St. Nacho's 4: The Book of Daniel

by Z. A. Maxfield

  I opened my eyes to discover Cam had parked in a lot at the top of a cliff with a startling view of the vast foamy gray-green sea. I could see him walking all by himself a hundred feet below, balanced on the rocky shore, bent over to peer at something in the tidal pools.

  Cam’s short hair, usually stiff with whatever styling product he used to make it stand up, was overpowered by the wind and ruffled gently across his forehead. Muscles bunched under his light clothing as he squatted farther down and leaned over. That youthful, boyish face of his was a study in earnest concentration on whatever he was watching as he put a gentle finger out to poke at it.

  I’d seen some amazing things in my life because I was blessed: palaces, museums, great art, theater, dance, pricey cars, expensive men and women, but the sight of Cam carefully lifting up a rock to study what he found underneath was by far the most beautiful. My heart clenched around the knowledge that he was wholesome. He was honest and capable of kindness and a depth of compassion I would never have expected from someone as huge and pretty. He was simply good in all the ways that things can be good—good to look at, good to touch and taste and smell. And he was arguably good for others like me, who maybe had a little problem sorting out the whole good/bad thing at times.

  I admired his beauty, I loved his heart, and I knew I would have to live up to his expectations. Which made the walk down a hundred feet of rickety wooden stairs to join him on the shore seem like the green mile—a treacherous path into the unknown without even a handhold for comfort.

  When he saw me coming, his face lit with a happy smile. “Hey.”

  “Hey.” I couldn’t help smiling back. “Whatcha looking at?”

  “Anemone.” He pointed to a spiny creature in the shallow pools created by low tide. “They have little cells like spear guns that anesthetize their prey. You never touch them though, because they’re holding their breath, and touching them would be like punching them in the stomach.”

  “I guess it’s not a good idea then, huh?”

  “You’re not supposed to touch anything around here, really. It’s okay to feel a starfish with a damp finger or something, but it’s better to observe without handling the wildlife.”

  “I see.”

  He put his hands behind his back. “You can cut the ends off a coffee can and wrap one side with heavy duty plastic wrap—you know. You can secure it with rubber bands. Then you submerge the can and look through the plastic to see what’s under the water. It’s worth looking at; there’s some pretty cool stuff down there. It’s hard to get the wrap as tight as you’d like though.”

  “Is that something you learned when you were a kid?”

  “Nah, I grew up in Northern New Mexico. I went to the Monterrey Aquarium when I first got here, and they talked about tide pool etiquette. California is amazing. I’ve been whale watching and hiked in the Channel Islands. We’re damned lucky to have all this here, and it’s essential to figure out the best way to take care of it.”

  I glanced around. Gulls wheeled overhead, and there were other seabirds. I might have recognized a cormorant or a sandpiper, but there were also species I’d never seen before. Glancing down at Cam, my inattention to details like that seemed to me—for the first time—like a senseless waste. As if I’d spent my time in idleness or on frivolous pursuits when I could have been observing everything he was effortlessly sharing with me.

  “We are lucky.” My voice seemed hoarse to my ears.

  He turned to look at me and frowned. “Is something wrong?”

  “No. I just don’t think I’ve ever looked that closely at all this.”

  “Why not? It’s amazing.” He hopped happily onto another rock, and I stepped after him. “When I was a kid, I found a shell fossil on my dad’s land. It made me wonder what it must be like to be able to explore the ocean. It’s so much more than I imagined it would be.”

  “Didn’t you ever go to the beach when you were a kid? The Gulf Coast?”

  “No,” he shook his head. “I grew up on a working ranch, and there was way too much to do.”

  “You what? A working ranch? Like…a cowboy?”

  Cam rolled his eyes. “I guess.”

  “You’re a cowboy and a fireman?”

  “Yes, Daniel,” Cam said drily. “It’s almost as if I am half of the Village People, all rolled into one.”

  “Why’d you leave?”

  “Because my father told me to.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “You can’t be serious.”

  “When they found out I was gay, my parents thought it would be best for the family if I left home. They believed I would be a bad influence or a danger to my brothers, so they asked me to leave.”

