Page 16 of Echoes in the Storm
“Hey.” She hurries after me. “What was that about?”
“Nothing,” I mutter, throwing a hand up to ward her off. “I’ll grab my gear and we can go, huh? I’ve got some other shit I can do until I need to be at the shop.”
“We can have coffee,” she announces, as though I didn’t just snap at her, as though I didn’t come close to punching her lights out. “I’ve got time to kill before the show too. Thought about doing groceries, but we could at least make the trip to town worth it by snagging some of Donna’s apple and ginger muffins before they’re all gone. Honestly, you have to try them. She slices it, puts a slab of butter in the middle”—Cammie animates the whole process with her hands as she talks—“and heats it up. It’s so good.” Her voice drops on the last word, her eyes rolling back in her head as her lids droop.
I should find it funny, amusing at least, but her inane ability to talk the hind leg off a donkey drives me nuts. The phrase “silence is golden” was coined for a reason. Pretty sure somebody out there discovered how peaceful it could be when you were left without the chatter of the world, and he decided to aptly name how precious it was to find such solace; he didn’t just come up with the saying for shits and giggles.
“I’m sure her muffins are delicious, but you’ve already done a lot. I wouldn’t expect you to waste half your weekend on me.”
She frowns, twisting her lips to one side. “Well, if you’re sure. I mean, I don’t get much opportunity to go there anymore. Work keeps me busy during the week, and between the theatre and the odds and ends I volunteer for, Sundays are pretty much the only time I have to myself outside of errands and she’s closed then.”
Again with the talking. I pinch the bridge of my nose and sigh. “Whatever, then. Would you like me to give you something for the food last night and this morning?”
She slices a hand through the air with a huff from between her velvet-red lips. “Don’t be silly; you were my guest.”
The entire fifteen-minute car ride continues in the same fashion. She chats incessantly about pointless shit that stretches from the reason why she chose to have no colours in the house, to why she prefers to listen to old-school grunge rock on Spotify over the modern songs played on the radio. Yet, as I sit quietly in the passenger seat, watching her gesture wildly and crumple her face in a stern expression, it doesn’t escape my notice that she avoids the obvious elephant in the coupe: why she’s single when clearly, once, she wasn’t, and what the hell all the kids stuff around the place is about. Last I checked, young unattached females didn’t have entire children’s dining sets in their kitchen cupboards, child-sized food items in their fridge, and pictures of toddlers with them in their hall unless they were a mother.
Cammie doesn’t once speak like she is. In fact, the only family she makes scarce mention of in her chatter is her parents, who are separated.
It’s intriguing, meeting a person who keeps secrets just as I do and viewing it from the other side. I wouldn’t know half her struggles if I hadn’t been in her house, listened to her talk. Is this how I appear to people I meet?
“Archie’s shop is over there.” She points out the windscreen at a flat-roofed garage across the intersection we’re currently stopped at. “Your car’s probably inside. He doesn’t like leaving them out in the yard; thinks people are going to randomly vandalise them.” She rolls her eyes as she says this, as though the thought of anybody doing such a thing is too ridiculous to believe.
I eye the place as she pulls around the corner and glides us into a parallel park on the roadside. It seems tidy enough, as though the guy takes pride in his workspace, which is always a bonus when it comes to tradesmen. A messy workshop could mean the same lack of care spilled over into his job, and while I know the HQ isn’t some fine supercar, I still expect to be paying for quality work.
“Donna’s café is usually packed on a Saturday, so be forewarned that space might be at a premium if you want to eat in.” Cammie kills the engine, and removes the keys.
“Takeaway’s fine with me.” Wide open spaces are also fine with me, so if she wants to eat out in the street, I’m all for it.
She opens her door and rises from the car, promptly reaching between the seat and the door pillar to retrieve her bag from where she’d slung it behind the driver’s seat. “Come on,” she singsongs when I don’t move. “Don’t know about you, but that toast has worn off and I’m famished. There’s also a tall cup of coffee with my name on it.”
I sigh as she closes the door with a thud, and reach for my handle. She needn’t worry about me staying in the car too long: the shift in the air as she exited and closed her door was enough to spike my heart rate. There’s a reason why I travelled most of the way with the HQ’s window down, the same reason why for most of this journey I kept a hand securely gripped to the seat between my legs.
I needed to anchor myself in the storm, find stability to cling to while I ride out the crazy rollercoaster of anxiety I live with now.
Cammie fusses with her hair, smoothing down wayward tresses as she stands on the sidewalk waiting for me to join her. The woman really is a sight for sore eyes. Her skin is flawless, her kissable lips painted a dark shade that pulls my eye to them every time, and those lashes—dark and framing her eyes perfectly. But I don’t sense that she spends a lot of time on her appearance—rather she’s been doing this look for so long that it’s second nature to wrap herself up in the cloak of invisibility before she steps out into the world each day.
You look at her, and she’s a pretty girl. She’s not a woman hiding a deeper pain. She blinds people with her visual appeal so that they have something to stop at, a reason not to dig any deeper to find satisfaction from being in her presence.
I wonder if distraction is the reason why she’s so damn talkative, too.
“I’ll pay for this,” I tell her as we start toward the café.
“Rubbish.” She stares straight ahead, her gaze locked on a real estate office across the street. “I said you don’t need to pay me back anything,” she protests, but her focus is clearly on that realtor.
“You looking?”
“Huh?” Her eyes burn bright as she snaps back to the present.
“The realtor. You were staring at it. You want to grab our bite to eat and go check out the listings in the window?”
“No,” she snaps.
The terse response takes me by surprise.
I hold the door for her, and she hesitates, an apologetic smile pursing her lips. “I’m sorry, Duke. There’s just … stuff going on, and I shouldn’t have taken it out on you like that.”
“Duck’s back.” I brush it off with a flick of my chin toward the counter. “Quick, while there’s only a couple of people at the till.”