Tumbling Down // Chapter Thirteen (Disputes and Dealing)

The next morning, I went to tell Sophie about my kiss with Taylor but choked at the last second, leaving her uninformed and me with a belly full of confusion. It was almost as if I knew that if I told someone else about it, I would be forced into realizing that it really hadn’t been anything worth talking about, something that I already knew in the back of my mind, but wasn’t yet ready to admit. A hot shower had calmed my stomach to a certain extent, but when I was grabbing my day planner and saw the date, it plummeted and I was sure that all of the color had drained from my face.

Try as I might, I just couldn’t shake it from my mind as I mindlessly attended classes, picked at my meals without thought, and walked around campus like the living dead. I knew that only one thing could bring me back to my senses, so I headed over to Hunter’s dorm without bothering to call. If he was there, I knew I could persuade him, and I wasn’t too worried about him being there due to it being after dinner and the fact that I had found out that he was a quasi-hermit after the sun went down.

He didn’t answer the door when I knocked, so I let myself in and found him sleeping on top of his covers with the TV on full blast and the lights on. I let my bag drop to the floor and I climbed into the narrow bed beside him, clinging to his warmth and finding comfort there even though I was teetering on the edge of the mattress. A kiss to the jaw woke him up and I continued my assault on his neck as he roused himself from sleep.

“What are you doing here?” he groaned sleepily, his eyes still not open.

“I found myself requiring a little TLC,” I said, pulling the collar of his shirt down so I could make contact with the skin hidden below its usual confines.

“Channel 40,” he said before attempting to roll over.

“You smart ass, you know what I’m talking about,” I laughed, shoving him onto his back and straddling his waist.

“But I’m sleeping,” he whined. A well-placed swivel of my hips finally opened his eyes and his hands made their way to my hips.

“It’s eight at night. I can not allow you to be pathetic and sleep at this time of the evening. Ravish me instead, please,” I demanded, moving over him again and feeling his grip tighten.

“You’re very persuasive,” he whispered, pulling me down so he could capture my lips with his. We made out almost frantically for several minutes before I pulled away, realizing my need for something slower and gentler.

“Let’s slow down, okay?” I asked, pulling my hair back into a ponytail before peeling my tight tank from my body revealing a brand new red push-up bra I knew he’d love.

“A recent purchase?” he asked, running his hands up my sides to the satiny fabric.

“You like?”

“I like. You leave on… wait, what are we, cavemen or something?” he laughed. I wanted to laugh, but it just wouldn’t come out of me. I knew that a touch of sadness was decorating my face despite my best efforts and I climbed off of him and squeezed in between him and the wall, laying myself down with a sigh. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I just want you here,” I stated softly, pulling the front of his shirt until he was on top of me and my lips were on his again.

I needed to feel someone there. I needed to feel safe. I let him continue to undress me except for my bra and helped him remove his own clothes without the real recognition that I was doing so. He didn’t seem to notice my trouble focusing, but he was a guy and once the pants came off, they were rarely fully conscious of their surroundings. Hunter was very observant, but I just supposed that I was putting on the front that I was trying to convey: that everything was just dandy and I had never been happier to be in his bed.

His fingers and mouth worked me expertly until I was completely ready for him. I had been exactly right, and Hunter had been just what I needed to get my mind off things, or at least he had been for a moment. For some reason, the feeling of him entering me fully shocked me back to reality. After only three thrusts I found myself shoving against his chest, trying to get him off of me, tears spilling without warning over my lashes.

“Stop! Get off of me, I need to go!” I cried, but my suddenness only made him freeze in place.

“Cammy, what did I do? Did I hurt you? Why are you crying?”

“I just… I just need to go. Please get off of me, Hunter,” I said, my breath hitching against the sobs I was trying my hardest to keep within my chest. I could see Hunter’s confused face still above me through my blurry vision and tried one more time to make him move, “I need to go see Taylor!”

Hunter made a guttural noise that sounded almost like a growl and he pushed himself harshly off of me and onto his feet on the floor.

“Damn it, Cameron! I can’t do this anymore!” he said, pacing in the small space next to his bed, “I can’t keep putting up with listening to you cry and complain about Taylor. This was the last straw, I’m sorry. We were having sex, I was inside of you and you start crying and tell me that you need to go see Taylor? I know I’m not your boyfriend, but I deserve better than that.”

I forced myself to a sitting position, my mind spinning while tears still managed to keep coming. I couldn’t believe that he thought I would do something like that, that I would cry over Taylor while we were together. Complain yes, but cry, never.

“Please don’t do this today, I’m begging you.”

“What’s so special about today? The fact that you and Taylor went upstairs last night and had some magical heart-to-heart? Unless he told you something truly revolutionary and new, then this,” he exclaimed, gesturing wildly between the two of us, “should not be happening right now!”

“You are being such an asshole right now, Hunter!”

