Before I Let Go

Part One: The Good Years

CAMERON

Charleston, South Carolina | Saturday, July 15, 2017

The first mistake I made that night was drinking a Trash Can.

The second was drinking another one.

The third was walking up to the prettiest woman I'd seen in Charleston with enough information about her personal life to qualify as a background check.

In my defense, I was twenty-one.

That doesn't excuse anything. I just think it's important to establish that my frontal lobe was still under construction, and nobody had bothered to put up the orange cones.

⸻

"Cameron, if you don't get your ass up, I'm leaving you."

I looked at the clock on my phone. 9:47.

Then I looked at Simone, who had been threatening to leave me for forty-five minutes. She was standing in front of my mirror in a dress she'd changed three times, putting on lip gloss like it had personally wronged her.

"Okay," I said.

She stopped. "Okay?"

"Yeah. Go ahead."

"You not coming?"

"Not with that attitude."

She turned around so fast I thought she might pull something.

"Girl, I swear to God."

I laughed and went back to tying my shoes.

Simone and I had met at basic, in Texas, three years earlier. Eighteen years old, both of us. We'd been chapel guides together, which meant we spent Sunday mornings handing out programs and folding chairs, and the rest of our free time saying things that would've made the chaplain reconsider our qualifications.

By some miracle of the Air Force personnel system, we'd both ended up in Charleston. She'd gotten here first. She'd taken it upon herself to introduce me to everybody on base worth knowing.

And several people who weren't.

"Who all going?" I asked.

"Everybody."

"That's not a name."

"Marcus, Eli, Darnell, Zay. Probably some people from Finance."

I finished tying my shoe.

Slowly.

"Finance?"

Simone didn't turn around. But I saw her smile in the mirror.

"Here we go."

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Why you smiling?"

"Because I know you."

"You don't know me."

"I know you better than you know yourself."

"That's a bold statement from somebody who lost her military ID twice in one month."

"One time."

"Twice."

"The second time it was in my car."

"Which you couldn't find. In a parking lot. That had four cars in it."

She threw a makeup sponge at me. I caught it.

"Anyway," she said. "Remember that girl I told you about?"

I wasn't particularly invested in the conversation up to that point.

I was now.

"What girl?"

"The one from Maryland."

"Which one?"

Simone turned around.

"Cam."

"What?"

"You know exactly which one."

I shrugged. She stared at me. I stared back.

"Jade," she finally said.

"Oh."

Simone started laughing.

"Oh?"

"You said a name. I acknowledged it."

"You been asking about that girl for two weeks."

"That is a lie."

"Cameron."

"A gross exaggeration."

"CAMERON."

"Okay. Maybe I asked a couple times. Damn."

I had.

I'd seen her once. Two weeks earlier, at the shoppette on base, in line in front of me with a bottle of water and a bag of Hot Cheetos and her uniform still on. She'd dropped her change. I'd picked up a quarter that rolled toward my boot. She'd said thank you without really looking at me, and taken it, and left.

That was it. That was the whole interaction.

I'd asked Simone about her that night.

And the next day.

And a few more times after that, casually, in a way I'd thought was very subtle.

Simone had told me everything. Simone told everybody everything. That was her love language and her greatest character flaw.

Jade Monroe. Twenty-one. From Baltimore. Finance. Just got to Charleston in July. Birthday in December, three days before Christmas, which she apparently hated.

I'd filed all of it away.

I didn't know yet that I was building a case against myself.

"Well," Simone said, "she's coming tonight."

I looked down at my shoes.

Then back up.

"Word?"

Simone nearly dropped her lip gloss.

"WORD?"

"Why you repeating everything I say?"

"Because you sound stupid!"

I stood up. Grabbed my keys off the dresser.

"I'm just asking."

"Uh-huh."

"People can't ask questions?"

"Not like that. You asked like somebody just told you you won the lottery."

I opened the door. "You coming or not?"

She grabbed her purse. Then stopped me in the hallway with one hand on my arm.

"Cam."

"What?"

"Be normal tonight."

