Someone I Used to Know - By Blakney Francis Page 0,122

time is it there?” She felt loopy and delirious after the ceaseless flight, but she knew there was a major time difference between Los Angeles and Sydney.

“It’s five am yesterday, you time traveler, you,” he quipped. “I haven’t slept. I’m in the zone. You know how I get when inspiration strikes, and after our spring break getaway, I’m feeling extra in touch with my muse.”

She rolled her eyes. “You’ve really got to get a new muse.”

The Girl in the Yellow Dress had been an even bigger success than expected, and to celebrate, Cam had treated her to a surprise trip to Paris where’d they’d gone to see the oldest professional ballet company in the world, Ballet de l'Opéra de Paris, perform The Red Shoes. She’d openly wept at the end of it. She’d thought Cam was going to have a heart attack at the sight.

“And what makes you think I was talking about you? I swear, dating a movie star has really changed you, Ads…I was talking about Thomas, of course.”

“Of course,” she replied mockingly, through a burst of laughter.

Thomas had been another unexpected addition of the trip, and he hadn’t been the only shocking tagalong. Her whole family had been waiting for her at the airport when she arrived for her flight overseas. They’d been rebuilding their relationship since December, but with her returning to UNC for the Spring semester, things had been progressing slowly.

She had no idea that Cam had reached out to her family, too. He wanted to make things right with them, and they were more open to the idea than she would have ever imagined. Thomas had given Cam a really nasty black eye the first time they tried to reunite, but Cam had agreed that he deserved it (best friend’s little sisters were apparently off-limits), and they’d eventually salvaged some semblance of their old friendship. Their week in Paris together, as a family, had been one of the best times of her life.

“I’m just glad you didn’t say my mother,” she joked.

“Oh! Now there’s a story begging to be written!”

She could almost hear the gears in his mind turning. “See, I knew I was still your muse…We better get off the phone before I inspire something else.”

“…Well, it was nice knowing you.”

She reached a dead end in her trek through a random terminal and realized she’d taken a wrong turn somewhere along the way. Backtracking, her eyes read over each oversized sign hanging from the ceiling trying to find the baggage claim.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked distractedly.

“I have very little hope that you’ll survive another summer with Madeline Little. Either that or you’ll be arrested for murder and spend the rest of your life in jail down there…Need I remind you that you are willingly submitting yourself to live with her?”

He had a valid point.

“I’ve been assured it’s a large house. Declan swears I won’t even realize she’s there.” She tried to be as convincing as Declan had been when he’d laid out the logistics of the whole thing to her, but she was suddenly forgetting all the reasons she’d agreed. She cursed his charm. “And you’re forgetting that I actually like Madeline.”

“You have an understanding of Madeline that you appreciate,” he corrected. “I don’t know if that’s the same thing as liking her.”

They both sighed heavily.

“You could always come home – spend the summer with me,” he tried to tempt her.

“No… I really can’t,” she affirmed simply, but it implied so much more than that.

He knew it, too; his silence, telling. She waited patiently for him to speak, knowing that he would when he was ready. Things were different between them, and the changes just took both of them by surprise sometimes.

“Hey, Adley?”

The use of her name jarred her. The sound of Cam’s voice shaping around it made her strangely melancholy. It was the same feeling she got every time she saw a lifeguard stand and memories of her childhood swamped her. Each time, nostalgia would just begin to tip its cup of warm honey into her gut when, suddenly, it would register that something had been lost, something she could never have back, and hollowness would empty her out.

Her innocence was forever lost to her, and so was Cam in a way that she could still love him, see him, touch him, but never fully possess him ever again.

“Do you ever dance anymore?” he asked. “Before everything that happened, you couldn’t stand still without whipping into a pirouette or twiddling