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After the whole Ferrari experience, going off to college is almost an anticlimax. Cameron isn't wild about his roommate, who does lots of sports and gets up at a ridiculous hour, but on the other hand, that means that Cameron doesn't see much of him. And he doesn't have to decide on a major for a while, so he takes a whole bunch of classes, and even shows up to most of them. He gets occasional postcards from Ferris, who decided at the last minute to defer college for a year in order to go to Venezuela with the Peace Corps. November's postcard announces that Ferris has been drinking whisky with the local guerrilla leader. That sounds about right.
At Christmas, he goes back to his parents' house. By the evening of the second day, he's up in his room, feeling strangely calm as he puts everything back in his backpack and walks out again. When he gets back to college, the only other people who seem to be on campus are the foreign students, so he spends the time camped out in one of the common rooms watching films in French and Spanish and Italian. He signs up for film classes when school starts back, and then, when he gets fed up of Henri teasing him about his reliance on subtitles, for French.
Ferris comes back from Venezuela tanned, slightly skinnier, and fundamentally the same. They hang out over the summer, when Cameron reluctantly has to go back to his parents' place but spends as much time as possible elsewhere. Things are a little different now; it used to be that Cameron could be lazy and depressed and all the rest of it, because Ferris would always be there to kick him out of it. These days he doesn't let Ferris bully him quite so much. It's probably good for both of them.
He has a different, and slightly less irritating, roommate when he goes back after the summer, which is nice. He still gets postcards from Ferris, but now they come from Seattle rather than from a South American jungle. The stories are much the same, though.
Cameron comes back to his room one evening to find a bunch of people and a collection of beer cans in it. He's trying to decide whether to be cross at his roommate, when one of the girls sitting on the floor turns round, and it's Sloane.
"Cameron!" she says, delighted, and all he can do is stand there gaping.
He hasn't seen her since she and Ferris split up. Ferris didn't say much about why, but Cameron saw Sloane that day, when Ferris was on the float and the two of them were stood at the side. Ferris might have talked about marriage, but Ferris is never going to be anyone's in particular. Ferris is everyone's, or he wants to be everyone's. Or maybe everyone wants Ferris to be theirs, and Ferris is okay with that. It's the same thing in the end, really. Cameron's been Ferris' best friend since they were nine, and he knows how much of Ferris anyone gets to have. It's okay, really -- too much Ferris would be, well. Too much, really.
So Sloane and Ferris split up, and Cameron went to college, and he lost touch with Sloane. And now here she is, with a beer in her hand, in his room. He blinks.
"Oh my god, Cameron!" she says again, and jumps up, and hugs him.
And just like that, it's all fine.
They spend the rest of the evening catching up -- afterwards, the roommate makes half-joking complaints about Cameron monopolising the prettiest girl, and Cameron tells him that it's not like that. A couple of days later, they go out for coffee, and again after that. Cameron remembers spending a lot of time hanging out with Sloane that last year of high school, but this time is different. There's no Ferris, of course, so no wild schemes and no crazy popularity. Cameron has friends, people he hangs out with, and Sloane, of course, already knows more people than he does. But neither of them are like Ferris, sharing themselves with the world.
It's quieter when it's just him and Sloane. It's nice. After a couple of weeks, Cameron realises that they're seeing each other most days, and spends a little while agonising over whether that's okay before he tells himself not to be stupid.They're not at high school any more. Sloane and Ferris aren't together. Ferris is in Seattle, running for class president or something, whatever it was that that last scrawled postcard said. Anyway, Cameron and Sloane are just hanging out, and that would be okay anyway.
He remembers holding Sloane's hand, stood by the side of the road, watching Ferris singing on the damn carnival float. Then he deliberately unremembers. He likes Sloane. He likes hanging out with her, likes talking to her. Sloane's taking English, among other things, and mentions magic realism one afternoon over coffee. The next week, he finds out that some tiny arthouse cinema is showing Bunuel's The Exterminating Angel, so he drags her along to that. It finishes after midnight, then they stay up for another four hours arguing about it, and finally stumble out into the pre-dawn light to find coffee. Cameron's coffee habit has just got worse since he got to college. Although the coffee here is better, at least. Everything's better here, really.
"So, maybe there are things we're interested in after all," Sloane says, smiling at him across the table, and he smiles into his coffee cup, looks up and catches her eye, and can't avoid breaking into a grin. They grin slightly foolishly at each other until Sloane starts to giggle, and then he does as well, and suddenly they're laughing until Cameron's sides hurt, and he puts his head down on the table and moans.
"God. I have a class in three hours," he says without bringing his head up.
"Another coffee?" Sloane suggests.
"You don't have a class, do you," he says, and she shakes her head solemnly, lips pressed together to hide another grin.
He peers up at her from the table, and carefully doesn't remember holding her hand.
Sloane goes home for Christmas. Cameron doesn't, and spends the time holed up in his lovely empty dorm room, reading all the things he didn't have time for during the semester. Including the copy of Nights At The Circus that Sloane lent him after the magic realism discussion; then after that, a stack more Angela Carter books from the library. Evenings he spends with Henri and Jeanne and Natalia, drinking espresso and watching more films. Henri's moved on to teasing him about Spanish, now.
"Va te faire foutre," Cameron replies cheerfully -- Jeanne taught it to him, it's not the sort of thing his professor would tell them -- and Henri grins and slaps him on the back.