I looked at her. "Why wouldn't I be normal?"

She gave me a look like she'd been waiting her entire life for me to ask.

"Remember the girl at the Fourth of July cookout?"

"No."

"Yes, you do."

"Unfortunately, I don't."

"You told her you could make potato salad better than her grandmother."

I grinned. "I stand by that."

"You've never met that woman's grandmother!"

"Then her grandmother should've been there to defend herself."

Simone doubled over in the hallway.

"Please," she said, wiping her eyes. "Please don't embarrass me."

I smiled.

"Have I ever?"

She didn't answer.

Which was disrespectful.

⸻

We took my truck.

I want to tell you about my truck, because it matters, and because it's going to be in almost every part of this story whether I like it or not.

It's a 1978 Ford Bronco. Black. Chrome bumpers. Seats the color of peanut butter, real leather, cracked in two places on the driver's side. A three-speed that grinds going into second if you rush it. An AM/FM radio and a cassette deck I'd rigged with an adapter so my phone could play through it, mostly.

It was my daddy's.

He bought it in 1991, before I was born, from a man in Gonzales who was moving to Houston and didn't want to drive it that far. He spent four years fixing it up in my grandparents' driveway. He drove it to the hospital the night I was born. He drove me to school in it every morning until I was fourteen.

He died when I was fourteen.

I'm not going to get into that yet. It's not that kind of chapter.

I'll just say the truck came to me, and I took care of it the way he'd taught me to. Oil every three thousand miles. Leather conditioner on the seats every spring and fall. Never let anybody else drive it.

Simone had been asking to drive it for three years.

The answer was still no.

"I'm just saying," she said, climbing into the passenger seat. "If you drink tonight, somebody gotta drive this thing home."

"I'll Uber."

"And leave your baby in a club parking lot?"

I started the engine. Low. Rumbling. A little rough on the idle until it warmed up.

"If I have to."

Simone looked at me sideways.

"You've never left this truck anywhere in your life."

"There's a first time for everything."

I'd find out later that night what kind of first times I was in for.

The truck wasn't one of them.

⸻

Charleston in July was hot in a way that felt personal.

Not regular hot. Not the kind where you complained a little and moved on with your day. Charleston humidity wrapped itself around your whole body and followed you everywhere, determined to remind you that somebody had built a city on top of a swamp and called it a good idea.

I was from Louisiana. I knew swamps.

Still. Disrespectful.

By the time we made it inside the club, the air-conditioning had become my favorite person in the building.

The music was loud enough to rattle my teeth. Colored lights swept across the dance floor. The whole place smelled like perfume and liquor and hookah smoke, sweet and heavy.

Somebody was arguing near the door.

Somebody else was already crying.

It wasn't even eleven.

Promising.

"CAM!"

Marcus. Standing by a high-top with a drink in his hand, looking entirely too pleased with himself. We slapped hands. He pulled me into a quick hug.

Marcus was one of those people who could turn a trip to the gas station into a social event. He knew everybody. Had an opinion about everything. And somehow always convinced somebody else to pay for his food.

Eli was next to him, laughing at something on his phone. Darnell was talking to two women by the dance floor with a confidence he had not earned. And Zay was doing what Zay did best.

Nothing.

"Where the hell y'all been?" Marcus said.

"Getting ready," Simone said.

"Since six?"

"Looking this good takes time."

Marcus looked at me. "What's your excuse?"

"Your mama."

He almost dropped his drink.

We were a collection of young airmen who'd figured out that being stationed far from home was a whole lot more fun when you surrounded yourself with people who made questionable decisions. Louisiana. Maryland. Ohio. Alabama. Mississippi. Georgia. Arkansas. Illinois. Logistics, finance, transportation, civil engineering, maintenance. Some of us worked days. Some worked nights. Somebody was always either getting off work, going to work, or trying to remember what day it was.

Getting all of us in one place required a level of coordination the Air Force would've appreciated if we'd ever applied it to anything productive.

But when the schedules lined up?

Oh, we were outside.

That night, I had no intention of doing anything memorable. I was going to drink, dance, laugh with my friends, and go home.

