Cameron began slicing vegetables, she noticed that Paul had made no attempt to touch or kiss her. She kept thinking of the way he’d kissed her the night before, not opening his mouth at first, just gradually doing so, just tasting her lips with his tongue, as though it was something he’d never done before.
So, we’re going back to being just friends, she thought. Maybe he thought they’d be “friends with privileges” or bonking buddies. Not a chance.
From the table, Paul watched her back, the two light brown braids swinging over the shoulders of her thrift-shop Fair Isle sweater. He could say something about last night. But what was there to say?
He wanted to do it again.
What he said was, “I don’t want to hurt you.”
At the counter, Cameron froze. Of all the things a man could say after a sexual encounter, this was one of the worst. Implicit was the fact that his hurting her was quite possible. In fact, it implied a certain likelihood. Attempting objectivity, she compared “I don’t want to hurt you” to “Sex will ruin our friendship.” Hard to judge which was worse, actually. What was she supposed to say?
She wheeled around. “You can’t hurt me, because I’m not sleeping with you again. For one thing, I don’t want to get pregnant.” She wished she hadn’t said that, for many reasons, from hating to discuss a terrifying subject to hating to tell lies. “But even if being pregnant wouldn’t kill me, you and I are just friends. What happened happened, but now my biggest concern is learning how to conceal a black eye before I lose my job.” Since I’ve already lost my mind and slept with you.
Paul thought she was acting strangely, but she’d been clear. He told himself it was a relief. And though the thought of her becoming pregnant alarmed him almost as much as it could alarm her, he knew that any fear of that outcome was neurotic. He said, “This is the twenty-first century. It’s totally irrational to believe you will die in childbirth.”
Her face flushed in a way he associated with her being particularly—well, hysterical. Oh, God, here we go.
“Easy for you to say! Didn’t one of your own mother’s clients almost die in childbirth?”
“No. It was a stillbirth, what you’re talking about, and it happened at the hospital.” Actually, Paul wasn’t sure of this. It had happened when he was six years old, and his father had moved out soon afterward. Sometimes the story of the stillbirth came up when people argued that homebirths were unsafe. He thought he could remember his mother saying, “If she’d been my client, I would have sent her to a physician.” But Paul didn’t know why this was, knew none of the details, though he was sure either of his parents could provide them.
Cameron was still talking. “Anyhow, you think dying in childbirth is the only unpleasant possibility. You think, ‘Oh, they’ll just give her an epidural. She’ll be fine.’ Roxanne Jacobs had an epidural, and she’s had crippling back pain ever since. You think, ‘Oh, Cameron will just have a cesarean section.’ My sister miscarried in the fifth month four times. You think a little miscarriage is nothing, but that’s like a stillbirth every time.”
Paul considered interrupting, but it was hard to find a place.
“And each time was physically excruciating. She thought she was going to die, not to mention being heart-broken because she’d lost the baby. And they are babies, premature but completely babies. Beatrice named every one.” Tears welled in Cameron’s eyes.
Horrified, Paul said, “Baby—” He almost put his hand over his mouth. He’d called her “baby.” That could lead to lack of clarity. About their relationship. But he forced himself to finish saying what he’d begun to say. “You know how you get before your period. You’re just freak—”
“I AM NOT EXPECTING MY PERIOD!” she shrieked. “Would I be worried if I was? Do you know nothing about women?”
He considered asking her to please put down the knife but decided to remain silent.
He heard the front door open. Denise called, “Cameron?”
Thank God, he thought.
Cameron grabbed a dishcloth to wipe her eyes.
Two days later
CAMERON PEERED around the Charleston Walmart as she waited in line, clutching a magazine on top of her two-in-one, double-check home pregnancy kit. Paul was not with her, having dropped her at Walmart and gone alone to prowl the endless aisles at Home Depot. That night, he was going to be the soundman for an English band called Crawl at a Charleston concert, and he’d asked her to go with him, and she’d agreed. So, though this was the Charleston Walmart, it was not out of the realm of possibility that she would see someone from Logan here.
With the coast clear, she went through the checkout, smiling tensely at the clerk. She paid for her purchases, then hurried into the ladies’ restroom, where she closed herself in a cubicle to find out the worst.
Alone, she watched the test strip, prepared to wait the three minutes, waiting to exhale in relief.
One line appeared, confirming that the test was working.
Nothing else.
She waited.
She looked at her watch.
She tried to breathe. It’s okay. It’s okay.
She wasn’t pregnant.
She waited for relief to wash over her, but relief wasn’t precisely what she felt. She was relieved, of course she was. But—well, it must be the biological clock thing. She’d been terrified by the possibility that she was pregnant, or she’d never have bought a test. But she’d had a sort of excitement, a sort of pleasure, in thinking she and Paul might have conceived a child.
Which was silly. She threw away the first test, stuck the second in her purse to take home, and washed her hands. There was really no way that pregnancy could have been good news. Even if she’d been pregnant, she’d have been likely to miscarry. This would save her so much heartache.
There was no reason for her to be depressed.
But she considered telling Paul she wasn’t feeling well, that she had run into friends and would make her own way home from Charleston. He could go to this gig on his own, a gig that epitomized everything about him that refused to grow up. He worked in the zoo to support his career as a musician and worked as a soundman to help pay for his equipment. Of course, he should be a musician. And he did love his job at the zoo. Okay, she was being hard on him, but she needed to keep her distance from Paul for the time being.
The thing is that she’d sort of, almost kind of, wished she was pregnant. It would have been a catastrophe. There was no way it could have turned out well. Paul would never have married her, and she didn’t think she would have wanted him to. Permanent children did not marry, and the thought of Peter Pan being a father to anyone but the Lost Boys was both ludicrous and scary.
No, she’d go to the Crawl show and be friendly. Paul was no threat to the peace of her heart.
But as she emerged from the ladies’ room, she collided with someone entering the men’s. She looked up into the handsome and obviously delighted face of Sean Devlin.
“HOW
