Chapter 11: Blessing

Cam didn't come home that night.

He texted at midnight that he was sleeping on a lab couch.

He texted at seven that he was getting coffee.

At eight he knocked on the box room door, and I opened it in my pajamas.

He held two cups from the good coffee place and looked as if he had slept in a dryer.

"Truce?" he said, and held one out.

I took it.

"Truce."

He sat on the edge of my bed and looked at the wall between my room and Jude's.

"I put you in the box room on purpose," he said.

"I thought the bathroom door was a good lock."

"The bathroom door has been a perfectly good lock," I said.

"It's the hallway I was worried about."

He groaned and dropped his face into his free hand.

"Terms," he said.

"I have terms."

"Of course you do."

"One."

"No hiding."

"I don't want to find out from a lacrosse player ever again."

"Fair."

"Two. If he hurts you, I'm moving his bed to the porch."

"Fair."

"Three."

He lifted his head.

His eyes were red.

"If you're happy, I'm going to be an idiot about it for a month, and then I'm going to be fine."

"Just give me the month."

I put my coffee down and hugged him.

He hugged me back, hard, and said into my hair, "He cries at dog food commercials, you know."

"He does not."

"He cried at the one with the old collie. I was there."

"I'm going to bring that up at the worst possible moment," I said.

"That's all I ask," Cam said.

He pulled back and wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand.

"Go," he said.

"Take the truck."

"I can't watch you two be nice to each other in my kitchen."

"Go to the lake."

"Be insufferable somewhere else."

I laughed so hard I spilled coffee on the blanket.

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