" Mel presses and I want to sigh. "Are you guys sleeping together yet?"
"No," I answer bluntly. "We're just hanging out."
"Do you want the place to yourself?" Gen pries over the sound of the sink water and I contemplate it. They already know either way so it's not like I have to keep him a secret. Besides, I know for a fact nothing is happening tonight.
"No, you guys are good." I rinse the suds from my hair.
"Cool," Mel concludes and with that, they exit the bathroom, leaving me to finish my shower in peace.
When Cam texts me that he's outside, I pause the music playing from my phone and get up from the couch, where my friends have started an in depth study session for their Psychology class. "He's here?" they simultaneously ask as they look up from their shared textbook.
"Yeah." They quickly start to pack up but I shake my head and stretch my legs. "You guys can stay out here. We'll just...hang out in my room."
"You better leave the door open," Mel chides teasingly and I lightly kick at her. Gen cackles evilly as I exit the room and start towards the door. When I reach the porch, I find Cam standing there with damp curls and an all black outfit on. I admire him briefly once I open the door and discreetly nod in approval. He greets me with a large grin and trails inside the building beside me.
"You look happy." My teasing comment gains an eye roll.
"You don't," he acknowledges and I shrug.
"Eh." We reach the apartment and I turn to him. "So Mel and Gen are studying in the living room, which means we have to hang out in my room."
"Okay." I stop in front of my closed door and hesitate a bit. His gaze drops down to my face and I suddenly feel nervous. I quickly recover when I see the way the corner of his lips perk upward a bit.
"But you can't try anything on me, Cam," I threaten him in a playful tone. He holds up his hands defensively and offers me a solemn expression.
"I would do no such thing." I chuckle at his words as I open the door to my bedroom. I slip off my shoes and watch as he takes in his surroundings, admiring the large tapestries hanging off my walls, along with a series of pictures scattered around the room. I suddenly realize that we're practically submerged in darkness with my fairy lights barely illuminating the room from the tops of my walls. To avoid any assumptions that I put them on for mood lighting, I switch the overhead lights on.
In a swift motion, he jumps onto my neatly made bed and extends his limbs comfortably. I toss my phone onto the blanket beside him and stand in front of the mirror a few feet away. I start to braid my now dry hair and listen as he presses play on my phone, starting up my previously paused playlist. "That's the study playlist," I explain when the sound of Chopin fills the room. "It's just classical music."
"Do you have any other playlists?" He holds my phone out for me to take. With my hands tangled in my hair, I figure that telling him my password is easier than stopping mid-braid and changing it.
"Yeah, just unlock my phone." He holds it up, which I see in the mirror behind me. "1145."
He types in the code and scrolls through my playlist. Soon enough, my rap music is playing as loud as possible. I continue tying half of my hair into a neat braid, which eventually starts to hurt my arms. A notification cuts off my music and I watch him in the mirror pretend not to notice it. "Who was that and what did they say?" I've been waiting for my Rowena to update me about the state of our potentially new family pet. Hesitantly, he lifts my phone from his chest and assesses the screen.
"An unsaved number," he skims the notification, "it says, 'My roommate left. Do you want to come over?' Oh my gosh, is this is a booty call?"
"Sorry." I cringe at him in the mirror. "What are the last four digits?"
"8936." After reading it off, he puts my phone back down and watches me in the mirror. "Rex?"
"Yeah." We fall into slightly awkward silence as the music continues to play. My phone goes off again, which gets a slightly frustrated grunt from me. I stare at him for a few seconds and he sighs loudly and lifts my phone.
"Another unsaved number," he skims it silently before giving me a flat look, "oh great, another one. This one is an eggplant emoji with a question mark. I'm guessing this is Danny."
"Yeah..." The cringe on my face gives away my embarrassment and I contemplate blocking their numbers altogether.
The music returns and I hope they don't double text me. That'd just make things ten times more awkward than they are now. Yet again, my phone vibrates and this time, it's Cam who lets out a frustrated grunt. "There are more of them?" He gasps in slight exasperation.
"No." I whip around once more. "Who is it?"
"It's...Rowena." There's relief in his voice.
"What'd she say?" I perk up a bit.
