Page 16 of Bullet
“You’re sure to win the Oscar, Dad.”
He laughed again, this time louder. “Yeah, yeah. Just get over here. That dog that you would have rather had a cat misses you.”
“All right. I’m on the way.”
“Cool, bye.”
“Bye.”
Already, my mood was lighter. I wouldn’t be the man I was if Cameron hadn’t come along. He’d been my foster dad from the time I was eleven years old and had loved me like I was his own. It was hard at first, treating any man like my dad other than the man who’d raised me, but Cameron told me he was probably looking down on me, happy I was out of my mom’s clutches. He’d want me to have a good parent still.
Thanks to Cameron, I did.
Milton, the Dachshund that Cameron had bought me as a puppy not long after I came to live with him, came ambling up to the door as soon as I walked in. His brown fur was graying all over, and he didn’t move with the same vigor he used to, but at damn near thirteen years old, that he was still alive at all was a miracle.
Sure, I preferred cats to dogs, but Milton was a therapy dog and had helped me through many rough nights, so I sat on the floor as he walked up and let him wander into my lap. “Hey, buddy.”
Cameron walked down the hallway from the kitchen and smiled down at me. “He still sleeps in your old room, you know?”
“Are youtryingto break my heart?” I asked.
“You could take him. Don’t get me wrong, I love the old guy, but he clearly would rather be with you.”
I scruffed the sides of Milton’s face. “I don’t know how well he’d get along with the cats.”
“He gets on fine with Marty,” Cameron replied, and as if on cue, Cameron’s huge, gray Maine Coon came wandering into the hallway from the living room. He snuggled against me and immediately started to purr, so I held out my arm so he could crawl up as well, though he took up much more space than Milton.
Cameron sputtered out a laugh. “You and animals, I swear.”
“They like me, what can I say?”
“Well, get off the floor before you get too much hair on you and come eat.”
As soon as I moved to get to my feet, both Milton and Marty let out their individual grunts of dissatisfaction, but both followed as I walked down into the kitchen. Looking over at Cameron, I laughed, noticing for the first time that he was wearing a yellow, frilly “kiss the cook” apron, which looked even more hysterical against his dark brown skin and bald head.
“That’s a unique look,” I said as I dropped down into a chair at the kitchen table.
“Yeah,” he laughed awkwardly. “It was a gift.”
He used a spatula to move an omelet onto a plate from one of the pans at the oven and then he brought it over and set it down in front of me. On top of being an amazing father, Cameron was an out-of-this-world cook. He never went into the field professionally, which was a shame, because it wasobviouslyhis calling. He grabbed some orange juice and milk from the fridge and set them down in front of me with a glass and then returned to the stove to finish off his own omelet.
“Who gave you that as a gift?” I asked, settling into my food, the hot spices and juicy meat easing my stress from the night before.
“Uh… We’ll get to that, but first, why do you look so tired?”
It shouldn’t have surprised me that he noticed. “I didn’t sleep well last night. Rather, I didn’t sleep at all.”
“How come?” He finished his omelet and moved it over to a plate, then came and joined me at the table. “Work?”
“Kinda.” I looked up at him. “You know how you always told me the way I felt about my mom was justified?”
That took him back a bit. He looked up at me, worried. “Yes?”
“And that judge and cop. You always said it was understandable the way I felt about them, too.”
“It was. They favored your mother when they shouldn’t have, and it could have spared you a lot of pain.”
“Is it fair that I distrust women?” I asked finally.
