Page 26 of Becoming His Perfect Daddy
In the morning, I decided to wait to come out to my parents. I wanted to be further along in my transition before I told them, and I didn’t have any plans to see them until Christmas, anyway, so it could wait. But whether they hated me or not, whether they disowned me or not, this was who I was. I’d always been a man, but I’d only now realized it. Like peeling back the layers of an onion, I’d had to go through a series of life changes and mindset shifts before I could even recognize who I truly was deep inside.
A lot of the reason behind that was how I was raised. I wanted to be angry at my parents for that, and sometimes I was, but that was in the past. All we could do now was move forward.
And I hoped they’d want me to be a part of their lives as we did.
July 25th
S.M.C.,
I wanted to say thank you SO MUCH for listening to me ramble about being able to finally write again! And now, my latest book comes out next month. *squeals in a very manly way* Though, as you know, it should’ve been out months ago. Ah, well. I’m just thankful I’m back!! I’ve already been working on a new one, actually, one that’s pretty different from my others, but we’ll see how it goes. I may not even finish it, say nothing of actually publishing it. But I digress.
As with every release, I’m at that point where it’s so close I can taste it but still far enough away that my anxiety starts telling me that no one will like it, no one will read it, and no one will buy it. Or that if they do, they’ll leave horrible reviews.
I know it’s part of being an author, but I gotta say, I don’t love this part.
This isn’t me fishing for compliments, but if you want to send some my way, I won’t complain. :)
Tell me more about your siblings! I was an only child, so having siblings sounds amazing. Although I can imagine it could probably be frustrating at times. I was close with my mom before my dad left when I was twelve, which was a whole thing I’m not going into now (basically, he was an asshole when he was drunk, which was often, and even when he wasn’t drinking, I couldn’t ever do anything right—damn, I did go into it), and I’m thankful I went to a large enough school that I had a small but pretty solid friend group through graduation. But it might’ve been nice to have a built-in playmate at home, too.
I’m so curious about how you grew up. Why were you so sheltered? Why didn’t you have many friends? The writer in me just wants to interview you to find out all about it, but the friend part just wants to understand you better. That’s okay, right? To say we’re friends? I hope we are.
As I always say, I’m here to listen. I love our emails back and forth—and if it’s not coming on too strong, I’ll admit that they are the best part of my week.
There. I said it. We said nothing was off-limits, right?
You’re the best part of my week.
I’m glad you emailed me all those months ago, S.M.C. When you’re ready to share even more, I’ll be here to listen.
I already said that. Geez. It’s way too late for this almost-40-year-old to be awake, but since you emailed me first, you’re getting the unedited Cameron. Don’t tell my readers this wasn’t professionally edited. Some of the salty ones would probably leave a bad review on principle.
Always,
Cameron
Chapter nine
Cameron
Mid-August
Ibit my bottom lip as I stared at my manuscript, daring myself to save, export, and upload the damn thing to the site already. It was due tomorrow and had been edited, proofread, formatted, and designed to near perfection, yet I couldn’t make myself finalize it and send it off.
As I scrolled through the front matter—all those pages before the story actually started—and my eyes lit on a particular page, I wanted to smack myself. What was I thinking?
I mean, I know what I was thinking: I was giving credit where credit was due. But thanking my anonymous email friend in the dedication to my new book was weird, right? Like, they could be a legitimate stalker.
But I didn’t think so.
With a loud, dramatic huff I only allowed because no one except Prickles was around to hear it, I pushed forward. And in afew minutes’ time, my manuscript was uploaded and ready to go live on release day.
Ugh. This was when a Daddy would have been helpful. He’d have held my hand or given me a reward afterward to make hitting publish less scary.
Instead, my only reward was a lukewarm cup of coffee that had been sitting on my desk since eight. I decided against taking another sip. Uploading my manuscript gave me enough jitters for a Monday morning, thank you very much.
Without another thought, I snatched up my phone, quickly typing out a text before I could talk myself out of it.What the hell did I just do?
My best friend’s response came just a few seconds later.I don’t know—what the hell *did* you just do?Tristan added a winky face emoji.
