Christmas at the Riverview Inn

They were alone. Really…really alone. She could hear him breathing over the sound of her heart pounding. And she didn’t know if she was strong enough to do this. To be close to him like this.

“You don’t have to do this,” he said, reaching for the clippers. His hand was bigger than she remembered, and he had a fingernail going black from some trauma she wanted to ask him about. “Josie?”

She sucked in a breath at the sound of her name in his voice.

“You okay?” he asked and his voice was light. It was even joking, a little. Like everything that had happened between them hadn’t happened, and she realized that was the way to handle this. The two of them just had to pretend none of it…that night, the kiss, his leaving, seven years of silence…none of it happened.

“This really seems like a bad idea,” she said, trying to give reason one last shot.

Cameron looked up at her from where he sat on the toilet, a towel around his neck.

“I don’t know,” he said with that crooked smile. “Seems kind of familiar.”

“I messed it up when we were kids, too. Remember the Mohawk fiasco of your senior year?”

“I loved it,” he insisted. “I loved it so much.”

“No one loves a ratty lopsided Mohawk in their senior pictures.” She considered the boy he’d been. “Except you.”

“Do it,” he said and closed his eyes, head tilted up.

She could kiss him. Just lean down and press her lips to his.

God. This bathroom is so small.

“It’s only hair, Josie,” he said, opening one eye.

“Right! Of course. It’s your head.” The whine of the clippers drowned out the opportunity to talk and filled the tiny bathroom with enough noise that it was actually hard to think. She ran the clippers over his head, the pretty silky-brown hair falling down around his shoulders. She caught some in her hand, trying to keep it out of his eyes.

“Sorry,” she whispered, her breath caught in her throat.

“It’s okay.”

“I just need…” She stepped sideways and he shifted out of her way. Not opening his legs so she could step between them. That, she realized would be…too much. Way too much. As it was, her knee hit his. Her palm skated over his hair, hovering over the shape of his skull.

He breathed out.

She breathed in.

His shoulders gathered hair and she picked it up and threw it in the sink, her fingers registering the warmth of him beneath the towel. Beneath the shirt.

“Can I…”

“I can’t hear you.”

She turned off the clippers for a second. “I need to clean up around your ears. Can I…touch you?”

“Seems like you already are.”

They kept bumping into each other. Elbows. Shoulders. Knees. His thigh. Hers.

She changed the number on the clipper and did her best to dress things up in the back and around his ears. So he didn’t look so much like a prisoner of war.

“There,” she said and turned off the clippers again. “Look at me.”

He did, smiling. And she was distracted by that crooked tooth for just a second.

“That bad?”

“No, actually…I mean, yes. It’s pretty terrible. But it’s not a lopsided Mohawk.”

He stood and she shifted out of his way, but he was so big he filled the tiny powder room. And she stepped back into the doorway to give him the chance to look at himself in the mirror.

It wasn’t a great haircut, but it wasn’t terrible. It made his eyes bigger and his cheekbones and chin sharper. Stronger. He looked, well, he looked beautiful.

“Not too bad,” he said, turning sideways, running his hand over his head. She closed her hand into a fist, wondering if it was actually a bad thing that she knew exactly how his hair felt. “Thank you, Josie.”

Their eyes met in the mirror and she couldn’t pretend anymore. Everything she wanted to say to him and had swallowed and swallowed and swallowed came pouring out.

“I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not that bad, Josie!”

“No. That night. For getting you kicked out.”

She stopped, the words getting crushed under the silence, thick and heavy between them. “I shouldn’t have said anything,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.” She reached behind her for the door and he reached out and touched her hand, a glancing brush of his fingers against her thumb, and she jerked back. Away. All of her was on edge. Electric.

“You didn’t get me kicked out,” he said quietly.

“Cameron, please. Please. For the last seven years, whenever your name comes up, everyone suddenly stops being able to look me in the eye. Alice is still mad at me. I tried to explain. I did, but they—”

He stepped forward and the bathroom was the size of a stamp. She could taste him in the air. If her fingers twitched forward they would touch him.

“They didn’t kick me out,” he said. “I left.”

“Because they kicked you out.”