She is Whatever She Wants to Be

Cameron Ann Morgan

This story was inspired by the lovely flustered-darcy’s post about Cammie and Zach’s opposing childhood’s affected the way they expressed their love. Enjoy!

It was only after hours of laughing, catching up, and getting sick on potato chips with Bex that Cammie-snuggled in mounds of blankets on the floor of her college apartment-finally admitted to something that had been nagging at her for years.

“He has never said told me that he loves me.’ Bex’s eyes widened.

“You’re kidding?” she said in a surprised British accent. Cammie just gave her a meaningful look and sighed,

“Never.”

It had been several, unbelievable happy years since she and Zach had been official, and even longer her since they had unofficially been committed to each other.

“Have you said it?” Bex questioned.

Cammie thought of the many times the words had nearly slipped off her tongue. ‘I love you’s’ had always come easily to her. In her house, I love you was casually tossed over a shoulder while running out the door, after quick goodnight cheek kisses, and through snorts of heavy laughter. So why in the world had she not said it to Zach? She had known for years that she had not just really like-liked him, not even just loved him, but was completely and hopelessly in love with him.

“No” Cammie replied to Bex’s question finally, looking at her solemnly. “I think I’ve been waiting for him to say it first, you know?”

Bex snorted, “That is ridiculous you know, if you love him, you should say it. None of that ‘wait for the guy to say it first’ crap. You are a CIA agent for god's sake!”

“Part-time agent” Cammie corrected with a half smile, contemplating the words of her best friend. She had missed Bex immensely, her best friend had been living across the world, not to mention abroad running clandestine operations at classified locations. That didn’t exactly lend itself to important best-friend conversations about boys.

                                                        …

Cammie lay sprawled on the couch with her laptop balancing on her knees, trying to concentrate on the paper she was trying to write for one of her classes. He focus, however, was not on Freudian psychology, but on the conversation, she had had with Bex earlier that week. It had been nagging at her, and she knew it had been because her best friend was right. She had to just say how she felt, and if that freaked Zach out…well, she didn’t really want to think about it just then.

She heard a soft tapping on her door, and knew who it was; she had been expecting him.

“Come in!” She called to her boyfriend

Zach came strolling into the room, a grease-stained fast food bag in his hand.                                   “You know, with all the kidnapping and almost dying you’ve been through, you should totally lock your doors.” Zach had just enough time to grin at his own comment, before Cammie was crossing the room in fast strides-her laptop abandoned haphazardly on the couch- and pressed her lips very firmly to his. His kissed back enthusiastically, before breaking away, one eyebrow arched, very sexily if Cammie dared say.

“I love you” she blurted quickly, the squeezed her eyes tightly, seriously embarrassed at her severe lack of romance. She opened her eyes enough to see Zach’s face phase through several emotions, first shock, something identifiable, then finally, a look that could only really be described as radiant overtook his face.

“Gallagher girl, I’ve been in love with you from the very start”

Cammie’s heart skipped several beats as he leaned down again to capture her lips in his, one hand knotting in her blonde hair, the other gripping her waist firmly. When they parted finally, their breathing was heavy, and Zach’s hair looked distinctly disheveled.

“Why didn’t you say it before?” Cammie wasn’t sure what ‘before’ she was referring to, whether she meant years or months ago, or simply before she had said it.

This question made him look…guilty? Cammie instantly regretted letting those words slip from her lips. He was quiet, for a minute, but he looked conflicted as if he was having an argument in his own head, and when he spoke, she knew that the part that had been fighting to be honest with her had won.

“Well... We didn’t really have an affectionate home” the phrase was said a bit sardonically, and Cammie kept a firm grip on his upper arm. “In fact” he continued, “I’m not really sure I can remember the last time that I heard anyone say that they loved me.”

She had rarely heard Zach ever be this vulnerable, and his words took her breath away. Both of them were lost in their own memories of Catherine Goode.

For a bit, Cammie struggled to find something adequate to say in response to this, as if she could take away years of his mother’s ambivalence towards her son with a few words.

“Well, you know Zach in my family, we said ‘I love you’ all the time, so I am not kidding when I tell you that you are gonna be so sick of me saying it from now on.”

Zach coughed out a laugh and smiled down at the girl he couldn’t help but always see. A million things he wanted to say ran through his mind, most of the incredibly cheesy variety. But instead, he just said

“Let's eat.”

They sat together, curled on the sofa of Cam’s studio apartment, feeling like the happiest couple in the world as they munched on their soggy burgers. When Cammie stood up to toss their trash, she leaned down towards her Blackthorne boy and said: “I love you.” And when she returned to him with a glass of water, she said: “I love you.”  And when she stood by the door, waiting for her boyfriend to put on his coat, she said: “I love you.”

Zach, instead of saying in back in that moment, crushed his lips to hers, and she pushed the forgotten coat off his shoulders, and they both knew that maybe that night, he shouldn’t go home.