“You’re not, though.” Cam climbs out of the hole and stands in front of me. “Because you bring it up every other second. Which one of us gets to be in charge. Which one of us deserves the treasure more. I brought it to you toshareit with you, you idiot. I brought it to you because I liked you and I wanted to share something special with you. But from day one, all you have cared about is taking over.You’rethe one who wanted to have some big talk about the title before we could even crack the book open!”
He makes a little squeaky voice. “ ‘Oh,Gay Treasures, what does that mean? Are you gay, are you gay? You have to be gay to readGay Treasuresbecause I said so.’ ”
“I never said that,” I say angrily.
“You said it all the damn time!” Cam yells. “You thought onlyyoudeserved to do the hunt because you were the one who came out first. I didn’t want to talk about being queer because I was still figuring out what being queer even meant for me!”
I stare at him.
“And you,” he says, motioning to me. “You kept making it worse, kept making it harder for me to figure out! Every time I tried to bring up something aboutus, you kept turning it intoyou. You made being gay your entire identity.”
“Holy shit,” I say. “I cannot believe you’re shaming me for being gay right now.”
“I’m not shaming you! I’m trying to explain this concept to you, because even now, years later, you’re so freaking thick that you’re still not getting it. I liked you, Ivy. I like you.”
My teeth are practically chattering. My legs are shaking.
“Why the hell do you think I first came out as a lesbian?” I whisper. “I was trying to tell you I liked you too.”
Cam stares at me. “But I’m not a girl.”
“Obviously!” I throw my arms out. “But how was I supposed to know that two years ago? You saidnothingto me. You kissed me and then ghosted me for an entire year! What the hell was I supposed to take away from that moment, Cam?”
He nods, head bobbing as he thinks. Then he turns andlooks directly into my eyes. “That you didn’t know me,” he says. “Not really. That’s the heartbreaker for both of us, isn’t it?”
“Time!” the Park official calls out.
Cam picks up his shovel and puts back the first load of dirt.
“Let’s just be done with this, once and for all,” he says. He sounds so worn and exhausted. “We tried our best, but it didn’t work out. End of story.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
There is something about Cam that has always made me put my guard up.
Maybe it’s his confidence. The way he seems to stride through life so smoothly. He gives out smiles like they cost him nothing, even though receiving one feels like winning the lottery. There’s such an imbalance with him. You get the feeling that you could come and go and his life would stay more or less the same. But for you, his choices mean everything. His absence would be, has been, is still—even now—devastating. There’s so much to lose, liking a person like that.
And I have always been terrified of losing.
The second the sod is replaced on top of our dig spot, Cam picks up his shovel and walks back out the way we came, around the hill and through the trees. The Park official and I watch him go. She turns to me once he’s out of sight.
“Tough break,” she says consolingly. “For what it’s worth, I was really hoping you would find something.”
She hands me a business card. “My email address is on the bottom, right here. I’d be interested to know more about this treasure hunt. Sometimes we do little exhibits inside McLaren Lodge at Golden Gate Park. Maybe see if you want to put something together.”
“Okay,” I say, taking the card. Even though, at the moment, I have no real intention of going home and making some stupid poster board exhibit. I can’t treat the hunt like a kid treats a science fair project about honeybees. It’s way too personal for that.
I wish I could leave my suitcase behind, dump it in a ditch somewhere, throw it off the edge of the cliffside and into the ocean. But technically, these are Mom’s gardening tools, not mine, so instead I have to do the stupidest walk of shame ever and drag it back onto the city bus.
I get home and kick the bag into the side yard, then go upstairs to shower. I want to curl up in my bed and hide away there forever, forget that the treasure hunt, that me and Cam, ever happened. But I can’t even look up at the ceiling without picturing the same view of it through Cam’s hair. His hands on my waist. His heart beating so fast against mine.
What do you want?
“No,” I whisper, sitting up. I can’t replay that memory. It took forever to get the first kiss from the park out of my head.
I pull on my oversized gray denim jacket and slump out of the apartment. It would be nice to go nowhere—a black hole in the space-time continuum that can just suck me up. I pause,thinking. I don’t know of any black holes, but I do have a spot that might work.
The sidewalk slopes down through the entrance to Golden Gate Park. I take the familiar path winding between the highway and the fields, across the width of the park, to Lloyd Lake. I can see the Portals of the Past in the distance, looming over its own reflection in the water. The bushes around the portico are filling in with the sweet-smelling flowers of late spring. I brush past them, thinking of when I used to pluck the petals off fallen flowers as a little girl. I pick a flower off the stone steps now, pulling on its petals absently. He loves me, he loves me not. He loves me, he loves me not.
