Page 46 of A Matter of Time
Gasps and whispers circled around us, and Cam glanced furtively from side to side, his jaw set, before taking a step closer to me. “Please, let’s go and talk…”
“It’s a yes or no answer,” I snapped at him, folding my arms tightly across my chest. “Which is it?”
His lips pressed tightly together as something like regret danced in his eyes, but we’d gone way past that point. I just wanted the truth. “Yes, but it’s not what you think. Let me explain what’s going on.”
All I really heard was the ‘yes’. My friends told me the rest later. I wasn’t even really aware of going up and slapping him across the face until my hand started stinging from the force of it.
“You lied to me. You bastard! You said you’d never hurt me. You said you’dnevercheat on me. Was every fucking word you ever said to me a lie?”
He blinked as tears gathered in the corners of his eyes. I couldn’t say if they were because of what I said, what he’d done, or the slap I’d just given him. It must have hurt since I didn’t hold back. I wanted it to hurt.
“Ms Callahan, Mr Bailey, my office, now!” The principal’s angry voice boomed out down the hall as everyone else quickly dispersed, still whispering amongst themselves. No one would be forgetting the show they’d just witnessed any time soon.
My heart still racing and my blood boiling as it ran through my veins, I followed the principal to his office where he told me and Cam to take a seat.
“Do you want to tell me what that was about? Violence is not tolerated in the school and neither is swearing. As class president, you know that, Tonia.”
Of course I did, but at that moment, I had never cared about anything less. All I felt was anger; well, angerandpain, and I wanted Cam to feel it too. I wanted him to hurt just as bad as he hurt me.
“You want to know what it was about? It was about myex-boyfriend cheating on me and asking another girl to prom without having the decency to even break up with me first.”
Genuine dismay crossed the principal’s face. At such a small school, he knew all the students pretty well. He definitely knew all about our relationship and up until now, we had been a model couple.
“Cam, is that true?” he asked cautiously.
“He admitted it to me!” I interjected before Cam could get a word out. “I just asked him out in the hall and he said yes. That’s why I hit him, and I won’t apologize for it because I’m not sorry.”
“I’ve already heard you, Tonia,” the principal told me before turning back to Cam. “Is there anything you want to add?”
“I never cheated on her.” His words were quiet, his voice raw and almost broken. “I wouldn’t do that. If we’re broken up, it’s only because she’s the one doing the breaking.”
“So why does she think you cheated?” The principal was trying to keep us both calm, but it wasn’t really working.
Cam’s reply was sullen, drifting into bitterness. “Apparently, she doesn’t trust me. She would rather take Kara Beckett’s word over mine.”
My anger boiled over once again as I screamed directly at him. “You fucking admitted it!”
“Language, Tonia.” The principal’s look of disapproval grew stronger. “That’s your last warning. We can discuss this civilly, or I can call your parents.”
How did he expect me to behave ‘civilly’ after what Cam did? There was nothing civil about any of this but I tried my best to hold my tongue, sitting back in my chair, still seething.
The principal tried one more time to steer us towards some kind of resolution. “Do you have any reason to think that Cam’s lying beside what Kara Beckett said?”
I had plenty. “There’s the fact that he told me straight out that he barely knew Marley Stevens, and yet he was at her house last night. I saw him myself.”
Cam’s expression turned harder as he looked over at me. “Were you following me?”
Indignation flared up yet again. “You’re damn right I was, and it turned out I had good reason to! I saw you in her room.”
He looked at me almost like he’d never seen me before. “That’s really what you think?”
“What else am I supposed to think? You haven’t given me any other explanation.”
The same fire inside me burned in his eyes as well. I recognized that stubborn, pigheaded look of his; I’d seen it in action plenty of times, he’d just never used it on me before. “I wanted to. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about this morning instead of blowing it up in front of the whole school.”
“Well, let’s hear it then. Let’s hear your explanation.” I crossed my arms again, and he did the same, mocking me even further as he repeated the gesture.
“No. I’m not going to tell you until you apologize for all of this. You know me better than that, Tonia. You know I wouldn’t do that. I can’t believe, after everything we’ve been through, that you wouldn’t give me a chance to explain before jumping to the worst possible conclusion.”
