Thinking of You

by Rachel Kane

  “No, I won’t let you use my life as a bargaining chip. No, you don’t get to hear all my secrets as a precondition to being with me. If I weren’t going through this scandal, you would never ask. Or if you did, it would be immediately obvious how sick the request is. Who do you think you are, Alex? How dare you pry into my life for the sole purpose of finding the darkness in it?”

  I took a step back. “Cam, I don’t think—”

  “Since you first walked into my life, you’ve tried to control the situation. You don’t know how to relate to someone, without that control. You need me to be a victim, because otherwise you don’t understand how to react, don’t understand how to treat me. Have you ever once peered into my private life for something positive? Have you ever asked if I had any good secrets, any happy memories that were so special, I kept them to myself, so I could hold them in my head, consider them in more cheerful sunlit moments, with a sense of quiet satisfaction at something that had gone well? Have you ever tried to find out anything good about me?”

  His words were an onslaught, and yet his face showed nothing.

  “I’m not the only one who likes taking control, you know that,” I said. “This isn’t about that. I don’t need you to be a victim, I need you to be honest.”

  “Honest about things that have nothing to do with you. Honest about things that happened while you were still off in California living your exciting star-studded life.”

  “Honest about anything, Cam! Jesus Christ, everything you say is a lie! Your parents in that picture aren’t real, but your real parents aren’t real either! Nothing about you is real! Can’t you see that I need something to hold onto, in this relationship? Can’t you see that I need the part of you that actually exists?”

  Finally his facade cracked, and he showed me an expression.

  A sneer.

  A bitter, disgusted sneer.

  Oh how I recognized that look.

  The same look David had given me at the end.

  “I think you should go, Alex.”

  “Listen, just talk to me, just tell me—”

  “No. This is foolish. Surely you see that. I’m not going to prostitute my history to you, so you can throw crumbs of affection my way. Leave my house. Leave my life. My fake life, my facade of a life, the one you hate so much that you cannot ever stop bringing it up.”

  There really wasn’t anything else to say. I wasn’t going to stand here and repeat my entreaties, not in the face of that bitterness. I wasn’t going to seek comfort and sympathy from that sneer.

  I left.

  27

  Cam

  The carpet scratched my face. The fibers were like sandpaper, scraping across my forehead, cheeks, eyelids. I didn’t care. Let me be worn down to featureless bone. Why did it matter?

  I don’t even know how I ended up on the floor. I didn’t remember any intervening moment between watching Alex close the door behind him, and falling down. Yet here I was. The evidence was clear. If Cameron Car-Liar falls in the woods, does anyone hear him?

  This is shameful, wallowing in self-pity to the point that you’re lying on the floor, crying.

  “I’m not crying,” I said.

  Yet the carpet was wet where my face had been.

  So I sat up. At least then I couldn’t chide myself for lying down.

  I thought I was supposed to lie low. Wasn’t that the advice?

  Yeah, exactly. That’s all Alex had ever wanted, for me to be as low as possible.

  I should have seen it from the beginning. From the second he walked into Micah’s office, he’d been so concerned about having control over the conversation, always trying to keep me on my toes.

  The thing about being on your toes is, that’s when it’s easiest to get yourself knocked down.

  He needed that. He needed me to be the perpetual victim. In his mind, that’s all there was in life. You were either a victim, or you were taking advantage of him.

  In a way, I pitied Alex. His experience had left him unable to have a normal human relationship.

  Oh, that’s fucking rich. When, in your entire life, have you ever been able to offer anyone a normal human relationship? Stop being such a damned superior-ass snob.

  Fine, fine. I pushed all those thoughts away. None of them mattered anyway. I was alone again, back to where I started. Alex hadn’t thought I was worth keeping. Hadn’t really fought for me. But that was to be expected. Who would fight to keep someone like me? I’d always known that finding out the truth about me would turn people away. That was the whole point in keeping secrets.

  It wasn’t like I could be surprised that it had happened now.

  A relationship with me is just a timebomb, except I never know how long the timer is set for.

  I guess my mind was so busy with these thoughts, that I lost track of what my body was doing. I must have gotten up. Coffee was finished, and poured into a cup, and brought to the desk, set on the coaster next to the computer. A normal life happening somewhere outside of me, my body on autopilot.

  How long would it take before everything got back to normal? It wasn’t that long ago that I could count on normalcy, the simple cycles of life. Write a book, send it off, get it back with edits, send it off again. Show up to signings, shake hands, smile. Coffee, lunch, dinner, drinks. Conversations with Eli and other friends.

  All of that had gotten disordered at some point. Drinks in the morning, confused conversations that were more updates than talks, no book written, no edits received.

  It would get back to normal. There just wasn’t anything left to happen with my drama. I’d reached the end of it. Like the point in one of my mysteries when there just weren’t any more clues I could come up with, and it was time for Katie to start putting things together, to have one of her patented flashes of insight that would make everything fall into place.

