Page 42 of Feels Like Coming Home

Her face was only illuminated by the single porch light on the side of the house, but I could tell her cheeks were a new shade of pink I hadn’t seen before. Why do my knees suddenly feel like they’re going to give out whenever this girl blushes? God damn. I squeezed her hand before dropping it, finally stepping out of the doorway and onto the front walkway.

“I’ll see ya around, Jones.” I turned to face her one more time and winked at her.

She blinked a few times, looking back at me. “Y–yeah, I’ll see you around, Johnson.” She slowly closed the door and once I heard it click shut, I stuck my hands in my front pockets and started walking back toward my hotel.

She didn’t ask me to stay, I thought to myself, but she didn’t pull her hand away either.

I couldn’t believe how well this evening had gone. Way better than I expected it to when I picked up dinner a few hours ago. She let me stay and we sat under a blanket together for over an hour talking just like old times. She blushed. Every time she blushed, I wanted to drop to my knees in front of her.

My insides were buzzing like early spring cicadas and I was wired even though it was almost eleven o'clock by the time I got back to my room. I started to pace, trying to unpack everything that had happened when I decided to make a phone call.

“Hello….?” The voice on the other side of the line was groggy and disoriented.

“Harvey! Hey, man! What are you doing?” I spoke with energy and excitement.

“I’m sleeping, or at least I’m trying to. Go the hell away and call me in the morning.”

“I can’t do that, I need to talk to you,” I added quickly before he could hang up.

“We can talk in the morning.” Harvey’s voice was drifting and I could tell he was starting to fall asleep again. Damn my friend and his inability to stay awake past eleven o'clock anymore. I guess that’s what kids do to you.

“Harvey, I need to talk to you about Haley.” My words tumbled out of my mouth and I braced myself for his reaction. Harvey had told me to stay away from Haley, to let her grieve in peace. I knew mentioning her now wouldn’t make him very happy.

There was a pause on the other line. “What the fuck do you mean you need to talk to me about Haley?” There it was—his disappointed dad voice. I tried to tell him he had one after practice one day and the look he gave me almost killed me. I never brought it up again.

He had one though, and I was hearing it now.

“I, uh…I’m kind of not in Charlotte right now. I might have…maybe…looked her up and figured out where she was, and now I'm staying in a hotel room in this tiny town on the coast. I just got back from her place.”

Harvey let out a deep exhale and I could just picture him massaging the space between his eyebrows with his fingers. “You just got back from her place?”

“…Yes?”

Another big exhale. “You’re such a fucking idiot and I hate you. You know that?”

“Yes, I know, I kind of hate myself too, so we can hate me together, okay? I need to talk to you though.”

He didn’t speak right away, taking time to come up with his response. “Hold on a second…I also hate you for waking me up, you’re such a dick.” I heard rustling on the other end of the phone and Harvey mumbled something to someone—Monica, I assume—before he came back on the line. “Alright, you fuckwad, I’m in the living room and alone. What the hell do you need to talk about?”

I filled Harvey in on the last few days and my failed attempt to find Haley in Wilmington which then led me to the town I was in now. He called me a stalker and told me I should go to prison, and for the sake of keeping the conversation going, I agreed. I then told him about running into Haley at the coffee shop yesterday, our walk, how we ran into each other again this morning at the same coffee shop, and then how I brought her and Piper dinner.

“I don’t know this Piper girl, but I like her. She’s right to give you shit,” Harvey grunted through the phone, interrupting my story. He wasn’t wrong.

I then finished by telling him about our time on the porch and how I thought Haley wanted me to kiss her, but we got interrupted by a barking dog. By the time I was done telling my story and dealing with Harvey’s interruptions and disappointed dad sighs, it was past eleven thirty.

“So I just need to know…” I started, letting out a deep breath.

“You need to know what?”

“I need to know if it would be a bad idea to try and do something with her.”

“Do something with her?” I didn’t even need his answer, I knew Harvey was against this idea. “I don’t know Camden, you tell me. Do YOU think it would be a good idea to do something with a recently widowed woman? I mean, for Christ’s sake, she just lost her husband! She doesn’t need some dumb fuck like you,especially you, coming into her life and making things more complicated for her!”

“But Harvey you weren’t?—”

“Camden, stop. Don’t do this. You two have history—bad history, where you’re the villain. She doesn’t need this from you again. She doesn’t need you rolling up like a knight in shining armor who’s trying to rescue her. She needs a friend, Camden, you hear me? A friend. The kind of friend who doesn’t try to kiss her, or bring her surprise dinners, or hold her hand, or tell her that you want her in your arms. Stop thinking with your dick and go home.”

Maybe Harvey was right. Maybe I was trying to be a knight in shining armor. That’s not what it felt like though. I held my phone to my face and played with a loose thread that was hanging off the pillow that sat on my bed. I could be just her friend, right? We felt like friends at dinner and when we sat across from one another yesterday at Coastal Brews.

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