Episode 51: Datenapping (Camilla)

Life was just a mess of messes. They exhausted Camilla. Keeping track of the most basic stuff, which everyone else seemed to just do without putting effort into it, gave Camilla anxiety just to think about.

Imagine a day where she could just get up and be who everyone needed her to be.

Today was not that day.

Neither, to be glib, were any of the days in the next century.

Maybe if she hadn’t lost the earring she would have been on time, but she lost the earring and now she had to wear the lavender ones instead of the periwinkle ones and she was late and she wasn’t even sure why she was wearing high heels. Her toes always felt like gravity set out deliberately to squish them.

She was going to come home with mangled feet and another rejection.

That was the way the day was going.

She walked out to the garden, through the palace gate. She was so lucky she didn’t need a guard. If she’d been one of the Alandrials, she would’ve, but she was a Linnaeus and she got to not matter.

He was there outside the gate. The light from the palace caught his eyes and made her blush a little. Not too much though, she’d managed to sort that part out. She knew people who never stopped blushing. At least she could turn it off most of the time.

“Hi,” she told him. She tried to decide if his hair was blonde or brown and decided it was bronde. Blown? Not blown, that sounded too much like blown, as in, the wind caught his hair and made him look really hot.

“Sorry. I lost my earring,” she explained. “Yeah, because. I’m sorry I’m late.”

Guys were bad people. If you put them all in a room with normal people, none of the normal people had the kind of impact on Camilla that guys did.

She needed to figure out what her issue with guys was. Her brothers were guys. Her dad was a guy. She didn’t have this problem with them…

Except he wasn’t really her dad, he was her stepdad.

It was like her brain shut down around them. It was awful.

The guy smiled.

Melted.

“I don’t mind,” he said. “You look nice. It was worth the wait.” He offered her his hand to walk, and it was warm and alive and masculine. She could feel callouses from sword training, just like Spence had, and she wondered why he trained if he wasn’t in the army.

Some guys just liked swords.

Spence liked swords way too much.

Oh that was such a lame joke.

Seriously. She was on a date, with a guy who told her she looked nice.

Yeah. Time for the blush to creep in. She hated blushing. Her mom never blushed, so she always wondered if her mom in her old body blushed or if there was just something wrong with Camilla.

Spence’s boyfriend Acheron blushed all the time. It was adorable. Camilla didn’t want to be adorable, she wanted to be alluring.

What did he do, if he wasn’t in the army? He’d told her this morning, but she had a bad memory for everything except those eyes and the way the wind caught his hair.

“So why do you like your job?” she asked him. “I’m career-hunting and so far nothing really appeals to me.”

He led her away from the palace, away from any roads. She got excited. A moonlit picnic in the woods, maybe a little wine, some kissing…this guy had good taste.

“I like being part of everything. There are so many faces that pass through the palace, each with their own story. The work itself isn’t the reward. What have you explored so far?”

Oh no. Personal questions.

Oh hi I’m Camilla and I literally can’t do anything.

“Um. Well…so far this week I’ve done babysitting, cooking, I’ve tried to help someone sort the library but I think he hates me. That’s about it.”

“Do you enjoy reading?”

Dating magazines, maybe. Definitely not long boring books.

She had no idea how she was her mom’s daughter. At all. It wasn’t possible.

Switched at birth, definitely.

“Some things,” she said.

The worst part about dating magazines was when she picked one up and Talise’s husband was in it. He didn’t give that kind of interview, so she knew it was all made up, but still. Wow.

Talise didn’t even deserve him after the way she used Spence, having heirs with him and then dumping him just because he was gay.

Although Camilla would’ve dumped someone over Niels too. He was just that amazing.

Seriously. How many guys were smart and funny and talented and rich and good-looking and ran a charity and had an amazing spread in Summer Toy magazine?

`Not that Niels did that spread either. But at least she knew that was real, supplied by his ex-girlfriend (what a nasty person to share something like that, but thank God for her right?).

