Wish You Were Mine, Page 3

  The outpouring of love and support they received was enormous. But you can’t make everyone happy, and along with love and support came a few bitter and angry individuals over the years. There will always be eccentric right-wing people and throw-back hippies who think what we do here is a political statement, and make it clear how displeased they are with us.

  There will also always be family members who don’t appreciate the things we provide for their loved ones at Camp Rylan, no matter how much it benefits everyone. Not only do we provide a safe and happy place for children of military personnel, whether they are deployed, wounded, or deceased, but we also provide counseling as well. Over the years, we’ve had a few people, after participating in the counseling we provided, decide to make changes, which sometimes meant parting ways with their spouse or loved one, just like Amelia did with her husband.

  Sometimes those decisions aren’t taken very well by all the parties involved. People get angry. People get upset. People want someone to blame. I try not to let the angry letters, e-mails, and phone calls we receive bother me, because I know how much those people are hurting. I know how hard it is for them to go off and fight a war and then come home and realize nothing will ever be the same again. I grew up in a very loving household, but my parents never sheltered me from the PTSD my father went through and continues to struggle with to this day. Even though he got better, he still has hard times every once in a while. There are still sleepless nights, or nights he wakes up screaming from a nightmare. I can relate to all of the campers on a personal level, which makes it so much harder to handle when someone doesn’t take the advice we give, or doesn’t believe in what we do.

  But I know the good always outweighs the bad in the end, and the thankful and appreciative messages we receive are always far more numerous than the nasty ones.

  Aiden used to always tell me this was a thankless, depressing job and he never understood how I handled it day in and day out. He would always joke that he made more than enough money and he would happily share it with me so I could be a woman of leisure and do something fun with my life instead of something he thought was depressing.

  My eyes flit over to a framed picture of him on the corner of my desk, and it’s a struggle to keep myself in check and not break down in tears. With my hands in my lap, I fiddle with the ring that Aiden gave me. I should have probably put it away in a jewelry box after he died. It was too flashy and not really my style, but I wore it for him, because he gave it to me. I refuse to take it off now because looking down at it and touching it make me feel closer to him.

  Amelia sees what I’m looking at, gently picks up the black frame, and turns it to face her, looking down at the photo with a smile.

  “You guys were just babies in this picture. What were you, like ten or eleven?” she asks.

  “Twelve,” I immediately reply, my voice cracking with emotion. “The boys were fifteen.”

  I can’t even bring myself to say their names out loud. It’s been nine months since Aiden died. The pain isn’t as acute as it once was, but it’s still there, hovering under the surface whenever I think of him. It still hurts that he’s gone and left me here alone.

  Aiden was the one person I could always count on to be here for me, and now he’s gone and I’ll never have that again.

  “Look at that smirk on Aiden’s face. Such a cocky little shit, even as a teenager,” Amelia laughs.

  I laugh along with her, having been the recipient of that smirk many times over the years and knowing exactly what Amelia means. Aiden was always so sure of himself. So sure of his life and the world around him, and he didn’t care what anyone thought of him. He thought very highly of himself and that’s all that mattered. It came off as snobby and arrogant to most, but to those who really knew him, it was just Aiden. Underneath all that confidence was a guy with a big heart who loved his friends and would do anything for them.

  My eyes start to fill with tears when I think about the fact that I’ll never see that damn smirk again. I’ll never listen to him joke about how good he looked or listen to him brag about how much money he made in commissions that month. He’ll never cheer me up by being so much of a pompous idiot that it always made me laugh. He’ll never go out of his way to be the best friend he possibly could, always knowing there was something missing and a hole in my heart that nothing could fix, no matter how hard he tried. He did whatever he could to help me forget that one of the Three Musketeers was missing and that made everything feel off and wrong. Since he died, every sad moment has been amplified and made worse because Everett isn’t here to talk to about it. Every happy moment has been tinged with the sting of regret that Everett wasn’t here to experience it with me.

  “Whenever I saw you and Aiden together, I had all sorts of daydreams about the beautiful babies you’d make together. He was such a cutie with that cocky smirk and sense of humor,” Amelia says with a shake of her head as she continues to stare at the photo.

  “Yeah, well, you never saw Everett in person,” I mutter, wanting to take the words back as soon as they leave my mouth.

  It feels like a slap in the face to Aiden’s memory thinking about how much hotter Everett was to me than Aiden. Where Aiden always felt safe and like coming home whenever I looked at him, Everett always made me feel the exact opposite. Like I needed to fan my face and cross my legs together tightly.

  “Jesus, Everett was a hottie even at fifteen. I feel really dirty right now. But from what you and Aiden both told me about him over the years, he was too much of a bad boy, too broody, and too much of a jerk. Makes sense since he hasn’t given a shit about you or given you a second thought in four years. I know you told me you used to have a crush on Everett back then, but Aiden was clearly the much better choice,” Amelia mutters, setting the picture back on top of my desk and turning it back around to face me.

