Page 84 of Out on a Limb

“You don’t know that.”

“My plan was to move out in September.”

There was a noticeable pause that echoed in the phone line. Cameron wished he knew what she was thinking.

“I don’t know if you will,” she said softly. “If you spend more time with Walker, it’s only going to be harder to leave.”

She had a point. Infinite Mom Wisdom struck again.

“Maybe I wouldn’t leave.” The thought had been brewing in his mind quietly for days, and it felt good to say it out loud.

“You have to leave, Cameron!” His mom rarely yelled at him. It shook him up, made his throat go dry. “I don’t want this guy to hold you back. I’ve done everything in my life to get you to this point, and it wasn’t to watch you make the same wrong choice I did.”

“Me?” His throat made sandpaper feel like mud.

“No. No, sweetie. You’ve been my saving grace. When I was your age, I stupidly followed my heart, not my dreams. You were too young to remember, but before your dad walked out, things were pretty awful. Your dad and I would get into fights every night. Screaming until our voices were raw. When he left, I told myself that I would give you the chances that I didn’t have.”

“Did he just really walk out?” Cameron was so quiet he didn’t know if anyone heard him.

“Yes. He put a note under your sippy cup because he knew I’d find it there.”

“What did it say?”

“I stopped reading it after ‘Please don’t hate me.’ There wasn’t a valuable word in there.”

Fucking asshole, Cameron thought. He hated that he shared that man’s DNA. But something inside Cameron couldn’t make him hate his father completely. Some unbreakable, inescapable father-son connection. That damn DNA. It really pissed him off.

“But I was lucky,” his mom said. “Without you, I wouldn’t have gotten through it. You were such an easy kid. You never gave me any trouble. I just put on a movie for you on the TV, and cried it out in my bedroom.”

“I remember the TV in our old place. It had a fat back, and the green paint was peeling off the power button.” That’s all Cameron remembered from those years. A set of tears rolled down his cheeks. His memory was filled with old movies, but no recollection of his mother’s misery or his parents fighting.

“That’s why you are meant to be in Los Angeles,” she said. “You love movies, always have. This is your dream, Cameron.”

It was also her dream, he thought. She’d get to see her son become a hotshot executive. She’d done so much for him, more than he would ever know.

“Walker will understand. If he’s a good man, he won’t try holding you back.”

Φ

Cameron showed up at Hobie’s soccer game sometime during the second half. He was hesitant about coming, but Hobie asked him personally, and he just couldn’t say no to that kid. He would’ve made a terrible stepdad, letting Hobie get away with anything. Just thinking about the word stepdad made him pause on the grass. Vagina sounded more natural coming out of his mouth than stepdad.

Parents crowded the sidelines. They brought folding chairs or sat on blankets and ate snacks, turning the game into a picnic. The more competitive parents stood next to the coach and yelled instructions at their kids. Walker sat on his coat. Cameron squatted next to him.

“Hey,” he said tentatively.

“You made it!” Walker stretched out his coat to make more room. He had none of the tenseness that Cameron seemed to possess. “We’re glad you came.”

He nudged at the field. Hobie played defense, which consisted of ripping out grass while his team’s offense was busy downfield. He looked up, and flapped his arm back and forth at Cameron.

“Cameron! Cameron!” Hobie screamed from the field. “I kicked the ball all the way down, and the offense person got it and kicked it into the goal!”

“Hobie!” Doug hissed from the sidelines and pointed a firm arm downfield. He looked over his shoulder at Cameron. He was wearing sunglasses, but Cameron had an inkling that a glare was waiting for him under those shades.

Cameron waved and smiled to be polite, but Doug returned to the business at hand.

“It sounds like he’s doing well out there,” Cameron said.

“He likes kicking the ball. Doesn’t matter to whom. That goal assist was more of a happy accident than my son’s planned strategy.”