“We’d talk about the boys we’d met that night,” Collin explained to Jack.
Jack was curious about this. Plus he needed something to keep his mind off Cameron in that dress. “How did the three of you meet?”
Cameron started to answer when Collin held up a hand, cutting her off. “Ahem. Since no one asked me to give a toast at this wedding, I will handle this question. Besides, I tell this story better than you do.”
Collin sat forward in his chair, lowering his voice dramatically. “It was a dark and stormy night.”
Cameron rolled her eyes. “Oh boy.”
Collin held up his hands. “What? It was a dark and stormy night. I should know—I walked you home that evening, remember?” He turned back to Jack. “It was our sophomore year. I was living in my fraternity house and had been having a rough time of things in college, struggling with the issue of whether I was g*y. I was at Michigan on a baseball scholarship and homosexuality was not something one discussed casually within the athletic circles. Anyway, one night early in the year, my fraternity had an after-hours party and it was pouring outside. I was hanging out by the front door, drinking my usual—which back then was Jim Beam and Coke—when Cameron blew in, huddled under a red umbrella with Amy and another girl. They were all laughing, and when they closed the umbrella, Cameron stepped into the room and shook out her hair. It was like something out of a movie—she was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen.”
Jack toyed with his silverware. This story could go south very quickly . . . When his hand came to rest on his steak knife, this may or may not have been merely a coincidence.
“So I struck up a conversation with her and we hit it off right away,” Collin continued. “We started meeting up after classes, on the weekends, and I knew that this was it: if it was ever going to work with a woman, she was the one. A couple weeks later, we were hanging out in my room on a Saturday night and I had it all planned out—that was the night I was going to make my move.
“We were sitting on my couch listening to the radio—it was an eighties flashback night—and ‘Bette Davis Eyes’ came on. And Cameron sighed and rested her head against the back of the couch and said, ‘I like this song.’”
Cameron cut in here. “Then you inched closer to me and turned your face to mine. And you said, ‘I like this song, too.’”
“And I knew that was the moment,” Collin said. “So I leaned over and kissed her.”
Cameron took her hand off Jack’s thigh and removed the steak knife that mysteriously had made its way into his grip. He threw her an innocent look. Like he would ever harm one precious hair on Collin’s head . . . with witnesses around.
Nearing the climax of his story—for his sake, hopefully only in the literary sense—Collin continued. “The kiss went on for a bit, and I’m telling myself, ‘Okay, maybe this is actually working.’ So I pull back to see if she’s into it, and she gazes up at me with sort of an amused expression and says . . .” He gestured to Cameron.
“‘I’ve licked stamps who were more excited than you by that kiss.’”
Jack burst out laughing.
Collin shook his head with a grin. “I know, right? Jack, I’m telling you—I was crushed. But only for a moment, because then she reached up and held my face between her hands and said, ‘Collin—we’re friends, right?’ And I knew, even after only a few weeks, that this was a person who was going to be a very important part of my life. So I nodded yes, and she says, ‘Good. Then listen to me: you need to get over yourself and just admit you’re g*y.’”
Collin looked at Cameron. “Hearing it said so matter-of-factly like that was liberating. So the next day, I decided to go to a very different type of after-hours party, on the other side of campus. And I kissed a guy for the first time.”
“Patrick,” Cameron said.
“You remember.”
“Of course I remember.”
Collin smiled. “And when I got home that night, she was the first person I called to tell about it.”
Cameron covered his hand with hers. “You’re right. You do tell that story better than me.”
“I like it,” said a voice from behind them. “I’ve never heard it before.”
Jack instinctively rested his hand on the harness under his suit as the three of them watched a blond, athletically built man in a well-cut suit approach their table.
Collin, who appeared shocked, was the first to speak. “Richard.”
Jack relaxed, recognizing the name. The ex-boyfriend who’d refused to come to the wedding.
“What are you doing here?” Collin asked him.
Richard’s face momentarily filled with emotion at the sight of Collin, then he collected himself and checked out the reception. “So this is Michigan. Not bad.”
There was an awkward pause as Collin remained silent. Richard shifted nervously.
Jack whispered in Cameron’s ear. “Why don’t we go dance?”
“I think that’s a great idea,” she said.
They said quick hellos to Richard before heading over to the dance floor to give them some space. Cameron glanced over her shoulder, and Jack’s eyes followed hers and saw that Richard had taken the seat next to Collin and appeared to be doing most of the talking. Collin was at least listening, however, and at one point he rested his hand on the back of Richard’s chair. Cameron smiled at the sight and turned back to Jack.