Page 18 of A Matter of Time
That sounded about right. “Well, I was completely in love with him. I never even looked at anyone else, even though there were plenty of other guys who were interested.”
“Sure there were,” Laura interjected sarcastically before giving Billie a nudge. “If you listen to her, she’ll have you thinking the whole football team were lining up for her.”
“Maybe not thewholeteam, but at least the offensive line,” I shot back, making her grin. “Why wouldn’t they be? Homecoming queen, class president, and a shoo-in for prom queen.”
My voice caught on the last words, to my great annoyance.No waywould I let myself get emotional over that, not after six years. I had gotten over it, just like I had gotten over Cam, and no one could convince me otherwise.
“I remember how cool you were,” Billie assured me even as Laura rolled her eyes. “All my friends wanted to be you.”
As flattering as that might be, no one would have wanted to be me by the end of the story. “Prom was a huge deal, as you could guess. It always is. We were having ours just before graduation, and I had my dress picked out for months. It would be our last big event before leaving high school behind, and everyone knew Cam and I would go together. We hadn’t gone to a single thing with anyone else ever since our first day of freshman year.”
“Spoiler alert,” Laura stage-whispered, leaning over to Billie. “They didn’t end up going together.”
“I remember that too,” Billie assured us. “What I don’t really know is why.”
My lips tightened as the memories flashed back through my mind, that same pit opening in the bottom of my stomach that always appeared when I thought back to that time in my life. “Well, a few weeks before prom, Cam started acting differently. He’d tell me he had things to do but wouldn’t tell me what they were. He wouldn’t answer his phone when I called. At first, I thought maybe he was planning some kind of surprise for me, ‘cause honestly, it wouldn’t be out of character for him to go all out.”
I could still remember how I tried to push all my doubts aside, telling myself I was getting worked up over nothing. Cam loved me; he told me so, and he proved it in almost everything he did. He wouldn’t do anything to hurt me.
Or so I thought.
“The first inkling I had about the real story was when Kara Beckett cornered me in the locker room after volleyball practice one day. Do you remember Kara?”
“I know her younger sister, Raenne,” Billie told me. “I think they inherited the same bitch gene.”
Her bluntness made me smile, and she had it exactly right. “That’s them. She came up to me, acting all innocent and asking me why I never mentioned that Cam had become such good friends with Marley Stevens. Though I knew she wanted to wind me up, I also knew she always had her ear to the ground for gossip, so I couldn’t help asking her what she meant. She told me that Cam had been over at Marley’s house almost every night for the last week. Not just in the evening either, but staying overnight. Kara said she saw him leaving one morning, wearing the same clothes he’d worn at school the day before.”
“No!” Billie’s eyes went wide, and in her expression, I could almost see my own shocked disbelief when Kara told me about it too. “What about her parents?”
“I asked that too. She said they’d been out of town for a while and Marley had been staying there on her own.”
Billie chewed on her lip, searching her memory. “I don’t really remember Marley. Was she a friend of yours?”
I shook my head as I glanced over to the big window in my room that overlooked the Houston skyline. Most of the lights in the surrounding skyscrapers were off since most normal people would be asleep in the middle of the night. Sometimes, looking out that window, I almost imagined I could see the little town where I grew up if I just squinted hard enough. “I only knew Marley in passing. She was a year younger than us and kept to herself a lot. People found her a bit strange, so even though she was pretty, she didn’t have a lot of friends. I didn’t think Cam really knew her either, until Kara told me he did.”
“Maybe it wasn’t what it looked like?” Billie suggested, and I shot her a disapproving look.
“You don’t think that didn’t cross my mind? I asked Cam flat out the next time I saw him if he knew Marley, and he said ‘not really’. He definitely didn’t say anything about spending time with her.”
The way my stomach sank at his response still lingered in my memory. If I closed my eyes, I could almost feel it again. Kara might have been exaggerating, but her stories usually had some basis in truth. If there was nothing going on between them that he had to be guilty about, why would he lie to me?
“You know me,” I continued, giving Billie a shrug. “I had to keep digging, so that night, I went over to Marley’s house myself. I hid across the street and I saw Cam show up. He certainly acted like someone who had something to hide. When he got to her house, he looked around, making sure no one could see him before he turned up the path and went to her door.”
Billie had leaned so far forward, she’d almost folded herself in half. “What did you do? Did you go and knock?”
“I would have, but before I could, I saw a light come on over on the other side of the house. The curtains were open, so I decided to just go take a quick peek.”
“You spied on them through the window?” Billie wrinkled her nose and she and Laura both laughed. “You’re a freak.”
“I’mthorough,” I argued. “They could say whatever they wanted when they answered the door, but if I saw it for myself, I would know for sure. Maybe he’d be helping her with her math homework, or maybe they’d just be watching TV. It wouldn’t explain why he lied to me, but at least I could trust my eyes.”
In my mind, I could still feel my heart pounding as I snuck up to the house, trying to avoid being seen as I crept closer to the window. Dozens of potential scenarios flashed across my imagination, a variety of innocent things they might be up to and how I could laugh at myself afterwards about how paranoid I’d been. I would tell Cam and he would laugh too, and soon, it would be just one more funny story we had to share. I convinced myself of it.
Once again, I was proven wrong.
“What did you see?” Billie asked breathlessly.
“They were in her bedroom. He sat on her bed while she paced back and forth, ranting about something, waving her arms around. The more upset she got, the farther he leaned forward, until he got up and wrapped his arms around her, hugging her really tightly just like he always did with me. She hugged him back, putting her arms around him like they’d done it a hundred times before.”