“Well I’m sorry, but I’m tired of feeling like I’m nothing more to you than a whore!” The silence following his words was deafening and it felt like my heart stopped beating. He immediately felt the impact of what he had said and tried to cover it up quickly. “At least that’s what it feels like. You love him and you use me and I’m sorry, but it just can’t be like that anymore.”

“Can we please not do this today? I’m begging you here. I just can’t take this today.”

“Why do you keep saying that?”

“Because you won’t listen to me!” I screamed, my voice cracking as a gasping sob finally worked its way to my mouth, “This has nothing to do with you, Hunter!”

“Look. I don’t know what’s going on with you right now, and that’s exactly the problem. You’ve let me in pretty much everywhere else, but you won’t let me in here,” he said, poking me on the chest, right above my heart, “And that’s where I want to be. I can’t pretend that I don’t have feelings for you anymore, Cameron. I’ve been trying to so hard to keep it back, but I can’t do it anymore. And I don’t want to hear that you can’t deal with this today, because you never deal with anything. You just push it all aside. You pretend like Taylor doesn’t treat you like shit. You say nothing to Brooklynn until eventually you just snap. Well now I’m forcing you to deal with this, because there’s something here and I’m fucking sick of not saying anything about it because of Taylor.”

I felt completely defeated. Hunter had no idea what I was dealing with inside of my head and he had turned it all around to be something else, something about us, something that I had neither the energy nor the will to deal with.

“I can’t talk to you about this today.”

“Then we’re not going to talk anymore period. I can’t do this anymore, Cammy. It just hurts way too much.” I got off the bed and threw my jeans and shirt back on, trying to keep myself from crying any more.

“You know, if you had just listened to me in the first place, none of this would be happening right now,” I spat, heading for the door.

“This is not my fault!”

“Yeah, well you want to know what isn’t my fault? The fact that eight years ago today I found my mom dead in the bathtub after she killed herself. It’s not my fault that I wanted to come to you for comfort and then realized that I couldn’t handle sex today. And it’s certainly not my fault that Taylor’s the only other person I know who has lost a parent and would therefore understand even part of what I’m going through today. None of it is my fault, Hunter!” I yelled, completely unable to control myself. Hunter gaped at me, guilt and regret seeping from him.

“I had no idea…”

“Yeah, well I don’t tell anyone about my mom. Taylor doesn’t even know how she died. And sorry this is all over now, but I can not talk to you about us today.”

“Cammy, I-”

“Goodbye, Hunter.”

And with that I was out his door and running down the stairs. I sprinted as fast as I could all the way back to my dorm blindly, wanting nothing more than to be as far away from Hunter as possible. I didn’t need any more emotional stress to deal with and here it was, poking me right in the chest. Before I knew it, I was pounding on Taylor’s door fervently, hiccupping and sniffing despite myself.

“Cams, what’s going on?” he asked when he opened the door. I just threw myself into his arms, a new round of tears brewing. I didn’t care if he was in the middle of something, or if Brooklynn was there, or anything. I just knew that being with Taylor was what I needed, just like he had needed me. “You’re scaring the shit out of me. Are you hurt?”

“No. Remember why you needed me to come over awhile back?” He nodded and led me inside the room that I now saw to be empty and guided me over to the futon. “Well, it was eight years ago today for me. I’ve never cried about it since then. I don’t know what the hell is happening.” He handed me a bottle of water and some random Papa John’s napkins.

“Maybe it just took you that long to realize it was real,” he suggested, stroking my hair and pulling me close again.

“No, I knew it was real. I’ve just been crying a lot lately and now today. Oh, today has been awful.” I swiped at my eyes with the rough napkin and leaned into him.

“Do you want to talk about her?” he asked.

I hadn’t realized it until then, but I really did want to talk about her. I hadn’t in so long, not even to my dad. We just tended to go about our lives as if everything was okay. I took a deep breath before beginning, not sure of how much I wanted to say, or how much I would even be able to talk.

“She was great, really. Everything a mom should be: supportive, loving, funny, tidy, a good cook, smart as hell. You know the works. She was a successful real estate agent, we spent a ton of time together as a family. We just had no idea she was so unhappy,” I said, “Not until it was too late.”

“You mean.” he started, looking down at me with huge, worried eyes. I just nodded and looked back down at my hands.

“I found her. She did it right in the middle of the day while Dad and I were downstairs. I don’t know why I’m suddenly sharing this with people today. I’m sorry, I’m sure it’s not what you want to hear.”

“Don’t even think about apologizing. I needed you and you came, and now you need me and I’m here.” I nodded and wiped the last of my tears from my face and dropped the napkins onto the futon beside me.

“Okay, can we talk about something else, please. I just need to talk, but not about that. Not any more.”

“Um, how are things going with Hunter?” I sighed heavily and rubbed absently at my forehead.

“Can we not talk about that either?”

