Page 14 of Feels Like Coming Home

Piper had decorated her desk with string lights and a wax melter—candles were strictly prohibited, our RA told us forty times when we moved in—and I decorated mine with inspirational quotes and pictures of home.

One of the photos on my desk was of Cam and me from back home and every time a girl from our floor came to our room they asked if he was my boyfriend.“No, he’s not…”I would always say, silently wishing that my answer was the opposite.

“This is nice,” Cam commented, doing a full circle and looking at the desk that was clearly mine based on the photos. “It definitely smells better than mine.”

“Imagine that, two girls sharing a room produces a nicer smelling environment than two football-playing boys.”

“Hey, Harvey and I keep our room clean compared to the other guys on the team. It’s not our fault the entire building smells like Axe and three-day-old chicken nuggets.” Harvey was Cam’s friend and fellow teammate that he met at school, he had told me in a text one day.

“Cam…what are you doing here?” I asked again, not allowing him to avoid the question any longer.

“It’s an off week for us, and Coach gave us the weekend off. I decided I wanted to come and see what your school was like. So I got up this morning, trained, and then came here.”

“You came to see what my school was like?” I asked incredulously.

“Yeah…and to see you.” His eyes went from studying the photo of us on my desk to looking straight at me. Silence hung in the air as we looked at one another and I swore the pounding in my chest could be heard from down the hall.

Cam and I had had our ups and downs, but ever since we graduated in the spring and went our separate ways, we kept in touch by texting each other every few days. When we started texting each other, we didn’t stop until the other person got too busy, had class, or fell asleep.

Sure, I had gotten a little drunk at a house party during welcome week andmaybetexted him things I shouldn’t have, but I laughed it off as a big joke the next morning when I woke up and read my texts. I also had a conversation about Piper that same morning, telling her if I ever got drunk again she needed to take my phone away from me immediately.

Since then, we’ve been friendly and talked like friends do. He asked me for advice on how to get the phone number of a girl in his general studies class and I told him how the party I went to was the next morning. Just friend things, nothing more.

So why was he here now, in my dorm room, telling me he came here to see me?

Just as I opened my mouth to say something, Piper came busting into the room, shuffling through at least a hundred papers while also trying to take a drink of the iced coffee she was carrying. Her bag was half-zipped with four very large books spilling out and she looked like she was coming back from the library. Something I loved about Piper was that she knew what she wanted and what she wanted was to become a public defender. The girl studied as if she already was one.

“Hey, Hays! Sorry I wasn’t here when you got up, I decided I wanted to go to the library and get some extra studying in before we—” She stopped when she realized there was a third body in the room that took the form of a guy our age who was built like a machine and smelled of pine, earth, and AstroTurf.

“Oh…hello there,” she said as a smile crept over her face, making eye contact with me as it grew. I could already hear the questions I would be peppered with once Cam was gone because not only did Piper study as if she was already working in law, she asked questions like she was too.

“Piper, this is my friend, Camden. Cam, this is?—”

“Piper McClellan,” she said, shoving her hand toward Cam, not even letting me finish my introduction. “It’s SO nice to meet you, our Hays here has told me a lot about you.” She finished by giving Cam a smile that said,‘I know exactly who you are, the things you’ve done, and if you hurt my friend, I will bury your body and burn the clothes I wore as I did it.’

After the drunken texting incident, Piper forced me to spill my guts to her and explain everything between Cam and me. She knew that it meant something that he was here now, standing in our dorm room.

“Hi…I’m Camden Johnson. I’m a friend of Haley’s from back home. It’s nice to meet you too.” He shook her hand slowly, a sense of unsteadiness in his voice.

“The pleasure is all mine, Camden Johnson,” Piper cooed in her most professional, lawyer voice. If this is what she sounded like now, I could only imagine what false sense of safety she would lure some poor sucker on the stand into later in life.

“Cam just got here and we were going to go get coffee, did you want to come?” I added, trying to dispel the weird energy in the room.

“No, Hays, I have a coffee already.” She shook the drink in her hand at me as if to say, ‘Duh, earth to Haley, pay attention and act normal and you better fucking explain everything to me later or I won’t let you sleep!’“Plus, I have some reading I want to do before we go out tonight. You guys go and we can catch up later.”

“Okay, if you’re sure. Text me if you need anything,” I said quickly before grabbing Cam’s arm and pulling him toward the door. I needed to get him out of there before Piper started asking inappropriate questions.

“Oh, sweetie, we’ll be doing more than texting…” I heard her say under her breath as the door closed softly behind me.

I groaned, knowing I was in for a full-scale prosecution when she and I were alone again.

Camand I spent the morning grabbing coffee from the on-campus coffee shop and walking around the small campus I now called home. He was in awe that I could walk from one end of campus to the other in less than thirty minutes because where he went, the same kind of trip required a bus ride. I showed him where all my classes were, pointed out the different dorms, and also showed him the sorority and fraternity houses.

“People only join those because they’re so desperate for friends that they’re willing to pay for them,” he joked.

“Some could say the same about people who join their college sports teams,” I snipped back. I hadn’t told him this, but I was planning on rushing after the first semester and was really looking forward to being part of Greek life.

After a while, morning turned to afternoon and we headed to the dining hall where I used a guest pass to get him in so he didn’t have to pay for lunch. I watched as Cam came and went from our table three times, each trip coming back with a full tray of food. Then, partially in disgust and partially in awe, I watched as he sat there and ate all of it in one sitting. I knew he needed to eat a lot to stay in shape for football, but holy shit. If I ate that much food, I would be four-hundred pounds.

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