St. Nacho's 4: The Book of Daniel (9 page)

“
Fuck
!” He shoved his partner back, knocking him to his ass on the ground below. “Fuck,
fuck
, sorry, man. Jeez.”

“What the hell?” The man wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and I could see he was shaking with adrenaline and nerves.

“I think something landed on me. Like”—Cameron glanced up at me and back down at his friend and continued—“a bug or something.”

“What?”

“Look. I’m kind of… I gotta go.” Cam took off running.

“Are you kidding me?
Motherfucker
!” screamed the man on the ground. He watched Cam lope off toward the beach on unsteady legs. “Pretty is as pretty does, you bastard.”

I couldn’t blame him for giving his dick a few quick, perfunctory pumps. He shuddered as it spit cum on the ground beneath where I sat, still unnoticed.

By him anyway.

I was going to kill Muse. She had to have known this would happen. Something like this. That little
monster…

What a doll.

Cam’s friend stuffed himself back into his pants and stomped off, and I found I could breathe normally again.

* * *

I’d been to Cam’s place once briefly with Jake and JT to drop something off, but a lot of the fifties-style apartment buildings right on the beach looked alike. Still, I saw my bike parked on the street, so I headed up the stairs of the one I believed was Cam’s. There were only three apartments, and I knew he didn’t live on the end, so I tapped lightly on the middle door.

A sisal mat beneath my feet invited me to “Wipe Your Paws.”

I heard footsteps on the other side of the door, and when they stopped, I imagined Cam, standing on the other side of the peephole looking out and wondering if he should open the door. That’s what I’d be doing. I’d be paralyzed with indecision and hoping I could get away with pretending I wasn’t home.

“I can hear you.” I headed for the shortcut. “Failure to answer the door won’t persuade me to leave.”

I heard the dead bolt turn, and then the door opened a crack. One blue eye peered out.

“I came to apologize to you.” The door opened farther, and I saw Cam’s face, awash with the pink tinge of a blush. “I should have let you know I was there. I’m sorry it seemed like I was spying.”

“Weren’t you?”

“I was actually there”—why
had
I been there?—“being
nudged
in a more organic direction.”

Cam blinked at me. “I beg your pardon?”

“At the time I thought it had to do with St. Nacho’s own unholy triumvirate. Muse, Izzie, and Minerva. They’ve been stalking me and—”

“Wait, what?” He frowned.

I glanced back up at him. In this light, his unshaven whiskers gave off little glints of copper and I knew,
I just knew
, I was right. His treasure trail and the thatch of pubic hair I’d seen would be a burnished, coppery red.

“Everyone in this town is insane, aren’t they? Can I come in?”

“I guess it could seem like we’re crazy, but we’re pretty harmless.” Cam relaxed a bit and stood back.

I crossed the threshold but only just enough so he could close the door. “Those three, Muse, Izzie, and Minerva, have been drawing chalk symbols on the sidewalk outside my house and on my coffee sleeves. I see them sometimes, diving behind the trees when I get the paper in the morning or running away when I go out to smoke in the afternoon.”

“But why?”

I shook my head. “That’s not important right now. Muse seems to have softened toward me since I loaned you my bike.”

“Since you loaned—”

“Like I said, what’s important is I wasn’t up that tree to spy on you, I should have let you know I was there, and I’m very, very sorry if I embarrassed you.”

I relaxed, happy to have the reason for my call out of the way.

“Wait, okay. You were up that tree because…” He waited for me to answer.

“Muse told me to climb it.”

“You climbed a tree—
with your arm
—because a nineteen-year-old girl told you to do it?”

“Well, she said it was easy, and it was. She climbed up first even though she was in a skirt and heels. I stayed there to think. I’ll bet she guessed you’d show up, and along you came, right on cue. Are you some tree-hugging horndog? Or is that tree your particular favorite? I guess I can ask around at Nacho’s if you don’t want to answer that. Anyway, she must have wanted me to see you, although I can’t think why…except…”

Cam flushed a dull red, and I thought he might be angry. “Except
what
?”

“She might have tumbled to the fact that I like to see you smile,” I admitted. “Although I think she might have taken that a little further than—”

“Wait… You like to see me smile?”

I shrugged. “But maybe not—preferably—because of a public sex act.”

