“Oh, I bet you bonded, all right.”
“You didn’t play any sports back in high school, right?” Tucker asked, drowning out the sound of the radio again, not that I minded so much at this point.
I check
ed my side mirror to make sure no one was walking up behind us, tapping the top of the steering wheel as I rested my hand on it. “Nah. We couldn’t afford it.”
My parents never had extra money, so instead of playing sports like the rest of my friends, I had to get a job to help out as soon as I was old enough. I pretended that it didn’t bother me and that I didn’t care, but I did. I sometimes wished for a more carefree life, but it wasn’t in the cards for me. This was the shitty hand I was dealt. I could either fucking cry about it, or make the best of it.
“I can’t imagine that. Not playing. Being on the football and the baseball team are some of my best memories.” Tucker practically sighed as he gazed out the window, apparently lost in his glory days.
I rolled my eyes and let out a little snort. “If those are your best memories, I’m glad I didn’t play.”
Tucker glanced at me, his brown eyes narrowing as he frowned and took a sip from his stupid giant coffee mug. “What are you trying to say?”
“I’m just saying that if your best memories came from a time when you were like fifteen and sixteen years old, that’s pathetic, man. Your best memories should happen after high school.”
“Says the guy who can’t get over his high-school crush. Your argument is null and void.”
He had a point, and I grimaced. “Shut up.”
Tucker let out a belly laugh and it echoed in the car, blocking out all other sounds.
“Seriously, Tucker, shut the fuck up. I want to hear this.” I glared across the seat at my partner, who wore a shit-eating grin on his face.
“What’s he doing now?”
“I don’t know what he’s doing now. I don’t even know if he’ll be there or not.”
“You didn’t keep in touch over the years?”
“Nope.”
“Maybe she’s not even talking about you?”
“But she said she didn’t keep in touch. We never kept in touch,” I said, the tone of my voice far more hopeful than it should be.
“Well, maybe she hooked up with a bunch of guys in high school, and you were just one of them.”
Tucker kept talking, saying the stupidest things I’d ever heard as I fought off the urge to punch him in the mouth. The idea of Cammie hooking up with other guys during our senior year made my blood boil. I suppose that could have happened, but I found it hard to believe. She had been in such a dark place that year. The smile she used to wear every day became a gift that she rarely opened. It was a rarity our senior year, and although she gave it to me often, I hated thinking she shared it with anyone else.
You’re a selfish shit, I told myself, realizing that I had no right to feel this way. I didn’t own Cammie, but fuck me if I didn’t want to. I had been a supreme idiot back in high school when it came to her—not that she was perfect either.
Cammie was stubborn and refused to listen to reason. Two qualities that I admired, actually, except when she used them against me, and then they became her worst quality. Not that I ever told her any of that. Hell, I never told her half the things I should have.
What the hell did I know about good, healthy relationships? Absolutely nothing. I was raised in such a high degree of dysfunction, I could have majored in it. My parents had only gotten married when my mom found out she was pregnant with me. Them they spent the next seventeen years of their lives hating, ignoring, and blaming each other for their misery. My house was filled to the brim with the emotions of two people who couldn’t stand the sight of each other. They never talked unless it included screaming or yelling. The worst part was that I had no idea this sort of thing wasn’t normal.
My parents divorced the summer before my senior year, and it was as much of a relief to me as it was a shock. Even after I finally realized how screwed up their relationship was, them actually calling it quits and my dad moving out messed with my head more than I could have ever imagined. They might have hated each other, but at least they were together. I was a mess emotionally that last year of high school. And even though Cammie ended up being the single bright spot during that drab year, I kept all my feelings to myself.
Tucker’s annoying voice broke through my trip down memory lane. “Does she know she’s the reason you became a cop?”
“Dude, she doesn’t even know I’m a cop at all. You know this already.” Damn, if I didn’t sound like a whiny bitch.
My mind continued its journey into the past, digging up old feelings and emotions I tended to keep to myself. For as unloving as my parents had been to each other, I had never felt unloved. My mom constantly doted on me, gave me hugs every time she saw me, and told me she loved me every day. But she also apologized a lot for not giving me enough, or being there enough, or doing enough. I learned pretty early on what guilt felt like when she told me these things as tears streamed down her face.
It wasn’t intentional on my mom’s part, I finally realized that as an adult, but it was still pretty shitty to experience that as a kid. All I knew at the time was that I had done something that made my mom cry. A lot. And I didn’t know how to not feel bad about that. I didn’t understand that her crying wasn’t even about me, because she never tried to explain it all that well.
My dad was definitely colder and more standoffish than my mom was. He only hugged me occasionally, but I still knew that he loved me. Maybe it was the way he looked at me with less hatred in his eyes, or that his tone of voice wasn’t the same cruel one that he used with my mom . . . whatever it was, it was his way of letting me know that he didn’t dislike me the same way he disliked her. And the boy in me who craved the acceptance of his father, took it for what it was. My point being—I felt loved. And in the grand scheme of things, that was what mattered.