  Cam stepped away from me to explore a different little dimple in the rocks. “Wait, did they catch you in flagrante or something?”

  Cam looked oddly embarrassed. “No. Of course they didn’t.”

  I didn’t think my question was absurd or anything. After all, I’d been sitting in a tree, perfectly innocently, and Cam had come along to get a blowjob underneath it. “So what happened?”

  “I came out to them, and they asked me to leave.”

  I still believed there was more to it than that. “Really. They just said leave.”

  “That’s about it.”

  “Without any kind of discussion?”

  “Yes.”

  “Without asking you to change or take it back or…anything?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Oh, hell no. That is not right.”

  “You have to understand my situation. There were six kids in our family, and we lived in a kind of…Christian-family bubble. We were homeschooled but active in church. We went to Bible camp every summer. We rode buses down to Mexico to do mission work there twice a year. My dad enjoyed being righteous, but being right didn’t worry him too much.”

  “That’s awful.”

  Cam shrugged. “I miss my family sometimes.”

  “What about your brothers and sisters?”

  “They have families of their own now.” Cam refused to look at me.

  “But surely—”

  “They’re not interested. I don’t exist for them anymore. Leave it alone, okay?” He put his hands in the foamy water and swished them to rinse off sand. “I’m finished here if you want to move on. I just like to stop by every now and again and take a look.”

  When I glanced around, trying to think of something to say, two things occurred to me. “Their loss is St. Nacho’s—and most especially, my—gain. And you need to show me around before we go.”

  Cam’s smile was absolutely radiant. “Yeah? Okay.” He took my hand in his and led me to a small natural shallow depression in the rocks. “First thing, it’s best not to move anything. Most of the creatures you find here shouldn’t be touched, but there are some you can feel if you’re gentle. If you do, make sure you wet your fingers first, because these organisms can be hurt by dry hands and killed outright by carelessness.”

  “I’ll just look.”

  “This is an echinoderm, mostly called starfish or sea stars. There’s a lot of different types. Some have long arms, like these, and some are like little pincushions.”

  Cam glanced up to make sure I was following and took off again. “There’s a ton of interesting things about these guys. They have a hydraulic vascular system that helps them move around in the water, and they…” he kept on talking and I just followed along, happy to be there.

  I let him tell me all about the sea stars, and eventually he widened his lecture to encompass the entire tide pool. I followed him from rock to rock, watching as his strong bare feet found purchase while mine, still firmly in my athletic shoes, slipped a little so I had to windmill my arms for balance. No way were my feet made for hopping around on…whatever the surface was, lava rock or coral, or even the pebbly sand we encountered after he’d shown me all the things he’d come to see. He taught me to look beneath the surface of the water at things
I’d never given any thought to, and he told me why they were important to the environment I took for granted.

  At one point he climbed up onto a boulder and stood above me, looking down—a smiling Titan—blond and healthy, his hands shoved in his pockets. I watched him a long time before I realized he was watching me too.

  He said, “You look at me differently from the way everyone else does. I like to think you see things no one else can. I hope that anyway.”

  Gazing up at him, I felt my skin flush with arousal. He was so…perfect. “You’re kind of larger than life, Cam.” He had to know that. Didn’t he know that? “You take my breath away.”

  “But why?” He crouched down and leaned over, peering at me, and I felt exactly like one of his damned sea cucumbers or starfish, as if he was going to put out a tentative finger and give the side of my face a stroke to see how I’d react.

  I could hardly find my voice. “Because just being around you makes me so fucking happy, you airhead. I like you. I want you. I see my unborn children in your eyes—okay scratch that one. I swear to fuck I’m not being flip here.” I sighed. “What my heart does whenever you’re near isn’t just about chemistry Cam. It’s like…stargazing. I feel insignificant and dazzled. Hopeful yet completely unprepared.”

