Happily Ever After



  Happily Ever After

  Jenn Faulk

  Copyright © 2015 Jenn Faulk

  All rights reserved.

  Published by Rivulet Publishing

  Cover Photography: Andrey Kiselev

  Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION ®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

  DEDICATION

  To Connor. Sometimes little brothers get to be the biggest heroes.

  For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

  —Romans 8: 38, 39

  YOUTH CAMP

  It had been the most amazing week of her life. Thus far, at least.

  At seventeen, Cammie Evans was a girl with a profound calling. She’d given Jesus her heart at six, had given Him every choice since then, and had, just that week at her last summer of youth camp ever, given Him the future.

  She’d gone forward one night after a foreign missions presentation, committing the rest of her life to service overseas.

  It hadn’t been the first time she’d heard about going to the nations. She’d grown up in one of the biggest churches in the convention, New Life-Dallas, where missionary speakers were familiar faces, the stories they told were thrilling, and the plea at the end of their services was one she could very nearly recite from memory.

  She’d heard it before. It hadn’t ever spoken to her quite like it did that week at youth camp, though.

  For the first time ever, Cammie had heard something different in what was a standard foreign missions presentation. People in a small country she’d never heard of dying without Jesus. The fields being ready for harvest but the workers being few. The authority of Christ, as He called His people to go and make disciples, His command clear as delivered there in the hot summer heat, where teenagers were distracted, sponsors were exhausted, and Cammie’s heart burned within her.

  Because she heard it. Really heard it.

  The words were personal, the instructions were implicit, and the call was clear. She believed it, she was moved by it, and she gave her life to it.

  Foreign missions. Her whole life given overseas. It was thrilling, embracing this as a reality.

  And what made it even more thrilling was the cute guy from Cabin #3 who was similarly called to missions right after the very same presentation. How well had that worked out, right? Cammie had been ecstatic about it, seeing the same excitement in his eyes as they’d both gone forward... noting the smile he’d given her so many times since then. They’d spent every evening after the service talking about what God was doing in their lives and marveling that He was doing the same thing in them both.

  Jeremy Fulton. Missionary in the making. Sigh.

  Cammie could see it now. They would end up together, of course. Promises made during the short week at camp would lead to something substantial, something real, just a few weeks from then, a lifetime ahead...

  Meeting up on weekends home from college. Or even better, going to college together! Seminary, barely scraping by together. Appointment with the mission board. A house in a jungle somewhere. An apartment in a bustling city. Somewhere, together, married and happy. And babies. Loads of babies. Born quickly, one right after another, the whole family a missionary team.

  Her happily ever after.

  Oh, Lord, let it be. Cammie prayed it again and again, even as she made her way to Jeremy that night.

  She had plans to meet him between rec time and dinner, and as she let her mind go wild with all the possibilities that were surely waiting for them just beyond youth camp, she didn’t hear the squeaky voice until it was right over her shoulder.

  “Cammie! Hey, Cammie, wait up!”

  She turned to see who was there and barely refrained from rolling her eyes.

  David Connor.

  Ugh.

  He’d been like her shadow all week. She knew him from church, where his father was the senior pastor. Of the thousands of church members there at youth camp that David could have picked to annoy most regularly, though, he picked Cammie. She was good friends with his sisters, and while he’d been annoying and a nuisance of grand proportions for the majority of her life, he’d gone a step beyond normal those past few months and that past week in particular.

  He’d probably finally hit puberty and had a crush on her. Was probably already imagining them together.

  Ugh. As if.

  Sure enough, as soon as he had her attention, he crossed his scrawny arms over his sweaty t-shirt and said, “What’s up, Cammie?” with a bizarre head nod, the annoying twang of his voice even worse than normal.

  Oh, good grief. Was this his impression of smooth? Jeremy Fulton was worlds beyond this. Because Jeremy Fulton loved the Lord, because he had a heart for the world, and because he was a whole foot taller than David Connor and not a fraction as smelly.

  “David, why are you that sweaty?” she asked, looking down at him and visibly crinkling her nose when she saw the massive sweat stains barely hidden underneath his pitiful biceps.

  “Oh, you know,” he said, trying to make his voice sound deeper… and failing. “From playing some basketball with the guys. Got recruited to play with the older guys. Those dudes are in eleventh grade, Cammie.”

  “And what grade are you in?” she asked, knowing the answer but wanting to hear him say it on the off-chance that he would be shamed by his age and would stop trying to act older than he was.

