Chapter 99
Chapter 92: Get A Love Life Cameron
Sedona’s POV
“You need to get married,” I told him, because it was the most effective redirect available and I needed him to stop teasing me about relationships when he was also terrible at relationships. At least I had a child that was turning seven, I doubt he had screwed someone in that long, he was still painfully single that my parents have probably agreed to themselves that Nick was the only grandson they might get.
“You need to find someone and settle down and direct all of this energy toward your own life instead of narrating mine because you have a way more worse love life than me which is saying something p>
The laughter didn’t stop immediately, but it changed-a slight shift in quality, a half-beat of
something underneath it that altered the texture, as he stopped laughing as he looked
contemplative for a moment that immediately told me that I had hit something.
“Yeah,” he said. “I should p>
And there it was. The same thing I’d noticed before, the dimming, the specific quality of enthusiasm going out of a sentence like a light being turned down rather than off. Not the
response of someone who’d never thought about it. The response of someone who’d thought
about it and arrived somewhere complicated. That he was not just not deciding not to have a
relationship or a love life, but he had something that was complicated than a love life and he was
dealing with that and it was taking a lot out of him.
“Cameron,” I said, differently than before.
“Hm.” He was looking somewhere past my shoulder, at the window or the wall behind me, not at
my face.
“What is that p>
“What’s what p>
“That.” I watched him. “The way you just-when I said you should settle down. There’s something there p>
“There’s nothing there. You’re deflecting from the Dante conversation by trying to make this about
me p>
“I’m not deflecting. I’m asking.” I kept my eyes on him, making sure that he doesn’t back down from
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Claim this because I could see that there was something there and I was determined to get to the bottom of it, no matter what. “Is there someone p> He looked at me then, quickly, a reflex look that he pulled back from almost immediately as he shook his head before giving me a oral response. “No,” he said. “There’s no one p> It wasn’t a lie, exactly. I’d known Cameron my whole life and I could read the difference between his lies and his carefully constructed truths that he used when he did not want to say something awkward or complicated, and this was the latter-true in the specific way of a statement that was accurate on its precise terms while leaving something substantial unsaid, he had no one but there was also not a no one if you get what I mean. There was no one. But perhaps there was a someone who couldn’t be someone, for whatever reason. I opened my mouth- The door opened. My mother came in with the specific energy she had when she’d been somewhere purposeful, doing something that she considered productive and was humming to herself with the happiness that came from realizing everything was being aligned for her and she was now arriving at the next purposeful thing, her coat still on, a bag over one arm, her eyes doing the quick assessment of the room that she’d been doing every time she entered since I’d been admitted. “Good, you’re both here.” She set the bag on the counter, started unpacking the things that she had brought while coming. “I spoke to Frank’s nurse on my way up. The pre-cycle bloodwork is scheduled for Thursday, which means I need to rearrange the Thursday afternoon-Cameron, are you staying for dinner? I’ve brought the barley soup and that bread you like p> Cameron stood with the fluid movement of someone grateful for a natural exit. “I can’t, actually. I have-there’s something at the company I need to deal with.” He was already reaching for his jacket, his phone appearing in his hand. “Rain check on the soup.” he was escaping this conversation, he was doing this on purpose. “Cameron-“I started. “Thursday,” he said, looking at me with a smile that was genuine but also deliberately surface level, keeping everything underneath it from my reach. “I’ll be here for the bloodwork. We can talk then.” He looked at my mother. “The soup smells incredible, Mom p> “It’s not for you, you’re leaving,” she said, without heat. He kissed the top of her head as he passed her, gave me a look that managed to be SAT 10 2/3 Claim simultaneously fond and evasive-the Cameron equivalent of *I know what you’re doing and I’m choosing not to be available for it right now*-and then he was gone, the door swinging shut behind him with the quiet click of someone making a controlled exit. I stared at the closed door. Something at the company. Cameron’s default deflection, reliable as weather, deployed with the confidence of someone who’d been using it for years. He ran a company; it was always available. But the timing of it, the specific moment he’d reached for it, and the deflection, I saw myself in him at that moment, when people asked about my marriage but it was a failure that it made me uneasy and fleeing rather than confronting it. “He looked tired,” my mother said, shaking me from the thought. She was setting out the soup containers with the methodical care she applied to feeding people, the activity that was her primary language of love, as she turned all her attention on me. “He’s been here every day. He needs to rest p> “He’s fine,” I said, though I was still looking at the door. “He’s Cameron, which means he’ll say he’s fine until he isn’t and then he’ll figure out how to manage that alone too.” She looked at me over her shoulder. “You two are very similar p> “We really aren’t p> Comments C LUCK DRAW > Vote 165 Admins2