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  "We're out of cell minutes," Cameron mutters. "Unless you want to pay out the ass for extra time."

  "I wasn't the one who bought the cheap plan."

  "No, but you're the one who said it was fine. 'We hardly ever use the phone'," Cameron mocks, his register switching to a freakishly high soprano, which Guy considers both unfair and insulting, sending his blood pressure skyrocketing. "'We'll never even use the minimum minutes.'"

  "Then I'll call people from the station," Guy snarls.

  "Good luck with that. You have to get special permission to call me on the business line!"

  "Goddamnit, Cameron!" Guy slams his fist on the table. He's not so lucky as Cameron -- damn the man -- when his impact hits. In near slow-motion, Guy watches in horror as the shock vibrations travel to Cameron's glass of juice.

  Cameron tries to steady the glass and fumbles.

  Two inches of sticky, sugary, glutinous orange juice that will never ever come out sprays from the glass as it tips over, propelled forward by Cameron's slipping butterfingers. Death Juice splatters Guy's notes with a napalm pattern and destroys them.

  Cameron's jabbing his finger at Guy before the juice settles. "Don't even start. You made me do that!"

  "How? How did I make you knock your damn breakfast over? Magical mind rays?"

  "Guy, if you don't shut up and start acting like you've got some sense --"

  "Like I've got some sense?" Guy demands, boggling at Cameron. "Me?"

  "Yes, goddamnit, you!" Cameron surges to his feet, kicking his chair out behind him. It teeters briefly on its back legs and tips over. "You haven't acted like yourself since you came up with the whole idiotic idea!"

  "Idiotic?"

  Cameron opens his mouth, shuts it, then shakes his head and lets rip, tendons standing out in his neck and his face reddening with the force of his anger. "You know what? I'm done trying to make this work, Guy. I told you it was a bad idea when you first came up with it, and I was right. What's this got us? Nothing but hassles and nervous breakdowns and you going on a rampage! Relatives I'd as soon have never seen for the rest of my life coming to town and making me feel about two inches tall!"

  Guy shoves his own chair back and stalks around the table, stopping only when he's close enough to feel the heat radiating from Cameron's body. He shoves his finger hard into Cameron's ribs, meaning to hurt him. "Why'd you let me talk you into it in the first place then, huh? Give me the real reason. Were you humoring me, thinking I wouldn't go through with it? Huh? Come on, Cam, tell me. Why?"

  Cameron gapes at him, as if the answer should be obvious. "Because I could see how much it meant to you, jackass!" Cameron pushes back, using the whole of his hand and more force than Guy used.

  Guy returns the hit, jostling Cameron off-balance. He's never laid a hand on Cameron in anger before and even now he knows he's far in the wrong. He doesn't have any room to care. "You'd rather I'd never brought it up in the first place, wouldn't you?"

  "You want the truth?"

  "You were planning to lie to me?" Guy snarls, swatting Cameron's hand away. "Let's hear it. Give me that big bad truth."

  "I told you this was a bad idea. You know what? Yeah. It's off."

  Guy's heart goes cold. "You're saying you want to divorce me? Already?"

  Cameron thrusts his hands through his hair, gripping the top of his head. "We're not married yet! How could I divorce you?"

  Guy seizes Cameron's wrists and shakes them, irrational fear and fury clouding his vision, tempered only by deep, piercing hurt. "We've been together for years. Now after two weeks of rough times --"

  "Rough? You mean like tornadoes are rough?" Cameron flings off Guy's grip. "You are not the man I've known since we hooked up."

  "'Hooked up'. That's great. That's really nice, Cameron. Way to make it sound like a one-night stand."

  "You're. Not. Listening. To. Yourself. Now you think I don't care about you, is that it?" Cameron flat-palms Guy's chest, sending him staggering back two steps. And again. "See that? That right there? You've lost your mind over this wedding crap." Shove. "If you think I don't love you, moron, you think I'd still be here fighting over this!"