Simple.

Then Simone grabbed my arm.

"Come here."

"Where?"

"Just come on."

"Why you always dragging me places?"

"Because you move slow."

"I do not move slow."

"You literally just stopped walking to argue with me about walking."

I opened my mouth. Closed it.

She had me there.

⸻

We moved through the crowd toward a group of women on the far side of the dance floor.

And that's when I saw her.

I'd seen her before. In line at the shoppette, in uniform, with Hot Cheetos.

This was not the same thing.

She was laughing.

That was the first thing I noticed. Not her clothes. Not her body. Not even her face, although God had very clearly taken His time with that.

Her laugh.

Head tipped back a little. One hand pressed flat against her chest. Like whatever her friend had just said was the funniest thing anybody had ever said in the history of the world, and she couldn't hold it in, and she didn't want to.

Curls framing her face. Skin glowing under the club lights. Gold hoops.

And then she turned toward us.

And I got a real look at her eyes.

Well.

Shit.

Simone leaned in. "That's Jade."

I swallowed. "Yeah. I figured."

"You good?"

"Why wouldn't I be?"

"Because you just stopped walking. Again."

"I was observing."

"Observing what?"

"The environment."

Simone laughed so hard she almost tripped over somebody's purse.

"Girl. Get your ass over here."

⸻

Introductions are supposed to be simple.

Somebody says your name. You say hello. Maybe a handshake, maybe a hug. Then everybody moves on with their lives.

I knew this. I'd done it hundreds of times. I'd survived basic training and tech school. I could talk to a full-bird colonel without embarrassing myself. I could walk into a room full of strangers and walk out with three new friends and somebody's grandmother's phone number.

None of those skills transferred to Jade Monroe.

"Jade," Simone said. "This is my girl, Cameron."

Jade turned toward me.

"Hey."

She smiled.

I smiled back.

"Hey."

Excellent. Strong opening. Very conversational.

Simone looked between us. "Cam works in logistics."

"Oh, okay," Jade said. "How long you been here?"

A question. A real question. With an answer I knew.

"Since October."

"Last October?"

"Yeah."

"So you're still kind of new too."

"Yeah."

She nodded.

I nodded.

And then we stood there.

Smiling.

At each other.

For absolutely no reason.

Beside me, Simone made a noise. I didn't look at her. If I looked at her, I was going to have to fight her, and I didn't want to get thrown out before eleven.

Jade's smile got a little wider.

"You having fun tonight?"

"Yeah."

"Good."

"You?"

"Yeah."

I was killing it.

One of Jade's friends tapped her shoulder and said something in her ear, and she turned away. The second she did, Simone grabbed my wrist so hard I thought she was taking my pulse.

"CAMERON."

"What?"

"WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?"

"Nothing!"

"You know any other words besides yeah?"

"Shut up."

"You just stood there!"

"I was being respectful!"

"Respectful? You looked like you were waiting for her to approve your leave!"

I snatched my arm back.

"Man, I need a drink."

⸻

The first Trash Can went down entirely too easily.

Blue liquor, ice, and a can of Red Bull upside down in the cup.

A masterpiece of poor judgment.

I took a long sip and looked at the dance floor. Jade was out there with her friends. Simone followed my eyes.

"Go talk to her."

"I did."

"You said four words."

"Quality over quantity."

"You like her."

I took another sip.

"She cool."

Simone stared at me. "You talked to her for thirty seconds."

"And she seemed cool."

She smiled. The bad one.

"Okay. Whatever you say."

I hated when she did that.

The problem was, Jade really did seem cool. And pretty. Unreasonably pretty. The kind of pretty that made me wonder if I should've worn a different shirt.

Which was stupid. I liked my shirt. I'd picked it myself. I looked good. I knew I looked good.

So why was I standing at the bar wondering if she thought so?

Disgusting behavior.

I ordered another drink.

⸻

Around eleven-thirty, the DJ did something I didn't expect.

He'd been playing everything you'd expect. Whatever was on the radio that summer, then some throwbacks, then something that made the whole floor jump.

