Page 103 of The Leaving Kind

Super busy today. Deliveries and two mowing jobs. I could come over and collapse next to you, but I’ll probably smell like gas fumes and sweat. I will most definitely snore. Loudly. And you need your beauty sleep. Going equipment shopping with Jorge tomorrow. Miss you. Catch up this weekend?

Victor found a smile for the check-in. It was so Cam. Newsy, but still personable. And he couldn’t be happier that Cam’s new business had taken off so spectacularly.

As quickly as the positive thoughts arrived, however, they fizzled. Fading from his mind until only afterimages remained, and darker thoughts soon rolled in to replace them. And they made no sense. Life should have purpose, and Cam was so, so lucky to have found his. And if Victor were to confess his dark thoughts, his insecurities, Cam would take those on board too. He’d make room in his schedule.

There was nothing to fear in all of this.

“Answer the text.”

Victor tapped out: Miss you too. He hit Send and pocketed the phone. He’d send more later. Tell Cam how he felt. Wish him all the best. Say something worthwhile.

He found a blank journal at the end of the row, one so new the spine still creaked when he opened it. Spreading it across the kitchen table, Victor shifted his buttocks against the chair, picked up a pen, and contemplated that first, awful page.

Then he touched the pen to the paper and wrote: I don’t know why I feel so sad, why my control is slipping or even if it’s a matter of control. All I know is that the wave is there, right off the shore and the longer I ignore it, the bigger it gets. I wish I knew why it was there. Why acknowledging the fact that I love Cameron brought it in from the ocean. Why I’m so fucked up.

Long experience moved the pen from those first few sentences where he did little more than ask questions and look for meaning, into pages of similar statements. Eventually, he’d connect all the parts together and he’d see a way through.

I’ll hurt him.

Why?

Because I can’t help being sad sometimes and when I am, I can’t talk about happy things. I can only lie there and feel the heavy weight of it all, breathing shallowly beneath it, gripped by the fear that one day, I’ll stop breathing, that I’ll want to stop breathing, and let it all crush me.

With a wordless cry, Victor dropped the pen. Then he did what he’d promised he wouldn’t do. Not reach for the closest bottle; he wouldn’t give in and start drinking. He went back to the cupboard and pulled out the sketchbook hidden behind those bland, gray books. The sketchbook that had broken his heart. Torn it up in a way he wasn’t sure would ever mend.

And there, slumped on the floor of his studio, legs splayed out in front of him, back curved against the open cupboard door, he revisited his father. The man who’d chosen the ironic name of Sunshine.

He had been so often sunny, though. When Sunshine had been up, he’d been very up. But when he’d been down, he’d been very down. In between hadn’t happened often. There’d be a day, an odd day or two, where he’d be like everyone else. And it would be weird. As though someone had forgotten to load his program and switch him on. Then Sunshine would return with cloudless skies and endless optimism and they’d believe that this time, he’d stay.

Swallowing a lump in his throat, Victor traced the lines of a beloved face. “Sometimes I wish you weren’t my father. That I hadn’t inherited whatever this is.” He knew what it was. Thankfully, he didn’t suffer as badly as Sunshine had. That didn’t mean he didn’t struggle, though. “But then I wonder what it would be like not to feel so deeply. Not to believe in love so fiercely that I fear it. Not to see the joy in every small glint of light.”

The hole Sunshine had left in his life would always be felt. But for a while, as Victor sat there with his saddest sketchbook open across his lap, he almost made it to the top of the levee. Calm started to spread through his middle as though the act of connecting with his father and telling him his troubles might be what he’d needed.

Then, as inevitably as the weather, his mood turned as he remembered he had two parents left, two perfectly lovely people who had lost and grieved both with their son and by themselves. And the selfishness, wanting only what he couldn’t have, washed in, the first splash of cold dread over the top of the dirt mountain he’d been trying to build.

Muddy emotion spilled across his shoulders, and then the weight behind his back collapsed, and he was falling, forever falling, too sad to pick himself up when it was so much easier to close his eyes and lie on the floor and go away for a while.

Cam was pretty tired by the time he turned his truck toward Milford. He and Jorge had bought a second mower, two trimmers, and sundry other equipment from a friend of a friend of a friend of someone’s who planned to retire. He should be anxious about having spent most of the money his brother had lent him. Instead, quiet purpose thrummed through his veins.

He could do this. With Jorge at his side and Nick at his back, he could make it work. Plus, he had Estefan, Renata, and Beck, part-time. Melanie already had another name for them, for when they needed more workers. Luisa was giving them all of her clients.

And then there was his relationship with Victor.

Cam didn’t need a romantic partner. After Donna cut him loose and fled with his last dream (and cash), he’d decided to keep things to just sex. The first time he’d kissed Victor, that notion had taken wing and flown out the nearest window. But still, he’d tried to keep it friendly. Until he hadn’t.

It was Nick’s fault, he decided. And Emma’s. If he hadn’t had to introduce Victor to his family as someone, he could have kept up the charade of friends who fucked forever.

Awkward as it had been, though, he’d liked having Victor with him for Emma’s visit. He liked having Victor in his life. Victor added so much light and brightness to everything he touched. Cam smiled into the night closing around the truck. For a man so pale, Victor always traveled with so much color.

He flipped on his turn signal and guided his truck onto Raymondskill Road. Lifted his hand in a half wave as he passed Melanie’s house unnoticed, and pulled into Victor’s driveway. His text that he’d be stopping by had gone unanswered, and it was only when he reached the circle at the top that Cam acknowledged the slight anxiety he was carrying below the weariness.

Vic didn’t strike him as the type to keep multiple partners (unless agreed upon), but they hadn’t had an exclusivity conversation. Coupled with the lack of real communication over the past week, Cam had started to wonder if the shine might have worn off. He’d tried to console himself by remembering how Victor had looked the last morning they spent together: spread across a jumble of colorful quilts, his pale skin aglow, sweat beading his brow. Victor had not worn the expression of a man who needed more or someone else.

Still, the thought that things had shifted niggled.

The house appeared quiet. A quick check of the garage showed Victor’s car in residence. Cam knocked at the front door. When he got no response, he tried the handle. Locked. He crunched across the driveway and took the path around to the back patio.

The kitchen lay in darkness, the laundry light slicing a wedge across one corner of the long table and the front of the breakfast bar. Putting his hands to the glass, Cam peered inside, looking as best he could through the doorway into the family room. He couldn’t see any other lights.