Cam closed his eyes when I said that.

“I’m just sayin’. You know. Against a tree and all.”

He waved that off. “Everyone does that.”

“I don’t.” Well, I hadn’t done
exactly
that. That didn’t mean if Cam invited me I wouldn’t. I guess Cam realized how hypocritical that was at about the same time I did, because he was quick to comment on it. “That’s because you don’t want to get caught.”

“And you do?”

“I guess you don’t have to worry about your
wife
anymore. Or the financial repercussions of cheating on her.”

I knew he was probably talking about the prenup Bree and I had—which only she’d been
caught
breaking. We’d both violated it. My brother Jake had an awfully big mouth.

Cam dragged his fingers through his short hair and walked toward the kitchen. “You want a cup of coffee or something?”

“Is this an
over coffee
thing?” I asked, following him. His place was damn nice. It looked professionally decorated—like it came straight out of
Everyday Living
magazine.
Who knew
? His loopy fire cat/dog rubbed up against my leg along the way.

While Cam added water to the reservoir of his coffee pot, he said, “I talked to your brother a lot when he first came to town. He was getting together with JT, you know? I guess I have one of those faces. Or maybe I was the one person who wasn’t afraid to tell him what I thought about men who go out publicly with girls and then get off with guys in private. The subject of your marriage might have come up.”

So. Jake really
had
told Cam all about me. I’d given Jake a ration about JT being in the closet too. I’d just come out to him and—at the time—JT’s behavior seemed duplicitous. I recognized it pretty easily since I was guilty of the same thing.

“You warned Jake off JT?”

“Yes. A few times actually.” Cam grimaced at some memory or other.

“Yet now you’re JT’s best man. What happened?’

“I didn’t blame JT for being afraid. But he still could just as easily have thrown everything Yasha had to offer away because he was worried what people might think. I didn’t want Yasha to get hurt. JT is on the level, now anyway.”

If I condemned JT, I condemned myself by extrapolation. “No one can know what he was thinking, though,” I hedged.

“Uh, yeah, we can.” Cam put the pot beneath the grounds with a
clank
. “A guy like that”—he looked pointedly at me—“is only thinking about how he can get what he wants without having to live with the consequences. He’s thinking,
I can lie, cheat, screw around, and deceive everyone, and as long as I don’t get caught, I’m golden
.”

“That’s a little harsh.”

“The truth hurts sometimes.” He watched steam puff up from his coffeemaker.

It was pretty obvious the truth had hurt me in Cam’s eyes. I wasn’t proud of what I’d done. I’d married a woman although I identify as gay, and I cheated on my wife more than once. I’d gone the route of paying for men or tricking anonymously so I would never get emotionally involved, and I’d convinced myself it was perfectly all right, even legitimately kind, to do it that way.

What a crock of shit.

I didn’t have to examine that through Cam’s filter to know how wrong it was.

The way Cam flip-flopped on me reflected some pretty conflicted emotions. But one thing he’d never pulled any punches about was a man who used a woman as a beard.

“Maybe I should just go.”

“That’s probably for the best,” he said quietly.

I started making my way to the door. “I just came by to say I’m sorry. It wasn’t personal—with the tree. I just happened to be up there and—”

“
Daniel
?”

Fuck it all
, there it was again, that damned voice of his, and by then I could absolutely swear he did it
only
for me, covering me with it like thick honey and cream when we were alone and no one else could hear him use it.

I froze.

He hesitated. “Do you really like to see me smile?”

“Yeah.” I turned to find him gazing down at me. “I really do.”

I barely breathed. We’d been dancing around that compelling
something
between us ever since he’d pulled me out of my wreck—maybe even before that, back when we met the first night I landed in town and got drunk with Jake at Nacho’s.

Cam hooked me by the back of my neck and pulled me to him, palming my head like a basketball. His hand was so warm it heated my scalp through my hair. He gripped my head hard as he slanted his mouth over mine.

For a second it felt exactly like free fall—a sudden shocking surge of fear along with a tremendous rush of excitement—and then I just caught fire.

