Chapter 20

Andrew slowed the car to a stop underneath the streetlight outside Cameron’s apartment building, the harsh LED leaving her half in shadow. In the seat next to him, she seemed miles away — miles away from him, miles away from the apartment building, and miles away from the Cameron he kept expecting to see.

At first glance, she looked mostly the same. Without any styling, her hair flopped down to the eye on the lit half of her face, which wasn’t unusual. And the gray tanktop was something she could’ve been wearing at any other time in any other place.

But a nicotine patch on her upper arm obstructed her tattoos and was a few shades too dark to blend in with the color of her flesh anyway. She’d reluctantly taken a few extra patches the nurses offered her since she wouldn’t be allowed to smoke for a few days. No smoking, no drinking, and, for the first night at least, she was supposed to sleep on her side to make sure her airway stayed open.

More than that, though, every time he looked over, it seemed like she’d sunk deeper down into the seat. Now that they were parked in front of her building, she didn’t seem like she had any desire to get out.

Or am I reading her wrong again?

“You could ... stay with me, if you wanted,” Andrew said gently. He wasn’t sure how she’d react, but he took a chance that he was reading her right after all. “I can just grab some of your stuff from Kendra.”

Slowly, she started to nod, staring down the glove compartment. “Yeah. Just ... just for tonight. ‘Til I—”

“Hey,” he said, stopping her from needing to ramble out some excuse. “It’s okay, Da Vinci likes the company, really.”

She snorted and he smiled warmly at her, even though she wasn’t looking at him.

Kendra was understandably surprised when she opened the door and only Andrew was standing there. She looked at him quizzically.

He wasn’t quite sure what to say, frankly.

“I think ... maybe she’s not ready to face ... whatever it was she was facing in there,” he said haltingly, waving toward the hallway where her room was. “I told her she could stay with me tonight.”

Kendra’s face fell. “Oh. Yeah. Didn’t ... really think about that.” She moved aside to let him in and she ducked into her room, coming back out with an empty grocery bag.

When he turned to Cameron’s room, he was startled to see no door there anymore. Whatever hinges had been there, they were gone — and judging by the marks in the wood, they hadn’t been removed gently.

“No door?”

Kendra shifted around uncomfortably, then brushed past him into Cameron’s room. “Yeah ... the new one was supposed to be here today, but the landlord never came. Hopefully it’ll be here tomorrow,” she said, her back to him while she opened Cameron’s closet.

Cameron’s room looked cleaner than he’d seen it before and there was a lingering smell of detergent covering up something more acrid. Her mattress was still in the middle of the floor, a wooden sign of warning on top of it that made Andrew snort when he read it.

Very Cameron.

Kendra did the same when she turned to see what had caught his attention.

“Yeah, I didn’t even touch it while she’s been gone. Dunno if you’ve seen full-on-rage-Cam yet, but seriously — don’t fuck with that girl.” He was expecting a smile on Kendra’s face, but when he looked at her, it seemed more like a look of warning that could — and probably should — be taken in a couple of ways.

He understood.

If I were in her position, I’d warn me too. Hell, I’m in my position and I’m warning me. Only ... I don’t really listen to my own warnings, I guess.

He pulled out his phone and quickly tapped out a text to the number Kendra had given him while they were killing hours in the hospital.

“I texted you my address. You can come by anytime tomorrow if you want — see what she wants to do.”

She looked back from the closet, where she was grabbing a few clothes and stuffing them into the bag. She sighed.

“Yeah, I’ll do that. I didn’t mean nothin’ by it, teacher boy. She just ... can’t hide away forever, ya know?”

He nodded. “So...” he said, making idle conversation. “New door gonna have a lock this time?”

“That’s the idea,” Kendra said without looking up. “Jacked my shoulder up on the other one.”

The pieces suddenly snapped together in his head and Andrew felt like an idiot. He’d meant it as a safe, offhand little joke.

But there’s no door because Cameron probably jammed it shut with the doorstop and...

He turned to Kendra with a rush of admiration.

What a fucking friend.

Apparently finished, Kendra seemed to be running through a checklist in her head, giving the few clothes on hangers and the larger pile on the floor one more survey.

“Hey Kendra,” he said, getting her to turn and face him. “Look ... I ... I don’t know her, okay? I’m not pretending I do. You’re her friend. But I do care about her. So if you think she should stay—”

She waved him off and heaved another sigh, resetting her expression to one that was softer.

“Nah, nah. You doin’ good, I told you. Really.” She set a hand on his arm and looked up at him, relief showing from the stress that had no business being on a face that young in the first place. “She’s ... she’s a handful. I mean, I dunno exactly what you guys are, like — like how serious you are or whatever—”

Andrew snorted. “You think she tells me that kinda thing?”

Kendra laughed. “But ... she’s worth it. It looks like I’m takin’ care of her, but ... she’s takin’ care of me. Ya know? I don’t know what I’d do without that girl.” Her face broke into an unwilling cry and she wiped away her tears before turning to look at him again. “You know, we fell in together because we didn’t have a whole lotta other people. I never woulda made it this far without her.”

Andrew didn’t know what to do. He wanted to comfort her, but he didn’t even know her. He settled for putting a hand on her shoulder, which she didn’t move away from.