"It says, 'mom said we can get the turtle,'" he reads out, which gets a large smile from me.
"Tell her...to name it Flizz...after me." I watch as he types out the response.
"They call you Flizz?" I nod in response to as I tie off my braid. I admire my hair in the mirror before walking over to my bed and taking a seat beside him. He hands me my phone, which is still playing music, and I turn off my notifications before tossing it to the side. I cross my legs and focus my attention on him, which surprises him a bit. His gaze travels to my device as it bounces across my bed. "You're not going to text them back?"
"Who?" I blurt before registering who he's talking about. "No. Why would I?"
He shrugs weakly from his spot a foot away from me. "If I leave before twelve, you could still catch them." I furrow my brows in confusion.
"Do you want me to?" I trail in confusion and he shakes his head.
"No, of course not...but I know you do sometimes. And I don't want to keep you from it if that's what you want." I stare at him for a few seconds before scoffing.
"No. I agreed to hang out with you so that's what I'm going to do."
He lets a small smile overtake his face as he nods up at the ceiling. "Cool. I feel special."
"Don't flatter yourself," I grunt as I fight off a small grin. "So what do you want to talk about?"
"Anything." His broad answer causes me to purse my lips.
I stare at him for a few seconds and think about how genuinely nice he is. "You said you used to play women?" He cringes awkwardly.
"Anything but that." I perk up eagerly, knowing that I'm not going to let him drop the topic. He notes this and sighs before falling into an explanation. "Once upon a time, I did."
"You know, I can't see it." I stare down at him and try to imagine him as a player.
"I often like to forget about that period in my life." He presses the heels of his palms to his eyes.
"So...tell me about it." He laughs loudly at my encouragement and and sits up a bit.
"What's there to tell? I was an asshole." He fully props himself up into a sitting position. I let him move around and adjust myself accordingly so that we're not touching; that's the last thing I need to do in my bed. "In high school, I'd talk to multiple girls, sleep with them, and just not call them back. Like an asshole does, you know?"
I cringe at his explanation and assess his remorseful features. "Seriously?" I stare in disbelief. "You did that?" I'm not one to judge. I've been on his end of the stick multiple times but never purposefully. I never really lead people on but I also don't bother explaining myself before I ghost people. So, really, I'm no better. But it's hard to imagine him doing such a thing. He seems too nice.
"Yeah, I know," another sigh, "I just wanted sex, sex, and more sex." A slow grin forms on his face as his head tilts teasingly, "kind of like you now."
"Hey!" I kick his leg defensively. He buries his face in my blanket and barks out laughter before rolling back over and returning to his semi-serious state.
"In all honesty, I think I did it because my friends were doing it, which is a shitty excuse but I was impressionable. No one ever talked to me about girls like that. Of course my dads told me to respect women but it didn't really click in my mind that sleeping with them and leaving was outright disrespectful," he continues to ramble. "I was a soccer player and for some reason, girls flocked to us. So I did what all of my teammates did and slept around. I didn't like hurting people. My friends would laugh about it but that was one thing I could never bring myself to do. I lived in a constant state of guilt in junior and senior year. Not to mention, I never had crushes on girls. So I hooked up with them just to do it."
"Wow..." I stare at him and tilt my head. "You were that guy in high school."
"Unfortunately," he grunts and shakes his head sadly. "I got better when I got to college. It was more hookups and less leading people on. Then I kind of got tired of it and tried my hand at dating. And here I am now."
"Psh, you're not even dating." He laughs loudly at my comment.
"Yeah, someone isn't making it easy," he gives me a pointed look. "What about you? What were you like in high school?"
"A nerd," I answer in short and he stares at me in disbelief. He waits a few seconds for me to confess that I'm only joking with him.
"You're kidding me, right?" I offer a long, embarrassed head shake. "What happened?"
"Well, I was never interested in dating. I talked to a few guys but they were all obnoxious teenage boys who just wanted to sleep with me in the back of their outdated Honda Civics after football game dates. And I could never mess around with girls; my family didn't know I was bisexual and I was too scared to come out." I fiddle with my hands in the gap created by my criss-crossed legs.
"Do they know now?" he wonders suddenly and I shrug.
