Chapter Thirty-Nine
The stairs in Cam’s house creak under my weight as I climb up to his room. His door is slightly ajar, and I can see his figure twisting up and down through the gap. Chin-ups, I’m guessing.
I tilt the stack of things in my arms against my chest for balance and rap my knuckles against the doorframe.
I hear a thump as Cam hops down from the chin-up bar he jammed into his closet frame sometime during freshman year.
“One second!” he calls.
“It’s me,” I murmur before he can open the door. I don’t want him to be completely surprised when he sees me. And, okay, maybe I’m also hoping to avoid whatever facial expression he’s making at this exact moment.
If he pauses after the forewarning, it’s too short for me to register. He swings his door the rest of the way open.
“Yes?”
“Your mom still loves me.”
He raises an eyebrow. “What?”
“She offered me a slice of cinnamon pear pie.” I motion with my chin. “Downstairs. Just now. Moms don’t do that to people they hate.”
“Is that right?” He looks me over warily, then steps to one side.
I walk into his room and am met with a tidal wave of the smell of him.
The Old Spice deodorant that smells horrible on every other guy at school, but for some reason, on Cam, crackles like a beach bonfire.
Then there’s his sandalwood shampoo. His citrus detergent.
It all swirls together, mingling but not completely mixed, so I keep catching different notes of him.
I take a deep breath, but it does nothing to help me focus.
“Are you okay?” Cam asks.
Of course not, I think. I’m obsessed with you, and you hate me.
“Chin-ups,” I say instead, which is somehow an even worse response.
Cam looks at the bar over his shoulder. “Oh yeah, sorry. I was working out for a while, so it’s probably pretty warm in here.”
Steam might actually come out of my ears.
I thrust the pile of treasure hunt stuff—everything I’ve gathered this spring—toward Cam’s chest. He looks down at the bundle in my hands.
“What’s this?”
“It’s yours,” I say. “Take it. Please.”
He shakes his head. “I already took my book back. You found these things fair and square.”
“Well, that pipe sticking out of the wall was definitely more of a circle,” I say, then grimace.
“Bad joke. The point is”—I swallow and look up at him—“this was always your hunt. You brought it over as something special to share with me, and I basically ripped it away from you. I’m sorry I have the sharing skills of an only child during their first week at preschool. ”
He cocks his head. “That’s…an oddly specific metaphor.”
“It was a hard week for me.” I push the things slightly closer to him, to the point where he finally brings his hands up to take them.
“Can we talk about something? Unrelated to all this?” I ask.
Cam sighs and sets the things down on his bed. “I don’t know, Ivy. I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”
“Or it’s a brilliant idea, because all we’ve ever done until now is shout back and forth over the elephant in the room.”
He rubs his neck and looks away. “Look, maybe we’re just better off—”
“You’re hot,” I say. I step to one side to catch his gaze, even though my face feels like it’s going to melt completely off my skull.
“You were hot when we were younger too,” I explain. “I’ve always loved your eyes. And I feel like that one time I accidentally got my fingers caught in your hair was my first ever sexual awakening.”
He lets out a gruff laugh but won’t quite meet my eyes.
“But you’re much, much hotter now. Your voice makes my skin vibrate. Every time you wear a sleeveless shirt, like now, for instance, I get really itchy.”
A muscle on his bicep flexes involuntarily. My heart leaps into my throat.
“Why are you saying this?” he rasps.
I raise my hands and drop them to my sides.
“I don’t know, Cam. Because I’m confused.
I like you, but I am also queer. I’m pretty sure I’m pansexual, actually.
And both those things are important to me.
I should’ve done a better job of explaining what my queerness means for me and, maybe, what it could mean for us. ”
Cam turns directly to me. “Why didn’t you do that before? Explain any of this?”
“Because it was sort of terrifying,” I say. “I was scared you would break my heart.”
I see a trace of his lopsided smile. “And what exactly do you think you’ve been doing to me for the last two years?”
