Back in the cab of the parked camper, Cameron smacks the steering wheel. He checks his phone, anticipating a message from Avery, hoping for an excuse to call her back and unload the events of the last hour on a sympathetic ear, but there’s nothing. Well, now what? He drums his fingers on the dash and watches the steady stream of Capitol Hill foot traffic go by. People grabbing dinner, picking up dry cleaning, window-shopping. All of them, with their normal, happy lives.
Screw them.
How long does he sit there before the phone dings? When it does, he jumps. A text message, but it’s not from Avery, it’s from Brad. A photo. Cameron taps on it. A tiny baby squints back at him, its squishy red face wrapped up in a light blue blanket. It does look like an alien spawn, but a cute alien spawn. A single quadrant of Elizabeth’s face is visible in the photo, but Cameron can tell she’s beaming. Not dying from a precipitous childbirth: a benefit of the twenty-first century.
Cameron closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. He texts back, Bro, you’re a dad! Brad responds seconds later with the head-exploding emoji.
While he’s texting, he writes one to Avery, too. Hey, can we talk? He fires the message off into the cellular-network void, then shifts the camper into gear and pulls out of the parking space.
Traffic is horrible leaving Seattle, but Cameron couldn’t tell you whether he’s been sitting in gridlock for ten minutes or three hours. The camper creeps along, and brake lights from the sea of idling cars blend together, a haze of smeary red. On the passenger seat, his phone dings repeatedly, and while stopped he steals a look, thinking it might be Avery, but it’s Brad again. More pictures of the baby. He shoves the phone under a fast-food bag that’s sitting on the seat. Out of sight, out of mind.
But his mind has other ideas. And it will not shut up about them. From somewhere deep in his brain, a voice needles him. None of this was ever real, it nags. Too good to be true. This isn’t your life. This is not your home. He wasn’t your father. She’s not your girlfriend.
At least he has a job he doesn’t hate. How many times has Tova assured him that Terry is definitely planning to offer him the permanent position? And that it’s well- deserved? Even Cameron must admit that his glass polishing has come a long way. He makes that shit sparkle. And he can do the entire loop with the mop, including all the random nooks and crannies, in under an hour now.
But then, the needling voice cuts in, why didn’t he offer the job? Especially when Cameron asked about it this afternoon?
You’re not as good as you think you are, the voice sneers.
Not even qualified to run a small-town supermarket.
“Shut up,” Cameron mutters to himself, swinging into the left-most lane and stepping on the gas.
Eventually, traffic thins out, and at some point, the fuel light comes on. Cameron blinks at it. He’s only twenty- something miles from Sowell Bay. He could probably make it. Live on the edge. But he pulls off at the next exit and finds a gas station.
The convenience store cashier gives him a pleasant smile as she rings up his bag of chips and a bottle of soda. Dinner. Cameron doesn’t smile back. It’s like he doesn’t remember
how. His face is frozen in neutral as the clerk asks him how he’s doing tonight in a making-conversation sort of way.
He ignores the question and instead tells her add on a pack of smokes.
While gasoline glugs from the pump nozzle into the camper, he scrolls his phone, but it’s purely reflexive, like his eyes are registering that words and photos are rolling by but his brain isn’t downloading any of it. Until a picture catches his attention.
Katie.
Did she unblock him? He taps her name, and sure enough, her profile loads. There she is, with her haughty smile. Like she invented the world, and he’s just lucky enough to live in it.
She’s posted a million new pictures this summer. Cameron whizzes through her feed. In half of the photos, some asshat has his arm slung around her, always wearing some idiotic wraparound sunglasses so that Cameron can’t even see the guy’s stupid face.
Has he moved into her apartment yet? He probably remembered to put his name on the lease. Works in some boring office. Drives a brand-new SUV and has never once needed the four-wheel drive. Uses an electric toothbrush. They probably get together with his parents for dinner on the weekends.
Screw every last one of these people with their normal, happy lives. Cameron will never get there, no matter how hard he tries. Not even here in Washington.
He opens his map app. Types in a new route. Sowell Bay to Modesto.
Fifteen hours.
