Page 69 of Bending Under Pressure

“Can I ask one question though?”

He takes a deep breath. “Sure.”

“Is Cam okay?”

Keelan tenses behind me, and it hits me that maybe something happened with Cameron, too. “Why?”

“Well, Jess was ignoring my texts, so after Mom and I came back from shopping, I went to her house to check on her. Cameron was already there, but her dad was at the door, telling him that Jess didn’t want to see him and she’d let him know when she does. He looked crushed. I was worried about him.” Just then, I see a figure jogging toward the water tower, I tense before the nearby streetlight reflects a head full of blond hair. “Is that Cameron?”

“Yeah. Thanks for asking about him. It explains why he was in a bad mood with me.”

“Why do you think he’s here?”

I feel his shoulders shrug. We don’t say anything else as Cameron climbs up to the top. He’s wearing a hoodie, and he wordlessly pulls out three bottles of soda from the kangaroo pocket. Cameron hands us one each and then sits down next to us.

“So, Jess has had a meltdown or something, and I need help in getting her to talk to me.”

Keelan scoffs from behind me. “That your apology?”

“No. I was hoping I wouldn’t have an audience for that.” Cameron pointedly looks at me.

“Do you have a plan?” I ask because I don’t want to hear Cam make up with his brother any more than he wants me to hear it.

“Short of kidnapping her and tying her to a chair, no.”

Jess wants to talk to Cam, I know that much. Why she’s refusing to is confusing to us all. I want to help them both. I take a sip of my soda, thinking over what we can do to speed this process up. Cameron’s sentence keeps replaying in my head.

“Why don’t we sort of do that?”

“Kidnap her?” Keelan asks with disbelief.

“No.” I elbow him on the ribs lightly. “You sneak over all the time, right?” Cameron nods. “Then we’ll go to her house, you’ll sneak in, and Keelan and I can like block the window. Tell her none of us are leaving until y’all talk.”

Cameron rubs his knuckles along his jaw. “I don’t know. It seems kind of wrong to bombard her like that.”

“Do you want to fix this or not?” I ask him.

“It’s worth a shot,” Keelan adds.

Cameron finally nods. “Okay.” He stands, ending our time at the water tower.

We park at the tennis courts like before, and then sneak over to Jess’s window. Cameron knocks lightly twice on her window before pushing it up. We can see Jess’s eyes widen as she scrambles off her bed.

“What are you doing here?” she whispers heatedly.

“We’re going to talk.”

“And we’re not leaving until y’all do,” Keelan tacks on.

Jess huffs, crosses her arms over her chest, and sits on her bed. Cameron lowers the window to grant them privacy. Keelan and I turn around because creeping would be, well, creepy.

“Do you think this will work?” I ask.

He glances over his shoulder, quickly frowning. “She’s crying, but they’re talking, so yeah. Good idea, Hales.”

“Do you want to do some talking of your own?” I rub my arms because it’s as if the temperature suddenly dropped.

Keelan takes my hand, pulls me against him, and rubs his hands over my arms. “The meeting with my aunt? It was a full-blown family reunion and Natalie acted like I was her long lost son. Then Cameron and I got into it.”

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