So maybe it’s not me he likes at all. Hey—it could be the case. Maybe he just thinks of me as a friendly buffer in the ultimate battle for Kitty’s heart, and soon I’m going to hear and see him banging her in the middle of the night too.
God, God.
“Allie?” Oh fuck.
Of course I knew I’d sat here too long. If they’d spent much more time out in the lake they would have all died of pneumonia. And yet still, my stupid brain wants to be all shocked that Cameron’s suddenly at the door to his own bedroom, and I do even more ridiculous things like trying to pretend I don’t have this book of writing in my hands. I totally don’t.
Why are you looking at me like that, Cameron? I don’t.
“Oh my God,” he says, and then I have to watch in tormented silence as his eyes slide over the clearly moved copy of Tehanu on his desk, and the writing in my hands, and probably the fact that I’m just in a towel too. I mean, it’s not the biggest problem with what’s going on here, but the towel-wearing has got to look strange beside the other stuff.
“Cam—” I start, but I have absolutely no idea how I’m going to finish and he knows it. He cuts me off before I’ve gotten past the first word.
“What are you doing in here?” he asks, and oh he sounds pissed. You can really hear it in him too, because usually he’s so calm and still. It’s like a pool of motionless water suddenly taking out a small city.
“Well, the thing is…”
I do not know what the thing is.
“I can’t believe you’d do something like this, Allie.”
Oh God, he’s disappointed in me. Oh no, I can’t breathe.
“No, look—see, the thing is,” I say, but I still don’t know what the thing is. I stand up in the vain hope that doing so will help me find it, but it only makes it more obvious I’m holding his book full of writing.
His eyes flick down to it and I actually see the flush spread up and over his cheeks. Like, literally see it. I didn’t even know such a thing could happen.
And then he looks back up to me and those glacial eyes of his are suddenly not very glacial any more. Instead they blaze hot, and his upper lip has gone all mean and thin the way it did the other night when Wade read that story out loud, and I just know something good isn’t coming.
I’ve never seen Cameron like this before, and it’s unnerving.
“How could you go through my stuff like this? I trusted you,” he says, and then he gazes at the mess I’ve made again as though he can’t process it. “This is just…this is just disgusting, it’s—”
In my defense, I do not mean to butt in, here. In fact, up until the point where the words actually come out of my mouth, I didn’t even know I wanted to say anything at all. They just rise up like some unstoppable tidal wave, and once they’re out there I can’t take them back.
“You went through my stuff!”
God I wish I could take them back. His head jerks up and he looks, quite frankly, stunned. He looks as though I slapped him, even though I totally didn’t, I swear to God. I didn’t mean to metaphorically slap you, Cameron, I promise. Oh Lord, this is dreadful.
“I don’t know…” he starts, and I am completely aware he wants to finish the sentence with what you’re talking about. It’s obvious. His eyes even slide to one side, the way the eyes of all truly bad liars do.
I try to take a breath and think about how I can mitigate this.
“Look—you know what? Let’s just forget about this. Let’s just forget all about it. I’ll forget what I saw and you can forget what you’ve seen here and we’ll just go about our business, OK?”
Fuck knows how that’s going to happen, but I figure it’s worth a shot. Until he puts a sudden hand over his eyes and moans: “Oh God you saw that.”
Then we can’t pretend anything, unless there’s a doctor around to perform two handy lobotomies.
“Cam—seriously. It’s not a big deal! I hardly saw anything—”
He backs away from me—he actually backs away from me!
“Please—I can’t talk about this, I can’t.”
He’s almost out of the room, by this point. The urge to drag him back in and shut the door is strong—because God only knows where Kitty and Wade are—but I resist. I don’t want to scare him so badly he becomes a vegetable.
Hey—I’ve seen it happen. People become vegetables all the time when I lay my hands on them.
“I think at this point we kinda have to, don’t you?”
He lets the hand drop from his eyes and that fierceness is back, suddenly, in his expression. Gotta admit—it’s intimidating. He’s just so big. And then he says something that crushes my soul, on top of all the bigness.
“Maybe I should rephrase—it’s not so much that I can’t talk about it, it’s that I don’t want to talk about it with you.”
It’s weird, how much everything sinks inside me. I mean, if Wade had said something like that to me I’d be devastated, but that’s understandable. I love Wade. It’s not as though I love Cameron. I just had a different idea of him, that’s all—one where he’s gentle and calm and would never lash out like that.
But then he puts a hand to his face again—this time to squeeze at the bridge of his nose—and I can see how much pain he’s in. It’s not every day your friend discovers all of your secret possible crushes and hidden sexual proclivities.
Plus, he then says: “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean that…the way it came out.”
So, you know. I can’t hold it against him. Especially when he then goes to the door and closes it, shutting us both inside. I don’t mind admitting—a little frisson of excitement goes through me. Even though it hurt when he shut me down I kind of expected it, so this…this is like an illicit little treat, suddenly.
Is he actually going to have a chat with me? About something other than computers?
