Finally Found (32 page)

Cin skipped dinner. That should have been her first clue. Cin wouldn’t return her calls. That was a close second. Finally, she gave up and drove over to her apartment. She began to bang on the apartment door as soon as she reached it. There were some floorboards creaking inside. “I know you’re in there, Cin,” she said as calmly as she could muster. “We need to talk.” More creaking. “So you need to put on your big girl panties and come open the door.” She thought that Cin was leaning on the wall near the door, based on the noises inside. “I’m going to have my say, baby sister. You just need to decide if we do it face to face, or if I do it through the door so all your neighbors can hear.
” She paused for a moment.

“I’m going to ask you one question, a very critical question. And you need to answer me. If you don’t, then I’ll still have my answer, won’t I?” She took a deep breath. The door flew open. Cin obviously knew what Cammie was going to ask.

Her head was down. Her eyes were red from crying. “I never had sex with Adam,” she said. Then she began to sob once more.

Had this admission come a day earlier, Cammie would have been completely shocked. Now, however, it seemed to be a bit anti-climactic. Still, there were questions. “What happened? Why would you let me believe that you had? Why would you let me hate him for years and years for hurting you?” Cammie could feel her own tears threatening to fall, but she refused to allow them leave. She was angry. She was hurt. Her trust had been abused. She may have lost the one man she never expected to love.

“He turned me down,” Cin said through sobs. “I offered myself to him and he gave me cab fare. He humiliated me. I was hurting. I never wanted to see him again.”

“Yes, but every time you did, you threw yourself at him!” She exclaimed.

“It was on principal. If I could just get him to sleep with me ever, then I hadn’t lied. Or my lie had become truth. I don’t know. I was crazy. I’m sorry!” She sobbed harder.

Normally Cammie would have reached out to comfort her. That was the history of their relationship, but at the moment she wanted to get as far away from her sister as possible. She had so much to process. The longer she thought about it all, the more her heart hurt.

Bereft. He felt that more and more. Adam didn’t know if Cammie would ever be in his bed again. The forced co-existence for the wedding was going to be a challenge. He would never let Sam and Haley down though. Never. They were everything. He couldn’t hurt them, too.

Rolling over in bed, he was grateful he had a day to mope around. He had tried getting up. He had even walked down to the bagel shop. The bagels…still sat on his counter. His coffee was cold. He had tried seeing if an ice cold
soda would shock his system into responding. Even that didn’t work. He had ignored Sam’s call for brunch. He had ignored what he had imagined was Haley’s invite to dinner. In fact, there was no one in this world he wanted to talk to at the moment, not even Cammie.

He went to bed for the night at 7:30pm. It wasn’t hard to do. He had slept on and off the bulk of the day. Even when he woke he felt sleepy. Maybe he had an iron deficiency. He would call the doctor in the morning.

“Glad to see you made it to work,” Sam’s voice boomed through the phone. “I just wanted to remind you that we were going to get together for Christmas Eve this year instead of Christmas Day. We won’t start that stuff until after Haley and I have children.”

“Sounds good,” Adam said trying to sound at least a little bit enthusiastic.

“How are you, Adam?” Sam asked genuinely concerned.

He took a moment to think about it. “How am I?” He repeated the question. “Hmm. I think I’m coming down with something. I’m tired. I didn’t even get out of bed yesterday.
I have no appetite. I don’t feel like doing anything. Must be some kind of flu going around.”

Sam chuckled. “Have you really never felt like this before?” He asked.

Adam thought. “No, I can’t say as I have. I didn’t get a flu shot. Is this supposed to be a bad year?”

There was a sigh. “Adam,” Sam began slowly, “you aren’t sick. You are depressed about Cammie. Fix it or get over it. Those are your options.” He chuckled once more. “Oh, the recess is over. I need to get back in there. I just wanted to make sure you were okay. And believe it or not, you are. Lesson one: love hurts.”

Adam hung up the phone. This…this ache was love. This overwhelming sadness? The loneliness, the lack of interest in anything. Screw that. He would never love again. If he ever recovered this time.

A week passed. Christmas was almost here. Adam had come to embrace the routine of work. He needed it. He needed the sense of purpose. He was good at it. The people here really seemed to respond to him. He was slowly feeling better. The true test, he knew would be at the wedding. He knew they were renting a beach house. He knew they were doing the wedding on the beach, the reception on the beach, and that Sam and Haley were leaving from there to go on a honeymoon cruise. It sounded pretty perfect.

He would be flying back in the private jet with Cammie, Ryan, Ellen, and Abby. That could be a long flight, but he loved to sleep while he traveled so that was one way to avoid having to talk to her. After that, he figured there was a very slim chance they would ever cross paths again. That thought both relieved and depressed him further.

On Christmas Eve, they held the traditional family gathering before midnight mass. The entire family was at Cammie’s parents’ house. It was…exhausting. Everything was exhausting these days. She used to be able to function on nearly no sleep, but now she was just tired all the time. She rarely smiled. Worst of all, she and Cin hadn’t spoken since their confrontation a couple of weeks ago.

Cammie had quit the family dinners. Sunday ended up being her one day of rest every week since business was currently booming. She had even had to turn away some business, which was simply unheard of. Adam was amazing. He had done all of this…for her. Her chest constricted every time she thought his name. Making a mental note to stop thinking about him…yet again, she worked in the kitchen in silence while the rest of the women chatted happily.

Just before 8pm, minutes before they sat down to eat dinner, Cin walked into the house. She looked at Cammie, but this time it was the older sister doing the avoiding. They ate across from each other. At the end of the meal, Cin cornered her upstairs in the bathroom. The minute Cammie stepped out after washing her hands, Cin was there, blocking her from going down the stairs.

“Did you talk to him?” Cin asked.

“Did I talk to who?” Cammie questioned. When her sister simply stared back at her, she knew that she meant Adam. “No. No, I haven’t talked to him.” She sighed.

“Why not?” Cin had apparently decided to be relentless.

“I don’t feel like it. I have so much other stuff going on. I don’t know that I have time for him right now.” She shrugged. “This was probably all for the best.” She started toward the stairs, and then she rushed back into the bathroom and shut the door.

“Are you okay?” Cin called to her. She pressed her head against the door.

Cammie sat on the floor next to the toilet and waited for the nausea to pass. Great. Now she was going to be sick over the holidays. She stood slowly, and opened the door. Cin looked really concerned. “Feel my forehead,” she said weakly. “Do I feel hot to you?”

Cin ran a hand across her forehead, held it to the back of her neck. Finally she shared her assessment. “No. You aren’t hot, but you have pretty much broken out in a cold sweat.”

“I think I’m going to skip church. I’m going to go home and go to bed.” She headed down the stairs to say her goodbyes.

“Are you sure you can drive? And how are you going to climb up that ladder and into bed? Come back to my place. I’ll take the couch.” Cin was determined. “It will give me an excuse to skip church.”

Cammie felt too tired to fight her. She looked at her a moment and nodded. “Let’s go.”