Page 19 of Slots & Sticks
He laughs once, short and nervous. “Yeah, but books don’t die in a week.”
The silence after that is too full to move through. I press my hand to the window, watching sunlight glint off the shrink wrap, and think about all the stories inside those boxes. Fourteen hundred escapes. Fourteen hundred ways to breathe again.
And somehow, without ever touching me, he gave me the first one.
“This is really sweet. Nobody’s ever gotten me an entire pallet of books before.”
I open my door and step out, heat slapping my face the second I hit the sunlight. The smell of cardboard and shrink-wrap fills the air—like rain and ink and new beginnings.
Camden gets out too but hangs back a second, hands shoved in his pockets. I circle the mountain of boxes, fingertips grazing the plastic. “And you have no idea what’s in here?”
He shrugs, coming up beside me. My brain feels fogged over, static from too little sleep and too much grief.
“It’s random,” he says. “Could all be trash.”
I swing at his shoulder, a pathetic ghost of a punch. “How dare you. We don’t slander books in this house.”
Camden’s snort turns into a half-laugh. “Fine. Maybe it’s nothing but C++ programming manuals.”
I wrinkle my nose. “Okay, that’d be a tragedy. Do we know how they’re packed in there? Are we gonna need forklifts?” I extend my arms and make a couple of beeping noises for emphasis.
He huffs out another small laugh. “They’re in boxes.” He jerks his chin toward the door. “I’ll drop your stuff inside, then I’ll open the wrap and start hauling them into the garage.”
I shake my head before he can move. “No. Bring them in. Let’s open them together.”
He freezes mid-step. Camden’s not the kind of guy whose smiles light up a room—he’s quieter than that—but something in his face shifts, softens. “Really? You don’t have to. I can… do the heavy lifting.”
“Cam,” I say, voice low. “I think I need to open them with you.”
And for a second, all the noise fades—the traffic, the desert heat, even the grief. It’s just the two of us, standing in thedriveway, trying to remember how it feels to want something that isn’t survival.
I shake my head. I’m not ready to tackle the rest of the house. Having Camden here with me, doing something fun and not at all related to the accident, sounds like a great way to psych myself up for being in the house again. “Bring ‘em in. If it’s all textbooks, we can have a bonfire in the backyard tonight.”
It’s Cam’s turn to mock-gasp. “You wouldburn books?”
“Depends on the book, I guess. Tell you what: anything about Javascript, we’ll save. Anything C++ goes on the grill.”
He laughs on our way up to the front door. His mirth is almost enough to distract me from my anxiety about stepping into the house. I type in the door code, turn the handle, and step inside.
We leave my purse inside and focus on unwrapping and relocating the boxes of books from the pallet. I wish I could muster the enthusiasm the gift deserves. Mostly, I’m grateful that he’s given me an opportunity to keep my brain occupied. By the time we’ve moved all the boxes indoors and gotten down to the business of sorting, I’ve almost forgotten the conversation I had with Dad.
Almost. At least I’m not crying anymore.
Camden rips into one of the boxes. His face immediately contorts in horror. “Um. What the fuck?”
“What?” I peer into the box. When I see the cover of the topmost book, I burst out laughing. The image on the front shows an extremely muscular white guy—he’s got to be a bodybuilder—wearing an apron. He’s brandishing a spatula with one hand and cradling a baby with the other. The title is sprawled across the top in a font that looks like dripping paint:Cooking with Baby Batter.
“Is that… a cookbook with semen-based recipes?” My face heats up, but the concept is so far from sexy that I can’t help cackling.
Camden holds the book out at arm’s length. His eye twitches. “Yup.”
I reach for it. “Show me the recipes.” When he raises an eyebrow, I shrug. “What? I’m curious. What do you think he recommends?”
Without missing a beat, Camden says, “Jizzled pound cake.”
“Gross.” I cover my eyes. “I take it back. I don’t want to know.”
“Creamed egg salad sandwiches?”
