Page 5 of Heart Throb

GRIFFIN

If I didn’t hear the door open and close at the crack of dawn, I’d think that I was living alone. Camilla isn’t here when I get up in the morning, nor is she here when I get home from work. Sometimes I smell the faint trace of food when I arrive, but I never find the source.

The weekdays go by in a blur and we pass like ships in the night. I wonder if she notices that I clean up. I wonder if she notices that the faint chemical smell of meth dissipates with each passing day. I wonder if she even realizes that I’m around.

When the weekend arrives, I catch her in the kitchen just before 7:00. She’s wearing a floral print dress and pulling her hair into a ponytail with a piece of toast hanging between her lips. She looks frantic. “Hey there,” I greet. “Barn on fire?”

Camilla’s brow furrows, but with the food in her mouth and her hands otherwise occupied, she doesn’t have the capability to respond. It takes her a second to finish pulling the ponytail tight before she can grab the toast. “I’m late,” she insists. “I should have left ten minutes.”

I check the clock on the microwave. “Uh, late for what?”

She looks at me like I’m stupid. “Work, Griffin. I have a shift at the bookstore starting at 8:00. It’s an hour’s walk on a good day.”

I haven’t seen her all week because she’s been at work or I have. I thought she might take some time off on the weekends and I could get to know my goddaughter a little bit better, but apparently not. “How about I drive you?” I offer. “Least I could do to help out.”

Camilla’s brown eyes narrow and I see her calculating what this is going to cost. “You’ve moved into my house,” she deadpans. “You’ve been casually cleaning up my father’s messes and I’m pretty sure you’re popping Glade plug-ins into all the light sockets so it doesn’t reek in here anymore.” Her hip pops out with all the teenage angst and attitude I don’t remember missing from my high school days. “I think you’ve done the least already.”

So she has noticed! Not that that was why I was doing it. If it was up to me, no person would live in this kind of squalor. “Well let me do a little more. It’s not like a three-mile trip into town is going to ruin my day or anything. Besides, it’ll give us some time to talk before you have to go to work. You’ll have more time to relax, maybe even eat your toast at the table like a normal person.”

I see her eyes look over at the forgotten breakfast table. When I arrived, it was covered in a thin layer of what I could only assume were illegal substances. I considered throwing it out and buying a brand new table, maybe a cheap one off of the Facebook marketplace, but I ended up scrubbing it down with bleach instead.

“I haven’t eaten there since I was four.” Camilla looks at the kitchen table like it’s wronged her. “Is it even safe to eat there?”

I carefully coax her in the direction of the table, running my finger across the flattop and then pressing it on my tongue. “It’s safe, I promise. I already cleaned it a dozen times. If anything is going to kill me, it’s the chemicals I used for sanitization.”

Camilla begrudgingly sits down, looking very uncomfortable and out of place. “So,” she mumbles, “what do you want to talk about?”

I can feel the way she wraps herself in uneasiness. It’s like she’d rather be anywhere but here. “What’d you do this week? I never really saw you. I know your dad mentioned that you worked a lot, but I guess I don’t know what you do.”

She bristles and eases depending on what I’m talking about. When it’s her dad, she is tense. When it’s work, she is fine. “Well, in the mornings I work at the diner. I’ve had a job there since I was a sophomore. They let me work the morning and early afternoon shifts. I used to work the evening shift, but once the high school kids graduated, Sarah had more help than she needed.”

This is why she’s gone before the sun even rises. She’s probably got to get up two hours before her shift starts so she can leave an hour before she needs to be there. I wonder how she keeps herself disciplined enough to keep up with this schedule.

“In the afternoons, I work up at the golf course. Sometimes I come home between shifts, but not always. It’s easier to walk from the diner to the course or catch a ride or something. I can usually take a shower at the course before my shift and relax down in the locker rooms. No one really bothers me.” She looks almost nostalgic as her eyes shift to the table and glaze over. “The people who go there have so much going for them, you know? Sometimes I wonder what it’d be like to be one of them.”

