It's shorter than last chapter but I wanted to get this out to you since you've been waiting so long. Forgive any errors I may have made.

Disclaimer (I should really start doing these more often): I don't own these characters. Hence, I cry myself to sleep at night.

Chapter ELEVEN

Zach and I weren't alone for long. Eva had already disappeared back into the party, her impatience getting the better of her, but my friends had gotten worried over my absence.

"Cam? You still on the phone?" Bex called behind me. I turned to look at her. Her silhouette was outlined by the lit festivities going on behind her and I couldn't see her face from this far away. Still, I could hear the uncertainty in her voice.

"I'll be right there." I called. I turned back to Zach who had his hands in his pockets and was being very careful not to make eye contact with me.

"I guess I'll...see you around."

He nodded but didn't say anything. I looked at him a minute longer, feeling like I should say something, anything but not being able to find the right words. I sighed in defeat. "Later, Zach."

I walked back to Bex who was still waiting for me. Now that I could see her face, I wished that I had let it stay in the shadows. It spoke of all kinds of mischief and curiosity. "So," she said, falling into step beside me. "What was that?"

"Nothing."

"Didn't seem like nothing to me."

I gave her a hard look. "What? We were just standing there."

"Yeah. In the dark, alone in during the Fourth of July bonfire, the night when everyone in town hangs out together."

"You're crazy." I rolled my eyes.

"I just call it like I see it." She said indignantly.

"If you must know," I said hurriedly as we were nearing the bonfire, "I had just gotten off the phone when I caught him and Eva Alvarez about to hook up on the other side of the shed."

She looked at me, startled. "Seriously?"

"Yep. So much for Macey's theory that he likes me."

Oops. That came out more bitter than I intended.

"Oh," she said, "Sorry, Cam."

"Don't be. It's not like I actually care if he likes me like that or not. I have a boyfriend."

"Right. How is Josh by the way? Were you able to get a hold of him?"

I hesitated, ashamed to tell her about my behavior on the phone. "Not exactly. Could we talk about this later?"

She looked at me for a long, hard moment, as if debating whether or not she should demand answers this instant. Then she nodded and it was as if a huge weight was lifted off of me. For some reason, I felt like if I didn't admit to what I had said, then I could imagine it had never happened.

But it had happened. I had said those things. And I had no idea how Josh was going to react to it.

The two of us reentered the throng surrounding the now blazing fireplace. Across the fire I caught sight of my mom once again talking to Abby. She seemed incredibly focused on the conversation considering how drunk she usually got on this night.

Bex tugged on my arm and pulled me sideways towards the table we'd been at earlier, before the horrid phone call and the awkward run-in. Already it felt as though the events from earlier in the night took place ages ago, not within the last hour. That phone call seemed to stretch time just as it stretched my guilt and anger into places I didn't realize they could go.

Liz was still sitting in her same seat and Macey had returned once again to the table as well. However, there were a couple of new additions to the table: Preston Winters and Anna Fetterman.

Anna saw us walking closer and popped up from her seat. "Cammie!" She scooted around the table and crossed the short distance between us to throw her arms around me in a hug. "How have you been?!"

"Good, good. How about you? I thought you were on vacation in New York."

"Got back last week. It was so amazing. I've pretty much decided I have to go to college there."

She giggled and hugged me once more before sitting back at the table. She looked up at where Bex and I still stood. "I hear you have a new neighbor, Cam."

I shrugged, doing my best to seem nonchalant despite the fact that my every nerve was on red alert, trying desperately not to think about Zach and Eva up against the shed. "Yeah, he's nice."

"His name's Zach, right? Eva was talking about him earlier." She wiggled her eyebrows. "I think she's got a little crush."

I tried to laugh but my throat wouldn't cooperate and it came out sounding more like a gurgle. Thankfully, Macey spoke up and took Anna's attention away from me. "So, Preston, I hear you and Courtney are getting back together."

Anna gasped. "Awe, you and Courtney are so cute together, Preston. Everyone was so sad when you broke up."

"Yeah," Macey agreed somewhat harshly. "Cam and Josh cried themselves to sleep for nights over losing their double date couple."

Preston ducked his head as I rolled my eyes. "We did not." I smartly retorted. Macey wrinkled her nose at me before setting her gaze back on Preston. He wisely kept his eyes on the table, refusing to get sucked into a staring contest with Macey's piercing gaze.

