Page 129 of The Backup Plan

“I brought you flowers.”

THIRTY-EIGHT

I Trust You

AVERY

Avery woke to the buzz of her watch on her wrist, and sixty seconds later, to the buzz of her phone under her pillow. Five-thirty a.m. Cameron would pick her up at six.

Only a week before, the prospect of hours in the truck with him on a road trip to Tennessee set her toes tapping with excitement. Now, even under the hottest water she could stand, she shivered as she scrubbed herself awake. The days since her disastrous confession had been a roller coaster of mood swings, with churning lows of self-loathing, loneliness and doubt.

Every time she saw him, the ache inside healed, and the fear vanished. When he was gone—to class, to weights, to practice, to what little sleep he earned—it engulfed her again like quicksand. When Isaac died, the weight was constant and unyielding for months, and the shift to normalcy was gradual. Happiness came back in small blips and flutters. Now, a week’s worth of emotions rolled in and out like unpredictable tides, pushing and pulling entirely out of her control.

Needs on top of needs, always—she shouldn’t need him so much that only his presence could lift her out of a funk of her own making. He sensed her floundering. A new tenderness flowed from his hands and lips, and the warmth in his eyes was just as much concern as it was desire—but he held her close, and didn’t ask why.

She wouldn’t have known what to tell him anyway.

Oh, Cameron, I’m so sad that I told you a big, scary truth, and you acted adult and reasonable about it.

I’m so bummed I didn’t know what to draw this week without you in arm’s reach every second of every day.

I’m so mad at myself for doing something stupid that turned out just fine.

Avery toweled off and shook out her hair, damp tendrils brushing her shoulders as she smudged a foggy corner of the mirror and peeked at her sleepy-eyed reflection. Five hours on the road, at least five hours at the stadium, including warm-up times, and after all that, she’d have to look her best to meet his parents. She didn’t know who she’d end up with in the student section at the game since the traveling fan base would be a new experience, but maybe she’d make a friend.

Chin up, she demanded. Her reflection obliged.

Cameron shrugged out of his jacket before he got into the truck and tossed it on the seat between them. “Okay, get the goosebumps out of the way,” he said, smacking his arms to warm them after he buckled up.

“You could have left your jacket on, genius.” Avery warmed her fingers over a heating vent. The early-November cold snap left the campus twinkling with frost, catching the first rays of the morning sun as they headed south.

“It would have gotten in the way.” He pointed at the glove compartment. “Open that. I got you something. I got us something, I mean. Forgive my hack job of wrapping it.”

“This?” She held up a padded mailing envelope, torn messily open at one end. “It’s not a hack job if you did nothing but put it back in the shipping material,” she said.

“Technicality.” He grinned and raised a finger as she reached inside the envelope. “Hold on. I got us that because I was a little worried about you this week. You’re obviously still feeling a little down. I didn’t want to push you to talk about it, and I still don’t, but I had an idea that maybe we could kill two birds with one stone on this drive. Now you can open it.”

A packet of three pens fell into her lap, and Avery’s lips moved in silent confusion as she read the instructions and glanced at his bare arms. “Cameron. You’re kidding. You’re crazy. You have a game today. We’re seeing your parents today. These don’t wash off.”

“They’ll wash off in about a week, if the reviews are anything to go by, and they fade instead of smearing like regular ink. There are a couple of different tips, so you have more flexibility than a tattoo artist.”

“I don’t have any of the sketches. We didn’t even decide on a final design.”

“You can draw what you’re feeling,” he said, plucking one of the semi-permanent tattoo pens from the packet. “Whatever you don’t want to talk about. I want you to trust yourself and see how much I trust you.”

She turned the pens over in her hands, rolling them between her fingers in silence, testing their weight as she caressed his right arm with her eyes. A minute might have passed, or five, or ten as they sped down the highway and she traced, erased in her mind.

“I think I know what to do,” she said. Shimmying in her seat, she unbuttoned her jeans and slid them halfway down her thighs.

Cam nearly slammed on the brakes at seventy-five miles per hour. “What are you—I can’t—” He watched in astonishment as she uncapped the pens one-by-one and used each to draw test lines, wavy and straight, crosshatches, and dots, in random patches over her thighs.

“I have to try them out. I might be in short sleeves when it warms up, and drawing on my stomach would be too soft compared to your arm. And you’re the only one who will see the trial-and-error process, anyway.”

He slid a hand over the seat between them and walked his fingers gingerly up her thigh, then inspected his fingertips. “The ink dries pretty fast. Maybe. Let me check again.”

“Are you sure?”

“When have I ever passed up a chance to touch you?” He winked.