The Lockdown

28

One evening, after Cam helped him to bed, he changed into his pjs and Andy noticed the faded shirt he put on. "Is that mine?"

"Not anymore. I stole it from your old room at your mom's. And I'm not giving it back."

"You can have it. That was my favorite shirt when I was a freshman, once I wore it five days in a row until my mom put a stop to it. It really smelled bad by then. What else did you steal?"

Cam opened his dresser and took out the dog collar hesitantly. "Oh, my god!" Andy exclaimed. "I knew it was a mistake to hold onto that."

"I just imagined you wearing it and somehow it ended up in my bag," said Cam blushing. He climbed under the covers and snuggled close to the older man. "I hardly know anything about you. I told you a lot of things about myself, but that's just the surface, I'm not sure you'd have even liked me if we met in high school. And we never talk about you. I slept in your old room for almost a week and I realized that I know next to nothing about the boy who used to live there. Jennie told me a few things..."

"Lies, lies, damn lies, everything that comes out of her mouth" Andy interrupted grinning widely.

"Oh, come on, she didn't say anything bad. You were lying in the hospital, dying, how could she. I will have to interrogate her later when you have completely recovered." Cam joked. "She mostly talked about you two, how protective of her you had always been, how she always pranked you in return. But I still don't really know you. I mean we have been living under the same roof for more than seven months, granted before the lockdown we didn't spend an awful lot of time together. I liked you from the beginning but I had no intentions to get involved with you after everything that happened. Sarah is a pretty good judge of character, she wouldn't have let me move in with you if she didn't like you which was enough for me. You were a safe bet, the straightest guy I've ever met. Then I fell for you hard, but maybe that's just because how you handled my situation. And you are hot. What if that's not enough? I keep thinking about your hospital buddy, with his wife they built a strong foundation that has been helping them through the most awful things life could throw at them. But we have no foundation."

Andy thought long and hard before replying. "I understand what you mean. Norah and I had been together for almost four years when she decided to end it. We met in college though we didn't get together until we both graduated. We knew each other pretty well, but, if I want to be honest, I wouldn't be able to recall much about her growing up. And that is probably my fault. If I paid more attention to her, if I let her in, maybe we would still be together, even though now I feel I am the luckiest guy on Earth to have met you. And I think you are wrong, I would have liked you in high school. I was a complete idiot, especially in my junior year, but I have a feeling that if we met then I would have fallen for you just as fast."

"That would have been creepy" Cam chuckled. "I was like ten when you were in high school."

"Oh, come on. You know what I mean. I never believed in soul mates, I'm not even sure what that means at all, but I feel that once we met, we had no chance but end up together. And I get your feelings, I want to know more about you as well and I promise to not make the same mistake I did with Norah. Go ahead, ask me. What do you want to know?"

"Everything."

So they talked. All night. From early childhood on, Cam wanted to know all about Andy. How he refused to go to school on the first day because they would not let Jennie go with him but his first-grade teacher helped him adjust, about his failed attempts at sports, mostly due to his inability to commit to anything seriously, or his disturbing teenage years which almost derailed his future as he barely managed to get into college. Andy talked a lot about his father, how they ended up best friends despite some very rough patches especially during high school. He believed it for a long time that his father must have deemed him a disappointment until four years ago, when he told Andy just the opposite. That he loved him not despite but because of his failures. What he saw in Andy still mystified the son, but his father apparently believed that Andy would eventually figure it out, that he would live a happy life. Andy just started working for his uncle at that time after failing in the corporate world and observing how much he loved it, his father encouraged him to commit to it, ignore others who may have pushed him in another direction, to believe in himself. The only thing he ever wanted for Andy is to be happy. His trust meant the world to Andy and he had missed him every day since he died.

Cam fell asleep early morning, and Andy looked at the youngster in his arms for a long time. He hadn't opened up like this to anyone before, not to his mother, to his friends or lovers. All his life he got it into his head that he had to keep some parts of himself private from others, that talking about his deepest fears or failures was pointless because why would anyone like to hear about the awful bully he was in his junior year. He apologized to the poor boy Andy and his friends tormented a year later, but he was still deeply ashamed of the things he had done. And now he was overwhelmed with the desire to tell Cam everything, to share his life with a boy who wandered into his world just a few months before.

Every day Cam made Andy exercise more. They started with walking around in the apartment, doing some light calisthenics in the living room. They moved on to the bike on a low setting at first, just a few minutes more every day. By the end of the week, Cam made him walk up and down the staircase in the building.

Sarah and Uncle Joe took care of the bar. They rearranged the furniture as she discussed it with Andy earlier. The newest regulations promised that they could open the bar in a few weeks if the numbers held up, though in a limited fashion at first. They would only be allowed to stay open until 10 pm, and only a finite number of customers were allowed in the bar at the same time. The council tried to ease the predicaments of bars and restaurants by promising to issue temporary permits for outside seating on the pavement and easing the open container regulations to allow drinking in the vicinity of said establishments.

Cam went to the bar every afternoon to help out while Andy was forced to take an afternoon nap. The bar had two storage rooms in the back and Cam figured out a system to utilize the space more efficiently. They bought some new shelves which they installed with Billy's help and ended up storing everything in the bigger room. Sarah wanted to move Andy's office into the empty space from the small closet it was in at the moment, but Cam had other ideas.

"I think we should expand the services of the bar" he turned to Andy that evening. "What do you mean?" Andy asked.

"At the moment, besides alcohol, we only serve peanuts and pretzels. What if we offered more? We have the small storage room empty now and we could set up a small kitchen there. I don't mean anything big, we could start with simple finger food, small sandwiches at most." He explained. "I asked Sarah to look into the possible permits we would need."

"It's an intriguing idea, I had thoughts about expanding as well, Mrs. Wilkinson, the owner of the pet store next door has been talking about retirement for years, but I don't think we can afford even a small kitchen at this point. I have a little money saved up but we need to buy some outside furniture and if the reopening doesn't go well, we may go bust fast. We could take out a loan, I can talk to the bank next week, though I have a feeling they will say no in the current economy."

"You are forgetting about the website money. We have over ten thousand from the video alone, they sent me an email saying it was one of their best seller in the past month."

"Holy cow! But that's your money," Andy protested.

"No, we've been through this, it is our money. And I want to invest my part in the bar." Andy put up a valiant struggle, but Cam had a counter argument to all of his objections. He finally agreed to his proposal grudgingly and Cam happily started to draw up the next steps. Andy called his uncle to ask for his opinion and was surprised when he took Cam's side wholeheartedly.

"Business is changing, you have to evolve to survive, and Cam's idea may just be the best thing that happens to the bar's future. You're lucky to have him."

"Don't I know it," Andy acquiesced, though he might have meant it in a different way than his uncle.