And then, out of nowhere, he dropped the beat out, and I heard the first few notes of a song I'd know anywhere.

Frankie Beverly. Maze.

"Before I Let Go."

The whole club lost its mind.

That's the thing about that song. Every Black person in America over the age of four knows it. It's the end of every cookout. Every family reunion. Every wedding reception where somebody's uncle has had too much and decides it's time to teach the young people how to really dance. The DJ plays it, and all of a sudden everybody's in a line, everybody's clapping on two and four, everybody's singing.

But I didn't just know it.

I knew it.

My daddy had a record. Live in New Orleans. 1981. He played it every Saturday morning in my grandparents' kitchen while my grandmother made breakfast and he sat at the table cleaning his fishing reels. He played it in the truck with the windows down. He played it so many times the record had a skip in it, two-thirds of the way through the second side, and to this day, when I hear the song anywhere, my brain still expects the skip, and I still sing through it the way he taught me.

I hadn't heard it in a club before.

I put my drink down on the nearest flat surface.

And I sang.

Every word. Every ad-lib. Every little background part nobody else knows. Frankie's voice and the backup singers and the part near the end where the band drops out and it's just the crowd. I sang the whole thing, eyes closed half the time, with the club lights going and Simone next to me laughing and singing too, and Marcus doing a dance he'd invented that had no name and should never be repeated.

I wasn't thinking about Jade.

I swear to God, for four minutes, I wasn't thinking about anything.

I was fourteen in my grandparents' kitchen with the smell of biscuits and the sound of a record with a skip in it.

When the song ended, I opened my eyes.

And Jade Monroe was standing at the edge of the dance floor, ten feet away, looking straight at me.

She wasn't laughing.

She was just looking.

Like she'd been watching the whole time.

Then the DJ dropped something loud and fast, and the floor started jumping again, and she turned back to her friends.

I picked my drink back up.

My hand wasn't totally steady.

I told myself it was the Trash Can.

⸻

Twenty minutes later, Jade Monroe danced in front of me.

I noticed her before I noticed anything else. She came through the crowd with her friends, laughing at something, and ended up right in front of me on the floor. She glanced back over her shoulder.

Smiled.

And started dancing.

With me.

Now. I would love to tell you I handled this with the smooth confidence of a grown woman who had successfully flirted before.

And on the outside? I did. Contrary to whatever Simone tells people, I can dance. I moved with her. Matched her rhythm. When she leaned back against me, my hand found her waist like it already knew where it was going. When she shifted, I followed.

Easy. Natural. The kind of thing I didn't have to think about.

Until she turned her head and smiled at me.

Then I started thinking about everything.

Why does she smell like that.

Do not say that out loud.

Cameron Louise Hayes, do NOT say that out loud.

She turned around to face me. Still moving to the music. Close enough that I could see the little gold studs in her ears behind the hoops, three of them, climbing up.

"You always this quiet?" she said. Loud, over the bass.

I laughed. "I'm not quiet."

"You've barely said anything to me."

"I'm letting you enjoy your night."

She raised an eyebrow. "Oh, really."

"Yeah."

"How considerate."

"That's me."

There it was. That little teasing look. Like she knew exactly what she was doing and was waiting to see if I did.

I leaned closer. "You making fun of me?"

"Would I do that?"

"Absolutely."

She laughed. "Then I guess you already know me."

I grinned.

Finally. A real conversation. A little back and forth. Something that sounded like flirting if you squinted.

Maybe I'd been nervous for nothing.

Then she leaned in and said, "I'll be right back," and nodded toward the hallway where the bathrooms were.

And I made the decision that would follow me for the rest of my natural life.

I followed her.

Not into the bathroom. I wasn't completely out of my mind.

But the hallway would be quieter. A chance to talk without screaming over the bass. A chance to show her I was actually charming. A chance to recover from yeah and yeah and yeah.

In theory, it was a solid plan.

In practice?

Jesus Christ.

⸻

"Hey. Jade."

She turned around in the hallway. Under a buzzing red exit sign, by a pay phone that hadn't worked since 2003.

