Page 1 of Bring You Back

1

The Ice Breaker

Camille

Only in my mind would I have ever had the nerve to come back here. Here being Bellsby, Maine, the small beach town where, up until last summer, I grew up. Here being Banks Collins’s doorstep in the middle of the night, looking for a place to crash until. . .

Crashisn’t the right word. A crash is what got me here. Arestis what I’m after. A place to rest my head, calm my soul.

I won’t find that behind the doors of this unkempt shack in front of me, but I’m landing here until my nerve pushes me two streets over to a better doorstep with better people.

The porch light is off. Right on cue, Grumbles meows from her carrier. I give it a shake, cooing to soothe her, and me. We’re a lot alike, she and I. We’re both picky, bossy, love early breakfast and napping, hate traveling and fetching, and come equipped with our own special brand of attitude.

Basically, I’m a cat. And we’ve been right at home. Slogging through the past month would’ve been harder without her.

A sharp, salty breeze blows my hair across my face and I inhale deep, my lungs fully expanding for the first time in thirty days. The stretching is welcome, along with the memories that bombard me from one simple smell. Nostalgia is now a comfort. Coming back is just what I need to learn how to breathe again.

I set my duffel at my feet and hear a crunch. I pull my phone from my pocket and shine the light on the source; a dead plant in a broken pot. How fitting.

Grumbles meows at the light and I shake her again as I cut it off, clicking my tongue twice. Any more or any less and she won’t hush, and I need her quiet as I knock on the door.

Banks is probably not even home. The thought crosses my mind as I wait. He never treated this place like home, and nobody could really blame him. Home was the Fowler house. Home was Julian.

I knock louder until my knuckles are throbbing, and I have this phantom hope that Banks is here. I need to see him first. He’ll have no qualms about being the ice breaker. And I wouldn’t care if he did. Just thinking about him turns my stomach. But unlike the others, I know how he’ll accept me. He’ll accept me, period, without hang ups. The Collins give no fucks. Look at their house.

The door finally opens with a shudder, and a man as lanky as his son holds himself up by the frame. He reeks of booze and pot, and the smell contaminates my nose, replacing my earlier wistful memories with stale ones that include insults hurled between me and Banks. A pastime that was almost as enjoyable as it was infuriating. The porch light stays off, but we’re cast in a glow I can now see coming from the television behind him. Good enough for this guy.

“Cameron?”

I roll my eyes as he moves his curtain of hair from his face. A stray sticks to his lips. His voice is gravel, his eyes are saggy, and his stare is aimless. I’d say the abrupt wake-up call and the blend of drugs and alcohol are the reason he got my name wrong, but it’s less complicated than that. Banks does the same thing; spews the first name he thinks of regardless of how many times he’s heard the right one. Like idiot, like idiot.

I stay mute and he calls for Banks.

“I’m busy!” His high shout grates.

Papa Collins staggers away, leaving the door wide open, and I’m left staring at the shadows playing along the back wall from whatever nonsense Banks is “busying” himself with on the television. I clutch my duffel around the phone still in my hand and follow them to the couch. I stand at the back and eye Banks from his bare feet that dangle over the side to his still spiky blond hair. His head is turned toward the television and he is so familiar, a longing jolts my chest like I’m seeing an old friend.

Imustbe desperate.

Banks and I were not the friends in our friend group. Before I split, I was the bitch to his bastard. Tommy handled him by mostly ignoring him, so it was Julian and Reyna he stuck around for. They actually liked him. But Reyna likes everybody, opens herself up to anybody. I’m hard to crack. I dislike you on sight, create distance until you give me a reason to draw closer. My old friends are the only ones who have held all my pieces in their palm. Banks never could, and he never will. We’re not friends, but we’re still tied.

Let’s get this over with.

I drop my duffel to get his attention. His head shifts to me and I shine my light again, right in his face so he can’t see me. He flinches and swears in protest, scrambling off the couch. I snort as he bangs into the armrest trying to round the couch to me.

“Fuck, Dad, I’m going.”

I lower the phone and cut the light. Banks stops in his tracks once the television illuminates the scowl on my face and he straightens up, his neck jerking to attention as he takes me in.

“You’re not Dad.”

He rubs his injured side and moves closer. “What the hell are you doing here?”

I could grin at the question he’s been known to ask me, particularly after I walk into a room. This is exactly what I hoped for and expected from Banks. To be treated like I never left, not like he’s staring at the ghost of summer past.

I sniff. “You smell like corn chips.”

“That’s my dinner,” he informs me in defense of his smell, looking down to brush crumbs off his loose white tank, the arm holes frayed.

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