  I missed Katie and Roger. Missed writing about the bakery, the crimes and the clues. They were like friends you couldn’t really talk to, friends you looked in on and thought about. They couldn’t do you wrong. A character in a book can never hurt you, can never ask that you divulge all the gross secrets of your life in exchange for love and acceptance.

  My life wasn’t much like a mystery novel. I found out whodunit long before the crimes stopped. There wasn’t going to be any shocking revelation that made everything make sense. Secret Reader had ruined my life, and now that she was out of ammunition, she’d move on to the next person.

  At least there was nothing else. I mean, the whole world finding out you used to be a rentboy was enough, wasn’t it? That was plenty.

  It’s funny. I had spent so long hiding that part of my past, that it felt disconnected from me. Like a weird phase you went through as a teenager, one you’ve practically forgotten about until you see an old picture of yourself from ages ago. Oh yeah, that’s the month I was goth. Or maybe, I don’t know why I thought I’d look good with skater hair, but that’s sophomore year for you.

  It was such a brief episode. Yet here it was, hovering over me like it had never ended, like maybe half my soul was still out there somewhere, hanging out waiting for invitations from older guys who had a little money to waste.

  I’m not that person anymore.

  I’m not even sure I was that person back then. So much of that time was spent out of my mind, either high or practically comatose. Can it be a character flaw, a sin, if you weren’t really there for it, if your mind was somewhere else?

  When my computer made that old familiar chime, I considered not looking. Why did I need to hear more people complain about my private life?

  Ah, but this was my old friend Secret Reader herself, rather than her legion of parroting minions. I clicked on her latest message to the world.

  I hope everyone saw Cameron’s interview yesterday—I said the truth would be REVEALED, and now it has been. But is it the whole truth? What would you say if I told you that there are STILL OTHER lies Cameron CAR-LIAR has told you? Let’s talk a minute abou
t his DRUG ADDICTION while he was a HOMELESS TEEN, living on the STREETS.

  Sometimes what makes you snap isn’t really clear to you. It will be something random, just that one extra little stress that pushes you over the edge.

  Then sometimes, it’s so obvious, so in your face, that you realize no one could have withstood it.

  Secret Reader had finally done it.

  She had broken me.

  Because when I read that last accusation, I’d reached for my phone to call Alex.

  It had been an instinct. An automatic reaction. I had been hurt and needed my protector.

  The one I had just thrown out. The one I had broken up with, after basically accusing him of feeding off my pain and secrets.

  I cried.

  No. I sobbed. I wailed. I didn’t care about looking ridiculous. I didn’t care who heard me downstairs or outside.

  I didn’t care. This hurt.

  The only man who could help me, and I couldn’t even figure out how to keep him. I didn’t deserve him. I’d done everything wrong.

  Now there was nothing between me and this tide. I realized right then that I’d been wrong in thinking there was nothing more Secret Reader could throw at me.

  There was no end to what she could do. I don’t know how she knew any of this stuff about me, and it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that within seconds there were another hundred messages. Everyone eager to sop up my pain, my history. Everyone dying to hear the latest sordid detail of my life.

  This was never going to stop. My phone was vibrating like mad, trying to keep up with the notifications coming to it. I threw it; hearing it clatter against the coffee table, bumping against the sofa.

  I picked up the papers on my desk and threw them as well.

  I threw the chair. I threw the coffee.

  But I did not throw the computer.

  Instead, out of breath, my arms sore from the exertion, I panted and watched the notifications come in.

  Two hundred messages. Two hundred and fifty.

  I couldn’t read them, my eyes were too blurry.

  There was no one to save me from this.

  The truth was, I didn’t deserve saving.

  Because all along, Secret Reader had been right. I’d lived a fucked-up life. I’d done bad things, and had bad things done to me, and after a while, it just grinds you down. You can try to be normal, you can try to act like you belong in the world, but you don’t.

  You’re nothing, and you’re just waiting for someone to point that out to the world.

  I couldn’t stop watching the messages, each one a lash across my back that I bitterly, dearly deserved.

  I deserved what they were doing now, as surely as I had deserved the abuse back then.

  It wasn’t like I had wanted that string of men with their foul attraction to me.

  It wasn’t like I wanted to be so drugged up that my heart almost stopped.

  But it didn’t matter what I wanted, it didn’t matter what I chose.

  I had deserved it all. Everything that had ever happened to me.

  It is all true, said the words on the screen.

  My words. My hands were on the keyboard. I was typing.

  Every word Secret Reader has said is true. I admit it all. There’s no sense hiding. All this time, I’ve felt like Secret Reader was the villain in a mystery, and if I could just understand what she wanted, these posts would stop.

  But I was wrong. I had things backwards. She’s the detective, and I’m the criminal. This is my confession.

  I don’t know how she found any of it out, from the plagiarism to the charges about my personal life, but I refuse to deny it any longer, or waste one more breath trying to make myself seem better than I actually am.

  I went to that interview trying to fool the world into thinking I was a better person than I actually am. But it was a lie.

  Goodbye, friends, fans, former readers. It was fun while it lasted, but there’s no room in your world for someone like me. You live in the light, while I have always been a creature of the shadows.