  His smile was slow. It started on one side of his face, a lazy lift of the muscles at the corner of his lips. Then it trembled across his mouth. From there it moved up his cheeks to his eyes and eventually the whole of his face. He leaped lightly down to stand before me and cupped my face between his hands. For what seemed like a damned eternity, he just stared at me, and then he pulled me in for a kiss so sweet, I will never, ever forget it. It seared me, scarred me, made every kiss that ever came before it insignificant, and set the bar too high for every kiss that would come after.

  “I make you happy.” He grinned against my lips. “You know what? That was exactly the right answer.”

  “So I overreached?” I sighed into a second kiss and then another.

  “Maybe just a little.” He grinned and took my hand to lead me to the stairs, and if going down those weathered bits of wood was unnerving, going up, even being pulled along like a roped rodeo calf by Cam, was unbelievable. Steep step after step passed with the sea churning behind us and nothing but sky above us until we reached the top and the lot where my car sat waiting.

  I was vaguely insulted when Cam suggested I do more cardio.

  “I do cardio,” I said between heaving breaths I was trying to hide.

  He laughed and unlocked the car.

  “Don’t worry.” He took a fiendish delight in my discomfort. “We’ll get you in shape in no time.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “Is it a problem for you if I eat shellfish?”

  “Only if you want to kiss me.” It was a pretty smug Cam Rooney who sat across the table from me. I’d laid my cards on the table, emotionally speaking, and I could tell as far as he was concerned, he’d won whatever battle of wills we’d been waging.

  “Is that true? You can’t kiss me if I eat shrimp?” We’d planned a late lunch of wine and tapas on the patio of a local resort, but I wasn’t about to order a food that would make him sick. We shouldn’t even be there if his allergies were serious. I knew any cross contamination could be life-threatening for people with peanut allergies.

  “Nah. My allergy is nowhere near that serious. In the past, whenever I’ve eaten certain types of shellfish—actually so far it’s only been prawns and shrimp—I’ve broken out in hives. I don’t take a chance it could turn into something worse, but so far I’ve never gotten hives from kissing someone who eats it.” Cam’s cheeks colored. “I admit I don’t spend a lot of time actually kissing people and I carry an EpiPen just in case.”

  “You kissed me.”

  Cam looked back at the menu. “You complaining?”

  “That means you like me, huh?” I put the menu aside. “More than any of your tree fucks. I knew it.”

  If anything, Cam flushed a deeper red.

  When the waiter got there I ordered several small plates, Manchego cheese and grapes, a cured Spanish prosciuttolike ham wrapped around melon, Spanish chorizo with marinated olives, and fiery garlic-seared shrimp with pepper flakes. We got a richly aromatic Rioja wine to go with it and settled in for the relaxing Spanish ritual of wine and nibbles.

  “You eat like this a lot?” Cam surveyed the odd assortment of highly seasoned food. “It’s pretty salty.”

  “It’s meant to be. It’s supposed to make you want to drink more.”

  “Seriously?” Cam flagged the waiter down and asked for water for both of us.

  “Little bites of things that have extreme qualities, bitter, sweet, spicy, salty, are fun, don’t you think?” He raised an eyebrow at me. “Jake could explain this better.”

  “I guess.” Cam reacted to one of the olives by blanching and taking a big sip of his wine, which seemed to help not at all. “The salami is good.”

  “Chorizo.”

  He frowned. “Really?”

  “It’s Spanish chorizo, which is kind of like salami.” Maybe this wasn’t the greatest idea. “Try the melon.”

  He picked up the ham-wrapped melon and smiled. “I like this.”

  It was pretty clear he was humoring me about the wine too. “Look, you want a beer?”

  He sighed with relief. “Please. And maybe some hot wings?”

  I flagged the waiter down again and ordered a beer and a couple of different kinds of hot wings for Cam. Cam took his Corona with a smile, and as he jammed the lime into its neck, he picked up another melon slice.

  “Red wine is supposed to be good for you,” I said, tentatively.

  “I know it is. I don’t like the flavor.”

  “Hot wings are deep fried, did you know that?”

  “Mmmhmm.” He spoke around a mouthful of melon. “I’m not going to stop you from eating your fancy munchies.”