She needed a Niels. Maybe he had a brother.

The guy was staring at her.

She couldn’t remember his name.

“What?” she asked? “I’m sorry, I was concentrating on walking.”

Concentrating on walking?

She had problems.

He smiled, like it was no big deal. “I was just saying: Growing up in the Lower Dell, I never learned to read more than simple things.”

“Really?” she was talking too fast now, to cover for the concentrating on walking thing. “You should. My mom says everyone should read because they can find their own ideas instead of being told what to think.”

“Your mom is Indigo right?” he asked. He stopped in a little copse of trees with the cutest little brook that trickled through it, over mossy stones. It probably draped like a curtain over the rift wall and fell to the valley floor below.

What a romantic spot.

She nodded her head.

“But she has a different body now?” he asked. “I’ve never gotten used to that idea.”

Camilla had one memory of her mom. She was pretty sure it was a memory and not a dream because it was so boring.

Her, playing on the floor of a room in front of people. She had little wooden animals and she was bored, but all the people just kept talking and talking. Her mom, and a guy she knew must be her dad, sat together. In reach of each other but not touching. Not even really looking at each other.

The way her mom was with her step dad, they could barely keep their hands off each other sometimes.

Camilla wanted that, not whatever her mom and dad had in that memory. All that ice and stone couldn’t be good for their sex life.

Not that she wanted to think about her mom’s sex life, but at least she knew she had a healthy one. She didn’t have to worry about her mom being lost and alone and lonely.

“Yeah,” she said.

She needed someone who made her feel like that. She could already tell it wasn’t going to be this guy, because he was asking boring questions instead of kissing her.

“Her new body isn’t my mom, but her old body was and she’s still her,” she said.

She bet Niels would make her feel that way, the way he moved around Talise like she was a black hole and he was a speck on the accretion disc.

Camilla wouldn’t have made him a speck, she would have made him a planet, and she would have been a sun.

If only she’d met him first.

She needed to go to more concerts and plays and find a guy like that, not this guy.

“Do you find it strange being a princess? You don’t act like some of the royal family…fixated on royal things.”

Was he insane? Seriously.

She liked being alive in a way where no one saw her as a threat to the kingdom. It was great.

She didn’t need some idiot guy in some idiot forest by some idiot brook making a big deal about the fact that she should’ve been the princess of the Upper Dell.

No. Thank. You.

She laughed, to shake off the weird. “I am not a princess.”

He leaned over, finally, and kissed her.

It was okay. Not the best kiss, not the worst kiss. She let herself get into it a little. She loved that rush in her stomach when she let her body take over and shut her mind down.

Now if she was kissing Niels like this, she wouldn’t even be thinking about the fact that she was kissing Niels. She wouldn’t be thinking at all, she’d be falling into some kind of magical place where the world stopped existing and it was just him and her.

She wished she could stop thinking.

That was all she wanted, was a guy who could make her stop thinking while they made out.

Holy heck. He had transported them.

Now that was romantic. Transported while kissing. That was the kind of thing she always dreamed of.

She looked around. It was some kind of basement, with yellowed walls and bad lighting. There was a bed in the corner, unmade.

“Where are we?” she asked the guy. Jackson? Jepson?

He yelled up some stairs, “She’s here!” He looked back at her, this kind of tired look on his face. “Sorry, Princess.”

It was seriously the most romantic thing anyone had ever done, transporting her while kissing. It made up for all the boring questions.

“This is your house?” she asked him. “Don’t be sorry.” She looked around some more.

It was a crappy house. Camilla wouldn’t want to live in a dry yellow basement, but it was probably a decent house for what was available to the average person in the Dells. Not that she knew. The royal kids liked to go all over the kingdom and help people, but Camilla hadn’t actually been to a lot of villages.

When she was ten, the guard guy who bossed everyone – even the king and queen – around, had told her she wasn’t allowed to go with when they did stuff like that.

“There are plenty of ways to help where you won’t look like you’re trying to gain support,” he told her.