  Now I will descend into your hatred, and I will take whatever you mete out to me.

  It is all that I deserve.

  My cursor hovered over the Send button.

  Then I erased it. Erased it all, every word of my confession. Because the last thing I needed was anyone thinking I had confessed to earn sympathy.

  They were going to tear me apart anyway. I didn’t need to give them one more thing.

  This was never going to stop.

  I returned to my place on the floor.

  I wished Alex hadn’t left. I wished I hadn’t thrown him out.

  Wishing didn’t change anything, it wasn’t like he could walk back in and things would get back to normal, because everything would still be hanging between us, nothing resolved, nothing fixed, still that endless distrust between us, a chasm that could not be bridged.

  But oh god, how I missed him.

  28

  Alex

  I stopped on the way home and picked up a fresh bottle of scotch.

  I didn’t bother walking into the house. Just followed the path to the gate, and went into my garden.

  My flowers were dying. The weeds, left untended, had begun to take over the patch. Thorny vines, spiky leaves, everything beautiful was being choked out.

  I peeled the label off the bottle’s cap and let it fall to the ground. Then I sat cross-legged in front of the garden and began to drink.

  When had I watered the flowers last? We were well into summer, and it hadn’t rained in days. Leaves were brown, dry, curling into themselves. The flowers themselves began to brown as well, but they didn’t drop their petals, instead tightening, as though clenching their fists, frustrated at their fate.

  I took a long, long swallow straight from the bottle.

  There was a gas can in the shed. Maybe I should douse the garden, set it alight. Black clouds of smoke replacing the butterflies and finches.

  The garden was like an accusation, like a finger pointed straight at me.

  This is what happens when you neglect your responsibilities. This is what happens when you follow desire, instead of doing what needs to be done.

  I wasn’t in the mood for metaphors, but the untended and dying plants before me were heavy with meaning.

  The one area I’d tried to have some control. The one thing in life I’d tried to make nice. And I’d failed.

  Cam was right, of course. I was incapable of taking care of anyone unless I could think of them as victims. My guard was always up, for fear that the person I was protecting would turn out to be a monster.

  But I’d been right, too. I’d been right all the way back at the beginning, when I’d called Cam a sociopath. Not that I’d gotten some psychiatric diagnosis correct, no. But that he was a person who fundamentally did not care about the truth, or its impact on other people.

  He was profoundly selfish.

  He’s not the one who killed your garden. He’s not the one who neglected his duties.

  Yeah. I know. I was hiding from my own pain. Of all the things I pictured happening this morning, Cam kicking me out was not one of them. It had come out of nowhere.

  He’d chosen his secrets over me.

  Had he ever felt anything for me? Or was that attraction just a ploy? I’d thought attraction had grown into desire, and then blossomed into love…but I was a fucking gullible fool, I’d proved that time and again, hadn’t I? He just needed a hero. Someone to believe his bullshit, and stand in between him and the world. And I was the perfect patsy. So damn excited to have a chance to redeem myself, that I couldn’t even see what he was doing to me.

  Another deep swallow of the scotch. It was already loosening me up. I could feel the warmth in my belly, in my joints, at the tip of my cock.

  When that disastrous interview had happened, I’d wondered whether Jess was in on Secret Reader’s plot. Had she sent him the question anonymously…or had he been working with her
all along? After all, Jess hated Cam.

  But maybe I was asking the wrong question. Where had Secret Reader found out all this information?

  What if…

  Yes. I nodded to myself.

  What if Cam had told her?

  What if all of this was just a sick ploy for attention, Cam indulging in a spectacular act of self-destruction, hoping someone would give up everything to save him?

  And then full of hatred when I couldn’t save him. When I insisted on treating him like secrets matter, like honesty matters.

  “Damn, I’m more bitter than I realized,” I said to my garden. I looked at the bottle, a surprising amount of which was now gone. “Or drunker.”

  I got up from my seat on the grass, and the world turned beneath me.

  Whoa. Damn.

  It didn’t matter. No reason not to get stinking drunk, was there? It wasn’t like anyone cared.

  I’d just take this bottle and all my fucking self-pity to bed.

  Damn the garden. Fucking flowers. Who cared about flowers?

  “I’m glad you’re all dead,” I said, my words slurring.

  My keys didn’t work. Maybe because I was trying to unlock the door with the same hand I had the bottle in. I tried switching the keys to my left hand, but that was clumsy, and I ended up dropping them.

  I slid down onto the porch. My eyes were wet.

  No. Fuck no. I will not cry over that bastard. He’s a monster and a liar and a—

  I could remember the feeling of his arms around me. Could remember the way he had trembled in fear, as his life began to be picked apart.

  Had that trembling been a lie?

  Could I honestly say that it had all been a lie, from the very beginning?

  I rubbed my eyes. My knuckles came away slick with tears. Another drink would make things clear. And if not that one, then the next one would, surely.

  Who the fuck was I, to accuse Cam of lying? I wouldn’t tell a soul what David Black had done to me, would I?

  I was just trying to make myself feel better, make Cam into the bad guy here, because the only alternative…