Here we go - Chapter 20. I hope you like it!

Please excuse any errors I may have made. I do proofread these before I post them but somehow something always seems to slip by me.

Chapter TWENTY

Josh slowly recovered from his surgery. I went to his house everyday to spend time with him, knowing that once we broke up he probably wouldn't want to be around me anymore. It hurt to think that when I broke up with my boyfriend I would most likely lose one of my best friends as well. I tried to keep the dark thoughts at bay, however, instead attempting to focus on the here and now.

But sooner or later, reality comes knocking on all of our doors.

A week after his return Josh was up and walking. His mother still doted and fretted over him but his time in the Caribbean seemed to have done him what I deemed to be good - he'd developed more of a backbone. He didn't automatically consider his mother's word to be golden anymore and even occasionally outright defied her.

It was refreshing to see this new, tougher side of Josh. It made me realize that I hadn't been the only one to change over the past two months. I only hoped Josh would be able to see my changes as good ones just as I did his.

There were things about him that hadn't changed, however, such as his propensity to show up unannounced. Despite his considerate nature, he'd never gotten the hang of warning someone before his arrival, instead expecting people to somehow be able to accommodate him and give him their time. I'd never found his impromptu visits burdensome before and had, on the contrary, been glad to spend what time with him that I could. Now, however, his sudden presence at my doorstep unnerved me and sent shivers of unease down my spine.

I felt like I had something to hide, like he would be able to see what I was planning when he caught me unawares.

So, it was with some trepidation that I led him into my kitchen the Saturday after his return. August was in full swing now and the humid heat had made us both break out in a slight sweat. But as I poured Josh and I both some water, I got hot and sweaty for an entirely different reason than the scorching heat and the small breeze coming in from the open back door did little to cool me down. I'd never been so grateful for air-conditioning before.

He looked at me over the rim of his cup as his sipped his water. His eyes had that same playful twinkle in them that they always did, only that twinkle no longer made me feel special; it made me feel dirty.

I had debated what I would say to Josh and how I would say it all week. In my head, I was eloquent and he was reasonable and we ended on good terms. Deep in my gut, though, I had a feeling things would not turn out that way.

After a moment of awkward silence, Josh spoke up.

"Is everything okay, Cam?"

I nodded, not quite able to make eye contact with him. "Yeah, it's all good."

"If now was a bad time for me to come over, I can leave."

I shook my head and saw his face relax infinitesimally. "I'm not busy."

He smile a little. "Good because I'm going absolutely crazy being cooped up all day with my mom."

I couldn't stop the grin that spread across my face at that. "Not quite able to overlook her helicopter mom tendencies anymore, huh?"

He looked down at his hands. "No. I guess the trip changed me in ways I wasn't expecting."

"I think this summer had that effect on us all." I muttered. His eyes shot to my face at that and he looked at me quizzically.

"How has it changed you?" His tone was tentative, like part of him was subconsciously dreading my response. Perhaps I hadn't done as good a job of hiding my thoughts as I had thought.

Purposefully avoiding his question, I asked one of my own instead. "Have you talked to DeeDee since you got back?"

The jealousy I had once felt towards the girl had evaporated and now I felt only gratitude that she was able to help Josh in his moment of need - although an incredibly curious part of me wondered how loaded the girl must be to be able to commandeer a helicopter on such short notice.

"Yeah, I talked to her yesterday. She says hi."

"Oh."

Josh was studiously rubbing circles around the edge of his glass. "You know, I still feel kind of bad about the fight we had earlier this summer."

"You do?"

He shrugged. "Of course, I do. After we finished talking, I still didn't feel any better. It was like we were off our groove or something." His eyes darted to my face for a second before looking back down at his glass. "We never fight."

"I guess the distance got to us."

"Maybe."

There was another moment of silence. The air was thick with unsaid words. It was Josh that had the courage to voice them.

"So why doesn't it feel normal now? I mean, here I am, sitting in your kitchen less than three feet from you but I feel like I might as well still be on some Caribbean island with crappy signal."

I took a deep breath, struck for a moment by the hardness behind his words. I hadn't realized that Josh had picked up on so much in the last week - let alone that he would have such a strong reaction to it.

"Like you said," I said quietly, "this summer changed things."

"Yes, but what does that even mean, Cammie?" His voice was soft, kind, pleading. It broke my heart. "What does that mean for us?"

That's when I knew this hadn't been some spur of the moment visit to my house. He hadn't escaped from his mom to find solace in my company. He had come here for answers that I wanted to give him, but was having difficulty finding the courage to put them to words.

"Are you still upset about DeeDee? Because I promise you, Cam, she's just a friend. I would never do...that."

