“Or not, apparently.”
“That’d been brewing between Doug and I for a while. You were not the cause.” Walker found the framed picture of his cartoon on the fireplace. He held it, wishing it could hurtle him back to the past. “We were supposed to go to New York. That was the plan. I got a job at an ad agency, but Doug got rejected from NYU for graduate school.”
Cameron smiled at that.
“He got into Browerton’s psych master’s program, though.”
“So you stayed.” Cameron nodded. “His decision?”
“I stayed to be with him. He kept saying that I should go, that I was meant to be in New York, but I knew Doug. It was classic reverse psychology. He was testing me, I knew he was. But I loved him.” Walker remembered when he moved the last box out of their house. The silence between them lasted longer than their relationship. Fifteen years, over like that. “We were going to be together forever. And then he broke my heart.”
Cameron slid his arms around Walker’s waist, and Walker let his warmth cocoon him. “He’s not worth having a broken heart over.”
Walker humored him with a smile. Cameron didn’t realize that it was so much more complicated than that.
The two of them absconded to Hobie’s room. Cameron and Hobie had been working on his medieval space opera over these past few visits. Walker brought them sodas and marveled at the Lego creations sprawled across his son’s floor. None of them remotely followed the instructions on the box. They were straight out of Hobie’s mind, and he felt like he understood his son more through Legos than anything else.
“Pretty impressive,” Walker said. He sat on the bed.
Hobie launched into a whole presentation. He sucked in a huge breath before starting. “So this is the spaceship castle. It’s owned by King Dandelion. His wife Queen Spacedragon lives in this tiny plane that has eight wings so it can go eight times as fast.”
“King Dandelion doesn’t realize that his wife is plotting a coup with his supposedly trustful guard Smort,” Cameron said with equal excitement. “She’s going to cut the brakes on the spaceship so that it crashes into this village. But the problem is, the night before the mission, she realizes she still loves him. Just as Monte, the other, loyal guard, catches onto their plan and plots his own plan to kill the queen.”
Hobie nodded along, even though he probably didn’t understand a word of that. He just wanted to crash a spaceship castle into a village.
“That all sounds great! Maybe don’t include a murder plotline with a six-year-old, though?” Walker said, in that put-on encouraging dad voice that Hobie was too young to notice.
“I see your point. Hey Hobie, Monte is plotting to throw the queen in a space jail now. Can you construct a supercool space prison where we can hold her?”
Hobie gave him a thumbs up with confidence.
Walker didn’t care what the plot was; he loved seeing his son so happy in his house. Hobie would run from the car into his house now, instead of having to be prodded. And it was all because of Cameron. Walker worried that he was the glue holding everything together, and soon he would be gone.
He let them play for a few more minutes before announcing it was time for bed.
“Toothpaste zombie time!” Hobie yelled. He raced Cameron to the bathroom. They showed Walker their foaming mouths, but Walker didn’t smile back. A pang of sadness sucker punched him, then stuck to his ribs and pulled him down. He had to sit back down on Hobie’s bed.
Cameron brought Hobie back into his room, and they tucked him in for sleep.
“Why do I have to sleep if I’m not tired?” Hobie protested.
“Are you sure you’re not tired?” Cameron asked knowingly. “You’ve been working on the largest medieval space omnibus in history tonight. Even I’m…” Cameron yawned out the rest of his remark.
Hobie caught his contagious yawn.
“Close your eyes, and we’ll see what happens,” Walker said.
“Sounds like a date I once had sophomore year.” Cameron clamped his hand over his mouth.
“I don’t get it.”
“Go to sleep, Hobie,” Walker said. The scene was too cute, and he knew it. But his chest wouldn’t stop aching, and he had to swallow back a lump.
They shut off the light.
“Cameron?” Hobie called out, a groggy, squeaky voice in the dark.
Walker and Cameron hung by the door.
