Page 68 of The Leaving Kind

Then Cam nodded—once—and squeezed Victor’s hand in return. “Okay.” A familiar grin tugged at the side of his mouth, poking a previously unseen dimple into his cheek. “But only because whatever you made for dinner smells so good.”

Victor laughed. “Thank goodness I planned ahead, hm? Or we’d be having peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.”

“Food of champions and never say it isn’t.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t dare.”

And just like that, the atmosphere lightened, as though the storm had moved on from inside the house as well.

After dressing in sweats and tees, Cam once again pleasingly attired in Victor’s too-small clothing, Victor ventured out to the garage to fire up the generator. Cam took care of the interior connection, flipping the fuses on the auxiliary board to power the well pump, the kitchen, and a few other scattered lights. Then Victor served them each a hearty bowl of chili, and they sat around a corner of the kitchen table, Honey flopped over Cam’s feet, Sinister on his own chair, his triangular black head poking up over the top of the table, and Dexter probably burrowed into a warm nook of the abandoned bed.

“Gang’s mostly here,” Cam observed. He appeared to take in the five empty seats. “Must have been nice growing up here. For your kids.”

“I like to think it was.”

“You still see them much?”

“I do. They stop by unannounced at times, which I love. That they’re comfortable enough to think, ‘Hey, I’ll visit Dad,’ and just show up. I feel like it means I did something right.”

Nodding, Cam dipped his spoon into his bowl and brought up a steaming mound of black beans. He blew across the top and then tasted it. “This is good.”

“Thank you. It’s one of Tez’s recipes. Her parents are from Texas, and this is, apparently, a completely authentic recipe. Except for the beans. It should be made with cubes of chuck steak, but beans are heart healthy, and apparently I should be watching my cholesterol.”

“Heh, me too.” Cam patted his belly. “Every now and then I’ll get all healthy and cook, you know? Spend a day making stuff to pack the fridge and freezer. But in between, I exist on bacon sandwiches and beer. Or chicken and whiskey. Those are my main two diet plans.”

“I’m more of a wine and cheese man, myself.”

“You don’t say.”

They shared a laugh and ate in silence for a while. Vic assumed it was a comfortable silence until Cam said, “Seeing as we’re doing the friend thing, can I ask a question?”

“Sure.”

“How come you’re not married. To a man, I mean.” His eyebrows dipped downward. “You are gay?”

“A hundred percent and thank you for not asking whether I slept with Tez in order to make our babies.”

“Oh, that was next.” Cam grinned, but the angle of his eyebrows suggested he was lying. The question didn’t seem to have occurred to him.

“As to why I am not married ...” Victor shrugged. “It’s funny you should ask. Or not funny, but coincidental. Tez and I touched on that subject this week. We were having lunch and wondering, again—this is something we think about a bit, I suppose—whether our decision to have kids has somehow mucked up our romantic aspirations. We wanted so badly to raise our children together and that was almost twenty years of our lives. Sometimes I ask myself if I could have found someone else to do it with. A man. But the men I was enjoying back then weren’t interested in having families, and the men I met out here were so often already married with children and I was their secret on the side.”

Cam winced.

“What about you?” Victor asked.

Cam put his spoon down and wiped his mouth with a napkin. “If I ever got married, I’d want a partnership like my mom and dad had.”

Victor’s heart squeezed. Of all the answers he might have expected, this was not on the list. Especially as he’d supposed Cam might never talk about his parents again.

“They were best friends. Like you and Tez. Good people too. Not perfect, but even at twenty, I loved what they had and aspired to achieve the same one day. I had a girlfriend before I went away, a friend from high school. Do you remember Cindy Marks? She was a year ahead of me.”

“You were dating the captain of the cheerleading squad?”

“Go big or go home, man.”

Victor laughed.

“She still lives locally. Married a guy she met in college and they moved out here to be close to her parents. We met up shortly after I returned from Afghanistan. A couple of years after.” He waved a hand. “I had work to do when I first got back. Rehab and stuff. But then I came home for a bit, and we caught up and it was great. We could still be friends, you know?”