  “Going into tenth,” he said, not shamed in the slightest. “I’m fifteen. Going to get my license this year. Can take you out on a date, you know… well, if you’ve got a license. Because I can’t legally drive without another driver in the car until my birthday.”

  “Oh, no,” she barely managed, momentarily stunned by this. David Connor. Assuming that she would want to go on a date with him. Not in this universe, not any time in all of eternity –

  “No license, huh?” he sighed. “Well, we can wait until I’m sixteen –”

  “Oh, no, I’ve got a license,” she said, correcting him on this point.

  “Cool,” he said, smiling, his voice squeaking as he was obviously getting very excited, thinking that a license meant she would be seen in public with him. “So, I can pick you up, take you out just as soon as –”

  “Oh, no, you little weirdo,” she said, intent on straightening him out. “We’re not going out. Like, ever, David. In fact, we won’t even be seeing each other after this week. I’m leaving for college.”

  He looked disappointed at this. “Really?”

  “Yeah. Really.”

  “But it’s only the first week of August,” he protested, frowning.

  “Moving into the dorm early,” she muttered. She looked around again for Jeremy. Any moment now, he’d be out here, looking for her, ready to promise her the future she’d been hoping for, ready to be the guy she’d been dreaming of, ready to be her happily ever after–

  “Why do you keep looking around, Cammie?”

  She kept looking, tossing discarded words David’s direction. “I’m looking for someone. And it’s none of your business.”

  “Who are you looking for?”

  The little doofus just wouldn’t take a hint.

  “Good grief, David,” she sighed. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?”

  “No,” he said, smiling. “Got someone else to take care of clean up duty in the cabin for me. Paid him twenty bucks.”

  She glanced at him. “Why would you do that? Do you hate clean up duty that much?”

  “No, I di
d it so I could walk you to dinner. Maybe sit with you in worship later tonight.”

  A mental image of David with his scrawny arm around her popped into her mind.

  No way.

  “I already have someone who I’m going to sit with.”

  “Charity? Hope?” His sisters, her best friends. But no.

  “No. Jeremy Fulton,” she said.

  He looked confused. “Why would you want to sit with him?”

  She gave him a knowing look. “Because.”

  This seemed to wound him. “Oh.”

  And just when she was sure he’d been silenced (at last), he added, with a shrug, “Well, tomorrow morning we can sit together then, huh?”

  She shook her head at his persistence. “No, David. Go away, David. Good bye, David.”

  “Cammie,” he said, almost desperate now, “Jeremy’s really not a serious guy, you know.”

  She frowned at this, at even the suggestion that her future could be anything less than perfect. “What?”

  “Well,” he said, “I mean, I get that you like him probably. Most of the girls here do.”

  They did. Cammie had noticed that, how he’d spent most of the camp with a swarm of girls around him.

  But she was different. He felt something real for her, of course.

  David kept right on talking. “He’s just not all that serious about Jesus. You know?”

  “Plenty serious,” Cammie said. “Called to missions, just this week. Just like me.”

  David’s eyes grew round at this. “Really? Is that why you went down to the front during the invitation on Monday night?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “And that’s why Jeremy did, too. Called to foreign missions. So he’s got it together, you know –”

  “Really?” David asked. “You’re called to missions?”

  “That’s what I said,” she offered, glancing around again.

  “Wow,” David said. “That’s wonderful, Cammie. I can see you doing that. You’ll be perfect for it.”

  And Cammie gave him another look, puzzled by these affirming words that sounded eerily like wisdom, coming from her best friends’ smelly kid brother.

  “Uh... thanks,” she murmured.

  David nodded. “It’s great about you, of course. But Jeremy Fulton...” He shook his head and raised his eyebrows. “Just because he’s going into missions doesn’t mean you should spend all of your time with him, you know.”

  “I’m not spending all of my time with him,” she said irritably. “And if I am? So what? Maybe God intends it, you know.” She smiled at the thought. “Intends for him and me to fall madly in love with one another.”

  “That can’t be,” David said, shaking his head.

  “Oh? And why not?”

  “Because.”

  “Because why, David?” she asked, getting a headache the longer the little snot kept talking.

  “Because God already told me that you’re going to marry me.”

  She frowned at this. He simply smiled.

  Oh, the very thought. Horrific.

  “Shut up.”

  “Okay, so maybe He didn’t –”

  “Goodbye, David.”

  And she left him standing there with his mouth hanging open.

  THE STATES

  Ten Years Later