chapter 3

Just then, my phone lit up.

James: I'll be there in 5 mins

And he was. In uniform and with his police cruiser and I almost drooled. The girls all waited with me outside the bar and when he pulled up, Melissa loudly whistled and yelled, "Hey handsome! Can I come home with you too?!" Damn, maybe we were all a lot more drunk than I initially thought, but before Melissa could say anything else, I piped up with all the courage I had in me. Thanks tequila.

"No ladies, looks like I'm the only one getting arrested tonight!" With that, I took confident strides to a surprised looking James as he opened his car door for me.

"Don't let me see those fake IDs, ladies." James threatened in a sarcastic tone and climbed inside the car, leaving my friends outside the bar and me, trapped with him. That's it. Tonight, I would do it, I would tell him how I felt, especially since Melissa was thinking of asking him out. Why was I such a coward then?

"Thanks for coming to the rescue. Are you still working? Did I rip you away from arresting bad guys?" Oh my God, tequila gave me ridiculous courage and I was still fully sober to realize how stupid I sounded. James chuckled at my words and lit up my world. Did he think I was funny?!

"No, I'm done, it was just too long to get changed and come get you, we're going to the station now, before I can drop you off." He informed me and while my body was already lighting up with excitement from being so close to him, a whole jolt of electricity ran through me that we would get to spend some time together.

Our conversation consisted of mostly awkwardness on the way to the station and I wondered why the hell that was the case? In fact, this entire summer he was super weird around me all of a sudden.

I meticulously examined his uniform while we were on our forty minute car ride and unfortunately, he noticed.

"What? Why are you staring at me like that?" He asked with curiosity and I was momentarily lost for words.

"Not staring. Just...you have so many things on your uniform...officer Brooks." I stifled a laugh when I called him that since it was both incredibly sexy and ridiculous in my mind. James Brooks; a police officer. He was the one who made fake IDs for his whole group of friends, set up fireworks in prohibited areas, and drove without a license for two years. None of his transgressions were serious, but he was the only one who mildly lived outside the law.

"By the way!" I suddenly was hungry for confirmation of what Melissa mentioned. "Did you break up with Becky?!"

"News travels fast, huh? Yeah, we're not together anymore." He spoke so simply about it, but I was literally breathless from the news.

"How come?" I shamelessly probed deeper, barely able to breathe in any air. James shrugged and responded just as easily,

"It didn't work out. We're here, wait for me inside and try not to show everyone how drunk you are, okay?" James locked his eyes with mine and shot me a smile. Fuck me, I almost gasped.

"K. But I'm not drunk!" I reassured him but he only nodded.

"Okay, Miss Please-Pick-Me-Up-From-The-Bar-At-One-Am-Because-I-Don't-Have-A-Back-Up-Plan." He was already out of the car and motioned for me to do the same. Patiently, I waited for him in the lobby of the station and avoided the gaze of every single officer or admin that walked by me.

"You ready?" A familiar voice interrupted my intense examination of my shoes and I lifted up my head to see James, his eyes so kind and only on me. I never really spent time with him, just us two, it was always in a group, but being together was igniting my feelings for him even more.

I was too scared. Too scared to speak up and tell him anything. We were five minutes away from our street and I watched the familiar landscape outside, gulping down all the words that were on the tip of my tongue.

"You okay, Camille? You're so quiet. Are you scared of me or something?" He asked earnestly and a sad smile replaced my frown.

"No. I'm not scared of you." I'm in love with you, not sure which one is worse. "I'm just...tired, I guess." A classic cop out.

Just then, he stopped right outside my house, his, being literally across the street. "Really? Because you seem very sad and apprehensive. What's going on?" I wondered why he was probing like that, he never really made conversation like that before. I inhaled and let out a shaky breath.

"Unrequited love, you know?" I forced a smile on my face instead of screaming at the words I uttered. "It eats away at you. And sometimes...it just comes on unexpectedly." I tried to sound as cheerful as I possibly could as I sat with deep self disappointment. It was silent again and just as I reached for the door handle, I suddenly felt a large warm hand grab mine.

I froze, quickly realizing that James touched me purposely. Collecting all of my self control, I looked at him with the most confused expression I could muster, instead of jumping into his lap.

"Who are you in love with?" He asked so curiously. Oh no, why was I so fucking stupid and started talking about this?! That tequila gave me too much courage which I couldn't actually live with. I merely stared at him and answered with the first thing that came into my head.

"A man." Alright. I can go jump off Cherry Cliff now and drown because there was no way to recover from this.

James chuckled quietly but didn't let it go. "That's good, at least it's not a fish. What man?" He suddenly turned serious and I wondered if it was possible to just develop amnesia suddenly and forget that we were engaged in a conversation.

"You don't know him." I lied and these words cut me open. My chest squeezed and my throat closed shut. This sentence definitely made it seem like there was another man I was pining after and not him. Maybe if I kept it ambiguous, he would eventually clue in that I was deeply and madly in love with him. "Why?" I added in the darkness and silence.

At this, James pulled his hand out of mine and not having the guts to hold onto him...I let him go. What a huge mistake.

He shrugged it off and suddenly furrowed his eyebrows, staring straight ahead into the road and the raccoon crossing the street in the headlights of the car. "Just making conversation. I don't know why I asked."

Something about the way he said it...clued me into the fact that he actually did want to know. But why? James never paid me any attention. We never spoke about anything more serious than town gossip and our parents' shortcomings.

"Okay well...thanks for picking me up again. I appreciate it. Goodnight." I was already out of the car and the last word was cut off as I shut the door. Phew. That was the single most stupid thing I'd ever done in my entire life. Thank God I was leaving in a few weeks.

Ready to hit the pillow and never wake up, I showered and changed into my pyjamas, checking my phone one last time as I turned my light off.

But what I saw there injected adrenaline into every single cell my body possessed. It was a text with just four simple words,

James: Come to your backyard.