Cameron was struck by how he had left Ashiq’s house in a such a better mood. There was an elation, maybe even a delusion, that followed him to work. The residual feeling of Ashiq in his fingertips and on his clothes. The thought that he was going to see his best friend again after all these years—that someone who knew him and who cared about him was going to be in his life again.

For certain, he had already been wandering down this dark and dismal path. All under the thumb of his maniacal boss—the cunning incubus who was running a business here. so what took you so long, conelly? weren’t gonna pussy out on this one, were ya?

And there it was. The demeaning way they all talked down to him, and him putting on his carefree, affable attitude to deflect it all back. But as much as he pretended to float above the harassment and perilous working relations, all if it cut at him so deep. No wonder he drank so much when he was working so hard with nothing to really show for it—all the money was going go Lisa. He was still living out of his van when he risked his life every night. Frayed nerves didn’t suit him well at all, and he was becoming despondent with the predicament he had wound himself up in.

Work had earned him a black eye and a bloodied nose. Some scuffle with a scavenger they had caught near the warehouse. Cameron, with his psychic senses telling him to investigate a foreign body. Yet Cameron, with his mortal strength only slowing the infiltrator before it escaped. Hit across the face and tossed to the side.

None of them had even offered a hand to help him up.

It really was a shit-show. This whole enterprise. Cameron was beginning to hate it—why had he looked up to Caden anyway? He knew the guy was a total scumbag. An opportunist of plight and chaos. But for a human Cameron always had something to prove, and for an impressionable kid sitting out on the curb with a broken nose and a swollen lip, having an immortal walk by and say good fightin’, kid was some hell of an ego boost.

Here he was, a decade later, still chasing after that affirmation. i work so hard just to please, i’ll do anything you ask me, even pull the trigger.

Cameron sure as hell was paying for some poor choices he had made. In a way, he had convinced himself that he might as well burden his mistakes—where else was he going to run to after Louisiana? Kansas? California? Mexico?

All of this weighed him down as he trudged from his van to the front door of Ashiq’s house. In a dramatic fashion, he was comparing in his mind how light the six-pack was compared to his sins. A bit woozy with already one drink in him—this was a bit too much to take when he was entirely sober.

The only thing he wanted to do was to see Ashiq. Reminisce about old times. Play some games. Eat his food. The pleasant aura that radiated from his very notion gave Cameron hope for the end of his shift, and now, he was standing on the front steps, waiting to knock.

Hesitating, he wondered: is he gonna get mad at me for showing up like this? with the beer and the black eye? Maybe tonight wasn’t the best night—it wasn’t going to go like Cameron had envisioned in his head.

Still, he had promised. With a sigh, he rang the doorbell, and leaned against the wall, waiting for Ashiq.

If he could have it his way—it’d be like old times where Ashiq would fuss over him and Cameron would smile with a mouthful of blood.

These days, that just seemed childish and giving Ashiq a problem that he didn’t deserve. They had gotten older and grown up, hadn’t they?