I knew what he meant by that. Cheating. Something I had come dangerously close to doing myself multiple times over the past two months. And if I was being honest with myself, emotionally I was cheating on Josh by harboring feelings for my neighbor. The feeling of being dirty and sleazy increased exponentially as I looked at Josh's disgust at the very idea of doing such a thing to me.

He was the very best kind of person.

And I felt like the very worst.

"Josh, I..."

I what?

What could I possibly say to spare his feelings and ease my guilt? Then again, maybe there was no way to do either of those things.

Josh was staring at me now, the concern apparent in his gaze and I couldn't help but break under the pressure. All my preparations, all my plans on gently explaining to Josh my reasons for wanting to break up went out the window now that I was actually in the moment. This wasn't going to be the simple, collected break-up that I had hoped for, and I had to accept that.

I took a deep breath and tried again. "Josh, I think we should break up."

Silence filled the room. My words hung in the air like an omnipresent force. And, coward that I am, I stared at the ceiling, too afraid to watch Josh's reaction to my fatal words.

"I - wha...why?" Josh struggled to gather himself. "Was it something I did?"

"I just feel like the summer apart forced things into perspective." I stole a glance at his face before realizing he was still staring at me and my eyes darted back to the ceiling.

"What happened? What did I do?" He asked. His voice sounded helplessly confused, and it tugged at my heartstrings to hear him sound so wounded.

"It was nothing you did."

"Is it about your new neighbor? Do you have feelings for him?"

My eyes flew to his in shock. "What?"

He cleared his throat, nervously. "I've been back a week, Cam, and you of all people know how this town likes to talk." His voice was quiet now, like he was forcing the words out. "I didn't want to believe the gossip, but...is it true?"

I wanted so badly to tell the truth, but I knew then that it would be too selfish of an act. If I told Josh now that I had developed feelings for Zach while he was an ocean away and unable to do anything to stop it...it would break him.

I had to choose between being honest or sparing this boy in front of me in some kind of way. I had to decide which kind of guilt I was capable of living with.

I chose the latter.

"No, this has nothing to do with Zach." I said. "He's just a friend. Nothing more."

~.~.~.~

Josh left shortly after that, not wanting to spend any more time than was necessary with me. It hurt, but I understood.

For a while after he'd left, I sat at the kitchen table mulling over our relationship. Every now and then, when I remembered a particularly fond memory of our time together, a chilling tingle would float down my spine and I frantically wished I could go back in time just an hour and take it all back.

Josh was safe and kind and would never hurt me. He'd never leave.

But then, I would compare my feelings for Josh and the ones I had developed for Zach and realize there really was no comparison. Despite dating for years, Josh and I were never a romantic coupling. It was comfortable, but as Zach had pointed out earlier this summer, there was no passion.

I had passion with Zach. I could feel it simmering beneath the surface of all of our conversations. It was a fluttering in my stomach, a tingling in my fingertips, an uncontrollable smile on my lips.

I could admit to myself now that I really wanted to indulge in passion. If only just once.

Without consciously deciding it, I left the table and went out through the backdoor, crossing the lawn to Zach's backdoor. It was open, the screen door closed to let the fresh air in and the bugs out. I slipped into the kitchen area, but it was empty.

"Hello?" I called out. "Anybody home?"

There was no response.

Feeling slightly creeper-ish, I walked further into the house, passing the open door of Abby's office where I had revealed so much about my dad to her as well as the doorways into other empty rooms. Once I had verified that there was indeed no one on the first floor, I ascended the stairs to the second floor.

"Zach?"

The door to his bedroom at the end of the hall was closed, and for a second, I considered exiting the house and pretending I'd never come over. But no, I refused to give in to my cowardice once again.

I squared my shoulders and knocked firmly on the door.

I heard shuffling on the other side of the door a second before it opened.

A shiver went up my spine as I took in the sight of him. I'd only seen glimpses of him all week, spending most of my time with Josh, and seeing him now in front of me was almost overwhelming.

I'd missed him.

He opened his mouth to say something but I was already moving toward him.

Our lips met and it was instinctual from there. It was a natural progression for my arms to slip up his chest and twist around his neck. His hands gripped my hips, pulling my body closer to his until I felt all of him from my legs against his and my lips pressing, moving, melting with his. Seconds or minutes or hours could have passed and all that would have mattered was that he was here. He was holding me and kissing me in a way that sent all rational thought out of my head and into the gutter.

It was magical and amazing. It was everything a kiss was supposed to be; my heart was pounding like a stampede of a thousand horses, and I could feel that his was too.

I never knew it could feel like this. Let this never end. Let this never end. Let him hold me in his arms and kiss me until apes take over the world and even then let it continue.

Please, please, Zach, don't stop kissing me.

Almost as soon as I thought that, however, he pulled away. My eyes, which had been closed during the kiss, fluttered open.

