Page 47 of A Matter of Time
“You wantmeto fucking apologize?”
That was the last straw for the principal. “Alright, Tonia, you’re going to take a few days at home to cool off. Cameron, you can get to class. We won’t involve the police unless you want to press charges.”
“Hecan press charges?” I squealed in fury.
“You’re the one who hit him,” the principal reminded me before turning back to Cam. “Well?”
Cam just shook his head. “No charges. All I want is an apology.”
His eyes pierced into me for a second more, filled with hurt and sadness, before he got up and walked out the door.
“You still there, Tonia? You going to let me up?” Cam’s voice brought me back to the present as it echoed once more through my intercom, and I shook my head to shake away the memories of the past.
After speaking to Marley earlier that week, I knew now that therehadbeen more to the story than I’d known at the time. Maybe the reason had been good enough and maybe it hadn’t, but there had been an explanation. Using the same logic, maybe Cam did have an explanation for where he’d been that night after leaving the bar. It didn’t mean I had to accept it, but at least I could hear him out and make up my mind with all the facts.
We had, after all, grown up a lot since high school, even if at times over the past couple of weeks, it didn’t entirely feel like it.
“You’ve got five minutes,” I told him, hitting the button to open the door for him. “Hurry up.”
~Cam~
I anticipated more of a fight. I half expected her to make me stand there in the lobby and tell her what I came to say over the intercom, or to refuse to speak to me at all. I was prepared to stand there until someone else came in or out of the building, beg them to let me in, and make my way to her door where she couldn’t ignore me quite so easily.
So, when the door buzzed and she told me to come up, I was genuinely surprised but grateful too. Maybe she wasn’t the only one who had figured out that we needed to change our approach if we were ever going to get out of this pattern we were stuck in.
Flinging the unlocked door open, I headed to the elevator. Her building didn’t require a key to get to the floor so I was able to go on up on my own. Tonia’s apartment was on the 14th floor and my heart pounded in rhythm with the shrill dings that marked each floor along the way.
The door already sat open when I reached her apartment, just enough that I could push my way in without knocking. She didn’t plan on wasting any time, apparently. She said she would only give me five minutes, but I wasn’t too worried about that. Once I got in front of her, once we got talking, I had a feeling she would want to see it through to the end, just as I did.
“Tonia?” I called out her name as soon as I got inside and closed the door behind me. In front of me, a door led to a bathroom, and a hallway stretched out to the left. Even at the front door, I could see that everything was neat and organized, just as I would have expected. The toiletries in the bathroom were lined up and her shoes, other than the one that had been holding the door open, were all neatly arranged on a rack with dress shoes on one side and casual shoes on the other, everything in its place, as efficient as can be.
“In the kitchen,” came her reply from down the hall, so I kicked off my own shoes and followed the sound of her voice.
The lights were low further inside, allowing the city lights to creep in through the living room windows. I found Tonia sitting on a stool at the counter that bridged the kitchen and the living room, her bare legs crossed beneath the peach-coloured silky nightgown she wore that only went to her mid-thighs, the lacy trim at the top drawing attention to the perfect swell of her breasts, and all the blood in my body immediately diverted to my groin. Was shetryingto drive me crazy? Just like that, my mind filled with images and memories of what happened in the restroom earlier, and what happened at my apartment earlier that week.
It would be so easy to give in to the nearly overwhelming desire for her that flared up inside me, but that wouldn’t get us anywhere, as we’d already learned. We needed to talk, and so I went to sit on the other side of the counter from her, far from temptation.
Tonia gave me a small smirk as I took my seat, as if she knew exactly why I’d chosen to sit there. “Tea?” she offered. “It’s non-caffeinated.”
She did indeed have a cup of tea in front of her, which I hadn’t noticed before. I’d been a little distracted by everything else about her. I’d barely registered anything about the sleek kitchen behind her, everything perfectly in its place, or the living room behind me. A large painting took up most of one wall, probably painted by Dex, but beyond that, all I could see in the whole apartment was her.
In any case, I hadn’t come there for tea. “No, thanks. Listen, I’m sorry for not coming back to the bar tonight. I tried to text you but my phone died, and by the time I got back there, you’d already left. I sent you a text as soon as I got home, but your phone must have been off.”
She reached over and tapped the screen on the device which sat next to her on the counter. “Yeah, I just turned it back on. I saw your message. Are you going to tell me how you got my address?”
“From Dex,” I told her honestly. No point in hiding that when he’d probably tell her himself.
“And where did you go when you left the bar? Did you and Kyra lose track of time?”
Unmistakable jealousy ran through her voice, and it heartened me to hear it. She had no reason or right to be jealous, but she was anyway, and I knew just how that felt. I’d felt it all night when I watched her and Tyler.
“Do you really believe that, Sugar? You think after what happened in that restroom that I went home and jumped into bed with another woman?”
I could practically see the smart retort on the tip of her tongue, the defensiveness and the need to not show even a hint of vulnerability, but to my surprise, she held it in. She took a sip of her tea, swallowing her comeback along with it, and shook her head instead. “No, I don’t think you were with Kyra. So, where were you?”
This was the moment of truth, quite literally. All those years ago, when she asked if I knew Marley, I lied. I put the promise I made to Marley ahead of the promise I made to Tonia to always be honest with her. And though I still thought she’d been in the wrong for jumping to conclusions later on and not giving me a chance to explain, I had to accept the blame for my part in the whole mess. If I had just answered that damn question honestly, maybe none of the rest of it would have ever happened.
It was not a mistake I intended to repeat, and so I told her the truth. “I was at the hospital with your parents.”