"My sisters know. I'm not sure if my mom does," I tell him while rubbing my hands together.
"So what changed in college?" Cue my long sigh as I recall my wild freshman year.
"Well, for one, I lost my virginity." I don't bother sugar coating it. "Once that was out of the way, I did what I wanted with who I wanted when I wanted."
"Was it a one night stand?" he presses and I purse my lips.
"Kind of but not really." How do I tell him it was Rex that I gave my virginity to?
I'm relieved of the task because he seems to catch on. Immediately, his mouth falls open a bit and he tilts his head. "Danny?" I shake my head. "Rex?"
"Yup." I bob my head up and down.
"And you don't have the whole virginity attachment that all parents warn their kids about?" I laugh loudly at the thought of me falling in love with Rex.
"I thought I would but I didn't. I still don't. He didn't even know," I elaborate with a bored look on my face. We fall into a brief silence after he gives me a slow nod and averts his gaze to the artwork hanging on my walls.
"Do you want a relationship?" he blurts after almost a minute of us being lost in our own minds. The question throws me off so I purse my lips hesitantly and contemplate my answer.
"I don't know," I confess, which is a step up from the hard no that it used to be. "Do you?"
"Yes." His confident answer is paired with a strong nod. "What don't you know?"
"I just..." Maybe I shouldn't hang out with him so much; both of these sessions have resulted in me opening up to him things I've never said to anyone else. Still, despite my apprehension, I allow the words to leave my mouth. "What if I get hurt?"
"Well..." He straightens out his back as he prepares to talk. I watch as he shifts so that he's resting on his hands with his legs outstretched in front of him. He seems to move around a lot; I can't imagine what it'd be like trying to fall asleep beside him. "So, hypothetically speaking, if you were to date me, for example, I wouldn't hurt you." I scoff at that and violently shake my head in disbelief. He'd crush my heart without a doubt. I don't know how but I know it'd happen.
"Bullshit," I dismiss him. "Everyone says they won't hurt you. And the ones that are so insistent that they won't are the ones that hurt you the most."
"Do you speak from experience?"
"No, but my older sisters all got their hearts broken," I inform him as I recall the nights of them crying themselves to sleep over boys who weren't even worth a single tear. "I don't want to ever experience that. Ever."
"Okay, hypothetically speaking again, I wouldn't hurt you on purpose. I wouldn't go out of my way to intentionally hurt you. In fact, I'd go out of my way to not hurt you. And if I did hurt you, I'd do everything in my power to fix things and make it all okay again," he assures me.
"And then after you?" I mumble and he blinks a few times in slight surprise. "You know, after you get tired of me and then break up with me because it's you, not me. Then, my heart is shattered but I have to pretend it's not because I know that it's just in my nature to push people away so much that they don't want to try anymore."
"You're going to think I'm crazy and you're going to say it's too early to know, but I wouldn't get tired of you." The sense of positivity in his voice almost convinces me. "Literally Flizzy, all I ever want to do is spend time with you, get to know you, talk to you, take you out on dates, and just be there for you. I'd text you all the time if I didn't feel like I was annoying you."
I stare at him and feel my stomach shift a bit. To avoid speaking on that, I drop my gaze to my knees. "You know...they say that your first relationship isn't going to be your last." From the corner of my eye, I see his shoulders rise and fall.
"That doesn't have to be true," he acknowledges slowly. I immediately look up at him with a face full of surprise.
"So you're saying you'd marry me?" My question doesn't throw him off as much as I hope because he only purses his lips as if wondering how to address it.
"Well, I'm not going to jump the gun and give you a strong yes, but I date to marry. And I want to date you," he trails with a slow shrug.
I stare at him for a few seconds and try to envision myself marrying him. I can picture it, which scares me a lot more than it should. I immediately shake the thoughts from my head and point at him with my index finger. "Anyway," I start in an attempt to change the topic, "that took a different turn than I expected."
"Do you know what I just realized?" He jumps up a bit and my stomach immediately drops. I lock eyes with him, which only triggers a growing beam on his face. Oh boy, what's this going to be? "When I first met you, you told me that you don't date or do relationships. And just now, you told me that you don't know if you want a relationship. Does that mean...I'm making progress?"
