12. Ryan
Ryan
I open my eyes to sunlight pushing through the curtains, stare at my bedroom ceiling, and remember telling Camille I had to leave because I was supposed to call my brother.
A human being I invented on the spot because apparently I need to go home and emotionally malfunction in private was too humiliating to admit.
I let out a long groan and pull the pillow over my face before making a wounded sound.
This is bad.
Because somewhere between walking into Camille’s laboratory last night and walking out of his front door with a plate of sliced peaches, something shifted.
I liked him before, obviously. You do not have the amount of sex we’ve been having with someone you actively despise unless you have significantly more emotional problems than I am currently prepared to claim.
I like looking at him.
I like his voice.
I like annoying him.
I like that tiny crease that appears between his eyebrows when I say something he considers scientifically offensive, which is apparently most things.
I like the way he occasionally laughs before he can stop himself, because Camille laughs like someone who believes laughter is an embarrassing involuntary bodily function and would prefer not to be caught doing it.
The point is that liking someone is allowed.
Fuck buddies probably should like each other.
Friends with benefits.
Sex friends.
Whatever the terminology is.
If you hate the friend part, you’re basically just repeatedly sleeping with an enemy, and I assume that requires its own category.
So liking Camille isn’t the problem.
The problem is that last night, for the first time, I realized I trust him.
I trust him more than I ever trusted Paul—I would have never let him wrap a fucking belt around my neck and choke me until my vision went hazy.
I mean, Camille genuinely could’ve killed me last night. In like a handful of different ways.
But he didn’t; I trusted that he wouldn’t. I trusted that he could take me to the very edge of my limits and pull me back down to earth afterward.
I push the pillow away, roll onto my back properly, and immediately regret it when several sore spots make themselves known at once.
Nothing serious, just reminders.
My hand rises toward my neck.
No.
Absolutely not.
We are not lying in bed touching marks and thinking about Camille.
I sit up, a bit too quickly, and feel dizzy. I wait for it to settle, then reach for the half-empty glass of water beside the bed.
I drank most of it sometime around four this morning, after waking up with my mouth so dry that my tongue felt upholstered.
Next to it is Camille’s plate.
Three peach slices survived the walk.
One survived me sitting on the edge of the bed eating them in the dark because apparently he was right about needing food afterward.
The last one has gone slightly brown and will need to be thrown out.
I push up, leaving the bed, and immediately come into contact with the wardrobe mirror.
My hair is a disaster. There are shadows under my eyes.
A bruise curves beneath the collar of the oversized sleep shirt I dragged on after stumbling home, and when I shift, another disappears beneath the fabric.
When I lift my chin, there’s a literal ring of purple mottling sitting around my throat like a collar.
None of the bruises really bother me. I actually find myself admiring them, pushing at them just to feel the ache. The thing that bothers me is how I felt during and directly after sex.
It was different than usual. It made me feel too vulnerable, too open, too… too clingy.
And with Camille helping me wash afterward, being so gentle after being so very not, it fucked with my head.
It scared me.
It scared me because I had wanted to stay.
I wanted to stand underneath warm water while he washed me, and sit on his bed wearing one of his stupid expensive shirts while he brought me fruit and water.
I wanted to put my head on him somewhere—his chest, his lap, his shoulder, I don’t fucking know—and just shut my brain off.
I wanted to relax.
With him.
Let him be my soft place to land.
The realization had hit me mid-shower.
And Camille noticed, because of course he fucking did.
Camille notices when my breathing changes.
He notices where I look.
He notices when I hesitate before answering him.
He notices when I’m afraid.
He notices when I’m turned on.
I’m pretty sure if one of my organs changed position, he’d tilt his head and ask whether my spleen had always sat two centimeters to the left.
We both knew I was lying about a nonexistent brother to escape, but he didn’t question it. He let me go.
I grab clean clothes from the chair and head for the bathroom.
The shower pressure is terrible.
I have complained about it almost every morning since arriving, but today the weak spray is particularly offensive because Camille’s shower has ruined me for all others.
Another thing to hate him for.
I scrub quickly, avoiding looking too closely at myself in the mirror afterward.
I throw on shorts, a loose tank, slather my skin in sunscreen, and twist my hair up into a messy bun because it’s probably already as hot as Satan’s ballsack outside.
I am completely fine.