I watch him walk over to the bed and sit down, nerves written all over his face. Hands clenching and unclenching. It’s like the bit in Poirot when he gathers everyone together in the room to root out the killer.
“Cam, seriously. It’s fine. Whatever you want to say—it’s fine,” I say, because that’s true. And also because I want him to keep talking. God, anything to just have him keep talking.
“Whatever you…uh…might have seen…” he starts, and I can practically feel him trying to squeeze it out of himself.
“It’s just because I was, you know. Worked up. From…the other stuff that happened.”
Hey, we all were, right? Wade’s story was hot.
“Perfectly understandable,” I say.
“And the picture I have of you…” He glances at the desk, where said incriminating photograph lies. “It’s just because…you’re my friend.”
“Obviously,” I say, because his answer sounds much more plausible to me than “I am secretly in love with you.” Much. Much. He’s clenching at the edge of the bed so hard his knuckles have turned white, but it’s still a completely reasonable explanation.
“And as for the stories…” He pauses, then, and this time I can see him really struggling. As though possible love and illicit masturbation is no big deal, but this…this is like some kind of awful insurmountable obstacle the likes of which the world has never seen. It’s like he’s trying to climb Olympus Mons with a toothpick and some dental floss as his only tools. “Which one did you read?”
He asks the question in this horrible, faux-casual sort of way. Raises one eyebrow and won’t meet my gaze. Seriously—how is someone this handsome that awkward?
“The first one,” I say, then for some reason wish I’d gone with a different answer. I bet there’s some nice romantic tale in there somewhere, about making love and buying people flowers and eating chocolates in bed or something.
But unfortunately for him, I read the one about two girls practically
gang-raping a guy who resembles him in more ways than one. And so I have to watch his eyes kind of flutter closed in a way that almost makes me want to giggle. It’s an obvious expression of mortification, but there’s something about the way he almost rolls his eyes at the same time, and doesn’t quite close them…it’s very endearing.
“Oh that’s wonderful,” he says, while my mind flashes on every little detail of that particular story. The hand over his mouth, all the talk of being used, the feeling-like-a-woman stuff…
Cam is just so self-contained. It must be like someone’s cut a hole in him and is letting all the stuffing spill out.
“I really, really didn’t mean to pry,” I say, but that’s a lie. I did mean to pry. I watched him jerking off and it infected my brain with some kind of sex fever, and then I simply couldn’t stop searching for further evidence of his…whatever this is.
However, I cannot use this as an explanation to him.
“It’s fine,” he says, and waves a casual hand. Everything is too casual. He’s never casual. “Like you said—I did it to you, first.”
“It’s not the same,” I say, because it isn’t. Him going through my stuff is not a big deal. Me going through his stuff is like breaking into Fort Knox. “And besides, this isn’t tit for tat. I didn’t…that’s not how I intended it. You just made me so curious!”
Ugh. Did I really just say that? And also: why did me saying something so dumb suddenly light up his face like that? As though he’s happy about my curiosity.
“Seriously?” he says.
I immediately want to back out of my own natural snoopiness.
“Well…uh…yeah. I mean—you’re not exactly the most forthcoming of people.”
This is true. Once, I asked him if he liked cereal for breakfast and he replied he’d have to think about it. Evasion is practically his middle name. I’m surprised he even got as far as “whatever…uh…you might have seen.”
I mean, the above actually implies there was something to see.
God, he’d make a great politician. I think his parents actually wanted him to be one, so that’s not really a shocker.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and then for some reason I feel really bad about having that politician thought. I don’t even know why he’s apologizing, in truth—after all, it’s me who did the wrong thing.
“No, no—it’s me. I shouldn’t have come in here, and I shouldn’t have read your stuff—it’s up to you if you want to share, not me—”
He scrubs his hands over his face briefly.
“I do want to share. I just can’t. Not this.”
“Well, that’s cool. No one says you have to,” I say, which seems like a nice, calming thing to tell him. Only when he looks up at me there’s an intensity in his gaze I haven’t seen before. Not ever. He’s usually so still, so to see him like this is…unsettling. Unsettling and something else, something I can’t quite pinpoint.
My body is still on high alert from the story. Maybe that’s it.
“You don’t have any trouble,” he says, and makes his hands into fists as he does so. The high alert ratchets up a notch. I think…and don’t hold me to this…but I think I’m turned on. Because of the story, obviously. And maybe also because I’m still in just a towel and he’s showing some kind of actual emotional reaction to something other than a website crashing.
“Of course I have trouble! What are you talking about? I have a bag of stuff down there I’ve never dared read to anyone,” I say. Of course I then think of him reading that bit in “Hamin-Ra” where three men take advantage of my hero’s inescapable and utter horniness to…uh…do stuff. To him.
Which just makes me flush even redder than I am already.
“It’s different…” he starts, but I’m not letting him get away with that.
“Why is it different?”
“It just is. What you write about seems…normal.”
Did he seriously just say those words? I think he did. And for the first time I’m starting to wonder if Cam’s issues run a little deeper than Oh I’m a bit reserved and I like computers a lot.
