Page 59 of Curious
“No. Not since I was eighteen.”
Cam gives me a long look. “She fucking kicked you outthat day?”
My nonresponse is response enough.
“Did you have any warning? Any place to go?”
I shake my head. My chest tightens, remembering how hard that first year was. The terrible rooms I rented that smelled of pot and cigarettes. “She gave me three thousand dollars and told me to use it as a security deposit. I already had the receptionist job at Weston & Ramirez. I’d been working there since I turned sixteen. So I had a job and a little money saved, but I mostly used that for my car payments and insurance. Now, all of a sudden, I had to make rent, buy food, and all that.”
I get out of bed and go rummaging in my dresser. I pull out an old card that I keep at the bottom and shove it at him. “That’s the card my mother gave me on my eighteenth birthday.”
He holds it gingerly. It’s a standard store-bought card reading “Happy Birthday to My Son.” On the inside, it says “From Mom.”
“Not very sentimental, is it?” I say.
“Why the hell would you keep that?”
“To remind me not to get my hopes up. To remind me to keep myself in check, so I don’t go around expecting anything from the world that it’s not going to give me.”
Cam’s dark eyes take me in, and the shock I see in them unnerves me. “Babe,” he says quietly, “come here.”
While something in me wants to run away, I do what he says. This is Cam.
He opens his arms, and I crawl into his lap. He nestles his face in my hair and sighs. “I have so much to say to you, and I don’t even know where to start.”
“I have that problem a lot.”
“I think you’re incredible. You give so much to everyone else. You’ve helped me with the house when you didn’t need to. You do things for the office that you don’t need to. And if you’re doing it all without expecting anything in return …” He sighs again. “I love that you do things out of the goodness of your heart rather than as a transaction where you expect or demand payment of some kind. But I do think you need to realize that you deserve to be treated as well as you treat everyone else. Sometimes people who give and give don’t ever let people give them things in return. It’s like they don’t think they deserve nice things.”
I shrug. “I mean, yeah, sometimes. But I’ve let you buy me things. You bought our rings. You’ve bought me meals. You’ve given me a place to stay.”
“And you give me so much more. You’ve given me my health. You’ve rehabilitated my home. You’ve given me a whole new understanding of myself. I don’t know how I can balance that out, and I want to.”
“Don’t make me cry,” I say.
“Yeah. Sorry.” He swallows. “What if we make today an anti-birthday for you?”
“Nope.”
“You say that too fast. But what if we do all the things you hate? We can do laundry, and eat tons of garlic, and watch true-crime shows—”
Despite myself, I crack up and tackle him. He falls easily onto his back, and I straddle his hips. I kiss his chest and between kisses say slowly, “I would be willing to make an exception this year, if we did things that we both wanted to do. Like, the intersection part of a Venn diagram.”
“Do we know what those things are?” His voice is getting husky, because I’m sliding down his body, getting nearer to the waistband of his underwear.
“Guess we’ll have to find out.” I pop his now-hard dick out and give it a lick. “What do you say to blow jobs?”
“Well, I don’t know,” he says, pretending to think. “Are you sureyoulike them?”
I swirl my tongue around his tip, enjoying his warm, sleepy tone. “Let’s see if it’s in a place we intersect.”
* * *
An hour later, we’re showered, dressed, and on the road headed to a restaurant Cam likes at the beach. It’s a clear fall day, and by the time we make it to the breakfast place, it’s almost brunch time.
“What do you think about breakfast burritos?” he asks.
“That overlaps on the Venn diagram.”
