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Gamebreaker

Page 205

by Nora Fares

"In passing."

"On the phone. Two weeks ago. She asked what you'd need." Cam's ears had gone red again. "I didn't know she'd... I didn't ask her to buy anything. She just went to Target."

I looked at that pillowcase, and I thought about Maria Russo, sixty-two years old, standing in the bedding aisle at Target, looking up satin pillowcase for curly hair on her phone because her daughter had mentioned it once, in passing, on the phone, two weeks ago.

Remembering. In this family, everybody remembered.

I sat down on the edge of the bed very suddenly, because my legs weren't working.

"Harper?"

"I'm fine."

"You're crying again."

"I'm going to cry for the entire rest of this trip. Get used to it. It's my new personality." I wiped my eyes. "Your family is insane."

"I know."

"I love them so much."

Cam sat down next to me on her childhood bed, which sank dramatically under the combined weight of two grown women and threatened to fold us both in half.

"They love you," she said. "You know that, right? It's not just because of me. They love you."

"I know." I leaned into her. "Your mother bought a new drawer organizer."

"I was there when she told you, baby."

"She bought a new drawer organizer, Cam. For my clippings."

"I know." Cam pressed her mouth to the top of my head. "She's been planning it since the parade. She called me the next morning to ask what color."

"What color did you say?"

"I said you'd want it tasteful but bold. Probably purple."

I lifted my head and looked at her.

"That's exactly right," I said.

"I know you," Cam said.

She did. She really did.

I changed into my sleep shirt and her socks and tied on my bonnet, and we lay down together in the full-size bed, which was absolutely, categorically not built for a woman who was six foot three, let alone her girlfriend. Cam's feet hung off the end. My elbow was in her ribs. Her knee was somewhere it absolutely should not have been.

"This is the worst bed I've ever been in," I said.

"I know."

"I love it."

"I know that too."

She'd hung her jacket on the back of the desk chair, about four feet from the bed. I watched her glance at it once in the dark. Then twice.

That made fourteen.