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Cameron
“Wakey, wakey.”
I bat Marney’s hand away from my ear, but she laughs and is right back to teasing my earlobe with a fingernail as soon as I stop flailing at the air around my head.
“Time to get up, sleepyhead, you’ve got a big day ahead of you.”
Barely awake enough to remember what day it is, I groan and bury my head under my pillow so she can’t touch my ears. “Leave me alone. Morning people should be shot.”
Marney flops down next to me and burrows her head under my pillow so we’re nose to nose. “You’re breath stinks.” She wrinkles her nose. “Whose ass did you eat last night?”
“I wish.” I close my eyes. “Whose idea was it to live together?”
“Yours, Cameron. You said, ‘Marney, I can’t bear to be apart from you, please buy this house with me.’ So, we did.”
There’s truth to that. Marney and I have been friends since middle school, instantly gravitating to each other as only weird, queer kids can, then holding on tight. We went to Lick-Wilmerding together, then Stanford, and now we both work at the same tech firm and share a house in San Francisco. It was originally a two-unit Victorian, but we connected the upstairs and downstairs via a spiral staircase in our living rooms. We still have our own spaces, but she’s always in mine, or I’m in hers. We eat almost all our dinners together, watch movies together, even place our Instacart orders together. About the only thing we don’t do together is date, though Marney might be willing to give it a try with her new girlfriend and me. But not only am I a solid six on the Kinsey scale, I’m not poly, and I have no interest in threesomes. So, dating is not something we share.
I may also be the current record holder for longest dry spell in the history of mankind because I have the worst luck with guys—I only seem to be interested in guys who are already in committed relationships or are the biggest fucking assholes on the planet. I’ve also been insanely busy since I got hired right out of grad school and honestly don’t have the energy to put into finding someone. I did the sleeping around thing in college because it’s what I thought I was supposed to do, but it’s not what I want. Not when it comes to finding my forever guy.
“Come on, Cam, you’ve got to get up, or you’re going to be late, and they don’t like that.” Marney bounces out of bed and then pulls the covers off me. “Coffee’s in your kitchen. Double espresso to jumpstart your day.”
God. I do love her. I swing my legs over the side of the bed and catch sight of my clock. “Marney, it’s only six thirty!”
She laughs from the kitchen. “I know. I wanted to make sure you were awake.”
“Awesome,” I grumble and turn off the alarm I’d set for seven. It’s not usually that big a deal. Marney and I grab coffee and a breakfast sandwich from the coffee shop next door, then catch a tech bus on our corner for the ride from SF to Sunnydale. Basically, my morning is wake, shower, get dressed, meet Marney at the front door, hop on a bus and spend the ride getting started on whatever my day has in store.
What makes today different? Two words: Jury. Duty.
Do not get me wrong. I am not opposed to jury duty. I take my civic responsibility seriously, but I have been called every two years since I turned eighteen. My first summons came two months after my birthday, and my father insisted I do it since it was summer break. Even when I was in college, Dad wouldn’t let me take a student deferment because I lived in the area and had my own car. “What kind of a hardship is that?” he asked when I got called for the third time during my senior year. My dad is a lawyer, which practically guarantees I will never be seated on any jury even though he practices family law and practically all he does is estate planning, so the whole thing is a waste of my time. But being a waste of time is not a reason that you can be excused. If it were, they’d never get enough people ever again.
At twenty-seven, this is going to be my fifth time having to report to the courthouse. Does this seem fair? It doesn’t to me. Especially since Marney has only been called once in the same amount of time. The only reprieve I’ve ever had was last year when a major deadline for a project coincided with my summons date, so I asked to defer to February of this year.
All of which brings us to today—Friday, February 9th—and me stumbling to the kitchen in my boxers a full half hour before I’d normally be upright to drink the coffee my dearest and bestest best friend on the face of the planet has lovingly prepared for me so I’m awake enough to get my ass to the San Francsico County Courthouse. Fuck. My. Life.
“I don’t even know why they bother,” I groan as I sit at the kitchen island. “It’s such a fucking waste of time.”
Marney sympathizes, but I know she doesn’t get it. To her, this is just a day off from work. She also likes meeting new people—which I do not—and finds the whole legal thing interesting, which, again, I do not. I especially do not because of my father for whom every infraction against the household rules resulted in me having to present an argument against my punishment. No excuses or explanations, my father only wanted reasoned arguments. If I argued well, he’d suspend my sentence or grant me parole that could be revoked if I reoffended. What six-year-old can argue successfully against a seasoned lawyer? I never won a single reprieve, though I did learn how not to dig myself deeper by giving him more information—evidence—than he already had. When I decided to pursue a career in tech, I didn’t even bother trying to mount an argument. There was none. It was simply what I wanted to do. My father didn’t speak to me for a year after I told him. Thank goodness my mother convinced him that not paying my tuition wouldn’t get me to change my mind.
The coffee brings me marginally to consciousness, and I check my phone one more time on the off chance that my juror group has been dismissed for the day. No such luck. Marney plunks a bagel onto the counter in front of me, and I rouse myself to give her a smile of gratitude. I don’t deserve her.
“Iris is taking me to some fancy restaurant next week,” Marney says as she spreads cream cheese onto her own bagel.
“That’s nice,” I say and stifle a yawn behind one of my hands. Honestly, I’m such a creature of habit that it’s difficult for me to wake up earlier than I usually do.
“It is. But it’s also weird. I’ve never had a date for Valentine’s Day before.”
“I can’t imagine it’s much different than any other date,” I say, and Marney gives me such a look that I know I’ve said something catastrophically stupid and oblivious.
“God, Cam, sometimes you’re such a guy.”
“Last time I checked.”
She shakes her head at me. “I don’t want to be one of those clichéd lesbians who move in together after only a couple of months, but…” She shrugs her shoulders, and I see the embarrassed smile curling at the corners of her mouth.
“Are you?”
“We’re talking.”