  "I don't know what I think, Cameron!" Guy tries and fails to regain his lost ground. "I wanted to marry you because --"

  "Because why?" Cameron presses, up in Guy's face now. "Did you ever think about what it'd feel like in my shoes, knowing you want to prove I'm faithful to you, not the other way around? Knowing you want to show them you're binding me to you? Remember you said we've been together years? Don't you think anyone's noticed you're not fucking your way from bed to bed?"

  "That's not the point --"

  "Sure sounds like the point to me." Cameron growls, sounding nearly animal. "If that's not it, then tell me what is, Guy, or so help me --"

  "So help you what?" Guy yells, tasting Cameron's breath, orange-juice-sour, on every inhale. "I want to marry you because I want to -- want to --"

  Cameron glowers at him. "Yeah. You go ahead and think of an answer. Want to know something else, Guy? Want to know the ultimate, final reason why I went along with your insane scheme in the first place?"

  Guy's hands curl into tight fists. He's going to haul off and punch Cameron in the jaw any second now. Guy's sure of it. And then they'll end up calling the wedding off because there's no way they can come back from hitting each other. It'll be the end of the best thing Guy's ever had in his entire life, too.

  "Guy, answer me. Do you really want the truth?"

  Guy's temper breaks. "Actually, yeah, I would!"

  He's unprepared for both Cameron's mouth slamming over his, or for the heavy, over-warm weight of Cameron's body shattering the tiny bit of space left between them. Cameron rocks forward and flattens Guy fully against the kitchen counter, the edge of the sink digging painfully into his ass.

  "Because I love you, you fucking idiot!" Cameron snarls when he breaks for air. "I want to stay with you for the rest of my life and if it took a ceremony to keep you happy then I figured I'd better get with the program. You know what, though, Guy? You're not happy. You're the furthest thing from happy! You're crazy. And you still want this? Fuck!"

  Guy swallows hard. He doesn’t want to say this, but it's shooting barbed over his tongue before he can stop himself. "Then call it off. End it. Walk out of here."

  Cameron jerks away, stunned. "What did you say?"

  "Get out of here!" Guy throws the weight of his upper body into trying to wrestle free of Cameron cornering him. "Like hell I'd marry someone who lied to me."

  "I didn't lie to you --"

  "You sure as fuck didn't tell the truth, either."

  "I love you," Cameron repeats. He sags a little. "Guy… that's not enough for you? Honestly?"

  Guy can't see straight. Can't think straight. "Get out of here," he says, turning his face away. "Just… just go. We're done."

  He expects Cameron to keep pushing, keep fighting him, keep working this out.

  He doesn't expect Cameron to take him at his word.

  He doesn't expect the look of complete disgust crossing the features he's memorized in every other way, this loathing unfamiliar and poisonous. "Yeah," Cameron says, stepping back. He wipes his mouth off with the back of his hand. "If that's all the flying fuck you give about trying to make this right, then screw you."

  Guy glares daggers at Cameron as Cameron stomps away, and keeps it up until Cameron's grabbed his windbreaker from where he tossed it over their couch and his keys from the coffee table and exited their apartment, slamming the door behind him with wall-shaking force.

  The silence Cameron leaves behind him is painfully loud. Guy's fury lasts a full ten seconds after the pounding of Cameron's footsteps fade, and then -- then --

  Guy finds himself sliding bonelessly down to the kitchen floor, numb. "Fuck," he says, his lips cold. How did they get here? "Oh, fuck. What have I done?"

  Chapter Seven

  Guy stands, slack jawed and staring, the echo of
the slamming door reverberating in his ears. Along with the rattling bang he hears a dozen overlapping accusations and pleas, each one in Cameron's voice, tagged immediately after by one of his own rebuttals.

  Cameron had said Guy wasn't listening to himself. Guy knows -- now that it's too late -- that Cameron was right.

  It's a bad idea, Cameron had said.

  It's what I want us to do, Guy had returned.