"Why'd the two of you break up anyways?" Bex asked as her and I snagged a couple of seats from the neighboring table and nestled them in between those of our friends.

He shrugged. "Sometimes a relationship just runs its course and it's time to say goodbye. Look for something else."

Something about his response itched at me, hit a wrong note. "Maybe it was just a rut, though. Maybe the relationship just needed a little work to get back on track."

Preston looked at me, really looked at me. "Maybe. But we're in high school. I think if it doesn't feel right to be with a person anymore, if we don't feel the same way we used to, then there's no point in staying at all. We have the rest of our lives to experience the hard and tiring relationship. We only have a few short years to feel what it's like to let loose in a relationship. You know?"

I didn't, but the others around the table we're nodding. Well, except Macey.

"That's insane." She said.

He looked at her with a surprised expression. "Excuse me?"

"We only have a few years to let loose?" She mockingly repeated. "Hell, no. We have our entire lives to be free. It's the relationships we choose that trap us. Not time."

Bex groaned. "Oh no. Now you've gone and gotten Macey started, Preston."

He smiled politely. "What do you mean?"

"Macey is very touchy about relationships." I told him.

"I am not." Macey scowled.

"Do you remember when she broke up with Nick because he got her a teddy bear for her birthday? She said it wasn't original enough."

"Oh, yeah!" Liz said excitedly as all the great stories came racing back. "And remember the time she dumped that bucket of mud on Simon? What was that for again?"

Our eyes turned towards Macey who sat fuming. And then she muttered, "He said he didn't like Tom and Jerry."

Everyone at the table laughed except Macey who exclaimed, "Hey, we were in first grade! It was a good show!"

It only made us laugh harder to which she crossed her arms and fumed, refusing to laugh with us. "Oh, come on, Macey," I said, "We're just having a little fun."

"Yeah, whatever."

Bex sighed. "Would it make you feel better if we told our own embarrassing stories?"

She thought that over a second. "Yes. Yes, it would."

"Okay," Bex said, "I'll go first. In the ninth grade, I had this huge crush on Grant Newman."

Macey and I groaned as Liz giggled. "We know."

"Yeah, well, what you don't know is that I had his whole schedule memorized and one day I ditched P.E. because he had study hall that hour." She took a deep breath. "I thought I would casually run into him in the hall but he took a detour and went to the bathroom and without thinking about it, I followed him in. And you know the only thing more mortifying than walking into the wrong bathroom?" We shook our heads. "Walking in to hear your crush taking a giant dump. And smelling it."

"Oh! Gross!" A round of laughter rang around the table, and Bex hung her head in shame, but her shoulders also shook as she laughed with all the rest of us.

We continued sharing our most embarrassing stories for another hour. They ranged from childish naivety to more mature but still just as stupid mistakes of the past few months. Preston told us about his experience with projectile vomiting last year at the student government conference in Richmond which we'd all heard before (from Tina) but never from the man himself. Anna shyly told us about her first kiss which ended with her parents driving the poor boy to the E.R. (it was only a broken nose).

It was easy to forget myself in the stories, to melt into someone else's memory and forget about my own mistakes. Until, of course, it was my turn to tell.

"So, Cammie, what's your most embarrassing moment?" Anna asked excitedly. "Ever."

I knew my most embarrassing moment ever but it wasn't the kind of embarrassing that induced tears of laughter. It was heavier than that and had no place in this bubble of joy we'd managed to create this past hour. So I chose a different story, one that was like a sweet hello to me.

"Have you guys ever heard the story of Josh and my's first date?" I asked. My three best friends smiled, knowing immediately where I was going and knowing the story by heart. The others at the table didn't though.

"Well, officially, Josh and I started dating the summer before ninth grade but the summer before eighth grade was when we went on our first date and it's that day that we celebrate our anniversary. August 10th.

"Josh picked me up at my house and we walked to the fair in town that week. He bought me a cotton candy and I let him have some of it, and we were having a generally good time," I said, "Until we went on the ferris wheel."

I hadn't known at the time, and I still felt a little being so pushy about going on the ride, but it turned out Josh was afraid of heights. They make him queasy. "So, we get to the top of the wheel and we can see the rest of the fair below us, and it looks so beautiful, right? So, I tell Josh to look because it's so amazing and when he doesn't move right away, I pull him to the edge of the railing with me...and he loses it."

"His temper?" Anna said hesitantly.

