Page 109 of Level Up
Cameron smiles as though he never tore my heart to shreds and hung it out on a wire like a pair of weathered old tennis shoes. As though he expects me to smile back.
And the worst thing is that I do. Igosh-darnfuckingdo.
“How are you?” I ask, more chipper than a chipmunk, and part of me dies a little.
“I’m good,” he says with a nod. He glances out the window. “You still living with your grandma?”
I don’t think he’s being condescending about it, but then again, he tricked me into thinking he was my best friend for a decade, so what do I know?
“The apartment upstairs,” I tell him. “Just—saving up, you know?”
He laughs politely. “Yeah, same.”
I can practically feel the table shaking with Damien’s awkward tension across from me. “Oh, this is Damien, by the way,” I add quickly, nodding in his direction before addressing him as well. “And this is Cameron. We—went to school together.”
“Good to meet you,” Cameron says to him, though he doesn’t try to shake his hand, thankfully. His polite expression turns more suspicious. “Or—Have we…met?”
Damien barely glances up at him. “I doubt it.”
“Hang on, wait—” Cameron taps his chin like he’s trying to remember something, and I wonder if, somehow, hedoesrecognize Damien from his streams. It’s not impossible that Cameron watches them, since he was anSOAfan, too, but it seems doubtful that he’d have memorized Damien’s mouth as well as I did. “Are you Damien Iverson?”
Damien’s eyes widen and he looks up at him for real. “I…”
Cameron’s grin widens as well. “We were in that second-year Software Engineering class. We had a group project.”
“Oh.” Damien visibly relaxes at that. “Yeah, maybe.”
I look over at him. “How would you have taken a second-year course at the same time?”
“I changed my major in my third year and had to go pick up a bunch of earlier pre-reqs,” he says quietly.
“Small world, though,” Cameron adds, looking between the two of us. “That we all know each other.”
I don’t tell him that I wish I didn’t know him.
“Infinitesimal,” Damien says dryly.
“Well,” I say, smiling up at Cameron again. “It was good to see you.” It was not.
“Yeah,” he nods. “We should catch up some time. All of us.”
“Absolutely!”Absolutely not.
“Have a good one.” To-go cup in hand, Cameron heads out with a small wave at us before he disappears.
Damien is staring at me as soon as I return my attention to him, like he’s waiting for some sort of explanation.
“So, uh. That was Cameron,” I say awkwardly.
“Another ex?”
“Uh, no. Not exactly. Well—Ex-best friend, maybe?”
“I see…”
“We sort of, um, drifted apart in high school, and I haven’t really seen him since then,” I tell him, and he nods.
“When you saydrift apart, you mean…?” he asks, and I nod. “He was in love with you, and you didn’t feel the same way.”