Cam had softer lips than any man his size had a right to, but the brush of his beard stubble was scratchy and electric. His tongue twined around mine and tickled, exploring my teeth and palate, and licking my lips as he opened up and let me do the same. He touched, tasted, and teased me while all my blood rushed south to pulse uncomfortably behind my zipper, and I kissed him back, so hard my lips went numb.

He both seduced and devoured me until my head swam and my good arm went around his neck to cling to him. I let my other arm hang limp. I really longed for it. I missed using both hands to touch and manhandle, to grip a lover’s ass and squeeze. He gently insinuated his arm around me underneath mine to get better hold, and again, his hand—that unexpected plate-sized circle of warm flesh—explored until it pushed its way beneath the waistband of my jeans to touch my naked flesh.

Our cocks pressed together, hard and insistent, and right then I knew—I thought I knew—exactly how good it could be between us.

Just like that, I’d have been willing to ditch my clothes and offer myself up to him. He was everything I wanted, but then I think we both remembered what brought me there in the first place.

“Oh, fuck.” Cam pushed me back just a bit. “I…um…accept your apology.”

“I guess
so
,” was all I could think to say.

My lips felt puffy from being crushed and kissed like that. I might have liked the rest of me to feel that way too—only not when I’d seen him getting blown by someone else an hour before. Or when we had that whole,
lying liars that lie
thing between us.

“There are a lot of reasons this isn’t a great idea,” Cam whispered.

I nodded. “I need to leave while I can still remember what they are.” Damn it, I couldn’t make myself let him go. “Look. Will you meet me for dinner at Nacho’s sometime?”

“I don’t know…” Cam had already drawn back, but he stood indecisively for a few seconds. He pried my arm from around his neck and walked me to the door. “I wish—” He bit his lip against the words.

“Me too.
Fuck yeah. Me too
.” I went for broke. “Are we going to keep pushing each other away?”

One side of his sensuous mouth lifted. “Are you going keep being a lying sack of shit?”

Jeez
. I might still be a sack of shit because I had lied—either plainly or by omission—for over a decade. And after fucking up everything else I’d ever done by trying to grease it and make it easier with white lies or harmless bendings of the truth, or outright whoppers, I could unequivocally say that hadn’t worked out so well. So
no
. I didn’t plan to lie anymore. Especially if Cam could consider giving me a fresh start, given what he knew about me.

The Machiavellian genius who wore my skin said, I’m not going to lie
even if I make everyone miserable by telling the truth
. He said,
fuck ’em
, and there was a part of me that liked that too.

I was still working out the particulars of my new, honest existence.

Cam sent a thorough, assessing glance my way.

“Have dinner with me, Cam. Just a casual dinner at Nacho’s. No pressure.”

“I’m free day after tomorrow for an early dinner.”

“All right.” I felt happier than he looked. “Yeah. Okay. I’ll meet you, all right?”

He nodded. When I was once again on his silly sisal mat I turned to him, but he was closed to me, as distant as he’d ever been.

“You’re a good brother.” I think he said that as a way of softening things between us. The door closed and clicked shut, but I put my hand on the wood as if by doing that I could keep us connected somehow.

I wanted to be more than a good brother. I wanted to be a good man…

It’s odd how you never know what form a karmic correction will take. I headed for home and the rest of the bottle of vodka in my freezer. After that, I slept fitfully and woke several times in the darkness, sick and confused.

Chapter Nine

When I met Cam for dinner at Nacho’s Bar, I tried not to
look
like I’d spent all of the previous day obsessing about how I looked. I’d ended up wearing a soft black sweater and jeans, with an expensive leather jacket, which made me look more like a member of Mossad than a guy who buys and sells apartment buildings. From the way Cam’s eyes widened when he caught sight of me, it was worth it. A tiny bubble of nervous laughter escaped me to ruin the moment, and he shrugged.

After I found us a table in the corner where we could still hear ourselves talk over the sound of Cooper’s violin, I saw Izzie and her police officer boyfriend, Andy. That night Izzie was a fashion plate in a sweater and microscopically short, slim skirt that hugged her bodybuilder figure and revealed legs any runway model would kill for. A halo of pale blonde hair stood in stark contrast against her spray-tan skin as she tottered toward us on towering stiletto heels, pulling the stalwart Andy across the bar. I couldn’t help remembering what she’d said about me being a blank slate. Next to her a lot of people probably seemed blank.