She’d run home crying, and her mom and Konrad (guard guy) had argued, and at the end of the day Camilla didn’t go with whenever any of her cousins went around to the villages.

She hardly ever even left the palace. Which, let’s be honest here, was really pathetic. She wanted a life.

“It is,” the guy said.

It is what? She tried to remember what they were even talking about.

Whether this was his house. So it was.

This woman came in. She was even paler than the king, which was saying something. Camilla didn’t know you could be that pale and still look like a normal fairy.

“This is my date,” the guy told the woman. “Camilla.”

“It’s nice to meet a friend of my son’s,” the woman said.

She didn’t say her name, which was just rude.

“This is my mom,” the guy explained. Camilla almost laughed. She wasn’t about to look at extreme stranger and call her mom.

“So do you want to watch a movie?” the guy asked. “I made supper.”

“Sure.” She couldn’t just leave, now that she’d met his mom. And he was obviously way more serious about her than she was about him. “Thank you.” She looked at his mom. “You have a lovely house. It’s very cozy.”

She almost laughed again. She was going to go home and tell Spence about this date and have no details. “Oh I went somewhere with this guy whose name I can’t remember and I met his mom but I don’t actually know her name either. Their basement was yellow.”

Spence was all about details.

The guy led her up the stairs and into a nice stucco kitchen with herbs hanging from the ceiling and one of those cute old-fashioned brick stove things that actually made a room hot.

Camilla would light a house on fire with one of those.

She wanted one, in a fireproof house, with someone to teach her how to use it.

“Camilla,” the guy said. He passed her a knife and this time the laugh actually bubbled out of her. He obviously didn’t know her, at all. “Why don’t you try out being a chef for two minutes? I forgot to cut the bread. I wanted to apply a garlic butter as well. It would only take five minutes, and you can add it to your list. Or maybe it will be your secret passion. Have you cooked much before?”

No. Well yeah, a few times, her stepdad had tried, but after she dropped the pan full of hot oil all over the kitchen everyone decided she was better off not being the person who helped cook.

“I can manage it,” she lied. “Just show me what to do?”

He got out some bread and a wooden board. The bread had probably been baked here in this kitchen, in that brick oven, all romantic and old-fashioned.

He set them all on the counter in front of her and stood with his arms around her. “Let me show you,” he offered, and he picked up the knife and started cutting. She felt his lips on her neck, soft and warm. It did something to her body she’d never felt before, a hunger she hadn’t known she was capable of.

She shivered a little, and her hand moved right in the path of his knife.

He gasped, his breath hot against her skin. “Oh! I’m sorry.” He jerked the knife away from her and moved it to the sink to rinse.

He was so flustered that he accidentally knocked it into a cup while he carried it.

Maybe there was something there after all. Probably her problem was that she was looking for perfect and amazing and Niels, when in reality that hardly ever happened to anyone.

He obviously liked her. He obviously made her body feel things she’d never felt before.

He wrapped a towel around her thumb, pressing down on it. “Are you alright? Would you like a drink? You can relax and I’ll serve you.” He kissed all of her fingers and her body practically collapsed in on itself with all those weird new perfect feelings.

“You’re so beautiful,” he told her. “I was distracted.”

He led her over to the couch, which was in this dimly-lit room that had nothing going for it except the tv in the corner.

She was so beautiful, he said. Maybe he was lame or maybe she was getting better at recognizing lines, but that was such a crock. You’re beautiful so I cut you.

Way to be an opportunist.

She sat on the rough sagging ugly orange couch. It sagged and smelled like too many combinations of herbs and made her want to leave.

She had to be polite. That had been drilled into her all her life. But she didn’t have to like it.

The guy smiled. “Drink?”

Why not. The worst that could possibly happen was that it would taste gross or he’d give her a drink from the cup he’d spilled her blood in, but she doubted it. Just because the couch was gross didn’t mean they had bad kitchen habits.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” a different voice said from the kitchen doorway. The voice was attached to this superhot guy Camilla couldn’t believe was real.