“Haven’t seen him for awhile?”

“No, more like just saw him. Had a huge fight.”

“What did you fight about?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I lied. I did want to talk about it, desperately in fact. I just didn’t know if I could manage to talk about it with Taylor since he was the one we had been fighting about in the first place. With a slight hesitation, I was able to think of what information I could share with Taylor and what needed to be left out of the conversation. “I think he wants more, and I tried to tell him that it wasn’t the best time to talk about it and he kept pressing it until I completely lost it and started screaming everything at him that was upsetting me. It was really bad, I know he felt awful because he didn’t know why I was so upset. I don’t think I’ll be seeing any more of him.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.”

“No, really. He told me that if we didn’t talk about it tonight that it was all over.”

“Did he say that before or after you told him about your mom?” Taylor asked, pulling back slightly so he could see me better. I shifted and scratched nervously at my chin.

“Before,” I murmured.

“Then see? I’m sure he’ll call you tomorrow and you two can work it out.”

“Work what out? We’re not in a relationship.”

“Well, you’re friends, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know what we are,” I said honestly, suddenly wanting to change the conversation to any topic other than Hunter, “Can we talk about last night?” He pulled his arm from my shoulders and scooted a few inches away from me, showing me that I had struck a nerve of some kind.

“Last night shouldn’t have happened, not our talk upstairs. I really had wanted to wait to talk until today, but I went and got drunk and decided that it was a good time right then. I think that our problem needs to be talked about sober, not drunk, because it is a problem, Cams.”

“What problem are you talking about?”

“The problem with you and Brooklynn hating each other. I mean, fuck, Cams. Do you have any idea what kind of an awful position it puts me in every day? I’m not blaming you, and I’m not blaming her, I’m just saying that the whole situation completely sucks.”

I just looked at him and pulled my knees to my chest. I had wanted to talk about what happened right before our chat. Instead I found myself having yet another conversation that I didn’t want to have when I was already an emotional mess, but I just let it continue on, knowing that Hunter was right and I couldn’t just keep ignoring my problems all of the time.

“What do you want me to say, Taylor?” I asked, feeling an overwhelming tiredness start to course through my veins, “Do you want me to say that I’ll just pretend that she’s never been mean to me? That it doesn’t hurt my feelings that you constantly subject me to her shit and then tolerate it to boot? That it doesn’t make me feel that you don’t care about me at all since you let her into your life after you had seen her be so callous to me? What do you want me to say?”

“I don’t know what I want you to say. It’s just really complicated, all right?” he asked, a bitter, edgy undertone appearing in his voice. I knew that the comfort I had found in the room was quickly escaping under the door and I wanted out.

“What? You, me, Brooklynn, Hunter? We’re just dripping with simplicity,” I said sarcastically before dropping my head into my hands, “God, I’m so tired of crying.” We sat there in silence for what had to have been several minutes, me softly struggling to stop crying for the umpteenth time and Taylor rubbing his hand rhythmically up and down my back.

“When did everything get so weird?” he asked rhetorically, but I felt the need to answer.

“About a month ago,” I replied, “Everything was just fine until then, and now look at us. You’re baffling all of us with your choice in company, I’m crying every five minutes, we’re kissing upstairs at parties.” I couldn’t help myself. It just came out and it felt so good when it was finally free from me.

“About that,” he started with no obvious intention of continuing.

“It shouldn’t have happened, I know.”

“No, it shouldn’t have happened like that. I mean, if we were going to, to kiss, then it shouldn’t have been like that, especially not at that time.”

I didn’t know quite how to respond to something like that, did that mean that he wanted to kiss me under better circumstances? The answer didn’t come because our phones started ringing almost simultaneously. I saw Hunter’s name displayed on the screen and promptly shut off the ringer before putting it face down on the futon, but Taylor answered his.

“Zac, what do you want, I’m kind of busy,” he said, looking at me out of the corner of his eye, “Yes I’m with Cameron, why? Well tell Hunter to calm the fuck down and stop freaking out because she doesn’t need anything else to deal with right now. No, she doesn’t want to talk to him. Will you stop yelling at me?” And I couldn’t take it any more, I wrestled the phone out of Taylor’s hand and brought it to my own ear.

“Zac, it’s Cameron. What’s going on?”

“Hunter feels horrible, about what he won’t tell me, but he called me about ten times insisting that I get you or Taylor on the phone.”

“He told me it was all over, Zac, so I don’t know why he’s doing this.”

“He doesn’t want it to be over, that much he made clear.”

“Well, he needs to respect my wishes, okay? I told him that I did not want to talk about this today and I meant it,” I said before shutting the phone and handing it back to Taylor, “Let’s just watch a movie, okay?” He nodded and grabbed the remote, allowing us to immerse ourselves in another world and pretend like our own wasn’t spiraling out of control around us.

Chapter Fourteen

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *