One Hot Summer

Chapter 20: Love in the Club

Cami observed the photo of Brett. But it was a false alarm. It was just a flyer of that Indie artist he was going to be playing with next weekend.

She was pretty. Too pretty for Cami's liking. Now Cami definitely had to make sure that she would be at the show.

Saturday rolled along quicker than Cami anticipated. She was nervous but tried to channel her inner Angelina.

"What time should we head that way?" Lauren asked on the phone.

"Come pick me up around eight," Cami said.

The show started around nine. Was she making a fool of herself though? She didn't want to be one of those desperate girls who chased after a guy. Especially, since Brett said he'd text her the details and never did. Did he even want her there? She didn't care. She wanted to be there for him. She wanted to be with him.

Later in the day, she attended another therapy session with her mother where they read each other their letters. It was very emotional and vulnerable. They both cried. It felt like a release, in a sense. In the session, Cami also brought up going to Brett's show. Mrs. Clark was infuriated.

"Why do you feel this way?" Dr. Brown asked Mrs. Clark.

"Because!"

"Elaborate. Share what you're feeling. We're listening to what you have to say."

"Because he hurt my daughter."

"Yeah, but you haven't liked them from the beginning," Cami said. "Why?"

Mrs. Clark looked at her daughter then at Dr. Brown. She didn't want to admit the truth—more to herself than to her daughter. But she was being put on the spot and forced to face reality.

"Because you're my little girl. I'm not ready for you to grow up," she confessed and broke down in tears. "I know you're seventeen but I don't want to lose you to friends and boyfriends and this is the first time you have all of those things and you're never home."

Cami was shocked. She figured her mother hated her.

"Then why were you and dad trying to send me away to military school?"

"That's a reasonable question, Elizabeth," Dr. Brown said.

"Because it was hard for me to watch you get attached to people."

"Why don't you want me to be close to people?"

"Because I don't want to see you get hurt. People hurt people."

Dr. Brown analyzed the situation and said, "To me it seems, what this comes down to is control. You desire control over your daughter. It's not so much that you felt like you were losing her to people or that she wasn't home. It was that all those things weren't in your control. Sending her to military school would be something in your control, you would know where she is and who she's with. I think we need to figure out where that stems from, Elizabeth. Did you come from a controlling environment? I mean as a child."

"No my mother didn't care at all and I never understood it," Mrs. Clark said. "I could've skipped school for an entire week and not come home, stayed out all night, and she wouldn't even notice. She didn't care."

Cami was finding out more things about her mother that she'd never known. Things that took her by surprise.

"What about your father?" Dr. Brown asked.

"He was a drunk who left us when I was young. I haven't talked to him in thirty years."

"Do you speak with your mom?"