Aguilar crossed his arms. “It does not, it’s stupid, but you g’head and try and make a case. We’ll hear you out.”
It was nice to have police backup.
15
Jeremiah
The drive from our new apartment to his house in Pacifica was fun. It turned out Cameron and I road-tripped well together. We liked the same music, though we didn’t listen to any, talking the whole way instead. One of the main topics was his SUV. He pointed out how comfortable it was and how well it drove, and wasn’t it nice that when it rained when we neared his house that we didn’t get wet? It was so much better than say, a motorcycle.
“You’re not subtle, you know.”
“I wasn’t trying for subtlety,” he assured me.
When we got to his house, I felt a flutter of excitement, or maybe it was nerves, or both. It was hard to say, because this…this was something I’d never experienced before, and if I was being honest, thought I never would. Cam and I meshed, what I liked, what he liked, we complemented each other well even in such a short time.
He directed me to the bedroom, and I went and put my duffel on the bed, then took a slow walk through the rest of the house. Looking at his home, which he’d decorated himself, I was having some concerns about the obvious concessions he’d made for me in our apartment. I returned to his sparsely furnished living room when I was done and took a seat on the hardest couch I’d ever had the misfortune to sit on.
“Okay,” I murmured after a moment. From a décor perspective, we were on very different pages. Clean and organized I understood, because everything in our kitchen cupboards was in plastic containers with handwritten expiration dates, and that was fine. I had no issue with that. It was what he liked, what he needed to have control in his space. But a house devoid of any warmth or color, other than various shades of gray, was a shock. “We need to talk.”
His brows lifted. “Already? You just got here and we need to have a talk?”
I smiled at him. “Yeah. About your place.”
He glanced around the living room. “Why? What’s wrong with it?”
“There’s nothing wrong with it, but, I dunno, I thought I knew what you liked. Seeing your place, though, I guess I didn’t know at all.”
“No, that’s not true,” he countered. “The things we chose together I really like.”
“Do you? Honestly?” I winced as I glanced around before refocusing on him. “Because right now, I feel bad that you let me make all the decisions.”
“I didn’t, though.” He bit his bottom lip. “I sort of steered you where I wanted you to go.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. There’s a lot more me in that apartment than there is you.”
“That’s not true.”
“C’mon”—I waved a hand in the direction of the kitchen—“look around. This is you. Our place does not look like this.”
“Because an apartment isn’t a forever place, not like a house is, and I sank a lot of money into furnishing mine.”
“That’s what I’m saying. You see the apartment as a place you’ll visit, like a hotel, a place you don’t care about. But to me, it’s home.”
He shook his head. “I want this to be your home.”
“This place feels so cold to me, though. Like nobody lives here. It feels staged, like those expensive apartments we looked at.”
His grumpy scowl as he stared at me, arms crossed, made me want to hug him. But I didn’t want him to feel like I was treating him like a kid, so I stood and went to look at one of his paintings. The entire place felt sterile to me, except for his artwork. His taste in art was where I got a real glimpse of the man I knew.
“Now you think I don’t care at all about our apartment.”
I looked over my shoulder at him. “That’s not true. You didn’t let me buy that recliner I wanted, or the stained-glass shower curtain, or the cat clock for the kitchen, the one with the shifty eyes and the tick-tock tail.”
He groaned. “Those cat clocks are a horror.”
I chuckled and turned to face him. “The wingback chair with the ottoman was a great alternative to the recliner. I like it much better, and I love sitting in it to read.”
His eyes softened as he gazed at me. “I know, I’ve watched you.”