"Oh. Hey."

"Can I talk to you real quick?"

"Yeah. What's up?"

There it was. My moment.

No Simone. No bass. No Marcus doing his unnamed dance. Just me and a beautiful woman who had willingly stopped walking to listen to me.

All I had to do was say something charming.

Instead, my brain opened a filing cabinet.

"So you're from Maryland, right?"

Jade blinked. "Yeah."

"Baltimore."

"...Yeah."

"Okay. Cool. And you just got here? This month?"

"Earlier this month. Yeah."

"Right. Right."

I nodded.

She nodded.

And I kept going. God help me, I kept going.

"You're twenty-one."

Her smile faltered. Just a little. "Yeah?"

"And you're in Finance."

"...Yeah."

"And your birthday's in December."

Now she was looking at me differently.

Not scared. Not exactly. More like she was trying to figure out whether she'd accidentally wandered into an interrogation room and somebody was about to turn off the camera.

"How do you know my birthday?"

I should've stopped.

I know that now.

At the time, I took her question as an invitation to explain myself. Which was unfortunate.

"Oh, Simone told me."

Jade looked toward the dance floor. Then back at me.

"Okay."

"Three days before Christmas."

"...Okay."

"Which, she said you hate. Because people combine your presents."

Silence.

Beautiful. Devastating. Silence.

Under the buzzing exit sign. By the dead pay phone.

I could practically hear my ancestors gathering in a conference room somewhere to discuss what had gone wrong with my line.

Jade pressed her lips together. I couldn't tell if she was trying not to laugh or trying to figure out the fastest route back to her friends.

Probably both.

"So," she said.

"So."

She glanced at the bathroom door. "I was actually about to—"

"Right. Yeah. My bad."

"No, you're good."

"Okay."

"Okay."

She smiled. Politely.

And walked away.

I stood there. Alone. In the hallway. Under the exit sign.

With the slow, horrifying realization that I'd just walked up to a woman I was interested in and read her own file back to her.

Like a cop.

A drunk cop.

A drunk cop with no probable cause and no warrant.

I closed my eyes.

"Goddammit."

⸻

Simone knew the second I came back.

She looked at me. Then at the hallway. Then at me.

"What'd you do?"

"Nothing."

"Cam."

"Nothing."

"Why you look like that?"

"Like what?"

"Like somebody just told you they repossessed your truck."

I took a long drink.

She narrowed her eyes.

I thought about lying. I really did. But Simone knew me. And more importantly, I needed somebody to tell me whether what I'd just done was as bad as I thought it was.

So I told her.

All of it.

By the time I got to three days before Christmas, she wasn't laughing anymore.

She was wheezing.

Bent over the high-top. One hand on the table. The other on my arm so she wouldn't hit the floor.

"YOU TOLD HER WHAT?"

"Lower your voice!"

"YOU TOLD HER HER BIRTHDAY?"

"SIMONE."

"CAMERON."

"IT WAS AN ACCIDENT."

"HOW DO YOU ACCIDENTALLY KNOW SOMEBODY'S WHOLE LIFE?"

"BECAUSE YOU TOLD ME!"

That made it worse. She grabbed the table with both hands.

"Girl, you sound like the FBI!"

"I was making conversation!"

"About her personnel record?"

By now, Eli had noticed. "What's funny?"

"Nothing," I said, immediately.

Simone pointed at me with a shaking finger. "THIS DUMBASS."

And just like that, my business became public property.

Within three minutes, everybody knew. Marcus almost choked on an ice cube. Darnell asked if I'd gotten her Social Security number. Zay wanted to know if I'd run her credit. And Eli looked at me with total seriousness, put a hand on my shoulder, and said:

"Detective Hayes."

I threatened every single one of them.

Nobody was scared.

Which was fair. It's hard to be intimidating while you're holding a blue drink with a Red Bull sticking out of it and trying not to laugh at yourself.

⸻

I saw her again before we left.

She was standing with her friends near the edge of the floor, looking at something on somebody's phone. When she glanced up, our eyes met.

