Chapter 199
Chapter 198: Quting Himself
Cameron’s POV
I woke up at five-forty-three.
Claim
This was not unusual. I have woken up before six for most of my adult life, something that I had gotten used to, ever since I started working and was running a company. I usually use the time to answer emails, review briefings, work through whatever problem has been sitting in the background of my mind since the previous evening before i got prepared for the day.
This morning I lay in bed and stared at the ceiling and thought about how to tell my parents that I was in love with my PA.
The ceiling didn’t offer much advice to me, saying nothing which was unhelpful but then again it was a ceiling and they weren’t very bright for having opinions of theirs.
I ran through the various approaches the way I ran through problems that needed solving and tried to remove the ones that had the most flaws in them. I could tell them over dinner, which had the advantage of a formal setting and the disadvantage of a long evening of follow-up questions with nowhere to go afterward if it didn’t go the way I planned.
I could tell them individually, which was more intimate but doubled the number of conversations and introduced the variable of one parent having processed it before the other and having to go through it
twice.
I could send a message to them which was cowardly and which Sedona would never let me live down.
Breakfast, I decided. Breakfast was functional and time-bounded. The day would continue afterward. After breakfast, my parents had places to be, so did I. So I would use going to work as an excuse to leave if they needed time to process the information.
Breakfast was the perfect time to tell them.
I got up at six-fifteen, showered, and dressed. I chose a jacket without a tie because the tie felt like armor and I was not trying to go to a battle.
When I got downstairs my mum was already the kitchen making breakfast for us, like she did every morning insisting that it was therapeutic for her, and enjoyed doing it.
Today there were eggs and toast and sliced fruit and small chin chin my mother had apparently made at some point in the last eight hours, because they weren’t there before
My father was at the table with his newspaper already going through the morning papers like he did every morning.
Sedona was not yet down. This was by design. I had timed it. I did not need Sedona here while i talked to
our parents.
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Isat down. My mother put a plate in front of me. drank the tea she’d already poured out for me.
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“You’re up early,” my mother said, which meant she’d noticed I was purposeful about this morning and was offering me an opening to say what was troubling me.
“I wanted to talk to you both,” I said: “Before the day starts p>
My father looked up from his newspaper He had the specific quality of attention he deployed when something required it-not dramatic, just present. He set the paper down.
My mother sat across from me.
I had done more difficult things than this. I had stood in boardrooms and delivered news that dismantled people’s assumptions. I had managed the collapse of a partnership that had taken three years to build. I had sat with my sister in a hospital corridor at two in the morning and held the knowledge of her diagnosis while she slept.
This should have been easier than those things.
It was not easier than those things.
“I’m in a relationship,” I said. “I wanted you to know p>
My mother’s face did the thing it did- an immediate smile on her face as she processed what this meant. “Cameron p>
“I’m telling you because it’s serious,” I said, before she could get momentum. “Not because it’s new. It’s been building for a while, and I should have said something sooner, and I’m saying it now.” I paused. “It’s Lucian p>
A silence.
Not a bad silence. A silence of recalibration-two people who had been holding an expectation rearranging it to fit new information.
“Lucian Park,” my father said. Not a question. Confirming.
“Yes p>
My father looked at me for a moment, his eyes on mine, searching for something i had no idea what.
My mother said: “Your Lucian p>
“He’s not-yes. My PA. Yes p>
She said nothing for a moment. I watched her face, which was doing several things at once in the efficient, overlapping way her face always did. Then she said: “How long p>
“Officially? A few weeks. In terms of-the awareness of it.” I considered how to say this. “Longer p>
“How much longer p>
“Eighteen months p>
My mother looked at my father. My father looked at the table briefly-not avoiding, just absorbing. Then he
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Outing Himse
looked back at me p>
“Cameron,” my father said. “You’ve been carrying this for eighteen months p>
“I was working up te it”
“To telling us p>
“To telling him p>
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Another silence. My mother reached across the table and put her hand over mine-briefly, warmly, the way she did when she wanted to communicate something that didn’t have a shape in words yet. Then she sat back.
“You’re in your thirties,” she said.
“I’m aware p>
“You’re almost thirty-five p>
“I am aware of that as well p>
“We’ve been asking-” She stopped. Recalibrated. “We’ve been wondering,” she amended, which was my mother’s version of the same thing, “when you were going to settle down. When someone was going to-” She spread her hands slightly. “We didn’t know this was the reason. Or part of it p>
“It wasn’t the whole reason,” I said. “I’ve been focused on the company. And on Sedona. And-it wasn’t straightforward p>
“No,” my father said quietly. “I imagine it wasn’t p>
The morning light continued to come through the kitchen window. A bird landed on the garden wall outside and sat there for a moment, then left. I thought briefly of Drew, who would have identified the species immediately and written it down.
“Do you have concerns?” I asked. Because I needed to know, and I was not good at waiting for information to arrive in its own time when I could simply ask for it.
My father looked at me. “About Lucian p>
“About any of it p>
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Florence
A passionate storyteller who brings emotions to life through her words. When she’s not writing, she finds peace nurturing her garden.