  I don’t want to look, but I can’t help myself. My eyes automatically go to the boy standing on the opposite side of me in the photo. Aiden and Everett both had short brown hair and they both stood around the same height, at least a head taller than me in the photo since I was three years younger than them.

  They were similar in looks back then, but where Aiden was always laughing and happy, Everett’s smile never quite reached his eyes in all the years I’d known him. It was always a lot of work to even coax a smile from him and almost impossible to pull out a laugh. Amelia’s right. He was broody and he was a bad boy, but he wasn’t a jerk when we were kids, at least not around me. Maybe that’s why I was so drawn to him when we were little. I wanted to fix him. I wanted to make him smile and I wanted to make him laugh. I wanted to be the one to take away the pain of losing his father at such a young age, and having to live with a mother who stopped caring about him and his brother after her husband died. I spent too many years chasing after a dream, and wishing on stars for something that, in the end, was a huge waste of time. Everett never wanted my help. He never wanted to be fixed and he never wanted me.

  Almost five years he’s been gone. All these years without an e-mail or a phone call. Nothing. I’ve blamed myself all these years because maybe I should’ve asked him to stay the night before he left for his assignment overseas. Maybe I made it seem that we didn’t need him, that we’d be fine without him, that we’d forget about him, so he decided to push us away first. I blamed myself because not only did I lose him, but Aiden lost him as well because of what I’d done.

  But then I found out he hadn’t ignored both of us. I found out a few weeks before Aiden died that he still e-mailed Aiden when he could, and he still called him when he had time. It was just me he left behind. Just me he didn’t give a shit about throwing away after twenty-plus years of friendship. Just me he didn’t care about.

  It pissed me off and it hurt. Aiden’s been dead for nine months and I’m sad and I miss him every day. Everett’s been out of my life for almost five years and I hate that it hurts more. I hate that I miss him more. I hate that I feel like I’m tarnishing
Aiden’s memory by being sadder about a man who just doesn’t give a shit about me. A man who I thought was my best friend, who I wished on entirely too many stars that someday he’d be more until I finally had to give up and move on with my life.

  “I hate to bring the mood down in here even more, but have you talked to your parents yet?” Amelia asks, pulling me out of my depressing thoughts and my eyes away from that damn photo.

  “No, not aside from the usual ‘How are things going?’ phone calls every couple of days. I can’t tell them the extent of the problems, Amelia, not yet. This camp is their entire life. Their dream. I can’t bring myself to tell them we might have to close after this summer session. I can’t break their hearts right now when I finally managed to get them out of town two days ago and take a real vacation for the first time in forever,” I tell her with a sigh as I start opening the stack of bills in front of me that I’ve been avoiding for a week.

  Camp Rylan has always been free for participants since the doors opened. My parents wouldn’t even hear of making people pay for their children to escape real life for a while and be with other children who understood all the struggles they were going through. With generous donations and grants from individuals and corporations, along with the huge charity function I throw here before the start of every summer session, we’ve never had any problems getting everything we need to make this camp run smoothly. Unfortunately, our biggest benefactor, the one who has almost single-handedly kept Camp Rylan open for twenty-seven years with his yearly donation, recently passed away and his remaining family members are cold-hearted assholes who have cut off all of his charitable donations. Jack Alexander, the founder and CEO of one of the largest car manufacturing plants in the United States, was like family to us. He never had one of his assistants mail in his yearly donation. He’d get in a car and drive himself out here on his own, all the way from New York every summer, to attend the charity function and present us with the check. He would be rolling over in his grave right now if he knew what his family had done.

  “I’m hoping I can figure something out before they come home for the charity gala next month. I have a few phone calls out to some companies, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I hear something soon. There’s one guy who actually replied right away to my e-mail. I’ve done some research on him, and he’s a little weird and has a lot of strict rules about who he gives his money to. My parents would need to be here since he only gives his money to happily married couples who run nonprofit organizations. I’m hoping he’ll be my last resort and I won’t have to involve them, but just in case, I told him the earliest we could meet would be the weekend of the charity dinner, and I confirmed the date and time with him. I can always cancel if we find something else in the meantime,” I explain to Amelia.

  If I’m being honest, even with the charity event, the assistance from the government, and the other miscellaneous donations we get throughout the year, it’s not enough to run a camp like this on a plantation this size. All of those things added up would barely cover the cost of electricity and pay for everyone’s salary who works here. We’ve relied on Jack’s donation for years and now I need to find someone as amazing and kindhearted as he was, but it’s like finding a needle in a haystack at this point. Even the money Aiden left to the camp after he died, every penny he’d ever saved, didn’t put a dent in our mounting debt. I’ve contemplated asking Aiden’s parents for help, but I don’t want to put them in an uncomfortable position of feeling like they have to do something like this. They moved away after Aiden died, unable to handle the memories here in Charleston, and I don’t want to add to their grief by letting them know the money their son left me wasn’t enough. I’ve gone beyond the point of being worried and am now in full-blown panic mode.