For one terrible second, I thought about pretending I hadn't seen her.

Then she smiled.

Not the polite smile from the hallway.

A real one.

Amused. Almost curious.

She shook her head a little. Laughing to herself.

Which was somehow worse. Because now I knew she remembered every single word.

I raised my glass. Just a little. An apology. Or a toast. Or a request that she never tell another living soul.

Jade laughed again.

Then she lifted her hand. A small wave.

I waved back.

And that was it.

No phone number. No dramatic confession. No moment where I suddenly turned into the smoothest woman in South Carolina.

Just a wave. A smile.

And the knowledge that I'd made an impression.

Not the one I meant to.

But an impression.

⸻

I didn't drive home.

I want that on the record. I'd had two Trash Cans and a shot Marcus swore was water. I stood in the parking lot at two in the morning, looking at my daddy's truck under a streetlight, and I thought about it for a long time.

Then I handed Simone the keys. She'd been nursing one drink since ten because she had to be at work at six.

She stared at them in her palm like I'd handed her a live grenade.

"Cameron."

"Don't."

"You're letting me drive."

"I'm letting you drive tonight. One time. Under protest."

"Three years—"

"If you grind second gear, I will never forgive you."

She ground second gear pulling out of the lot.

I put my head against the passenger window and closed my eyes and listened to the engine and didn't say a word.

By the time we got back to base, she'd told the story four more times. Each version was worse than the one before. According to the final retelling, I'd asked Jade for her blood type, her mother's maiden name, and the last four of her social.

"That's not what happened," I said, walking toward the dorms.

"Close enough."

"Not even a little bit."

She was still laughing. She handed me back my keys, which I checked for damage, which made her laugh harder.

"Whatever," I said. "She was smiling at me when we left."

Simone stopped walking. "Oh, so now she likes you?"

"I didn't say that."

"You implied it."

"I'm just saying."

"Uh-huh."

She started toward her building. Then turned back around under a streetlight.

"Hey, Cam?"

"What?"

"Next time you see her? Try asking her something you don't already know."

I stared at her.

She grinned.

"GOODNIGHT, SIMONE."

Her laughter followed me all the way down the sidewalk.

⸻

I kicked my shoes off and dropped onto my bed with my phone already going off.

MARCUS: detective hayes reporting for duty

ELI: somebody hide their birth certificate

DARNELL: she got a warrant for jade yet?

ZAY: 😂😂😂😂😂

SIMONE: Y'ALL LEAVE HER ALONE 😭

SIMONE: also she ground second gear on me. on purpose. I could feel it.

SIMONE: that was a lie I ground it. it was me.

I typed: I hate every last one of y'all.

Marcus answered in two seconds.

MARCUS: what's my birthday cam

I threw my phone across the mattress.

Then picked it back up.

Because, despite everything, I was smiling.

I'd met Jade Monroe. I'd danced with her. I'd made her laugh, even if it was at me. And I'd embarrassed myself so thoroughly that there was no possible way she'd ever forget my name.

At twenty-one, I considered that a reasonable foundation for a love story.

Looking back, I probably should've been worried.

But I wasn't.

I was young and a little drunk and living in a city that still felt like it was full of doors I hadn't opened yet.

And somewhere on the other side of base, there was a girl from Baltimore who now knew two things about me.

My name was Cameron Hayes.

And I knew entirely too much about her.

_____________

JADE

Charleston, South Carolina | Later that night

The first thing I noticed about Cameron Hayes was that she was fine.

I'm not going to sit here and pretend otherwise. She was.

The second thing I noticed was that she knew it. Not in an arrogant way. She just carried herself like somebody who'd stopped asking permission to take up space a long time ago.

And the third thing, the one I didn't tell anybody, not Hope, not my mother, not anybody for a long time, was that I'd seen her before.

Two weeks earlier. The shoppette on base. I'd been in line in my uniform with a bag of Hot Cheetos and a bottle of water, and I'd dropped my change, and a quarter rolled away across the floor, and a girl behind me in line stopped it with the toe of her boot and bent down and picked it up.