I narrow my eyes at him and look for an out. "Actually," I start, "I didn't know if I wanted a relationship when I first met you, either. I just thought you'd leave me alone if I said I didn't want one."
"Ah, that didn't work well, huh?" he concludes with a grin. "Okay, I have a question but it's going to make me sound really lame."
"Ask away. You're already as lame as they come," I tease him with a matching smile.
"When you saw me at the party, what made you approach me?" he wonders. My eyes take in his dark, well-kept curls that I always want to run my fingers through and the vague chiseling of his face. His large, white smile enveloped by his plump, pink lips and his playful, brown eyes are enough of an answer.
"I thought you were hot," I blurt without thinking about how much his head will inflate. His face contorts to one of satisfaction as he absorbs my words, which bounce around in my brain like a quarter machine ball. I try to find a way to save myself so I stumble over my words and shake my head. "Then I got up close and realized how wrong I was."
He smirks and nudges my leg with his foot. "Now you're just lying." I bring my shoulders up to my ears.
"I really just wanted to see something so ugly up close." I make it a point to take in his features and shiver after my assessment. "Who would think he'd be here sitting on my bed?"
"You hoped I'd be in your bed," he announces, which gets a glare from me. I reach for my phone and he jumps up excitedly. "Wait, I want to see something." He grabs his phone from his lap and types for a few seconds. His hand shoots across the bed to retrieve my long abandoned phone, which gives me slight anxiety. What if one of the guys texted me something inappropriate? Or worse, Gen or Mel pestering me about what noises I'm trying to mask with the music? However, none of these things happen judging by the triumphant look in his face. He hands me back my device, which I stare at curiously.
"What?" I look over my notifications. Danny texted me again but it was just eye emojis. Rowena replied and Nola texted me a simple 'hey.' I see Cam's text at the top of my notifications.
"You have my number saved." He seems oddly satisfied at this revelation.
"I have all my friends numbers saved." His mouth drops in slight shock and I struggle to see where I went wrong.
"Friends?" he repeats and I furrow my brows back at him.
"Are we not friends?"
"You just friend-zoned me." I immediately suck my teeth in response.
"You friend-zoned yourself a while ago when you literally said that you'd settle on being my friend," I retort with a dismissive wave of my hand.
"You remember that?" he asks with a small smile. I give a short nod and he lets out a quiet chuckle. "So tell me...honestly..."
"What?" I urge him to finish when he takes his time spacing out his question.
"Do you see me as just a friend?" My stomach falls to my ankles. "You can be honest with me. You don't have to lie to try to save my feelings."
"I see you as...Cameron." His eyebrows rise as slowly as the words slip from my mouth. "You have your own category."
"Okay...is that a good thing or a bad thing?" I let a small smile show on my lips.
"It's whatever." He seems to catch on because he nods.
We continue to converse for hours, bouncing back from topic to topic. The only consistent thing we do is flirt, which takes the form of him nudging me and me insulting him. A little too soon, he sighs noisily and glances at his phone. "It is two in the morning," he acknowledges in a tired mumble. "And I have to be up for work in five hours."
I stare at him from my position laying down. At some point earlier, he pulled my legs into his lap and held them there. I didn't complain but I want to now as he lightly pushes them off and stands up. I get up with him and give a large stretch, which he seems to find entertaining. I follow him down the hall to the front door, which I unlock and open. Before I can tell him to text me when he gets home, he pulls me into a surprising hug. I don't complain and wrap my arms around his neck to return it. I take in the feel of his arms around me and his body against me, as well as the scent of him infiltrating my nose. It's all so comforting and so enticing that I have to pull away after a few seconds to ensure I don't try to pull him back to my room.
"Go home." This gets a laugh from him.
"Do you want a ride?" he asks, which gets a lost look from me. "To Rex's place, I know you're going to sneak off there as soon as I leave."
"Don't make me hit you." I jump at him with narrowed eyes. He leaps back excitedly before slowly starting towards the stairs. "Text me when you get home."
"I will." He turns to head down the stairs and I shut and lock the door, shaking the jittery feeling in my stomach away. Why am I so excited over a little hug?