“Don’t say that,” I say, and it comes out a bit stronger and darker than I intend. He straightens, as though I’ve admonished him somehow—though if there was anything I wanted him to feel bad about, it’s this. He shouldn’t think of something as not normal, he just shouldn’t. Fair enough if he’d written a story about fucking himself on a horse’s cock or something, but even then I’ve got to say…I don’t think I’d be that bothered by it.
He spreads his hands, palms down. I’ve seen him make the gesture a thousand times before—a mea culpa move, a peacekeeping thing. And also, weirdly, very much like the kind of gesture a politician would make.
“I just meant—” he starts, but I cut him off.
“I’ve written about that kind of stuff. Are you saying I’m not normal?”
“What?” he says, and he looks appalled, just as I knew he would. “No, God, no. You’re the reason I even think about stuff like—”
Of course he stops short before he gets far with a thought like that. But oh, not quite short enough, no, not quite short enough. My skin bristles and that same deep down jolt of pleasure goes through me—like the one I felt when I read the line Just stay still and take it.
“Stuff like…uh…you know…stuff like…um…” he says and it’s adorable, it really is. I never thought I’d live to see the day I called Cam adorable, but watching him fumble toward an end to a sentence like that is just…delicious.
He clears his throat, and tries again.
“It’s just how I feel about myself. It’s not anything to do with you.”
“Cam—it’s not a big deal. Loads of guys fantasize about two women,” I say, because really. Really. This is what he’s beating himself up about?
And he is beating himself up about it, because when I actually stop dancing around the subject and lay it out for him, he goes bright, bright red.
“Not like that, they don’t,” he says, and I have a sudden image of a bunch of beer-swilling, loudmouthed dudes watching two simpering girls getting it on with some big manly man.
“Cam—”
“Look—I’d just really rather we didn’t talk about this. I hardly want to think about it, so talking about it is, like, ten times worse.”
“OK, but—seriously. Loads of guys think about things like—”
He almost stands up then, but seems to think better of it. He does, however, make some pretty big gestures. And his hands are massive too, so it’s kind of like he’s assaulting the air.
“But you know what—it’s not just that, it’s not, it’s everything. There are literally hundreds of things I really don’t want to be thinking about, ever.”
Of course, I know he means sex stuff. But then he confirms it, so I can’t even escape the idea on any level whatsoever.
“In fact, I think I preferred it back when I hardly thought about sex at all.”
It’s weird that around twenty-four hours ago, I would have pegged Cam as bordering on asexual. If he’d said something like that to me when I hugged him in the boat room, I might have nodded my head in agreement. He seems as though he hardly thinks about sex at all. He barely dated anyone in college, and it’s obvious he’s not with anyone at the moment.
But when he says something like that now, it’s like a big sign painted across him in neon. I’m lying, I’m lying. He doesn’t prefer it and even when he spends time not thinking about sex it’s always there, humming beneath his surface. I can tell.
I was blind before, but now I see.
Chapter Six
I think we’ve been sitting in silence for about five minutes when Wade shouts up, “Are you guys coming down for something to eat or fucking what?” Or maybe it just feels like five minutes, because I’ve just spent this whole pause in the conversa
tion trying to work out what to say. The best option seems to be:
Whatever you want to do is OK by me.
But it seems too much like a come-on. I feel too much like a come-on. I’m all ripe and ready and I don’t even realize it until I stand up and go over to him—you know, maybe just to tow him downstairs for something to eat. But then he kind of jolts out of the reverie he’s sunk into and he puts a hand out—he actually puts a hand out to stop me—and says: “No, no, don’t come over here.”
And I’m pulled up short.
“What? Why?” I ask, but even as I’m saying it I know I’m being stupid.
He kind of…winces.
“Because you’re just in a towel,” he says, then the wince becomes a frown of incredulity. “Why are you just in a towel again?”
I try to think of a good answer to that, I do, I really do. But all I can process is: he likes the fact that you’re just in a towel, oh holy shit he really likes it. It’s making him think forbidden sex thoughts!
My cunt clenches once, around nothing. I’m too on edge, that’s the thing. I should have masturbated last night or let Wade fuck me today or just snuck out of this room before Cameron came back and seen to myself in my own bed, but I didn’t, and now I’m stuck. I’m stuck half-naked in a room with a big massive gorgeous amazing guy who apparently wants me.
I squeeze my thighs together, but it doesn’t help.
“I was cold after the lake, so I took a shower,” I say, like a total idiot. I should have focused on the reason he doesn’t want me close in just a towel, and I know it—but then again, do I really want to push him further, right now? He looks…harassed, to say the least. “Come on. Let’s go downstairs and have something to eat, OK?”
I hold out a hand to him, but it’s a friendly hand. An innocent, nonsexual hand.
He doesn’t take it, however. He just eyes it like it’s about to explode.
“You know what—I’ll meet you down there,” he says and although it’s completely irrational, I can’t help it. I let the hand drop to my side with what can only be described as Oh fuck, I’ve totally just blown our friendship apart with my snoopy snooping.
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