  I practically begged my parents to transition everything over to me after Aiden died. They were planning on doing it in time, but I needed something else to focus on after he was gone. I needed something else to occupy my thoughts other than missing him. When they finally relented and passed the torch to me, I wouldn’t take anything less than total control. Of the camp, of the decisions, and of the money. They know that with Jack dying we’re struggling, but I’ve managed to keep them in the dark about just how much. I refuse to let my parents down. I refuse to let the children and the families who come to this camp down. I grew up here, I met Aiden and Everett here, and all of my best childhood memories are wrapped up in this place. I refuse to let thoughts of Everett Southerland mess with my head and my heart when I have something much more important to worry about. He’s a part of my past that I need to let go of, no matter how much it hurts.

  No matter how much my heart breaks that I didn’t lose just one of my best friends, I lost them both. And I’ll never get either one of them back.

  Chapter 4

  Cameron

  Wishing in the past…

  Twelve years old

  Wiping my sweaty palms down the skirt of my dress, I take a deep breath as I break through the clearing in the woods that leads to our meeting spot. I lift my chin and pretend like it’s not totally weird that I’m wearing a dress. My legs feel naked without the dirty jeans with holes in the knees that I always wear when we hang out, and I force myself not to think about all of the bruises on them from tripping during our basketball game the other day or all the scrapes and scars from years of climbing trees and being one of the boys.

  I want to look pretty today. I want him to think of me like an actual girl instead of a tomboy. When I asked my mom if she could take me to the mall yesterday to buy this dress, she couldn’t hide the look of shock on her face. She did, however, give me a wink and say something about me wanting to look nice all of a sudden. She’s always making comments about how sweet Aiden is and how cute he is. She couldn’t be more obvious if she tried. Everyone loves Aiden, but that’s only because he lives close by and comes from a good, happy home, just like ours. Everett’s home life is anything but good and happy, and my parents just didn’t understand him. They think because of the trouble he gets into at home, that he’ll be a bad influence on me, but they couldn’t be more wrong. He’s just as sweet as Aiden when he’s here with us in the summer; they just never see it.

  I kept my mouth shut and smiled and nodded when my mother droned on and on about how wonderful Aiden is, because at least she didn’t laugh at me or tease me about wanting to dress up. I’m so afraid Everett will laugh at me that I almost want to turn around and run back to the house to change into jeans and a T-shirt.

  Please, God, don’t let him laugh at me.

  As soon as I get to the base of the treehouse, where Everett is sitting on a large rock waiting for me, he looks up from the ground and his eyes widen in shock. I paste a smile on my face and try not to let the butterflies flapping around in my stomach force up this morning’s breakfast as I continue walking toward him.

  I don’t even know when I started thinking my best friend was the cutest boy I’d ever seen. It was like one day, I just woke up and started feeling funny whenever we were together. I stuttered over my words when I talked to him and I giggled like all those idiot girls at school who have a crush on a boy. The worst part is that now I can’t even stop myself from doing it. After years of having him for a friend, playing with him, and hanging out every summer, not caring what I looked like or acted like in front of him, Everett suddenly made me nervous whenever we were together. I don’t know why I’m not nervous around Aiden. He’s almost as cute as Everett. But I don’t care what Aiden thinks of me and I don’t care if I make a fool of myself in front of him. He’s just Aiden.

  Everett’s wide eyes are glued to me without saying a word and I almost wish things could go back to normal. I almost wish Everett could go back to just being Everett.

  After a few moments of me standing here awkwardly in front of him, instead of tugging the skirt of my dress down or fiddling with the curls my mom helped me add to my long strawberry blond hair this morning, I put my hands on my hips
and glare at the boy in front of me.

  “What are you staring at?” I ask in annoyance.

  Everett finally blinks and clears his throat.

  “You’re wearing a dress,” he states.

  I sigh, wishing he would have said something a little more flattering, but I guess it’s better than him pointing and laughing at me.

  “Yeah, so?”

  “And you don’t have hay in your hair,” he adds, one corner of his mouth finally tipping up into a smile and forcing one of those totally cute dimples out. “You look really pretty.”

  The annoying giggle comes out before I can stop it, but I quickly clamp my mouth closed and lick my lips nervously.

  “Um, thanks. You know, it’s a special occasion and all, so I thought I’d do something different.”

  Everett finally stands up and I have to tip my head back to look up at him. When he turned fifteen a few months ago, he suddenly shot up in height until he was almost a whole head taller than me.

  “It’s not every day you turn twelve,” he replies, pulling a six-pack of Grape Crush in glass bottles out from behind his back and holding them up. “I’ve got our birthday drinks. Hopefully Aiden gets here soon with the food. I’m starving.”

  Every summer since the three of us became friends, we have a special birthday tradition that I put into place when I found out Aiden and I shared summer birthdays. At the time, Aiden and I only saw Everett when he came to stay with his grandma during the summer and she brought him to camp. It always made me sad that we never got to see him the rest of the year or celebrate his birthday with him, so I made sure we did something extra special to celebrate by appointing July Fourth as Everett’s “summer birthday.” On each of our birthdays, three separate times every year, we always come out here to the treehouse and have our own birthday celebration separate from the ones we have with our families.