When he took another step back and pulled entirely out of my grasp, I got concerned.

"What are you doing?"

He looked at me like I was crazy. "What am I doing? What are you doing?"

I was confused, until I remembered what I hadn't actually told him. "Oh. I, uh, I broke up with Josh."

He snorted. "I know."

"What do you mean?"

"Tell me, Cammie, do you always kiss people like that when you don't have feelings for them?"

I gaped at him for a moment, surprised by the words and the bitter tone in which they were spoken. It took me a moment to connect what he'd just said to my earlier conversation with Josh. My mind raced, wondering how much he had heard through the open back door.

"We kissed each other." I whispered, somewhat dazed. He just shook his head and took yet another step back. Another step away from me.

"Everything just has to be so damn complicated with you. You can never just come out and say what you mean."

I took a deep breath, trying to find a response but he continued on.

"I'm done pretending as if you don't affect me, and I thought you were too." He said, running a hand through his hair frustration. "I want to be with you, Cammie. I want to hold your hand in town square. I want to slow dance with you all night at the town bonfire. I want to be the reason you get all dolled up for a Monday night." He grabbed my hand and squeezed it gently. "I want to hold you and hug you and kiss you. I want to call you my girlfriend and have you call me your boyfriend."

"Zach, I..."

He shook his head, motioning for me to let him finish. "What I don't want is for you to lie to others about what we mean to each other."

"Then be with me." I said, pleading. "We just have to keep things quiet for a few weeks, let the tension from the breakup dissipate. I want to be with you, Zach. I do."

He shook his head again. "And then a few weeks become a few months, because you feel bad that you lied to your ex and you don't want to make him feel uncomfortable by 'parading' your new boyfriend around town. I think I know you pretty well by now, Cammie. And I can see where this is heading. I just wish I'd seen it earlier."

I wanted to tell him he was wrong, but I couldn't. I knew if I could, I would spare Josh as much pain as possible. I owed him that much at least.

I looked up at Zach's somber face, terrified to hear his next words.

"I refuse to be anyone's secret." He said. "I hope you can understand that."

In my heart of hearts, I could see where he was coming from, especially after everything he had confided in me about his parents. But I only came to understand that after I left his house and collected myself. In that moment, I was flabbergasted and hurt and very much afraid that I was losing the one guy that made me feel more alive than I had in years.

"Anyone's secret, Zach? Or just mine? Because you seemed perfectly content to be Eva's secret at the start of the summer!"

"That was different." He insisted.

"How?"

"Because it didn't matter!" He yelled. "Neither of us had any feelings for each other or expectations. We hung out twice and the second time you interrupted it before anything even happened!"

He was breathing heavily now and he stared at me real anger in his eyes. "But you, I care about."

"So because you care about me, you don't want to be with me." I looked at him like he was crazy. "That's some fucked up logic."

"No, what's fucked up is you putting Josh's feelings on higher priority than what's going on between us."

"He was my boyfriend for three years."

"'Was' being the operative word."

I sighed in frustration. "What do you want me to do then, Zach? Do you want me to call Josh and say 'hey, I actually lied to you when I was breaking up with you, no biggie'? Yeah, I see that going down real well."

"Every choice has a consequence."

I rolled my eyes at him. "Thanks for the warning, Captain Obvious."

At this point, we were standing on opposite sides of his room, me by the door and him by the window, with our arms crossed. Neither of us was backing down from our position, and I wondered briefly how it was possible for us to have dissolved so quickly into this fight.

Hell, three years of dating Josh and we'd never had a truly serious argument. Now, I wasn't even technically with Zach and we were at each other's throats.

"Just go, then."

It took me a second to register his words. "What?"

"You obviously aren't going to change your mind about this, and neither am I." He shrugged, and the nonchalance of the act irritated me. "I know the kind of person I am and what I'm okay with, and I am not okay with Josh being a third party to this relationship. For any length of time."

I just stared at him, and after a moment I think he realized that I was still waiting him say it. To say the words he was tiptoeing around.

"This isn't going to work. You should go."

I pursed my lips, fisted my hands. Refused to show him how those words affected me. Maybe I should have. Maybe if I had he would have called me back and asked me to stay. But you know what they say...

Shoulda, woulda, coulda.

Instead, I walked out of Zach's house without another word. When I entered my own house, I slowly made my way upstairs to my room, where I sat down on my bed and stared at the wall.

How long I stared, I don't know.

I guess you could say I was in shock.

Regardless, my brain seemed to have short-circuited because I was at a loss for words of the verbal or mental variety. I think part of me was waiting for the tears to come, for the cathartic release of emotion and the salty wetness trailing down my cheeks to shock me out of the limbo I'd fallen in and back into life.

But the tears never came.

Soooo…..

Please don't hate me.