Page 86 of Cherry Picking
“I’m so sorry for imposing on them.”
I shake my head. “No worries. The Easton family is actually really sweet.”
Her lips turn up the slightest bit at the corners, and it isn’t until we’re both in the car with the airport disappearing into the rearview that her body relaxes and nearly melts into the seat of Riley’s car—the one that I borrowed because I still don’t have one of my own.
Really need to remedy that.
“What happened, Cam?”
Because our Dad is a bigot, albeit a seemingly quiet one, but violence has never been a worry of ours.
Cam’s jaw ticks and tears spring to her eyes again that she quickly wipes away. “He called me Cameron.”
I offer her a hand, and she takes it without question, squeezing my fingers in a death grip.
“I’ve made this so easy on him,” she says in a vehement whisper. “I picked a name that he’s already used to calling me. I tone down my femininity anytime we have to be near each other. I don’t talk about anything that has to do with my transition. All I ask is that he uses three simple words. She, daughter, and Cam. That’s it. He never has to acknowledge that Camry exists. I can always be Cam for him, but?—”
Her thin body shakes as her nails dig into the palm of my hand.
Home trips are reserved for holidays, and even then it’s only maybe once or twice a year. They’re cordial when they’re together, like they’re putting on appearances for an imaginary audience.
If you ask me, the only reason she even visits is some misguided guilt over Dad having a heart attack three years ago when she gathered us around the kitchen table and told us she was trans. That she’d gone to Planned Parenthood and started the process of getting hormones.
I’ve told her time and again that she doesn’t owe him anything. Not her time. Not her presence. But every time theresponse is,“He’s my daddy, and I love him. He loves me, too. Deep down. I know it.”
“I flinched,” she says once her voice is under control. “He took offense and asked what was wrong with my name that I had to change it? What was wrong with the name he gave me?”
“Did you tell him to shove it?”
She laughs, but it’s a sad, wet sound. “I told him I just wasn’t that person anymore. That he served me well, but I didn’t want to live in a cage for the rest of my life, and he said—you know what he said, Griff?”
The southern twang is coming out hard now, one she can never seem to shake when she’s angry.
“He said it’s all that liberal, devil music I ran out to make. That he should have pushed me into sports like you, and that he never should have let me take all those drummin’ lessons. He called it trash and brainwash. I told him he was a hypocrite when it was him pushing God and all of these arbitrary rules onto us like we’re his puppets and not his children.”
I free my hand from hers to wrap it around the back of her neck. Squeezing in a gentle pattern until her heartbeat settles and the fight drains out of her.
“It doesn’t matter. He hit me; I ran like a scared little girl.”
I wish I could take her into my arms and tell her it’s alright to be a scared, little girl. It’s alright to be afraid, to want acceptance and to push for it. That she has done nothing wrong, and it’s the world that needs to get with it.
“How about this? We get you settled at Riley’s, and I’ll make you some honey tea and re-braid that hair for you. Deal?”
The smile she gives me is real—small, but real. “I’d like that.”
Cam has kept her hair grown out for as long as I can remember. Sometimes it was just scraggly and down by her ears, then shoulder length; once it was nearing her elbows and Dadcut it off in the kitchen because he said it was a nightmare to maintain.
Now it’s somewhere in-between and no longer the dirty blond color she was born with. She’s constantly changing between hues, but this shade of green seems to be her happy spot.
When we were kids, I used to find myself mindlessly playing with it. Brushing it, braiding it, and it always seemed to relax her, so it’s a ritual we’ve kept up through the years.
“I’m glad you called.” When she raises a skeptical brow, I ruffle her hair. “Really. My baby sister will absolutely not be alone and crying on Christmas.”
“I love you, big brother.”
“And I love you, Camry Foster. The one and only.”
It’s nearing sunrise when Cam finally settles under the throw blanket on the couch and falls asleep. We made tea, a snack, talked for awhile, and when her head hit my shoulder with unmistakable little snores popping out, I laid her down and tiptoed back to Riley’s room.
