46. Downtime Activities
Chapter forty-six
Downtime Activities
Cameron
There are five adults in this house, which means at any given moment at least three of us are working, one of us is eating something that belongs to somebody else, and Dex is probably making too much noise.
Today, impressively, all three things are happening at once.
“I am not changing it back,” Dex says from the dining room.
I look up from my laptop.
He's wearing headphones around his neck instead of over his ears, one knee bouncing under the table while four different audio tracks cover his screen.
His guitar is propped against the chair beside him, and there is a half-eaten sandwich approximately two inches from his keyboard despite Micah having informed him twice that this is how electronics die.
“You changed the fucking bridge,” a voice says through his laptop speakers.
Austin.
Again.
Dex points at the screen like Austin can somehow feel the accusation through several hundred miles of internet. “I improved the bridge.”
“You added another vocal layer.”
“Because it needed one.”
“It already had six.”
“And now it has seven. You're welcome.”
I grin and go back to the fourth revision of website copy for a client who is paying me enough money that I am morally obligated not to complain about the number of revisions.
I complain anyway—not to them.
I'm a professional.
Mostly.
My newest client is a regional home-services company rolling out a new brand across nine locations, which sounded completely reasonable when I first came across the request.
Landing pages.
Email sequences.
Social content.
A few location-specific variations.
Fine.
Normal.
I did not realize “a few location-specific variations” meant nine separate managers would each have an opinion about whether the phrase “trusted local service” properly reflected their individual market identity.
Apparently Colorado Springs has very strong feelings about adjectives.
My cursor blinks beneath a comment that says:
Could this sound warmer but also more authoritative?
I stare at it for entirely too long.
Then type:
Absolutely.
Because what the fuck does that mean, Greg? is probably not billable language.
Micah passes behind me carrying a bowl of something toward the kitchen.
His hand brushes over the back of my neck as he goes.
I lean into it automatically.
“Food?” I ask.
“Eventually.”
“That is not an answer.”
“Prep.”
“That is also not food.”
He turns enough to give me a look. “You ate lunch.”
“Hours ago.”
“An hour and twenty minutes.”
I narrow my eyes. “Whose side are you on?”
“Time's.”
From the couch, Griffin snorts.
He's sitting with one ankle crossed over his knee, half watching some home-repair video and half pretending he isn't monitoring the shelf hardware spread across the coffee table in front of him.
Apparently we need another shelf.
I don't know why.
I wasn't consulted.
There are already shelves.
But Griffin discovered the wall near the window contains “wasted vertical storage potential,” which is the kind of phrase that should probably come with a warning label.
Ronan is in the armchair beside him with his laptop, doing something that could be actual work, campaign planning, household finances, or a complex statistical model explaining why Dex should no longer be allowed to buy decorative pillows.
I have learned not to ask until necessary.
Dex suddenly swivels his laptop. “Cami.”
“What?”
“Say hi to Austin.”
He turns the screen fully toward me.
Austin Fletcher appears in a small box wearing a baseball cap backward and looking exactly like a man who has spent the last ninety minutes arguing with Dex about seven seconds of music.
He lifts a hand. “Hey, Cami.”
I wave. “Hi, Austin. Sorry about him.”
“Thank you.”
Dex gasps and swivels the computer back.
Austin laughs. “See? Someone understands.”
“I live with her.”
“Exactly. Expert witness.”
I laugh.
Dex turns the laptop back around. “Betrayal everywhere. This is why artists die misunderstood.”
Austin's laugh crackles through the speakers.
Three months ago, Dex would have spent a week alternating between freaking out and pretending this was no big deal.
Now Austin calls him on a Saturday afternoon because they are still fine-tuning two tracks from Chicago and apparently considering another collaboration afterward.
Dex still acts like an idiot about it.
But he doesn't act like it isn't happening anymore.
That's different.
Good different.
Since I’m hungry, I glance at my blood sugar.
