Page 36 of Stray for You

LIFE SETTLES BACK INTO a familiar rhythm. Routine asserts itself, demanding I return to work in Manhattan. When it’s time to report to Garret about the conference, I tease Cameron carefully out of the story, but it’s like plucking the color out of a box of crayons and leaving behind only gray, white and black. Regardless, Garret accepts my report, just as my co-workers accept my little hints that I, as usual, had a good time racking up escapades and salacious stories. I feed them the tidbits I know they want, leaving the end of those stories open-ended so they can fill in the blanks themselves. I don’t tell them the truth, of course. The time I spent with Cameron is not for their dissection.

Somehow, I maintain the facade until the weekend, when I thankfully have plans to head to my mom’s house for dinner.

We try to get together at least once a month. It can be hard with the amount I travel for work, but she lives right across the water in New Jersey, so I really don’t have an excuse not to see her.

I don’t bother knocking before entering the home I grew up in. Whistles and football announcers greet me before my mother or her boyfriend realize I’ve arrived. I pry off my shoes and head down the hall to the living room at the back of the house, where Mom sits cuddled up with Dave on the same sagging tan couch that was here when I was kid.

For some reason, the sight makes my chest feel too tight,like someone is squeezing the air out of my lungs. Mom reclines against her boyfriend. He has an arm around her, and it’s so casual, so easy, that they barely seem to notice they’re touching each other. I can’t fathom Cameron ever letting me touch him that way, but when I enter the living room, that image flashes in my mind before I can banish it, burned there like a brand. Even as the ache fades, the mark remains.

Mom sits up when she notices me. “Julian, you’re here.”

She gets up to fuss over me, and Dave follows her off the couch, leaving the football game droning on the television. I know enough about the sport to know we’re rooting for the guys in green and not the guys in red, but that’s about where my knowledge of football ends. My mom has always been a big fan, however. Today, she’s got her Sunday spread all laid out; enough chips and dip and beer sits on the coffee table to supply the whole neighborhood.

Mom wraps me up in a hug. “It’s been too long. How was your trip? This was Nashville? No, this was Seattle, right?”

She’s going rapid-fire, but I know it’s just excitement. In the meantime, Dave offers his hand. I shake it. I don’t know the guy well, but he seems nice enough. Him and Mom have been dating for a few months, and she seems happy. If she ever isn’t happy with him, we’ll have a problem, but until then, the man seems mild-mannered, quiet and eager to please, and that’s good enough for me. I liked Miss Ortiz better, but obviously that didn’t work out … and maybe that wasn’t about my mom as much as it was about me. I never thought about it much before, but perhaps the memory of my mother dating Cameron’s mom carries positive connotations simply because it put me in Cameron’s proximity so often.

I shake that off and try to answer my mother’s questions. “It was Seattle,” I say. “And I’m still kind of exhausted.”

“Oh God, yes, sit, sit,” she says. “We have chips and beer andwhatever you want. Do you like that brand? I can run out and get something else.”

I sink into the arm chair beside the couch and take a lukewarm beer without even looking at it. “It’s great.”

I struggle to get it open, and Dave reaches over to pop off the top with a bottle opener attached to his keyring. Okay, one more point for Dave.

Mom and Dave settle back on the couch, sitting closer to the edge to be near me. The game is still unfolding on the television, but only Dave pays any attention to it. My mother’s eyes never leave me now that she’s got me back in her house, and I silently promise myself I won’t go so long without seeing her next time. It’s been a busy couple months with work and traveling.

“Tell me everything about Seattle,” she says. “I’ve never been there. What is the city like? Did you see the fish market?”

I nod. “I stayed a few blocks from the fish market.”

I tell her about Pike Place Market, where they’ll toss fish around if you buy one, and the Ferris wheel that you can see from the pier, but I didn’t spend much time on those things. Instead, I recount the Underground Tour, the one super touristy thing I indulged in while in Seattle. It wasn’t about the tour, of course, but I dance around that, carefully excluding Cameron from the story. I’m not sure what my mother would think about his presence. Does she hold any guilt or pain or regret about the breakup with Miss Ortiz? It never seemed that way to me, but it’s one thing to have an amicable breakup and it’s a whole ‘nother thing to find out your kid is hooking up with your ex-girlfriend’s kid.

Unfortunately, I got my brainsandmy good looks from my mother, and she easily senses that there’s something missing from my story.

“Did your co-workers go with you?” she says. “Who were you on the tour with?”

Normally, I’m pretty quick on my feet, ready to spin a lie or half-truth to dodge a sticky situation, but when it comes to my mother, I’ve never had the heart to pull that shit. It was always the two of us; unlike Cameron, I never even knew my dad. So lying to her never sat right with me, no matter what outrageous tales I would tell anyone else.

“Julian?” she prompts.

Shit. I’ve waited so long that it’s obvious I’m holding something back. Even if I had the heart to lie to her, she’d hear it.

I let out a breath.

“It was actually, um, Cameron. Cameron Ortiz,” I say.

Her eyebrows rise. She sits up straighter, the football game entirely forgotten. Even Dave shoots a quick glance in my direction.

“Oh,” Mom says, clearly trying to sound casual. “How is he?”

“He’s, um, yeah, he seems to be doing well,” I say.

I mean, it’s true. He did seem to be doing well, especially when he was in that hotel room moaning so beautifully for me.

“How is his mother doing?” Mom asks.

An unexpected pang strikes my chest. It socks me out of nowhere, like a bully hiding around a corner, waiting for me to let my guard down. I didn’t see Miss Ortiz. It never even crossed my mind to see her. Cameron never suggested going to his apartment or somewhere more personal like that. Everything happened in a public place or my hotel room, anonymous, impersonal locations. Was that a coincidence, or did Cameron shield his “real” life by ensuring I never encountered it?

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