“Care to your lady,” the guy said to Camilla’s date guy, who didn’t have nearly as nice a voice either.

His Hotness passed a cup to Camilla, filled with a shimmery clear opaline liquid she couldn’t wait to taste, and walked over and turned the tv on.

She tried to focus, because this guy…his voice that was like a cello, his hair that was a couple of inches long instead of way too short or ponytail long, the way he brought her a drink when all her date bothered to do was cut her…

But there was something else too. She couldn’t figure out what it was, but there was just a thing. An amazing thing. A thing that belonged in the middle of Summer Toy as a spread.

Maybe he was her Niels.

No, she was on a date with the dull guy, who had been trying to be romantic. She should give him more of a chance.

“Thank you,” she said, and she took a long drink from the cup. It tasted weird. Not like melons or other stuff. Not like anything. Weird, different, new. She liked it. Maybe she’d ask for more later. “Are you this guy’s brother?”

This guy?

Hi, there’s this guy I’m dating, his name is…I mean, he probably has a name, right?

She was hopeless.

“More a cousin,” he said. “You’re from the palace?”

Ugh, not that question. She blushed, because no one like him had ever asked her that before. Or asked her anything before. Or existed in her life before.

There was something about him. What was it? It was like…

There was some kind of magic. He was probably gancanagh.

Yeah. She needed to get a good look at his eyes and see if they glittered like Konrad’s did.

“I’m not really from there,” she told the guy.

“Where are you from?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

Yes? Her verbal randomness was getting worse. She needed to shut up.

Or at least say something productive. Before she could, dull guy said, “The Senât Gile.”

Hotguy turned and looked at her.

“I mean I barely remember it,” she explained. “My mom hates it there.”

She blushed again because the guy was still looking at her and it made her feel warm and weird and like she should be closer to him but she was here with the other guy.

Just to prove it to herself, she leaned against the dull guy.

Seriously. She needed to figure this out. Whatever was making her go all Niels Poulsen about this guy she didn’t even know…

“That’s unfortunate,” he said, and she watched his lips. He had an interesting face – a narrow nose like the dead king’s, and blue eyes which you hardly ever saw in the Lower Dell, and full pink kissably soft lips.

She’d never wanted to kiss lips so much before. Not even Niels’.

The guy tapped the door frame between the living room and the kitchen. “I believe our roots are a fundamental part of our being. I’ve heard the Senât Gile is breathtaking in the spring.

The hot guy went into the kitchen, and the dull guy wrapped his arm around Camilla. “Have you seen Dogs not Included yet?”

Wow, she’d wanted to see that movie for so long, and then it came out and her parents had a movie-and-sex night (those were the worst) watching it and she had this weird thing about watching it now.

“No,” she said. “My mom has, we have it at home, but Sawyer’s always using the tv.”

The hot guy came out with a bowl of oil and the bread they’d been cutting, and handed it to the dull guy while the opening credits of the movie rolled.

Then he sat down on the couch.

Seriously. Right next to Camilla.

He kept accidentally brushing her during the movie too, just little light contact that thrilled her and made it so she missed most of the movie. She couldn’t focus, sitting between these two guys. Dull guy had his arm around her and hot guy had a really warm body and she was going to die.

Just die.

At least she’d die happy? Confused, but happy.

Dull guy got up after a while. “I’ll be back,” he said, and he walked off. She thought she heard the front door of the house open and close.

It was just her and hot guy. She refused to look at his lips.

“What do you think of this movie so far?” he asked.

The movie. Oh, he meant the one she couldn’t even a little pay attention to. “I think it’s okay,” she bluffed. “Obviously they’re going to get together,” because it was a romance, right? “That dog is doomed,” because she’d seen her mom crying when she read the book.

Not a bad prediction.

“I agree,” he said. He shifted so he was sitting up more and he put his hand on her thigh.