“I know.” I dip my head. “Well, I didn’t know before, technically. But now I know. And I’m sorry.”
His hand moves forward, like a robot trying to decide if it has enough juice to jolt to life. He raises it halfway between us, barely grazing my arm with his fingertips. I hold my breath, willing every muscle in me to go completely still so I don’t break the spell.
But he freezes up anyway.
“The thing is,” he says, stepping back, “you say you like me now. But I’ve tried leaning into you, twice. And both times…”
“I fucked it up,” I say before he can get to it. “I used the wrong name. I touched you without asking you first. That’s on me.”
“It’s not even that,” he says quietly. “There’s just too much history between us. Too many memories between you and a part of me I don’t like to think about right now. It would have been easier if we didn’t know each other before. If we could have met after, you know?”
He takes one of my hands in both of his. I sink into the comfort of his skin. It feels so good to have him hold my hand. It feels so good that I can almost make myself forget he’s in the process of rejecting me.
I wrinkle my nose so I don’t cry.
“I know.”
The words are choked and strained, but there they are.
He keeps holding on to my hand, and I think for the first time, I finally get the flavor of misery he’s been going through.
To have someone keep holding on to you even when they really should be letting go.
But if both of us don’t want to let go, where does that leave us?
Does someone really have to walk away just because of things we couldn’t help in our own pasts?
I extricate my hand from his.
“Can I just say one more thing?”
Cam gives me a look. “Um, all you ever do is say things, V. But, yeah, fine, go ahead.”
I steel myself, knowing this may well be the last opportunity I have to say the uncomfortable things, the things I don’t know how to talk about, before we shut the door on this forever.
“ ‘Cam’ and ‘Cameron’ are really similar,” I say.
“Name-wise. And I get it; that was probably the point. But me saying Cameron wasn’t actually me thinking, ‘Oh yeah, I’m with this girl named Cameron.
’ I didn’t have your gender messed up in my head.
I just hadn’t realized what the name meant to you. And when I touched under your shirt—”
“Ivy…”
“Just wait, please. I’m not trying to convince you about anything when it comes to me. But maybe this can help for your next partner. When I put my hand under your shirt, both times, I had wanted to touch right here.”
I lay my own hand, flat, over the center of my chest. My fingers tease the edge of my collarbone. I feel the steady thump, thump, thump of my heart in my palm.
Cam stares at my hand for a long time. At first he looks quizzical, like he’s not sure if he can believe me. Then his jaw tenses, and his mouth goes taut.
“Shit.” He closes his eyes and shakes his head. “So it’s me, then. I’m too stuck in the past.”
“That’s not true. It’s not me or you. It’s both of us, Cam.” I take one of his hands in mine, uncurl his fingers from the clenched fist, and lay his hand where mine was: just under my collarbone. My heart beats faster under him. I want him to feel it as I say what comes next.
“I don’t think the past is meant to be left behind.
The things that happened back then…their impact evolves, right?
It changes. That’s the point of Gay Treasures.
It wasn’t meant to be about certain names or objects gathering dust in a book.
It’s about looping people from the present into that legacy.
We’re the gay treasures too. We’re growing and changing too.
And liking someone…Well, it’s less about liking who they are in one exact moment, and more about liking the ways they change. And I like the ways you change.”
I feel sweat gather under Cam’s palm. Something in my stomach curls into a thick knot.
We have a dangerous habit of melting into each other like this.
We get too close to see properly. And I desperately need to give Cam some distance here.
So he has a chance to see things from another perspective.
Maybe, hopefully, the clearer perspective.
I reach for the thin wooden box on his bed, then pull his hand away from my chest and set the box down in his palm.
“A few days ago,” I say, “I couldn’t have told you any of this. I wasn’t here yet. Sunny was the one who said I needed to take a long look in the mirror. I think that might help you too.”
I lean in and give Cam a tiny peck on the cheek, then pull away and tap the top of the box twice.
“In more ways than one,” I add.
I slip out the door and leave him to it.