Page 42 of A Matter of Time
Maybe I could take Kyra home and come back before Tonia left for the night. My apartment building wasn’t all that far away.
Since Tonia hadn’t come back from the restroom yet, I went to talk to Tyler while Kyra collected her coat. “I’ve got to head out, but can you let Tonia know I’ll be back later? There’s something I want to talk to her about.”
“Sure thing, Cam.” He looked a little too pleased with himself and I didn’t understand why, but I had no time to waste worrying about it. At that moment, I simply wanted to get home and back as quickly as possible.
I called a cab and accompanied Kyra back to our building, apologizing once again for leaving her alone with my colleagues for so long. She told me she thought I had just up and left without her, which is why she had come looking for me, and that made me feel even worse. Even though I had told her I’d asked her out that night simply as friends, abandoning her had still been a crappy thing to do. I did feel bad about it, but not enough to wish it hadn’t happened. That little restroom hookup with Tonia would be worth feeling slightly awkward whenever I saw Kyra in the gym from then on.
After delivering her to her door like a gentleman, I headed back down to the lobby where I’d asked the taxi to wait for me. My hand had just grabbed the door handle to get back in the car when my phone rang.
Groaning, I pulled out my phone to check the number. The number belonged to a cell phone, one I didn’t recognize, but my gut told me to answer it anyway.
“Hello?” As I answered, I sat back down in the back of the car and motioned for the driver to take me back to the bar.
“Cam, is that you?”
The voice sounded familiar but it took me a moment to place it. “Mrs Callahan?”
Why the heck would Tonia’s mother be calling me? For a brief moment, I was suddenly transported back to those days in her basement when her parents would almost catch us, and absurdly, my heart rate spiked, imagining that she had called me because she knew what Tonia and I had done at the bar tonight.
Reminding myself that I was now a 24-year-old man who could do whatever I wanted, I tried to focus back on what she was saying.
“I’m so sorry to bother you, but we don’t know that many people in Houston and since we just stayed with you last weekend and you were kind enough to give us your number, I thought it might be okay that I called.”
Her words were rushed and hiccupped, and it felt like I had missed something, or she’d just left something out. She wasn’t making any sense. “Of course it’s okay. What’s going on?”
“We’re… we’re at the hospital.”
My stomach immediately dropped and I held up my hand to get the driver’s attention. “Which hospital?”
She gave me the name and I told the driver to head there instead even though I still didn’t know what was happening.
“Is it Shawna?” I tried to guess. She should have gone home the day before, but things could have changed.
“No, no, Shawna’s fine, but that’s why I’m calling you instead of Dex. He’s got enough to deal with.”
Those words made me even more confused. She had said she didn’t know many people in Houston, but I had assumed that meant besides her own children who lived here. Why would she be calling me rather than her own family?
“What’s going on, Mrs Callahan?”
“It’s Bill.” She gave me the name of her husband, Tonia’s father. “He had a heart attack this afternoon.”
“Oh, gosh, ma’am.” My shock made me revert to a 12-year-old boy, apparently, as the words shot out of my mouth. “Is he alright?”
“He’s just resting now, they’re still doing some tests, but we don’t want to get anyone upset until we know more. Like I said, Dex’s got enough going on right now.”
I could understand that, but there seemed to be one other obvious person she could have called. “And Tonia?”
I could hear noise in the background as Mrs Callahan went silent, speaking to someone else for a moment before returning to the phone. “I’ve got to go, but if you’re too busy…”
“I’m already on my way,” I told her truthfully. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
~Tonia~
After cleaning myself up in the restroom, I returned to the bar where the Barnly Oil group were still drinking, laughing and talking, but I couldn’t see either Cam or Kyra. Still glancing around for them as I sat down next to Tyler, I almost jumped as he put his hand on my shoulder.
“Cam asked me to tell you he had to leave but he’ll be back later. Said he had something he wanted to talk to you about.”
I couldn’t hide the satisfaction that information gave me. It seemed I’d made an impression on him, at the very least, and maybe, at last, we could finally hash all of it out together. I still had no idea what the outcome would be, but at least we could both stop wondering. What happened the other night in his apartment and just a few minutes earlier in the restroom made it pretty clear to me that things weren’t as resolved between us as we’d both believed, not to mention that I still wanted to talk to him about the things Marley had told me.