Oh no. She was really going to just stop breathing and die.

This was why she couldn’t ever find a guy before, because if she had she’d be dead and now she was going to die because her body wanted to explode with weird-good feelings she couldn’t sort out and he’d touched her.

“Why are you seeing Jentzen?” he asked her.

Jentzen! That was dull guy’s name!

At least she had a name for the guy she was never going to see again.

“I met him this morning, he seems nice,” she defended.

“You know he’s doing this just to sleep with you, right?” hotguy asked. “You’ll never hear from him again.”

Then he did the most incredible thing. He put his hand on top of hers and looked her right in the eye and said, “I wouldn’t do that to you.”

Talk about heart flutters.

She blushed. “You?”

“Is it that hard to believe I might be interested in you?”

Yes. Because she was her and he was hotguy.

“What do you enjoy doing?” he asked.

No, this was wrong. Even if she dated hotguy some other time, she couldn’t do this now. It wasn’t fair to Jentzen. “I’m here with your cousin.”

“You met him today,” he dismissed. “You’re hardly with him.”

She’d just met hotguy today too and she’d totally be with him if circumstances were right.

But then.

Some part of her quivered a little.

There was a different something, not a good something.

The part of her that was Spence’s sister and her mom’s daughter was stirring, coming to attention, beginning to think.

There was something she was supposed to notice but hadn’t.

“What do you enjoy doing?” he asked her.

She tried to think. Something. There’d been a thing. She’d thought the thing, and it was an important thing, and it wasn’t about how hot and distracting he was, it was important.

“I enjoy reading and chess,” he told her.

Maybe if she talked to him again something would trigger the same thought.

“Chess?” she asked. “Lots of my family plays chess, but I’m not very good at it. How are you?”

“I’m decent,” he admitted. “What are you good at?”

“Um. I’m not really good at anything. Messing up? Is that a thing to be good at?” She thought about options, things she hadn’t actually failed at. “I’m a good sister…

“Does messing up include being clumsy at times?” he asked.

It was when she was looking at him. She’d thought something when she was looking at him. And she’d thought something else in the basement.

It mattered. Why was she so scatter-brained?

“Yeah, a lot,” she said. “It’s bad.”

Dark hair, blue eyes, pale skin, tall, skinny nose…what was it…

“So you’re good at falling,” he teased.

“Yeah.” She was amazing at falling. If they had falling competitions in the arena she’d win every time. “It’s an impressive skill.”

His eyebrows? Had she noticed his eyebrows before? Maybe. She noticed them now. They were thick and brown and expressive.

His lips! She’d thought about those a ton, it had to be his lips.

“It could be,” he said, “depending on how deeply you fall.”

Oh, they were still on about falling. This was not helping her figure out why her instincts were screaming that something was wrong.

“Yeah,” she muttered. “Usually once you hit the ground there’s nowhere else to go. Trust me.”

He bent his eyebrows together. “Unless there’s someone there to catch you. Do you have many siblings?”

The eyebrows. Now that she’d noticed them she couldn’t stop noticing them. It had to be the eyebrows. But why would eyebrows matter?

“Sort of. I’m the only one that was from my mom’s old body.”

He put his arm around her and made little circles on her shoulder with his index finger.

It was perfect.

It was nauseating.

“If you’re so good at being a sister, you should consider being a mother.”

Something was really wrong.

Eyebrows…

“What? No. I’d be a horrible mom. I can’t cook and I lose things all the time. I’d lose my own kids.”

“Do you lose your siblings?” he pressed.

“No. Why?”

Wrong. It was so wrong.

She stood up. The wrongness was like a pressure inside her, catapulting her away from him.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to pressure you about anything.” He stood up too. “I can let you enjoy your evening with Jentzen.”

She didn’t want an evening with Jentzen, she wanted an evening with him.

She didn’t want an evening with him, because something was wrong.

She wanted Spence. Not for an evening with Spence, but so he’d point out the obvious problem.

“I’m…I should go home.”