112
Flat arrow.
Boring—beautifully, wonderfully boring.
Nobody is hovering.
That's the part that matters.
I glance toward Griffin.
No tension.
No paramedic face.
He smiles at me, then he goes back to the video.
I smile at my laptop before I realize I'm doing it.
Apparently surviving a catastrophic medical event teaches you to appreciate extremely stupid things.
Flat arrows.
Men who don't panic.
Insulin arriving where it is supposed to.
Greg from Colorado Springs needing his adjectives warmer.
Life—normal life.
My gaze drifts toward Micah when he walks back by.
He's wearing loose gray sweatpants and an old black T-shirt, and when he lowers himself into the chair beside Dex, he does it like it is also normal life.
Thank God.
Because not too long ago, for almost a week, Micah sat down like a ninety-year-old man with hemorrhoids and expected me not to notice.
I noticed.
I also saw enough dark purple under the hem of his boxers one morning to understand Ronan had been involved.
How involved, exactly, remains classified information.
Dex knows more.
This is evident from the fact that the first time I watched Micah wince while sitting down, Dex's face did something so spectacularly smug that Micah threatened to stab him with a fork.
Ronan, meanwhile, looked irritatingly serene.
Nobody told me anything.
Which is fine.
Mostly.
I respect privacy—I just don't necessarily enjoy it.
Micah catches me looking at him. “What?”
“Nothing.”
His eyes narrow.
Ronan looks up from his laptop. “She's thinking about the bruises again.”
My mouth drops open.
Micah closes his eyes.
Dex loses his fucking mind. “I KNEW IT.”
“You knew what?” I demand.
“That you were dying to ask.”
“I was not dying.”
“You were absolutely dying.”
“I was respectfully curious.”
Micah points at me. “You stared at my ass for four days.”
“Because you were moving like your hips had been recalled by the manufacturer.”
Griffin chokes on his drink.
Ronan's mouth twitches.
Micah looks toward the ceiling as if requesting intervention from a higher power.
Dex is nearly folded over the table.
Austin's voice comes from the laptop. “Do I want to know?”
“No,” four men say together.
I consider it. “Maybe.”
“Cami,” Micah warns.
I grin. “Fine. Privacy. Boundaries. Personal autonomy. Whatever.”
“Very convincing,” Ronan says.
I smile sweetly at him.
He returns to his laptop.
Micah's mouth curves despite himself.
That matters more than the joke.
He laughs more now.
Not every day.
Not the same as before.
There are still moments when his phone lights up, and something in his face closes. He still disappears onto the porch sometimes, and Dex doesn't always follow him anymore because I think they've both figured out the difference between alone and abandoned.
There are names I haven't heard him mention since his parents' house.
There are others—Abigail, mostly—that come up every few days.
It still hurts.
Of course it does.
But the hurt has moved into his life instead of swallowing all of it.
Maybe that's what healing actually looks like.
Enough room for other things again.
Dex straightens suddenly. “Oh, shit.”
Micah looks over. “What?”
“You haven’t heard this revised chorus yet.”
“I have nothing to do with that.”
“You have ears.”
“So does Cami.”
Dex looks at me.
“No.”
“You haven't even heard the pitch.”
“I have a deadline.”
“You always have a deadline now.” He says it teasingly.
Still, something warm catches behind my ribs.
I do.
I have deadlines.
Plural.
Clients who send revisions.
Invoices that get paid.
A calendar I actually have to maintain because if I do not, approximately five people will tell me I overcommitted.
My work used to be whatever I could find that would cover rent, insulin, and whatever catastrophe my body invented that month.
Now I'm turning down projects.
Not many, but enough.
I glance at the corner of my screen where the invoice total for this client sits minimized.
Definitely enough.
“I'll listen after I finish Greg's emotional journey with the word reliable.”
Dex nods solemnly. “Godspeed.”
“Thank you.”
