Page 12 of Feels Like Coming Home

I had forgotten that Cam lived in Charlotte now that he played for the local NFL team. I had unfriended him on every social platform years ago and only knew about his trade because of my mom. She still followed the local newspaper back home on Facebook, and when they reported on his trade, she called to tell me all about it. I tried to tell her that I didn’t care (even though I was happy for Cam) but she went ahead and read the entire article to me anyway. I refused the part of me that desperately wanted to look him up and send him a message to congratulate him. I knew if I let him in, I would be opening up a can of worms I wasn’t ready to open yet. I had Connor and I was happy. And I wasn’t going to let anything jeopardize that.

“Oh, I uh…” I lingered on my answer for fear that sharing my true purpose for being in town would cause me to break down in tears. I was never a crier growing up, but recent events have changed that. Now it felt like I could cry at any moment. I took a few deep breaths and locked my eyes on the ceiling, trying to force the tears that threatened to spill down my cheeks back. Having to explain my situation was still so fresh and caused me agony every time I had to do it.

“I’m…uh, I’m here for a funeral.” I swallowed hard, looking down at my feet and pulling my bag closer to me as if it were a shield that would protect me from the pain.

I looked up to see Cam’s face fall and fill with concern. I felt guilty for concerning him. I never wanted to make Cam feel anything other than happy, just like when we were younger.

“Oh my god. I’m so sorry, Haley.” His brows came together in the center of his face, “I didn’t realize you had family in Charlotte, I thought everyone lived in Pennsylvania?”

He was clearly confused about why I was going to a funeral in Charlotte when we both knew our families were born and raised in Pennsylvania. I was going to have to explain it to him and try to hold it together while I did.

“I don’t have family here, but my husband did. It’s his funeral I'm here for—my husband’s.”

Cam didn’t say anything for a long moment, his face filled with a mix of shock, sadness, and concern. I shifted where I stood as I waited for him to respond. The people in the coffee shop moved around us like we were statues.

“Haley…” His voice was low and he swallowed hard. “I’m so sorry. I can’t even imagine what you’re going through.”

“I wish people would stop fucking saying that. It’s not that you can’t imagine what I’m going through, it’s that you won’t,” I snapped at him while looking him straight in the eye.

I didn’t miss the pained look in his deep emerald eyes as my words hit him like a slap across the face. Embarrassed by my outburst, I quickly went back to studying my shoes. Cam was only trying to be kind, and I had just gone full psycho bitch on him.

“You’re right, I could imagine it,” Cam lamented as he sucked on his bottom lip and gently nodded in agreement. “but it still doesn’t explain why you’re here in Charlotte, don’t you live in Wilmington?” I wanted to know how he knew that, but I moved past it and answered his question.

“We do—I do, but Connor’s family lives here and his mother is insisting we do a full service for him even though it’s not what he wanted. He wanted to be cremated and then have his ashes spread around places that were special to him. Not to be put on display and gawked at by people who didn’t even really know him. So now I'm here, playing the grieving wife, when I haven’t been able to get out of bed or eat a proper meal or even have the energy to bathe myself since his accident last week. She’s being so fucking selfish and only cares about herself when I'm the one who lost the love of my fucking life…we were supposed to have Thai that night!” I threw my arms up in the air and was almost shouting.

The tears were no longer threatening to fall; they were streaming down my face at this point. I felt like the cork of a champagne bottle had just burst open out of my chest and a wash of relief and embarrassment ran through me. It felt nice to get this off my chest but I was also mortified that I had just dumped all of this on Cam not even three minutes after seeing him again for the first time in over ten years.

“Hey, hey…it’s okay, you’re okay…” Cam hushed as he moved closer to put an arm around me and move me toward two chairs sitting next to a big window that faced the busy street.

The touch of his arm sent something that felt like electricity down my spine, and I was instantly ashamed of how it made me feel. My husband of eight years just died in a tragic accident, for crying out loud; how dare my body react this way to the touch of another man? But the feeling of his arm wrapped around me made me feel safe and like everything was going to be okay.

I sat down in one of the big chairs, rested my elbows on my knees, and dropped my face into my hands. While I tried to collect myself, I heard Cam’s footsteps walk away and then return after a moment, and I looked up to notice he was handing me a napkin to use as a tissue. I took it from him, grateful for his kind gesture. I dried my eyes using the scratchy brown paper napkin and took a few breaths.

“I'm sorry for dumping all of this on you. I’m sure you weren’t expecting to have a blubbering widow crying in front of you when you came in here.”

“You know, I actually woke up and had the sense that I was destined to come here and run into a blubbering widow,” he joked, making me smile just a smidge. “For real though, Haley, I’m sorry for your loss. Do you want to talk about it? You don’t have to, I’m more than happy to just sit with you if you want.”

This was something we always offered to do for one another growing up. When life got hard, we never forced each other to talk about things until we were ready, but always offered to sit and be there while the other hurt.

When my dad left, when his sister was going through treatment, we would just sit and wait for the other to start talking, and if we didn’t, we left the words unsaid. Just being there for one another was enough.

I continued to dab my eyes because the tears wouldn’t stop when I heard the barista behind the counter call my name and then Cam’s. I started to get up to go grab my drink when Cam put his hand up to stop me and lifted his body from the chair again to retrieve our orders. When he returned, he handed me my drink, set his down on the table, and pulled a pastry out of the bag.

“A bear claw…” I noted, laughing at the familiarity of it. “You used to eat those things by the dozen when we were younger.”

“I wish I could still eat them by the dozen now, but I’m pretty sure that would slow me down on the field or at least clog my arteries making it much harder to breathe while I ran after a football. I haven’t had one of these in years but when I saw them in the display, I couldn’t say no. You want a bite?” He was holding the pastry close to his face, practically drooling on it, then shoved it toward me so fast he almost smashed it into my face.

“No, I’m okay. Plus, I feel like you might bite my hand off if I tried to take it from you anyway. You look like you’re ready to make love to that thing.”

“Trust me, Jones, this is not the face I make when I want to make love to something.”

His comment caught me off guard and my eyes flickered to meet his deep emerald eyes once more.

Was there a hint of something in that comment? I didn’t want to read too much into it, but the comment mixed with the fact that he called me by my last name made me feel like there was something more to it.

“Anyway…” Cam retracted his arm pulling the pastry back to his side of the chair and fidgeted in his seat, picking up on the awkwardness that came with his last remark. “You mentioned your husband's name is Connor?”

“Was Connor,” I corrected sharply, not to be rude but because I found that speaking in the past tense about him made it more real that he was gone and never coming back. No matter how much I wish he was. “He died last week in a car accident on his way to work. It was sudden and they couldn’t save him.”

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