Camilla keeps her voice neutral, but if you peel back the layers, you can hear the hurt ringing like a bell. I treat her with kid gloves, not because she’s a kid, but because she’s sensitive. “You can be one of them one day, Camilla. The choices your father made do not define you. The background you come from does not define your future. You can rise above your circumstances and become the people that you serve. You can become everything you’ve always dreamed of, Camilla.”

I pretend not to notice her bottom lip quivering. After all, that’s the police thing to do. I avert my eyes and act as though there’s something fascinating happening outside the window. A few leaves rustle on a tree and I notice someone’s figure moving in a trailer next door, but otherwise, there is nothing particularly interesting going on. But it is enough of a diversion to allow Camilla her privacy.

Her hand comes up to swipe at her cheek and I hear a slight sniffle. If she’s crying, it’s done quickly and without much ado. Her eyes are not red-rimmed when my gaze returns and she seems just as stoic as before. “Drywall finisher, huh?” Camilla asks after a second. “Is that a fulfilling career?”

A smile twitches on my lips. “I mean, it’s not poet or human rights advocate, but I enjoy it. I don’t hate going to work every day.”

Camilla’s fingers start drumming against the table in an unrecognizable pattern. It’s her turn to look out the window, but I don’t think she’s staring at the neighbor’s trailer. She looks like she’s staring far off in the distance. “I want that,” she decides.

“Want what?” I venture after a moment.

When she meets my gaze after a second, it’s with quiet affirmation on her face. “I want to go to work every day and not hate what I do. I don’t need to love it, I just need to not hate it. I think,” Camilla pauses and her bottom lip quivers, as if she’s afraid to voice her next thought, “I think I know what I want to do, too.”

“And what’s that?” I tell myself that no matter what it is—teacher, librarian, artist, liberal arts, hell, even stripper—I’ll support her.

Camilla’s tongue comes out to sweep across her bottom lip. “I want to go into social work, I think,” she says with quiet indecision in her tone. “I want to make sure other kids don’t have to face the same childhood that I did. Or if they do, that they have someone they can talk to about it. I never really had someone that I could talk to growing up.”

My heart breaks and I think in that moment I fall in love with Camilla. To grow up in a broken home with a father whose priorities are cooking and dealing drugs over taking care of his family and then choosing to help out other kids in the same situation? It takes a big heart to choose a path like that. “Whatever you need to get to that place, let me know. You need me to rob a bank? I’ll do it. You need me to fake some transcripts? I got you. You need a ride across the country? Cue up the playlist, baby, I’ll drive.”

She gives a short, disbelieving chuckle. “You don’t have to do that, Grif. You don’t even have to offer. You don’t have to watch over me just because my dad asked you to. I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.”

“I’m sure you can, but you don’t have to. I’m here for you because I want to be.” It isn’t just because I used to be close to her dad. It isn’t because I was in the room when her mom jumped ship. It isn’t because she’s a beautiful young woman who triggers the protective instinct in me. “You had a rough life growing up, Camilla, there’s no doubt about it. I should have been here sooner, but I wasn’t. I let my relationship with your father’s business push me away, but not anymore. This is about being there for the people you love and I love you, Camilla. If I gotta break a few rules to make sure you finally get a fair shake at life, so be it.”

Camilla looks at me, then tilts her head. There’s speculation in her gaze as if she can’t believe the words that are coming out of my mouth. “Usually, I would think you’d expect something from me in exchange. For all this supposed help, you’d want my mouth or my body or something. Maybe my ass.” The blush on my cheeks doesn’t even affect her. “But for some reason, I think you really mean to help me, no strings attached.”

I reassure her immediately that I do. “I don’t want anything,” I am quick to add. “I swear. I don’t want your body or your anything. I just want to help you.”

“Okay, well, how about you help me get to work? You did offer, after all.” She gets up from the table looking a little less stressed out than when we sat down. “Thank you. You know, for being around.” Camilla grabs her house keys off the kitchen counter and looks up at me. “The house looks great and it’s kind of nice to have you around.”

It isn’t much, but it’s a start. I’ll take it. “Anytime, Camilla.”

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