  It'll mess up what's good between us, Cameron had protested.

  Don't be an idiot, Guy had snapped.

  Guy knows it's a humbling and humiliating thing for a man to realize he's spent the last two weeks metamorphosing into a giant asshole on legs. He grinds the heel of his hand against his forehead and groans, with deep meaning, "Fuck."

  He can't let this happen, and no way is he letting Cameron leave him angry like this without even trying to make amends. There's been too much between them to throw away. Guy's not too proud to eat crow. Maybe he'll marinate it in orange juice.

  Thoughts like these tell Guy it's time for less stress, more sex, and the balancing influence of Cameron, and they fix him immovably on a new, inspired path. Guy's not often a man of quick decision, but sometimes lightning strikes twice and he knows what he has to do.

  Heedless of his bare feet, Guy grabs his keys from their hook, shoves them in his hip pocket, and charges the front door. He almost does an injury to the hinges as he flings it open, racing pell-mell out into the corridor to chase down his man.

  He gets about three feet before bouncing into, and almost off of, a solid wall wearing a P.D. uniform and a baffled expression.

  God, Guy decides, must hate him.

  "Look, I know we were making a racket -- if one of the neighbors called you, I'm sorry, it won't happen again -- c'mon, slap a ticket or a fine or whatever on my door and I'll pay, I swear, but I just -- I -- I gotta follow that man!" Guy points a shaking finger down the empty corridor where he knows Cameron raced away mere minutes ago.

  The cop doesn't move. Guy could just weep. "Cut me a break, Officer. Please?"

  The cop raises one eyebrow and smirks. "Yeah, you're definitely one of Clay's friends."

  Guy pulls up short. "Huh?" he blurts intelligently. "Clay? Radio station Clay?"

  Clay peeks around the cop. The cop isn't quite large enough to hide Clay completely, and Guy's full attention was focused on the badge in his line of sight, but damn, it's a near thing and Clay's nowhere near small. "I'm going to guess we've come at a bad time," he ventures. "This is Seth, by the way." His emphasis on Seth's name indicates very clearly that Seth is his. "Would Cameron be a bigger guy than Keystone Kop here, in a bad mood, who could potentially have almost plowed me over in his dramatic exit?"

  Guy groans and perks up at the same time. "That's my boy. You saw him?"

  "I did, and I'll have the bruise to prove it tomorrow. Cameron's got some pointy elbows on him." Clay comes fully out from behind the cop and rubs his shoulder. "What's going on?"

  Guy doesn't have time for this, but he knows better than to insult a cop's sweetheart. "He doesn't want to get married. We had a fight over invitations. I sort of pushed him into the whole thing and I'm an idiot --" he gabbles, picking up speed-- "and now he's running off God knows where and I've really got to find him before he takes the car and I can't track him and would you please let me by?"

  "He's definitely one of your pals," Seth mutters. "What do you do, train them in the fine art of filibustering without the need to stop and breathe?"

  "Seth, hush." Clay does some elbowing of his own. "Hold on, cowboy. I understand that you're in a rush, but let me get this straight. The wedding's off?"

  "Maybe not entirely, no, but the ceremony we had tried to plan for this weekend, yes. That one's off like six-week-old milk. C'mon, c'mon!" Together, Seth and Clay form an implacable wall Guy can't penetrate. "If I don't go after Cameron, I might lose him. He's mad enough to leave me, and I --"

  Something behind Seth and Clay squeaks. More like shrills. It's a sound of pure if vaudevillian panic, reminding Guy of the old cartoons where a high-strung woman spots a mouse and hops up on a stool, shrieking in alarm.

  Seth and Clay exchange wary glances and part ways. Guy still can't run forward, though, his way now blocked by a scrap of a blond man with wide eyes, his mouth open in horror, and an aluminum-covered casserole dish tilting precariously in his oven-mitted hands.

  "This," Clay says dryly, "would be Tony."