She walked, too-fast, to the kitchen to see if she could find Jentzen.

The hot guy followed her and offered her a glass of water.

“Thank you,” she said.

She’d watched him pour it from the tap, it wasn’t like he could’ve drugged it.

The pale woman from before came in. “Going well?” she asked.

Oh no. Pale. So pale, just like the royal family. Hot guy had a nose like the dead king’s.

Salamander.

Those twins, Oren and Olivia or whatever their names were.

This was the wrong thing.

Jentzen was a salamander.

He was probably a spy.

She had to tell people.

“I’m going home,” she announced.

“I ruined her evening,” the hot guy said. “Have you seen Jentzen?”

The pale woman gave him a look.

Konrad, the guard guy, sometimes gave that look. When he was serious.

“You haven’t ruined her evening,” the pale woman insisted.

Her instincts were screaming again. Just play along, just get through this.

“Can I make it up to you?” the guy asked. “One chance, then you can go home?”

Play along. Salamander.

No wonder she felt so sick.

“Yeah,” she agreed.

The guy led her back to that lopsided couch and brought some dessert and wine with him, in two clean glasses. He poured himself some, drank it, and passed the bottle to her.

Maybe he guessed that she knew.

Maybe not.

She took some wine. It couldn’t hurt to have a few sips, if it made them trust her enough to let her leave.

He wrapped his arm around her and started the movie back up.

She had the wine.

A sip, another sip.

Ahh, this was all she needed. Everything was almost okay.

She looked at him. “Will you at least tell me why?” she asked. She realized she had tears in her eyes.

He squeezed her into the nest between his side and his hand, pressing her against him.

He felt so good.

Why did he have to be so hot?

He looked down at her. “You are worth more than you give yourself credit for,” he told her.

She had another sip of that delicious wine and snuggled into him.

He was so right. He felt like home to her, warm and big and perfect in every way. It was like all her dreams had come true, in one night. The perfect guy, delicious wine, a place to call home…

She sighed, content. She finished the wine pretty quickly and then had another goblet-full when the dog was finally dying and the couple was in love and it was just awful.

No wonder her mom had cried.

At least she had this guy here, to make her feel loved.

He was her everything.

When the movie ended, she looked at him. She couldn’t figure out which part of him she wanted to kiss first. It didn’t really matter. She was going to kiss all of him.

“You smell nice,” she told him.

“Thank you. You do as well.” He put his arm around her, with his hand on the small of her back.

She moaned, comfortable and deliciously hungry for him.

“Did you enjoy the movie?” he asked.

“Yes.” She stood up. Sort of. She tried to stand, but the house fell sideways and it took her a minute to figure out how to stand on the floor when it was suddenly the wall.

But it worked.

The guy had his arm around her. He taught her how to stand in the sideways house.

He had the most gorgeous lips.

She was so utterly in love. Such a lost cause.

“I’m ready,” she told him, breathy.

Her body was starving, and the only thing it wanted was him.

“You seem a bit unsteady,” he commented.

Well of course she was unsteady. It was a sideways house!

“May I carry you?” he asked.

She melted against him. Every part of her needed to touch every part of him.

“Yes.”

He picked her up.

She kissed his neck, because it was there and he was her home and all she could ever want ever.

He kissed her back.

His tongue ran over her lips and teeth, his sumptuous tongue that tasted of wine and man and all the millions of things she wanted but had never done.

He was her everything, and she didn’t even know his name.

He pulled her shirt off, her pants.

He kissed her body. Everywhere, until he was kissing her so much that she forgot how to be Camilla. It was the most amazing thing she’d ever experienced. It wouldn’t have been right with anyone but him.

He was the universe and she was his orbiti….

Ahhh, she moaned.

She couldn’t focus.

“Who are you?” she gasped.

He climbed on top of her, kissing her mouth with strange new flavors, pungent flavors.

Just before she lost all ability to think, he whispered his name against her ear.

“Tarragon.”

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