“Tell Greg I believe in him.”
“I absolutely will not.”
From the couch, Griffin says, “Can somebody hand me the level?”
Ronan looks at the collection of tools in front of Griffin. “It is six inches from your left hand.”
Griffin looks down and grabs it.
Dex immediately points. “Hero college couldn't teach you that, apparently.”
“Paramedic school.”
“Whatever. Hero college.”
Griffin throws a drywall anchor at him.
Dex catches it. “See? Reflexes.”
Micah takes it out of his hand and gives it back to Griffin. “Stop encouraging him.”
“I didn't.”
“You exist near him. That's enough.”
I laugh and close my laptop before Greg can create another comment.
Maybe fifteen minutes.
I can take fifteen minutes.
The client is not going anywhere.
Nobody is dying.
Dex is arguing with an internationally successful musician from our dining room like they're two assholes trying to finish a garage-band demo.
Micah is chopping vegetables in the kitchen.
Ronan has apparently abandoned whatever he was doing to explain to Griffin that the shelf brackets are not equidistant.
Griffin is telling him nobody will notice.
Ronan says, “I will.”
Of course he will.
My phone lights up again, but this time it's a calendar notification.
I expect a client deadline.
Instead:
9 months married
I stare at it.
Oh.
Right.
Griffin did this.
After our one-month anniversary—or montheversary, as I called it while mercilessly making fun of him—he put a recurring reminder in our shared calendar.
I forgot about it.
Apparently nine-month anniversaries are not culturally significant.
I look at him.
He's crouched beside the wall now, holding the level against a shelf bracket while Ronan informs him he is off by approximately one-sixteenth of an inch.
Nine months.
Not even a year ago, I moved into this house because my life had come apart and I needed somewhere to land.
Not long after, Griffin offered to marry me because health insurance in America is a dystopian fucking nightmare.
We signed paperwork.
I made jokes.
He panicked quietly.
Everyone else panicked less quietly.
And now… I look around the room.
Dex has stopped arguing long enough to replay a section of music for Micah.
Micah listens with the concentration he gives everything he cares about.
Ronan takes the level from Griffin because apparently this shelf has become a matter of personal honor.
Griffin notices me watching and smiles. “What?”
I hold up my phone. “Happy nine months of health insurance.”
His face softens immediately. “Oh.”
Dex's head snaps around. “IS IT YOUR INSURANCEVERSARY?”
“No,” Griffin says.
“Yes,” I say.
Dex slaps the table. “We need cake.”
“We do not need cake,” Micah says.
“We absolutely need cake.”
Austin speaks through the laptop. “I don't know what's happening, but congratulations.”
“Thank you,” I tell him.
Griffin shakes his head, but he's smiling when he crosses the room.
He bends and kisses me.
Nothing dramatic.
Just warm lips, one hand settling against my cheek, familiar enough now that my body leans toward him before my brain bothers participating.
When he pulls back, I smile up at him. “Look how badly that simple plan went.”
His thumb moves across my cheek. “Yeah.”
Behind him, Dex says, “To be fair, I think it went great.”
Ronan doesn't look away from the shelf. “The outcome and the original plan are objectively unrelated.”
Micah points his knife toward him from the kitchen. “That may be the most Ronan sentence you've ever said.”
I laugh.
Griffin kisses my forehead and goes back to his shelf.
My laptop is still waiting.
Dex's music is still playing.
Dinner is becoming something in the kitchen.
There are five schedules on the shared calendar, three different kinds of work happening in one room, a D&D session Thursday, two date nights next week, Griffin's shifts, Micah's appointments, one Dex-related entry simply labeled AUSTIN CALL?
??, and an alert reminding everyone when my next endocrinology appointment is because apparently privacy has limits when four men have access to Google Calendar.
Nine months ago, Griffin and I got married because I needed insurance.
Today, we’re all existing very domestically in the same open floor plan.
And that feels like progress.