I shook my head, grinning. "His stomach."

Macey chuckles. "Wussy."

"It wasn't funny experiencing it, let me tell you that." I said. "But for some reason, I couldn't stop laughing."

Anna and Preston both seem to be having difficulty deciding between being amused or disgusted, but my girls have lost it. Bex and Macey especially had always found that story hilarious and asked me to recount it to them for years at any of our sleepovers. It was practically a ritual now like our girls' getaway every summer.

"We went home after that - he had to change out of his clothes. I never thought we'd go out again and we would just stay friends. And then the next summer he asked me out again and we've been together ever since."

"That's kind of sweet actually." Anna said. "Gross. But sweet. I mean, you guys have such a cute love story. The golden boy and the town sweetheart falling in love."

Macey pretended to gag on her finger, but I tried to ignore her.

"Yeah," I agreed with Anna, "We do have a pretty great story."

But suddenly something wasn't adding up in Josh and my's story, something was itching me that had never bothered me before.

I knew I had to figure out what it was before the distance and my own securities drove Josh and me even further apart. Yes, he was the boy that puked on himself on the ferris wheel. But he was my puking boy, the one that apologized profusely afterwards and offered to buy me a new cotton candy to make up for the one that was destroyed by his upset stomach. And he was the one who held my hand through the trials of the next summer, the one that was always kind and caring and giving. He never pulled away.

So how could I?

~.~.~.~.~

I pulled into my driveway just after one in the morning. My mother was half-asleep in the passenger seat, beat from her night of partying our nation's independence. I nudged her shoulder, and she reluctantly pulled herself out of the car. I imagined my friend's doing the same for their equally intoxicated parents. What happened to parents being the adult ones?

Mom trudged slowly up the stairs as I made sure the house was locked up for the night. When I got to my room, I switched the light but stood for a moment in the middle of my room, not moving. Telling the story of my first date with Josh had woken something in me and now I was seeing so many changes that I hadn't before. All of my furniture and decorations seemed shaped differently, like they'd mutated in the short time I'd been absent. But they didn't seem wrong when I looked at them. Just different. New even though I'd had most of the items for years.

A thwap on my window shook me out of my kooky, late-night thoughts. I pulled my shades up just as I heard another thwap. Suctioned to the glass of my window were two Nerf gun darts, and across the short distance of the side lawn to Zach's house was Zach himself, leaning against his windowsill, Nerf gun in hand.

I unlocked my window and pushed it open. The darts disconnected from the glass and fell into the shrubbery two stories below. "What are you doing?" I exclaimed.

He shrugged. "I couldn't find any rocks in my room."

I stared at him for a moment. "And you needed rocks because...?"

"Because I needed to talk to you."

I closed my eyes and sighed. Gathered myself. "Look, Zach, I already told you not to worry about earlier tonight."

"Yeah, I know."

"So then, what is it? What could possibly be so important you need to talk to me about it at one thirty in the morning."

He acted as though he hadn't heard me. "I heard your story tonight."

"What?"

"I wasn't eavesdropping or anything. I just overheard you telling the story about your first date with your sweetums."

"Good for you."

"Not really."

I pushed my hair behind my ears and leaned further out the window as if to stress my point. "What do you need, Zach?"

"Do you know what chemistry is, Cammie?"

"Of course I know what Chemistry is. I took it last year."

He shook his head. "Not the class. The attraction between two people. Because the way you describe your relationship with Josh, it doesn't sound like there is any."

"What?" I gasped, insulted. "How can you-"

He cut me off. "Which is a shame because a girl like you deserves to have passion with the guy she's in love with."

"Josh and I have plenty of passion."

"Do you?"

He was leaning on his Nerf gun, totally nonchalant as he analyzed my love life uninvited.

"Obviously, you're still drunk." I said.

"I'm not drunk." He said. Truthfully, he didn't sound drunk, but I couldn't imagine he was having this conversation with me sober. It would give his words too much credibility.

"Go to bed, Zach." I said. "You'll feel better in the morning."

I shut the window before he could say anything else and shut the shades. I readied for bed quickly, ignoring the thwaping that had recommenced on my window.

He must have tired eventually or run out of darts because the sound finally ended. But I was still awake when the clock hit two and then three in the morning, wondering if Zach was right.

Maybe Josh and I didn't have chemistry. Was that something we could fix?

Thoughts? Comments? Concerns? Feelings?

You know what to do. :)