CHAPTER 1

Natalie has been twirling that same lock of hair for the past ten minutes andit's starting to drive me nuts. I shake my head and pull my iced latte towardme, strategically placing my lips on the straw. Natalie sits across from me withher elbows propped on the little round table, chin in one hand.

"He's gorgeous," she says staring off toward the guy who just got in line."Seriously, Cam, would you look at him?"

I roll my eyes and take another sip. "Nat," I say, placing my drink back on thetable, "you have a boyfriend—do I need to constantly remind you?"

Natalie sneers playfully at me. "What are you, my mother?" But she can't keepher eyes on me for long, not while that walking wall of sexy is standing at theregister ordering coffee and scones. "Besides, Damon doesn't care if Ilook—as long as I'm bending over for him every night, he's goodwith it."

I let out a spat of air, blushing.

"See! Uh huh," she says, smiling hugely. "I got a laugh out of you." Shereaches over and thrusts her hand into her little purple purse. "I have to makenote of that," and she pulls out her phone and opens her digital notebook."Saturday. June 15th." She moves her finger across the screen. "1:54 p.m.– Camryn Bennett laughed at one of my sexual jokes." Then she shoves thephone back inside her purse and looks at me with that thoughtful sort of lookshe always has when she's about to go into therapy-mode. "Just look once," shesays, all joking aside.

Just to appease her, I turn my chin carefully at an angle so that I can get aquick glimpse of the guy. He moves away from the register and toward the end ofthe counter where he slides his drink off the edge. Tall. Perfectly sculptedcheekbones. Mesmerizing model green eyes and spiked up brown hair.

"Yes," I admit, looking back at Natalie, "he's hot, but so what?"

Natalie has to watch him leave out the double glass doors and glide past thewindows before she can look back at me to respond.

"Oh. My. God," she says eyes wide and full of disbelief.

"He's just a guy, Nat." I place my lips on the straw again. "You might as wellput a sign that says 'obsessed' on your forehead. You're everything obsessedshort of drooling."

"Are you kidding me?" Her expression has twisted into pure shock."Camryn, you have a serious problem. You know that, right?" She presses her backagainst her chair. "You need to up your medication. Seriously."

"I stopped taking it in April."

"What? Why?"

"Because it's ridiculous," I say matter-of-factly. "I'm not suicidal, so there'sno reason for me to be taking it."

She shakes her head at me and crosses her arms over her chest. "You think theyprescribe that stuff just for suicidal people? No. They don't." She points afinger at me briefly and hides it back in the fold of her arm. "It's a chemicalimbalance thing, or some shit like that."

I smirk at her. "Oh, really? Since when did you become so educated in mentalhealth issues and the medications they use to treat the hundreds of diagnoses?"My brow rises a little, just enough to let her see how much I know she has noidea what she's talking about.

When she wrinkles her nose at me instead of answering, I say, "I'll heal on myown time and I don't need a pill to fix it for me." My explanation had startedout kind, but unexpectedly turned bitter before I could get the last sentenceout. That happens a lot.

Natalie sighs and the smile completely drops from her face.

"I'm sorry," I say, feeling bad for snapping at her. "Look, I know you're right.I can't deny that I have some messed up emotional issues and that I can be abitch sometimes—."

"Sometimes?" she mumbles under her breath, but is grinning again and hasalready forgiven me.

That happens a lot, too.

I half-smile back at her. "I just want to find answers on my own, y'know?"

"Find what answers?" She's annoyed with me. "Cam," she says, cocking herhead to one side to appear thoughtful. "I hate to say it, but shit really doeshappen. You just have to get over it. Beat the hell out of it by doing thingsthat make you happy."

OK, so maybe she isn't so horrible at the therapy thing after all.

"I know, you're right," I say, "but ..."

Natalie raises a brow, waiting. "What? Come on, out with it!"

I gaze toward the wall briefly, thinking about it. So often I sit around andthink about life and wonder about every possible aspect of it. I wonder what thehell I'm doing here. Even right now. In this coffee shop with this girl I'veknown practically all my life. Yesterday I thought about why I felt the need toget up at exactly the same time as the day before and do everything like I didthe day before. Why? What compels any of us to do the things we do when deepdown a part of us just wants to break free from it all?

I look away from the wall and right at my best friend who I know won'tunderstand what I'm about to say, but because of the need to get it out, I sayit anyway.

"Have you ever wondered what it would be like to backpack across the world?"

Natalie's face goes slack. "Uh, not really," she says. "That might ... suck."

"Well, think about it for a second," I say, leaning against the table andfocusing all of my attention on her. "Just you and a backpack with a fewnecessities. No bills. No getting up at the same time every morning to go to ajob you hate. Just you and the world out ahead of you. You never know what thenext day is going to bring, who you'll meet, what you'll have for lunch or whereyou might sleep." I realize I've become so lost in the imagery that I might'veseemed a little obsessed for a second, myself.

"You're starting to freak me out," Natalie says, eyeing me across the smalltable with a look of uncertainty. Her arched brow settles back even with theother one and then she says, "And there's also all the walking, the risk ofgetting raped, murdered and tossed on the side of a freeway somewhere. Oh, andthen there's all the walking ..."

Clearly, she thinks I'm borderline crazy.

"What brought this on, anyway?" she asks, taking a quick sip of her drink. "Thatsounds like some kind of mid-life-crisis stuff—you're only twenty." Shepoints again as if to underline, "And you've hardly paid a bill in your life."

She takes another sip; an obnoxious slurping noise follows.

"Maybe not," I say thinking quietly to myself, "but I will be once Imove in with you."

"So true," she says, tapping her fingertips on her cup. "Everything split downthe middle—Wait, you're not backing out on me, are you?" She sort offreezes, looking warily across at me.

"No, I'm still on. Next week I'll be out of my mom's house and living with aslut."

"You bitch!" she laughs.

I half-smile and go back to my brooding, the stuff before that she wasn'trelating to, but I expected as much. Even before Ian died, I always kind ofthought out-of-the-box. Instead of sitting around dreaming up new sex positions,as Natalie often does about Damon, her boyfriend of five years, I dream aboutthings that really matter. At least in my world, they matter. What the air inother countries feels like on my skin, how the ocean smells, why the sound ofrain makes me gasp. "You're one deep chick." That's what Damon said tome on more than one occasion.

"Geez!" Natalie says. "You're a freakin' downer, you know that right?" Sheshakes her head with the straw between her lips.

"Come on," she...