I just need to stay away from Camille for a couple of days. Not because I suddenly have feelings, but because boundaries are healthy.
Distance is healthy.
And if I go back over there today, there is a nonzero chance that I will end up curled against him afterward like some sort of needy house pet.
I decide to walk into town to avoid Camille at least for the morning. The walk takes forever, as usual. Normally, by the time I reach the first cluster of buildings, I’m sweaty, irritated, and considering whether stubborn independence is actually worth heatstroke.
Today, I welcome it.
Physical suffering gives my brain something uncomplicated to concentrate on.
The village is busier than usual, probably because it’s Saturday and apparently rural French people also believe weekends are for buying bread and standing in inconvenient groups across narrow sidewalks.
I stop first at the little market and pick up a few tomatoes, some cheese, a loaf of fresh bread, coffee, and laundry detergent.
By the time I leave, both canvas bags are heavy enough that the walk home is going to suck.
Good. More suffering. Maybe I’ll develop heat exhaustion before developing an attachment style.
I cross the square toward the hardware store. The woman behind the counter recognizes me now and has graciously stopped pretending she cannot speak a lick of English, though I remain convinced she understands significantly more than she admits.
“Bonjour,” I say.
“Bonjour, Monsieur Smith.”
I show her a picture of a warped window latch that I’m trying to fix. She makes a noise that I suspect translates universally to “that is fucked.”
We spend the next ten minutes communicating through a combination of English, French, hand gestures, and her occasionally taking my phone from me to correct whatever the translation app has done to the sentence.
Eventually, she disappears into the back to search for what she’s concluded I need, so I wander the small store as I wait for her to return.
There are approximately 6,000 kinds of screws.
Why?
No human society needs this many screws.
I am attempting to determine what exactly the numbers on the packages mean when someone behind me says, “Legrand.”
I turn to see an older man standing at the end of the aisle. He’s thin with a sun-browned face and combed-back white hair—in his seventies, maybe.
He has a cane tucked beneath one arm while he examines me with enough intensity that I briefly wonder whether I have accidentally stolen something.
“Sorry?”
“Le petit-fils d’Alberte?” Alberte’s grandson?
That one I understand.
“Yes.” I point at myself like an idiot. “Alberte’s grandson.”
The man’s mouth presses thin like he has just bitten into something unexpectedly sour. “Tu vis dans le cottage?” You are living in the cottage?
“Oui,” I answer, nodding. Yes.
“Hm.” He takes a step closer, still intensely staring at me. His English, when he switches to it, is heavily accented but far better than my French. “You came from America.”
“Oui, yes. I haven’t been here for very long.”
He taps a finger on top of his cane, as if deciding whether or not to say anything further. Finally, he says, “I knew Alberte.”
That gets my attention.
“You did?”
“Oui. When I was young.”
I set down the package of screws.
“Were… were you friends?”
A strange expression crosses his face. “No.”
“But you knew him?”
“Everyone knew Alberte then.”
The same vague shit everyone keeps saying. I sigh and lean against the shelf. “Yes, that’s what I keep hearing. How did you know him?” I ask.
He studies me a moment longer. “You ask Moreau?”
My stomach does a stupid little thing at Camille’s surname. “About you?”
The man’s brow crinkles, and he lets out a small chuckle. “Non, non. You ask about Alberte?”
“Yes.”
“What does he tell you?”
“Not much.”
The man snorts.
Finally, someone gets it.
“He told me Alberte came down here because of work. That he worked for some doctor. Henri Voclain.”
The change is immediate. The man’s face closes off in recognition.
“You knew him too?”
He looks toward the front counter as if checking whether the clerk has returned. She hasn’t. He then gestures for me to move farther down the aisle.
“Doctor Voclain,” he says quietly. “Yes.”
“What was he like?”
The man’s eyes sharpen. “Why?”
“Because nobody will tell me anything about my own grandfather.” That comes out more frustrated than I intend it to.
He considers me, then says, “There were many rumors about the two of them. That they were…” The man’s gaze moves over my face. His voice lowers to a hush. “Something more than doctor and assistant.”
Is he saying…?
“Were they together?”
The old man looks uncomfortable. “I cannot be confident that it is true. But that is the rumor. That they were together… as men and women are together.”
“Oh.” Does the village hate them because they were gay? And they’re, what, alienating me because I’m the grandson of a queer man?