Look at You

Chapter 15

15

I'm giddy Saturday morning. Unnecessarily so. My mom eyes me as I move jitterily around the kitchen, opening and closing cabinets and emerging with nothing. Cam is picking me up at 12, and I've already run five miles and lifted in the garage. I'm still teeming with nervous energy, and it's putting Alice on edge.

"Can you just sit down? Open your father's birthday card maybe!" She points to the blue envelope sitting on the kitchen table. Since I have decided to go to a hockey game, Jay has left for the golf course.

I shake my head. "I'll do it tomorrow. Cam's probably almost—" I don't even finish the sentence because I can hear his truck pulling up. The thing is a monster. I glance out the front window and see him getting out. I check my watch. 11:45. Of course. I find my body twisting toward the door, then back toward my bedroom. "I'll—I'll just—" I book it back toward my bedroom, ignoring my mother's snorts of laughter that echo on the hallway walls.

I'm ready, and I have been for an hour. I'm wearing my black Levi's and a Penguins baseball hat of Trey's (backward of course—Frat boy energy) and one of the seven plain gray hoodies that I have stacked neatly in my closet. I pull a denim jacket from the hanger and shrug it on over the sweatshirt. I take the hat off, put it back on forwards, take it off again, and then pitch it on the bed. I run a circle around my room looking for my Nikes, and it's only when I hear Cam's voice that I remember I set them by the door for easy access.

I grab the hat, toss it back on (backward), and try my hardest not to run to the front door.

The hallway from my bedroom leads clean to the front door, so as I walk toward it, I see him. The door has been left wide open—presumably by Alice—and Cam stands in the doorway patiently, hands folded in front of him. He's looking behind him, so when he turns back to the house he can see me. He smirks.

"Hi," I reach him, grabbing the wall in the front hall for support as I shove my feet into my sneakers.

He gives me a once over. "Hello."

I hear my mom yelling something from the kitchen, but I'm too preoccupied with the fact that Cam is not wearing his Red Sox hat to notice anything else around me.

I'm about to ask him about it, but Alice has come bustling through the doorway with a lululemon bag full of water bottles and travel-size snacks. The sweet woman.

She hands it to Cam, not to me. "Thank you so much, Mrs. Love."

"Of course, of course," she's waving at him like this is nothing. "Drive carefully please."
I roll my eyes, but Cameron nods very seriously.

"Yes, of course we will." And then he says, "We'll let you know when we get there," like he is my mother's son.

Mom pulls my head down close to her and stands on her tiptoes to slap a wet kiss on my cheek. Cam is trying to hide a smirk, presumably amused at the look on my face.

"Have fun!"

"We will," I mumble. "See you later, ma."

As soon as we close the door, I groan. "God I need to get out of here. I'm 25 for Christ's sake."

Cam eyes me over his shoulder. "So do it."

For some reason when Cam suggests it, it actually sounds like a good idea. "Yeah," I shrug my jacket up on my shoulders. "Maybe I will."

Google says the ride to the Penguins stadium is going to take three hours and forty-six minutes. I buckle up, already digging into mom's bag for a water bottle before we even leave the neighborhood.