She held it out.

I said thank you.

She didn't say anything. She just smiled. A little crooked. Like she'd wanted to say something and couldn't decide what.

I took the quarter and left.

And I thought about that crooked smile, on and off, for two weeks. Which was ridiculous. I didn't know her name. I didn't know anything about her.

And then Simone walked up to me at the club with that same girl at her elbow and said, Jade, this is my girl Cameron.

And Cameron said hey.

And I thought: Oh. It's you.

She didn't remember the quarter. I could tell. She was too busy forgetting how to talk.

I decided not to bring it up.

Not yet.

⸻

I'd been watching her before Simone brought her over.

Not stalking. Observing. There's a difference.

And Cameron was entertaining to observe. She laughed with her whole body. She danced whenever the DJ played something she liked, and she seemed to like almost everything. At one point I watched her pull out her phone and record herself drinking something blue out of a cup with a Red Bull can sticking out of it, and then put the phone away and go right back to her conversation like that was a normal thing to do.

She looked fun.

Not the kind of fun that needed you drunk or stupid. Just somebody who seemed genuinely happy to be exactly where she was.

I'd been in Charleston for two weeks. Two weeks of a new base and a new dorm and a new office and humidity so thick you could chew it. Two weeks of being the new girl. Everybody else had stories together. Inside jokes. People they'd known for years.

And there was Cameron Hayes, who apparently knew half the building. Every few minutes somebody stopped to talk to her. She'd say something that made them laugh and they'd move on, lighter than when they came.

She looked comfortable.

I wondered what she was like when she wasn't surrounded by people.

Then Simone brought her over.

And I got my answer.

Or part of it.

Because the same girl who'd been laughing and talking all night suddenly seemed to have misplaced her entire vocabulary.

Hey.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I almost laughed. Not at her. Well. A little at her. But mostly because I could tell she was nervous, and it was cute. Especially coming from somebody who hadn't looked nervous about a single thing all night.

⸻

And then the DJ played Maze.

I need to explain something about my mother, so you'll understand what happened to me in that moment.

My mother, Angela Monroe, raised me by herself in a rowhouse in Baltimore. She worked days as a CNA and went to nursing school at night and still got up every Saturday morning to clean the whole house from top to bottom with the windows open, no matter the weather. And every Saturday morning, the whole time she cleaned, she played Frankie Beverly and Maze on a CD player in the kitchen that skipped if you walked too hard past it.

She sang every word. Off-key. Proudly. With a broom for a microphone.

"Before I Let Go" was always last. She'd put the broom down for that one. She'd grab my hands, even when I was too old for it, even when I rolled my eyes, and make me dance with her in the middle of the yellow kitchen.

I hadn't heard that song since I left Baltimore.

The DJ dropped it, and the whole club screamed, and everybody started doing the line, and I stood at the edge of the floor feeling suddenly, stupidly homesick.

And then I saw Cameron.

She'd put her drink down.

She wasn't doing the line. She wasn't dancing for anybody. She was standing in the middle of the floor with her eyes half-closed, singing.

Not singing along. Singing. Every word. Every background part. The little ad-libs most people mumble through. The part near the end when the band drops out. She knew all of it, the way my mother knew all of it, the way you only know a song if somebody you love played it for you a thousand times before you were old enough to choose.

And there was a moment, about two-thirds of the way through, where she paused. Just for a half-second. Like she was waiting for something. Like the song had a skip in it, and she was singing around the skip.

There was no skip.

She sang around it anyway.

I don't know why that got me.

I don't know why I stood at the edge of the dance floor and watched her for the whole song, not moving, not laughing, not looking away.

I just know that by the time she opened her eyes, I'd forgotten I was supposed to be pretending I wasn't looking.

She caught me.

I turned back to my friends and pretended I'd been doing something else.

I hadn't.

⸻

When she ended up behind me on the dance floor later, I decided to have a little fun.

She could dance. That was obvious immediately. She wasn't just standing there swaying and hoping I'd do all the work. She knew how to move, and once the music got going she wasn't nearly as shy.

