Page 35 of Why Cheese?
While it’s still dark out, the lights are bright enough to mimic dawn. I point across the street already filling with people on their way to work. “It’s just past this park.”
On our walk, Cam would peer up at the buildings and tell me what business used to be there. The Apple store in particular confused him. “An entire shop devoted to a single fruit? What will they think of next?”
As we reach the other side of the road, I turn to travel around the dark, scary woods, but Cam pauses. “Why don’t we take a little shortcut? I assume your room is in one of those glittering buildings past the trees?”
I nod but grit my teeth as he pulls me past a sign saying the park is closed from sundown to sunup. What if someone catches us? What if the cops try to arrest a man who turns into cheese in the jail cell?
What if they put Cam in an evidence bin, and the cops get hungry and, they slice him up for sandwiches because it’s the Lieutenant’s birthday?
Okay, that might be a stretch.
“I’m glad you’re here,” I say, flinching as each syllable hits a tree that could be hiding a murderer. I’ve been here nearly a week and I still have all of my organs. It seems like it’s just a matter of time before I lose my tonsils or pancreas.
“And I am delighted to be by your side,” Cam says. “Though, if I may confess, I originally believed you would be sleeping in the old apartment atop the shop.”
“Oh.” God, that makes sense. Why would someone like him waste his time walking me home? Stupid. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“Please.” He places a finger on my flustering lips. “I am not worthy of your sorrow. Besides, it is delightful to canvas the city streets and escape those ever-confining walls.”
We wind up on a trail circling a large pond. Two white swans bob on the surface, drying the city orders as they hunt for an early breakfast. “Can you not leave the store?” I ask.
“No. There was a time when Cheddy and I would make a loop around the slumbering city, perhaps happen upon a night market that’d sprung up unexpectedly.”
“What about Brie?”
“Oh, he’d toddle along, but at the sight of a long spine and fine fluttering pages, he was off. We wouldn’t find him until it was nearing dawn usually spent upon a pile of pleasing literature.”
I smile at the idea of Brie tumbling face-first into a mess of books.
“But for now we are ‘quarantined’ according to the killjoy inpelo azul. Alas, no sanctioned long strolls down a winding road with a beautiful woman on my arm on his watch.”
I gulp hard at not just his words, but the way he says them, and how he stares at me like there’s no one else in the world. My heart can’t take it. “Please…” I whisper, my teeth chattering. “Don’t do that.”
Cam shoots up rod straight. “Do what?”
“Flatter me. It’s… I get it. You…you were trapped for a while, a long while. There’s no one else around. You’re killing time until—”
All of the words I’d kept clenched on my tongue for the past week spill out. The only thing that can stop them is a finger against my lips. “Does it bother you that I say you are beautiful?”
I fight to focus on him and his worrying face, but my eyes keep trying to cross to see his finger just below my nose. Even with him having a single eye and no nose, he’s still Netflix-hero handsome. Meanwhile, I’m… “Yes,” I confess.
I thought it’d free him. He wouldn’t have to keep at this game of buttering me up. He could find someone men actually want instead of a bucket of stale popcorn with gum on the bottom. But Cam’s cocksure smile bows into a gut punch of a frown. I feel awful.
“It’s not you. I mean… I know it’s a cliché, but it isn’t. It’s—”
“You have a beau, of course. A, no-doubt, mountain of a man prone to fits of jealousy.”
Sure. Why not? I’ve got a huge boyfriend, a pack of ‘em, waiting for me back home. And they’re all supermodel doctors who foster puppies on the side.
I want to laugh at the absurd idea, but Cam’s silence is deafening. He doesn’t release my arm as we cross a bridge arcing over the pond, though his touch has lightened. Instead of peering over at me, he’s looking up at the night sky void of stars.
My heart pounds harder, his pain chewing my brain into tiny pieces. I don’t do well when others around me are hurt. It’s my job to help them. Screwing my eyes up tight, I say, “I’m not the girl you pick.”
“What?” He jerks on his feet as we both freeze in our tracks.
“I’m not that girl. I’m not beautiful. I’m awkward, and quiet, and weird. I’m at the back of the crowd, at the end of the table, out of the circle. Only invited because…because they feel sorry for me. I don’t get the best friend necklace, the promposal, the ring.”
Oh fuck, am I crying?I don’t want to check. That’ll give me away. Hopefully, the darkness hides the tracks. Swallowing down the tears in my voice, I face him. “I’m not the girl people…want.”
