Must've Stumbled into Something

Cameron simply just could not believe what Val had done. Two years, and she'd been cheating for most of it? Cam was almost as incensed at himself for not finding out sooner as he was at Valerie for actually cheating. He was distracted and fuming the whole day, and had to keep himself from flat-out punching his own mother in the nose when she asked him to run to the supermarket.

In the car, Cam transitioned from anger to self-pity. Why was it always him with the relationship problems? Sure, Cam knew everyone had breakups and rough times, but why was he the only one he knew that had such awful endings all the time?

The poor checkout woman nearly had the money thrown in her face, and Cam took the change, shoved it in his pocket, and seized the bag from of the counter. On the way out the door, he ran straight into a blonde-haired girl, knocking her straight back against a bunch of shopping carts. He stood up and helped her up, mumbling, "I'm really sorry, I'm just... not having a good day."

She assured him it was okay, shit happened, and he stalked off to his car.

"Shit happens, ha," he snorted as he started the engine. "That's exactly right, a whole lot of shit happens."

Cameron spent the rest of his purely miserable day in his room with his music ear-splittingly loud. His mother didn't even come in and tell him to lower it, a sign to him that she knew something was seriously wrong with him again. He had turned his phone off earlier, and flung it at a pillow on the floor before falling dead asleep.

...

It was, for some reason, really early in the morning when Cam woke up. It was nice, though. He pulled on some clean clothes and walked straight out of the house without eating anything. His mother wasn't even up yet, so it must have been before five thirty. Either way, he didn't bother checking the time.

Cam wandered aimlessly down the streets of his relatively small town. At around six thirty or so, he sat down on a bench in front of a little park on Main Street. After a couple of joggers in need of some looser clothes passed by, he tried to keep his eyes on his lap. He watched feet go be every so often, growing more frequent as time went on. Some were slow, others quicker. One pair of purple flip-flopped and pedicured feet looked hurried, and their owner dropped some kind of paper. He quickly looked up and grabbed the girl's shoulder to stop her, then reached down and picked up the paper.

As he handed it to her, he smiled, recognizing her face framed with shoulder-length blonde hair and bangs across her forehead. "Hey."

"Hey, you're-" she began.

He nodded. "Yeah, sorry about that yesterday."

She sat down next to him, saying, "No problem - my name's Charlotte."

"I'm Cameron - or just Cam."

"Shit still happening?" she asked, smiling.

He laughed his first real laugh in a while. "Yeah, I guess. Just gotta let it go sometimes."

"I know what you mean," she sighed. It looked like a sigh she needed, too.

...

It was a week later. Cam was walking down the street with Charlotte, his arm around her waist.

Finally, he was happy - and this time for real. There was something about Charlotte that he couldn't quite place that made him sure this would be better, something he hadn’t realized was missing before. Whatever it was, it was great, and Cameron almost couldn't believe it was actually happening.

All Cam could really think was what sheer luck he had to have had to plow Charlotte over in the supermarket the week before.