I liked the way she laughed when I teased her. The way she leaned in close to hear me. The way her confidence came back a little at a time, like somebody turning up a dimmer switch.

For a few minutes, I thought she'd finally relaxed.

Then she followed me to the bathroom.

And read me my own file.

Maryland. Baltimore. Twenty-one. Finance. December.

Three days before Christmas.

I kept waiting for her to ask for my supervisor's name and my last PT score.

The funniest part wasn't even the questions. It was how serious she looked asking them. Like she honestly believed this was going well. Like she'd studied.

I wanted to laugh so bad.

But I could tell she was trying. Really trying. So I answered.

Until I actually had to pee.

I made it around the corner and into the bathroom and locked myself in a stall and laughed until I had to hold onto the wall.

Not because I thought she was weird.

Because the whole thing was so ridiculous.

And somehow, completely, irritatingly, adorable.

⸻

"You know that girl was trying to talk to you, right?"

Hope was sitting on the edge of my bed, taking out her earrings. We'd been in the same flight at basic, bunked next to each other for eight weeks, and then, by some miracle of the personnel system, both landed in Charleston. She was the only person on base who'd known me before. She'd been making herself at home in my room since the day I moved in.

"Who?" I said.

She gave me a look. "Don't do that."

I laughed. "What?"

"Cameron."

"Oh."

"Oh?"

"She was nice."

"Nice."

"Yeah."

"Girl, she was looking at you all night."

I shrugged. "Maybe."

"Maybe?"

"Okay. Yes. I noticed."

"And?"

"And what?"

"You think she's cute?"

I looked down at my phone.

Then back up.

"Obviously."

Hope grinned. "Okay, then."

"But she's funny."

"Funny how?"

I thought about the hallway. The exit sign. Cameron's face, so pleased with herself, right before she realized what she'd said.

I started laughing all over again.

"Girl. She asked me my birthday."

Hope frowned. "Okay?"

"And where I'm from. And how old I am. And where I work."

She stared at me. "Wait. All at once?"

"YES."

Hope fell backward onto my bed.

"Like she was interviewing you?"

"Like she was processing me! Like I was in-processing and she was the clerk!"

We laughed until my stomach hurt.

When we finally stopped, Hope wiped her eyes and looked at me.

"You still think she's cute?"

I smiled.

"Yeah."

⸻

My phone buzzed on the nightstand around three.

I didn't have to look. I knew who it was.

RAVEN: u up?

RAVEN: u said you'd call tonight

I looked at the messages for a long time.

Raven and I had been together since I was sixteen. Almost six years. Through tech school and my first assignment and now this one. She was still in Baltimore, working at her uncle's barbershop, talking about how she might move down to Charleston, someday, when things settled.

Things never settled.

We'd been fighting more since I left. Small things. How often I called. Who I went out with. Why I hadn't answered fast enough.

I'd forgotten to call tonight.

I hadn't forgotten, exactly.

I'd been watching a girl in a club sing a Maze song with her eyes closed, and I'd let the time go by.

I typed: Sorry. Went out with some people from work. Talk tomorrow?

The dots came up. Went away.

Nothing.

I put the phone face down on the nightstand.

And I lay there in the dark, in a dorm room that still didn't feel like mine, and I thought about a crooked smile at a shoppette, and a quarter, and a girl who sang around a skip that wasn't there.

Hope was asleep on the other bed, snoring softly. She'd decided around two that walking back to her own room was too much effort.

"Hope," I whispered.

"Mm."

"You think I should talk to her again?"

A long pause.

"Who," Hope mumbled into my extra pillow. "Detective Hayes?"

I laughed into my hands.

"Yeah."

Another pause.

"Even after the interrogation?"

I thought about it.

Cameron Hayes knew my birthday, my hometown, my age, and my job.

But there was one thing she didn't know.

I'd noticed her first.

Two weeks before she ever worked up the nerve to say hey.

Over a quarter on the floor of a shoppette.

"Yeah," I said into the dark. "Even after the interrogation."

But Hope was already asleep.