A few days after the new year, he's lying on his back on his bed, vaguely wondering when his roommate's due back, when there's a knock on the door. Huh. Maybe today, then.
"It's open," he calls, and he hears the catch click and looks up to see Sloane. She raises an eyebrow.
"Cameron," she says. Then, looking around, "Have you been there all vacation?"
"No," he says truthfully.
"Watching movies in the common room doesn't count," she says. "Or just going across the road for dinner."
"Um," he says.
"Oh my god, Cameron. Right, okay, on your feet."
"It's cold out there!" he protests. "I don't need to go outside! Inside is fine."
"We are going out, Cameron," Sloane says firmly, and he groans dramatically, then swings himself up to sit on the edge of the bed and scrabbles underneath it with his feet for his shoes.
When he gets out there, he has to admit that it's kind of nice. It looks like it's snowed again recently -- where people are walking it's all grey mush, but there's fresh white snow in little patches on grass and gardens. It's sunny, as well, but crisp. Sloane is wearing earmuffs, and has her hands in her coat pockets. He's glad of his own woolly hat.
Carefully, he walks on the edge of the sidewalk, putting footprints in the tiny strip of clean snow. When he looks up, Sloane is staring in the other direction, with a thoughtful smile. It reminds him a bit of Ferris' thoughtful smile, the one that usually presaged disaster of some sort. He doesn't worry about it so much on Sloane. He follows her gaze, to an expanse of beautiful clean white snow, untouched by human boot. There's a little fence around it, some sort of city park or university park or...
Sloane's looking at him now. He looks back at her, and both of them break into a grin.
"Race you," she says, and they're both off, Cameron hurdling the little fence slightly in the lead.
They've barely been there long enough to make giant snow-footprints and a snow angel -- Cameron's back is now covered in snow and he has a little down his neck -- when they hear shouting behind them. Sloane chucks the snowball she's just made at Cameron, and they turn to see someone lumbering towards them across the snow. Some kind of parks official or whatever, Cameron guesses.
"Get off there! What the hell do you think the fence is for?" the park official is shouting.
"It wasn't us!" Cameron calls immediately.
"What do you mean, it wasn't you? You're right here!" The official has reached them now, face red from the exertion and the cold.
"We're standing in for someone else," Sloane says.
"Yes. We're actually having a walk over there, look," Cameron adds, pointing over behind the park official's back.
He turns, bewildered, to look where Cameron is pointing, and Cameron grabs Sloane's hand. "Run!" he says, and they both take off in the opposite direction, laughing as they run, leaving more giant footprints behind them, a clear trail.
They collapse eventually on a bench, park official long ago left behind. They're both out of breath, and Cameron leans forward for a moment, forearms on knees and head hanging down while he catches his breath, only just on this side of the giggles, before he sits back up a bit and looks at Sloane, sat next to him, turned slightly towards him. And then she leans further towards him, with that slight smile of hers, and she presses her lips to his.
For a moment, it's amazing, like everything come true all at once. Then he panics.
He cannot handle this. He cannot possibly handle this. This is worse than the car, worse than failing freshman physics (he'd always suspected that physics would be a mistake), worse than those two days of Christmas with his parents. This, he cannot handle this.
He doesn't even know what he says, as he backs away, eyes wide, and bolts.
He spends the next three days in bed, refusing to answer the door. He stares at the ceiling for a while, with his hand on his chest, wondering if he's having a heart attack. After an hour or so he figures that since he's still alive, he probably isn't. His hands feel clammy, though, and he can't concentrate properly. And are those spots in the corners of his vision? He's definitely coming down with something.
His roommate tells him once that Sloane's outside, asking if he's okay, and Cameron says again that he is ill, and he doesn't want to see anyone, which means anyone. His roommate mutters that if it were him who had Sloane Peterson coming to cool his fever'd fucking brow -- the roommate is an English major -- he wouldn't be turning her away, but hey, it's Cameron's funeral. Cameron ignores him, and goes back to sleep.
When he does eventually leave the room -- carefully, cracking the door open just a little to check beforehand that it's clear-- there's a note pinned to the door. It doesn't have an envelope. It just says
Stop being a dick, Cameron.
He goes back into his room, and sits on his bed, looking at the door. Looking through it at the note still pinned on the outside.
Stop being a dick, Cameron.
Fuck.
When he gets over to her dorm, she's sitting on a bench outside, despite the cold, talking to a friend. When he stops beside them, the friend looks from one to the other and makes a polite getaway. Cameron isn't paying attention.
"I'm sorry," he says. "I was being a dick."
"You were," Sloane agrees, and sits there, watching him, without smiling.
"I, it was," he starts, then stops himself from the attempt at justification. "I'm sorry," he says again.
She nods. She's still watching him. She still isn't smiling, but she looks, now, like she might. He takes a breath, and sits down beside her, turning towards her.
"Can -- can we try that again?" he asks, and as she nods, he leans in towards her.
It's still amazing, still like everything come true all at once; and this time, it doesn't stop being amazing. He keeps his eyes open. He doesn't want to miss any of this. When she eventually pulls back a little, they're both smiling, and he knows that they must look ridiculous, but he doesn't really care.
Somehow they're holding hands. He doesn't remember that happening. He looks at Sloane, sees the slight question in her eyes.
"It's okay," he tells her. "I can handle it."