10. Jamie #3
By the time we clear the worst of the crowd and reach a quieter side street, the noise behind us has receded enough that I can hear him take a slow, deliberate breath.
Cameron checks the sidewalk behind us twice before his pace finally eases.
“We’re clear.”
Cyaire nods and reaches up to pull off his sunglasses, pressing two fingers briefly to the bridge of his nose.
“Sorry,” he says.
I look over at him. “For what?”
He gestures vaguely in the direction we came from. “That.”
“You didn’t plan it.”
“No.” A small, humorless sound leaves him. “I usually manage things better than that.”
I glance pointedly at the hoodie. “The disguise was flawless,” I say.
His head turns toward me slowly. “You have been waiting to say something about the hoodie all night.”
“I showed considerable restraint, actually.”
“You called me Clark Kent,” he says, pointing at me with mild indignation.
“That was earlier.” I lift one shoulder. “That barely counts.”
Cameron snorts audibly behind us.
Cyaire’s laugh finally surfaces, quiet at first, and then more genuine as it settles in. He shakes his head, something loosening back into place across his expression, the tightness from before not entirely gone but retreating.
“I knew you were judging the hoodie.”
“The hoodie was doing its absolute best,” I say. “The sunglasses at night, though.” I cannot help it. The laugh gets out before I can catch it.
“All right, all right, I hear you.” He gestures at the sunglasses and the hoodie with an air of resigned dignity that makes it worse. His smile holds a little longer this time, and I am glad for it. Glad that I could find the angle that brought it back.
In the quiet street around us the pause that follows feels larger than it probably should.
The market is still close enough that I can catch pieces of it, voices layered over traffic, the distant cry of gulls, the low ambient rumble of an evening crowd working its way through the city.
Out here, it is just the three of us and a narrow street and the kind of stillness that only exists in the gap between one thing and the next.
This is the part where we should probably say goodnight.
The evening has already run well past anything either of us planned for. He has Cameron. I have whatever version of my evening remains. Common sense, which I am normally quite good at, says wrap this up now, before the night stretches into something neither of us can honestly call casual.
The problem is that common sense has been losing ground consistently since the moment I agreed to take a walk with him. I can’t identify exactly when it started conceding territory, but it has been at it for hours now.
Cyaire shoves his hands into the front pocket of his hoodie and looks toward the line of cars along the curb.
He looks tired in a way that has nothing to do with the walk or the hours on set, I think.
It is a specific kind of tired. The kind that comes from being recognized, from managing it, from pulling yourself back behind the appropriate walls in public and carrying the weight of that constantly.
I recognize it without fully understanding it.
Neither of us makes any move to say goodnight.
I am aware, in a very clear and unhelpful way, that I should find that more concerning than I do. I really should, but it doesn’t stop me from opening my mouth and saying the first thing that surfaces.
“You want to come back to my place?”
Cyaire’s head turns toward me, eyes widening just a fraction. “Your place?”
I shrug, reaching for casual and landing somewhere in the approximate vicinity of it.
“No crowds. No phones. No strangers recognizing movie stars while they’re trying to enjoy a nice stroll.”
His mouth curves at one corner. “That’s your sales pitch?” he asks, and I hear the callback to the arena in it immediately, the shape of my own words returned to me.
“It’s a pretty good sales pitch,” I reply, and I find myself rocking slightly on the balls of my feet, which is new. I have no idea when nerves became part of this, but here we are.
“It is undeniably practical,” Cyaire says, with the tone of a man weighing options he has already decided on.
“I am a practical man.”
Behind us, Cameron makes a sound that carries the full weight of a man who has an opinion and has chosen, professionally, not to voice it. I suspect he would like us both to get our collective act together.
We ignore him completely.
Cyaire looks at me for another moment, something settling in his expression, and the quality of it makes the entire evening feel like it was building toward exactly this.
“Yeah,” he says. “I’d like that.”
Something in my chest loosens and tightens in the same breath. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” This time there is no hesitation at all.
Cameron steps closer, his attention already moving back to the street, checking and cataloguing without making it a performance.
“Send me the address,” he says to me, easy and direct. “I’ll follow behind.”
I nod, genuinely grateful that he doesn’t make it into anything more than logistics.
Cyaire slides his sunglasses back on, even though the evening has long since moved past the point where they serve any real purpose. Then he looks at me, and the smile he gives me has nothing careful or managed about it. It is real and it’s bright, and it reaches everything.
I turn toward where I parked and give myself exactly the length of that walk to be honest about it.
I am not ready for this night to end. I want more evenings like this one, quieter ones and louder ones and ones that run longer than either of us planned for.
I want the version of him that laughs at seagull chaos and argues seriously about hoodies and looks out at the water like he is trying to remember what stillness feels like.
More than I have any sensible business wanting. Far more than I planned for when I agreed to take a walk.