Unexpected

“You look great,” Cam smiled as I walked into Red Lobster, my silver heels clacking against the floor. It was slightly embarrassing, since I wasn’t one for being noticed, and a couple of people were looking out of the corners of their eyes for the girl who was making such a ruckus.

Thankfully, I wasn’t the only one who had dressed up for the occasion. Cam was wearing a light blue button down, turning his eyes blue, and black slacks. He looked quite awesome.

“You don’t look half-bad yourself,” I replied before glancing at the clock. Was I late? Cam was usually late for everything.

But surely enough, it was seven o’clock on the dot. Punctuality was very important for me. The one time I was ever late for something (my father’s birthday party, two years ago), my mom had chewed me out in front of everybody. It wasn’t my fault, since my train was late, but it didn’t matter. Mom was the controlling type, so if anything went wrong, she would lash out at them.

“Don’t worry,” he chuckled, “you’re perfectly on time. I, for once, was early.”

I gasped mockingly. “You don’t say!”

“Waking up early for all those classes made me more aware of how late I was for everything. Professors don’t really like it when you waltz into class late, though they pretend they don’t notice. One professor told me that I was wasting my parents’ money by not taking advantages of the classes.”

“I see. So college improved you in one way,” I joked. We got seated at our table and received our menus. I wasn’t really sure what to drink, but eventually just decided on a Diet Coke. Then…I had to decide what I was going to eat…

When I looked back up, Cam was staring at me. I couldn’t help myself from blushing. “What?”

“Nothing. Just…thinking about how weird it is to see you again. I never thought that I’d be back on the east coast. I never thought I’d say that I missed it, but I actually did.”

“Missed the hustle and bustle of everyone running around to get stuff done?” I asked.

Before Cam could answer, our waiter came over and asked us what we wanted to drink after apologizing for interrupting us.

“Don’t worry about it,” I assured him. “Um, I’ll have a Diet Coke, please.”

“Same,” Cam chirped. The waiter nodded, scribbling down our orders, before walking back toward the kitchen.

“So what were we saying?” I wondered aloud. My mind had completely forgotten what had happened before taking our drink orders, and from the look on Cam’s face, he had, too.

“I don’t know…” he trailed off, squinting his eyes as he concentrated.

“Oh, I remember,” I laughed. “You were talking about how much you missed me when you went to California.” Okay, so slight lie, but who was it hurting?

“Who said I missed you?” he winked. “I just missed how everyone’s always rushing to get stuff done on the east coast. Everyone’s too laid back in California.”

“And that’s why the second you get settled in, you find me, right?” I teased.

He didn’t really have an answer for that. “Alright, alright. I missed you. Happy now?”

“Elated,” I said truthfully. I worked hard to keep my smile in check and not let it do that creepy Cheshire Cat thing. That would not be attractive.

In the moment of silence, I smoothed the bottom of my dress, trying to find another conversation starter. I could ask him just how hard Stanford was, but I figured that could be pretty tactless. He did drop out, after all.

“So how has your life been going?” Cam started. I let out a sigh of relief, thankful that I didn’t have to worry about what else to say.

“Still going after that writing career,” I shrugged. “I write nights and whenever I’m not working.”

“Holy shit. How many books have you finished?” In high school, Cam had been the one that read all of my books and critiqued them. What I loved the most was that he was honest. If he thought a plot went too quickly or too slowly, he’d tell me. He even told me a couple times that my stories were flat-out boring. But toward the end of school, I won him over, and he started to enjoy my writing.

My face flamed as I looked at the table and mumbled, “Uh…five or six. Since we graduated.”

“Have you sent any into publishers?”

“Um…no.”

“Why not? They could be published and you could quit your job. Well, if they make enough money.”

“That’s just it,” I sighed. “Writing is not a reliable job, and I’m afraid that if I get a single book published, it’ll go to my head. And what if I get disappointed? What if not a single person bought a book?”

“I’d buy one,” he promised. “Maybe we should go back to your place after this and I could read some of them?”

“Sure,” I smiled. I could also avoid Tory hitting on Cam or giving me the third degree about who he was because she had gone out with her boyfriend and she always slept over his house when she did that.

We ordered our food then, and got it about twenty minutes later or so. Though I was not a huge fan of seafood, it was good.

Throughout the dinner, we talked lightly about various subjects. I found out that most of the time he was at Stanford, he went out with a small brunette named Whitney. “She was hot,” he informed me, “but not the brightest bulb, you know?”

“It happens,” I replied.

Then, as the conversation inevitably had to go, it turned on me. “So what boyfriends have you had?” I bit my lip, and he rolled his eyes. “Don’t even tell me that you haven’t gone out with anyone since Steve the end of senior year. You guys didn’t even last a month and a half.”

Another blush filled my face. “Then I won’t tell you anything.”

“Oh, come on, Layla. A gorgeous girl like you hasn’t had a date in three years?”

“I would appreciate that a lot if you didn’t say that so loudly,” I snapped at him. Wait…he called me gorgeous?!

“You know I’m just…kinda shocked.” His tone went from light, as if he was trying to joke, to serious. It was a pretty strange sentence.

“It’s not that weird. I’ve never really liked socializing. I don’t give people a chance to get to know me.”

“That’s true,” he agreed. The waiter came over with our bill, assuring us that would could take our time.

Cam immediately pulled out his wallet, but I stopped him. “My treat,” I insisted. “Consider it a welcome-back-to-the-city present.”

“I can’t argue with a free dinner,” he smiled. I threw some money from my purse onto the table, including tip.

“You ready to go?” I questioned, standing up and smoothing down the back of my dress, making sure that it hadn’t folded up or anything.

“Yeah,” he agreed. With that, we walked out of the restaurant and stepped into the cold night.