  Tony's lip quivers. Even in the midst of his panic, Guy senses that Tony generally operates on a level of such intense flaming-ness that he could be substituted for the Olympic Torch and no one would ever be the wiser.

  He's enough to give anyone, even a man in hot pursuit of his pissed-off groom, a moment's pause.

  Guy shakes his head hard, like a dog trying to shed water, and starts to ask Tony to let him past.

  Tony beats him to the punch. "He's running away? From you? The wedding's off?"

  "And maybe the relationship; the love of my life is getting away and I have to --"

  The casserole dish slips from Tony's hand, crashing unheeded on the floor as Tony's blue eyes fly open wide and he gesticulates with wild jazz hands. "What are you standing around here for?" he screeches. "Go, go, go, go, go!"

  "I'm trying to!" Guy bellows at him.

  "Oh. Oh, no." Tony stares at the mess of broken glass and wrecked casserole. "Glass. You're barefoot." He kicks off his flip-flops, bright pink, and wings them at Guy before standing aside. "Go, go, go, go, go!"

  "Thank you!" Guy snarls, stuffing his feet into the too-small sandals and jumping over the mess, finally tearing down the corridor in hot pursuit.

  He gets maybe halfway down the hall before screeching to a halt.

  Sometimes, lightning strikes three times.

  Turning around to face Seth, who looks like he's trying not to crack up, Clay, who looks worried, and Tony, who's revving up to a fit of hysterics, Guy hauls his keys out of his pocket and peels off the apartment key, winging it at Clay. Tony catches it instead. Good enough. Maybe better than good. "Feel like helping me make a dramatic rescue?"

  Tony nearly glows with excitement. "Absolutely! What can I do?"

  Guy tells him, in abbreviated detail -- a guy like Tony can intuit the finer points -- and once Tony's blazing happily over the plan, Guy's back in action. He bypasses the elevator and hits the crash bar on the stairwell with his hip in preparation for racing down. His head turns on instinct before he hurtles through, and he sees the odd threesome standing at his door, Seth giving him a thumbs' up.

  It's oddly like giving him a blessing. Guy can use all the good vibes he can get. He flashes a grin at Seth and then he runs, pelting down the stairs.

  He's going to catch himself a Cameron.

  ***

  Guy's almost too late. Luckily for him, close only counts with horseshoes, hand grenades, and coffee. There's no such thing as undrinkable coffee.

  However one wants to slice it with words, Guy catches Cameron at the edge of the worn ramp leading to their hotel-cum-apartment building. Guy catches sight of Cameron's long, lean back curving above the furious stomping of those lengthy, agile legs and loses control of any good sense he had left, launching himself bodily at Cameron and tackling the man.

  Well. Attempting to tackle him. Cameron's a strong boy who drank his milk when he was growing up, and has honed his balance swimming daily against the pull of massive waves. Guy's colliding into Cameron doesn't knock Cameron down.

  Mostly, it just pisses him off. Cameron's eyebrows shoot up briefly before he shoves Guy off. Guy, lacking Cameron's equilibrium, almost falls ass over teakettle, righting himself at the last second by grabbing Cameron by the forearm and refusing to let go.

  He's had a whole speech planned, composing it in his head as he raced down the seemingly endless flights of stairs, but now that he's breathing Cameron-scented air again Guy's brain shorts out, and he blurts, "I don't want to get married."

  Cameron st
ares at him.

  Guy gulps for breath and plows on, squeezing Cameron's arm and refusing to break their eye contact. "If you don't want to get married, then fuck it. It's not worth losing you. So forget the wedding. Okay?"

  Cameron's forehead furrows. "Did you hit your head on something?"

  "No! Look. I'm just saying -- I'm -- oh, God, I don't know what I'm saying. I just don't want to -- I can't lose you. Don't run off like this."

  A reluctant smile tugs at the corners of Cameron's lips. "Such a drama queen."

  "There's a guy upstairs who you really need to meet before you ever think about calling me a queen again."