“We been through so much shit,” she said, sniffing back more tears from coming. Her gaze shifted to the wall — through the wall and to the waiting car a few levels below — then to the mattress on the floor, and the carpet beneath it.

“But I ain’t never been more scared than when I saw her in here,” she said in a quiet voice. She turned to him again. “Sorry. She’s ... she’s the only sister I got. And if I ever got to pick one, I’d pick her anyhow.” She sighed, looking him over. “I dunno. A lotta people can’t see that. They just see ... what she lets ‘em see, I guess. Maybe you can, though.”

He wasn’t sure he could, but he kept listening.

“She’s so fuckin’ frustrating,” Kendra continued, running her palms over her face. “But when shit goes bad, there ain’t nobody else I want in my corner. I promise you. She just ... don’t let nothin’ hurt you.”

She turned to the mattress again.

“When we first moved in together, after she finished high school, we shared that shitty thing,” she said with a faint smile, pointing to the mattress. “Shit was hard then.”

Andrew wanted to laugh and say to her, “This isn’t hard?” But he held his tongue. It only increased his admiration for the strong young woman — and the bond she had with Cameron.

“Sometimes I’d fucking cry myself to sleep,” she said, still reliving a flashback playing on the mattress. “Didn’t think she’d notice. Then, I’d wake up and see her layin’ there, just watchin’ me. Like ... like she didn’t know how to help, but she wasn’t gonna let nothin’ make it worse.”

She tore herself away from the memory and looked back to Andrew, the faint smile still lingering. “She cares about the people she cares about. She just sometimes got a peculiar way of showin’ it.”

Andrew snorted at that and Kendra smiled wider.

“Honestly, Henry? I’m glad you’re here. Usually there ain’t ... there ain’t nobody else to talk to. You know, about her.” She pointed her chin in the general direction of the car outside. “She’s worth all the bullshit, though.” Kendra looked him in the eye, then patted him on the arm, wiping away the remainder of her tears with her other sleeve. “Tell me if you need anything.”

Andrew just nodded. Since he’d met Kendra, in the middle of a crisis, she seemed like she could handle anything in stride. Whether it was busting through a door to get her friend to the hospital or knowing what to pack for her, she seemed completely unflappable.

But as he looked in her eyes now, struck by the kindness in them, he was reminded that Kendra was just some kid in her mid-20s, trying the best she could to deal with shit she couldn’t predict. It was easy to forget that with how she carried herself — Cameron too.

No wonder their friendship seemed so strong.

How else could you get through shit like this? I would’ve been a blubbering mess at their age. Probably even at my age, let’s face it.

Andrew frowned to himself, though, when it was clear Kendra wasn’t going to hand him the bag, but planned to follow him back out to the car to hand it to Cameron. He didn’t blame her — she only had his word that Cameron didn’t want to come inside, and who the fuck was he, really? — but he got the sense that Cameron wasn’t only trying to avoid her room.

Back out into the cool evening, he went around to the driver’s side while Kendra handed the bag of clothes to Cameron through the window of his car. Cameron looked a little ashamed, a little embarrassed, sinking down a little further into the seat and into herself.

“I see how it is,” Kendra said with a big grin, no trace of the tears that had been there just a minute ago, while Andrew got in. “You got a taste for good coffee now, huh.”

Cameron snorted, looking up at her friend hanging on the window. Kendra moved the limp hair out of Cameron’s eyes. She flinched a little, but let her do it.

“All right,” Kendra said more softly. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

Cameron nodded and they shared an awkward hug through the open window.

She didn’t look up as they got on the road, her face back to the default slight frown.

“I know you probably didn’t really want her to see you,” he said quietly, looking over to his sullen passenger, “but ... you know she wasn’t gonna let you leave without coming out.”

Cameron turned and looked at him with a new expression. He wasn’t quite sure what it was, so he had to look back twice in between glimpses of the highway. Maybe ... surprised appreciation?

“Yeah,” she said, her voice still weak.

He looked up as they went along. The thin sliver of a crescent moon seemed to outshine even the city lights trying to obscure it.

“You’re really lucky to have each other. She really loves you.” He wasn’t sure why he said it, he just felt like it needed to be recognized out loud. He’d never had a friend quite like Kendra, he was sure. “You’re like sisters, huh.”

She nodded. “Yeah,” she said again, but this time with more weight to it. “We are.”

Andrew opened the door hesitantly, not wanting to wake Cameron if she was still asleep. Her eyes were closed, looking in the direction of what he was starting to think of as “his” side of the bed, closest to the door.

She no longer slept all the way at the opposite edge, looking toward the mirror. He took that to mean she was comfortable here. He liked that. It made him feel ... useful. He tried not to think about the nights he’d spent there before Kendra had called him to the hospital. There were more important things to think about now.

Cameron had been sleeping for most of the time she’d been here. The first night — last night — that was expected. That’s what the doctor had told them would happen while the Xanax worked its way out of her system.

Kendra had come over today, as Andrew had asked her to do. She brought more clothes and some toiletries, not sure how long Cameron was going to stay here. As far as Andrew was concerned, she could stay here as long as she wanted.

He wasn’t sure if that was because he was just that nice a guy, or whether he was just happy to have the distraction from what he would be brooding about otherwise.

Hey, why can’t it be both?

Cameron had made it out to the couch for a while to chat a little with Kendra, but was still too sluggish to really do much else.