Page 67 of The Leaving Kind
But the more he got to know Cam and his face, the more Victor saw. His eyes weren’t simply brown. They were the loam beneath the trees, the fertile earth hidden by the mulch of fallen leaves. Touch the color with sunlight, though, and they shone like lake water. Brown and green and the tiniest flecks of blue. A glint of yellow. If Victor were to paint Cam’s portrait, he’d need at least four tubes of color to replicate the varying moods of his eyes.
Physically, Cam was beyond fine. He wore his years well, his body shaped by activity and determination. Victor suspected Cam rarely sat to do nothing. He was a man who moved. Lying there, thoroughly fucked in a way unachieved for longer than he liked to admit, Victor could attest to the absolute fineness of Cam’s fitness.
Footsteps padded back toward the bedroom. Victor thought about picking himself up, maybe sitting or gathering some pillows so he could try to lie attractively. But Cam’s fineness had pretty much done him in. He did manage to look up with a smile, though, a smile that felt stiff as he noted the distracted expression on Cam’s more-than-fine face.
We need another word, hon.
Kneeling on the side of the bed, Cam offered a damp towel. Victor accepted the gift and set about cleaning the—don’t say it ... ah, fuck it—fineness from his hands and stomach.
“What’s the grin for?” Cam folded his knee so that he sat. Naked, still, and obviously comfortable in his skin.
“I have been pondering the various meanings of the word ‘fine.’”
Cam’s eyebrows quirked upward. “Okay.”
Finished with the towel, Victor tossed it toward the floor. “It’s such a reflexive word.”
“How do you mean?”
“It’s what we say when we’re not fine. I mean—what is fine? As far as mood or mental state? If you think about it, like, really think about it, what we’re saying is that I am in neutral. Neither good nor bad. Just fine. But what we’re also saying is that I’m standing on the edge of something. I’m clinging. I’m fine now, but I could easily not be fine.”
Cam blinked at him.
Victor continued. “But what we’re mostly saying is, ‘I’m experiencing an emotion or pattern of thought I’m not ready to talk about. Or would prefer not to share with you. So I’m going to say I’m fine and you’re going to nod and we will move on.’”
Lips twitching, Cam offered a gentle nod. “I see.”
The rain had hastened the end of the day, the light outside now obscured by heavy clouds. Victor could still see Cam’s face, though, one half illuminated by the up-thrust beam of the flashlight on the mantel, the other by memory. He wore a thoughtful expression.
Then, leaning back on his hands, Cam nodded again, his chin bobbing up and down. His lips twisted. His brow pinched. When he turned to Victor, his mien had changed. Now he seemed sad.
“What is it?” Victor asked.
“Conversation leads to complication.”
“Complication doesn’t necessarily mean commitment, and we’ve talked before.”
“We have.”
Victor touched Cam’s hand, brushing his fingers over the knuckles folded into the quilt. “If you prefer to remain fine, I won’t press.”
Cam gazed at him for a long, long time. If Victor had a clock that ticked, the quiet beat would have sounded over and over in a steady rhythm beneath the thrum of rain and the creak of old timber and they’d be starring in their own gothic horror movie.
But, no, they were sitting on rumpled sheets, sated by good sex—and he had, inexplicably, decided to destroy the mood. Victor patted the knuckles he’d been stroking. “Let’s get dinner, hmm?”
Cam scrubbed his face with his other hand. “My parents died on a night like this. A storm caused flooding on a road outside Milford and the edge broke away. Their car slid off the side, bounced off a power pole, and rolled. The power was already out when the cops showed up to tell us what had happened. We thought it was the lightning. It had hit our damn yard, striking a tree outside our front door. The cops had to walk around half a smoking tree to tell us our parents were dead.”
Victor curled his fingers over Cam’s hand. “I’m so sorry.”
“It was a long time ago, Vic. A very long time ago. But when I think back, when I’m looking for reasons, that’s where it all starts.”
Where what starts?
He might as well have posed the question aloud, because Cam answered: “Four weeks later, I enlisted in the army.” Easing his hand out from under Victor’s fingers, Cam scooted back toward the side of the bed. “So, now that I’ve shit all over our parade, I should go.”
“No.” Victor scrambled off the bed and caught Cam’s wrist. “You can leave if you want, but you don’t have to go. I asked, Cam. I opened this door, even though you have hinted, many times, that I should not.” Victor slid his fingers back over the knobby bone of Cam’s wrist and tugged on his hand. “But I didn’t ask for the sake of connection. Well, I did. But only because that’s who I am. I’ve never been fond of anonymous sex. But I can do friend sex. That’s what I’m doing here. We both wanted this, and we’re both old enough to see it for what it is. Just because we talk doesn’t mean it’s more. Okay?”
Cam considered him for another long, quiet moment. The invisible clock ticked, but outside, the wind had eased. The thunder was gone. Dexter had stopped howling a while ago, and the house no longer groaned under the pressure of a storm.