When I turned around to go hang my towel in the washroom, I saw Cameron standing in the
bedroom doorway. I froze and Cameron formed a wary smile on his lips. I wondered how long he had
been standing there, how much he had heard.
“Can I come in?” he asked with his velvety voice. He was wearing a red T-shirt, making his
beautiful features even more noticeable to me. I was now sure that he did these things on
purpose.
Rocco looked at me, awaiting my response, but I went to the washroom to hang my towel. “Join
the party,” he responded for the both of us.
I came back out and fingered my hair into a wet bun while Cameron sat on the edge of the bed. He
raised his eyebrows at his kid brother.
Rocco rolled up and cleared his throat. “I better get going.”
But on his way out, he squeezed me in a bear hug until my feet were no longer touching down.
“Thanks, Emmy,” he murmured into my ear and let me go so that my lungs could suck air once
again.
Cameron was shaking his head in wonder as Rocco closed the door. “Funny kid,” he said,
chuckling uneasily.
I had decided that that exact moment was the perfect time for me to put away the clean laundry
that had been sitting in laundry baskets. I had also decided that this chore required my
complete and undivided attention.
The room was tensely silent while I folded laundry and opened and closed drawers.
“You’re still angry with me,” Cameron finally caught on after a few minutes.
I briefly lifted my eyes but otherwise ignored him and continued my imperative chore.
Defeated, he fell backward on the bed, his hands passing over his face and halting forked in his
hair. “This is so much more complicated than I ever thought it would be.”
“I’m sorry to be such an inconvenience to you,” I snarled. Then I remembered that I wasn’t
talking to him and went back to the laundry.
He laughed and shook his head at the ceiling.
“I should be mad at you, you know,” he said. “There’s no way that Rocco could ever come up
with a plan to blackmail me into letting him work for me.”
“You wanted something, he wanted something. That’s called bargaining, negotiation, not
blackmail. Anyway, you don’t give Rocco enough credit. He’s a really smart kid.”
“Are you saying that you didn’t put the idea in his head?”
“He would have eventually found a way to get what he wants, whether or not I helped him,” I
responded, avoiding the finger-pointed question.
He turned his head to gaze at me. “Having Rocco follow in my footsteps could get him killed.
That’s not something that I can live with.”
“You know,” I said with an elongated sigh, “for someone so smart you can be really dense.
None of this has to do with working for you. Rocco is just looking for a way to spend more time
with you, his big brother. Since you work all the time and won’t talk to him about your life,
he probably thinks that working for you will get him more time with you.”
I could feel Cameron’s eyes on me while he considered this.
“You think so?” he finally asked.
“I know so,” I said while I rolled socks into each other. “This has everything to do with you
and Rocco and nothing to do with me. I’m just trying to give Rocco something to look forward to
for once. Something beyond channel-surfing.”
“This place isn’t so bad, is it?” he asked me with an edge of concern in his voice.
“It’s definitely one of the nicer prisons I’ve been in,” I mumbled. “You can be mad at me
all you want for not following your rules, but Rocco is bored and lonely. You really need to
keep his mind busy. Doing dishes, babysitting me just won’t cut it.”
“Rocco likes to be around you,” he said. “I don’t think he feels like he’s babysitting you.
”
“Maybe,” I said. “But I’m a very poor substitute for you.”
Cameron sat back up, resting his elbows on his knees and clasping his hands together. I could
sense that he was studying me, and I tried to ignore that.
“Emmy, can you look at me?” he asked. “Please?”
I finally let him see my eyes, since he had said please.
His lips curved a little higher, but his eyes were still very tight. “I didn’t come in here
because I was mad at you,” he told me. “I came here to apologize. I didn’t react very well
after you had a nightmare because it was hard for me to see you be afraid of me. The last thing
I wanted was to make you fear me. It made me feel sick to my stomach, but I don’t blame you for
having the reaction of a normal person.”
I exhaled overdramatically. “Cameron, I had a bad dream. People have bad dreams all the time.
And I’m definitely not afraid of you. If that makes me abnormal, then that’s nothing new.”
“You need to be scared of people like me, Emmy. We can hurt you.”
I crossed my arms like a five year-old. “If you came here to order me to be scared of you, then
you might as well just turn around, because I don’t feel like being ordered around again today.
”
“I never order you around,” Cameron said.
“What about yesterday when you gave me the third degree for talking to Frances? I didn’t do
anything wrong.”