  “Okay.” I pinched the tail off a shrimp and dipped it into the spicy oil. “That’s good. I’m only just getting used to being able to eat what I like.”

  Cam leaned forward to palm a couple of wings. “How come?”

  I wondered how much I should say about Bree. Nobody wants to be with a guy talking about his ex on what could arguably be called a first date. “My ex didn’t like food very much.”

  Cam paused, his wing halfway to his mouth. “What do you mean she didn’t like food. Any food?”

  I picked up my napkin to wipe my fingers. “I told you about Bree. She had some issues. One of her things was she was determined to stay slim. Plus she had this aversion to restaurants. And certain foods. It took an act of God to get her to eat out in a restaurant with me.”

  “Poor baby.”

  Cam’s frown was formed from pure compassion, and I was quick to deflect it. “No, really. It was a lot harder on her than me. She just didn’t seem to ever fit into her skin. Everything irritated her. Everything worried her. I could still go out for business meals but she—”

  “I meant her. I meant, poor woman.” Cam put his wing down.

  “Exactly. Wow. How cool that you see it like that. Sometimes Jake was a little hard on her.” I breathed out a breath of relief and surprise. It was true she was a bitch sometimes. But I still felt a connection to her, and I hated to make her sound like she was crazy. “She had problems. I’m perfectly willing to admit that one of them was me.”

  “There are some people at the gym like that. They’re way too thin, and they see themselves as overweight; they work like demons and they’re never satisfied. It makes me sad.”

  “Bree could be self-destructive,” I admitted. “Occasionally I had some luck getting her to see a therapist.”

  “It’s good that you tried.”

  “Not really. There were plenty of times when her problems were convenient for me. When she focused on herself like that, I never had to worry she was looking too closely at what I was doing.” I pushed the food away and picked up my w
ine. In that moment I was ready to swear Minerva put some kind of spell on me. It was becoming impossible for me to keep very private, even painful, things from pouring out of my mouth, especially with Cam.

  “I see.” He sipped his beer, watching me carefully.

  I shook off the mood I’d placed us in. “And just like that, I become the guy who talks about his ex.”

  “It’s all right.” He shrugged.

  It wasn’t all right. “I know that I come with a warehouse full of baggage. For a lot of different reasons I blow hot and cold. I run, then I chase, and I act like I don’t know what I want, because I don’t. But I know what I like. I know what makes me happy, and whenever I see you, it’s like getting a face full of sunshine. Maybe that’s all I need to know. I keep wanting to turn to you again and again, because you make me feel so good.”

  “That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said about me.” Cam put his hand down on mine. He stroked the backs of my fingers, and just that small connection between us lowered my blood pressure and sent soothing messages to my brain. It’s all right. It’s going to be fine. You have time to figure this out.

  I lifted my glass to my lips to cover my embarrassment.

  Cam asked, “You know what happens when I look at you?”

  “Do I want to know?”

  “Probably not.” He huffed a laugh.

  “All right though. Shoot.”

  Cam toyed with his beer bottle. “When I look at you, I just think…that one is mine.” Aw, man. How do you resume an afternoon of casual dining after something like that?

  “All right.”

  I’m not sure what I meant by all right at the time. Only that I’d heard him. That I understood, or maybe even that I was willing to capitulate, to fall in with his plans for me—to come when he called—like his cat. I might have.

  Probably I would.

  Cam smiled then and put his effort into his wings. While he did that I was able to enjoy looking at him. He hadn’t forgotten me but he didn’t seem like the kind of guy to spend a lot of time talking while he ate something he liked, so I paid attention to detail like never before. Every crunch of Cam’s even white teeth fascinated me, every swipe of his tongue turned me on. He had a way of eating wings that would have made Bree faint. It was unapologetically carnivorous. Intrinsically dirty. He dipped the juicy, sauce-coated morsels into bleu cheese dressing and broke them into bits, licking and sucking both the bones and his fingers until I was hard as stone beneath the napkin in my lap. He wasn’t nutritionally irredeemable, like me. He seemed to enjoy the celery and carrots that accompanied his wings just as much, if not more, than the chicken itself.