Chapter SIXTEEN

David

TIME SPENT in a hospital emergency room always felt like it took three times as long as reality. The oppressive atmosphere wasn’t helping.

The longer I stared at the rust-colored stain dried into the linoleum, the less I wanted to know what it was. I’d heard my students decry their neighborhood hospital often enough to have expected it to be less than stellar, but it surpassed my brain’s worst machinations.

“This is ridiculous.”

I crossed my arms over my chest and looked everywhere but at Caleb, as I’d done for the past couple of hours. One glance in his direction brought back his angry words and the mental image of him calling the cops with shaking hands.

The cops.

Just the very notion of Raymond being arrested was sickening. Especially over a fight he hadn’t started. All he’d done was defend himself, and now he had an arrest record. It was enough to drive me out of the filthy waiting room with the screaming infants, snarling patients, and disinterested staff, and to the precinct where he was probably waiting for an arraignment. I ached to be there with him even if there was nothing I could do to change the situation, but there was no way I was leaving Caleb’s side until he promised not to press charges. If he contacted his rich family or a lawyer, they would talk him into going the full nine yards.

“I should have just gone to my doctor tomorrow.”

“You should have,” I agreed sharply. “You shouldn’t have called the police at all.”

Caleb didn’t reply, and for the first time since we’d arrived at the hospital, I looked straight at him. He looked nothing like the Caleb I had met three years ago. That Caleb had been flawless in an unnecessarily formal three-piece suit, distractingly handsome when he smiled, and with his light brown hair prematurely streaked with silver, he had looked mature and distinguished. This Caleb was disheveled and miserable—skin ashen, eyes bruised and red-rimmed, and starched shirt stained with drops of blood. The proud posture I’d come to correlate with his sophistication and self-assuredness was sagging, and Caleb’s gaze was glued to the floor.

“Are you in pain?”

“Yes.” Caleb shifted on his cot. “Does that make you happy?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It makes me really fucking ecstatic that you got yourself beaten up and Raymond thrown in jail.”

Caleb’s brows drew together. “I didn’t plan for this to happen.”

“Then why did you call the police?” I was already shouting, which was a bad sign. I struggled to hold the reins on my temper, but my voice still came out thick with loathing. “You hit him first. You started this. And now he has an arrest for assault on his record.”

“I’m not going to press charges. I know that’s why you’re staying here so, rest assured, your precious Raymond will be free soon enough.”

Relief nearly bowled me over, but my anger didn’t cool. “That’s great, but you can still look up an arrest record!”

Caleb wilted further, his shoulders slumping. “I didn’t know that.” He bowed his head, and I tilted mine backward.

“Why the hell did you call at all?”

“I don’t know.”

“You better come up with something better than that,” I hissed. “And you better not press charges.”

“I already said I wouldn’t.”

“So you admit this was ridiculous?”

“Yes. Obviously I am goddamn ridiculous, David.”

I huffed out a breath. “Then why the hell did you make the call? Why didn’t you tell them—”

“David,” he interrupted. “I was angry, I was humiliated by a twenty-five-year-old fuckwit in front of the person I loved, and now you are trying to find rational motivation for an irrational action. Just stop.”

The edge in Caleb’s voice cut through me. He usually held everything in, remained controlled and even-keeled, and hid his feelings from the world. In retrospect, I should have expected the disaster in the apartment. I’d never seen Caleb that vindictive, and I’d never seen him this defeated.

I replayed Raymond’s scornful words, and guilt slid over the prickles of my anger like a velvet cloak. In the midst of all of the yelling, and the rising violence, I’d failed to consider how deeply it all must have gouged Caleb’s armor. I tried to imagine how I would have reacted if Oli had bragged about fucking Raymond while I slept down the hall, and knew I would have tried to inflict serious bodily harm. I’d almost done it over one kiss.

Caleb’s chin had dropped again, his light eyes downcast, but I tilted his head back up.

“I’m sorry.”

His eyebrows came down. “For?”

“For me.” I released a ragged sigh and sat next to him on the bed. I could feel him looking at me, but I stared down at the stain on the floor. I was almost positive it was old blood. “I know this is all my fault. I think it was wrong of you to call the police, but I know I turned this entire situation into a massive donkey fuck.”

“A donkey….”

“Can you not correct my language right now?” I felt more than saw Caleb spread his hands in surrender. If my voice rose in public, he was guaranteed to back down. Being tacky and drawing attention was not something Caleb wanted for himself or our relationship. “I’m sorry about what I did.”

“Which part, David?”

His voice scraped low and tired, and additional shame piled on top of the growing mound.

“The way I treated you when we were together, and… for what Raymond said. I didn’t want you to know about him. That—”

“That you fucked him while I slept in your bedroom?”

My jaw clenched, and I nearly cursed Raymond for blurting it out for spite, but then I remembered where he was, and the burst of heat flickered like the dying embers in a fire.

“You need to understand that we’re broken up,” I said. “I didn’t cheat on you with Raymond. You stayed that night because of the storm. You stayed in my room because I was being nice. And when he came home….”

“You just couldn’t help yourself?” Caleb put a hand on my upper arm, twisting me sideways on the bed. I didn’t want to meet his eyes, but I did, and the stricken look on his face soured my stomach. “You knew there was a chance I would see you with him, and you just didn’t give a damn?”

“That’s not it.”

“Oh come on, David.” Caleb slid to the edge of the bed, poised to stand. His jaw clenched, hand cradling his nose and covering the gauze packed in it. Even while sitting in a filthy hospital room, he probably could not stand the thought of being seen in such a state. “For once in our entire relationship, can you say what you mean and not whatever you have censored after deeming me too fragile for the truth?”

I flinched, but didn’t turn away from his flinty stare. “What I have with Raymond….” Caleb’s lip curled, but I pushed on. “What I feel for him is something I’ve never felt before, and I know you don’t respect that, and I know that might hurt to hear, but I can’t change it. So yes, when I worried for him all night because he was out in that blizzard, and I realized he was whole and safe in front of me, I wanted him. I could have stopped things, but I didn’t.”

Caleb’s eyes cut away. I thought he would stride off to collect himself, but he didn’t.

“You don’t care if you hurt me.”

“Fuck, Caleb, it wasn’t about you!” I got to my feet again, running both hands through my hair. “Raymond was so angry with me that night. He thought I’d brought you there to rub our relationship in his face. And even then he wanted me. You have no idea how good it feels for someone to want me the way he does.”

“Right.” Caleb glanced to the side. Our conversation was protected only by thin, dingy curtains separating the rails of the beds. “Because I never wanted you as intensely as he does.”

“Do you really want me to compare the two of you?”

“Maybe you should,” he said. “Maybe then I’d get it. He’s a beautiful kid, but you barely know him, and he isn’t good enough for you.”

“And you are.”

“Yes. I can take care of you.”

“Oh my fucking God, Caleb, this is exactly what I’m talking about!” I was nearly shouting by the time the sentence left my mouth. A stocky woman next to us hissed sharply in Cantonese. I held up my hand in silent apology before swinging my glare back to Caleb. “I don’t need you to take care of me. I don’t need… I don’t need anyone to take care of me, and he doesn’t need anyone to take care of him. We’re not children, for fuck’s sake, but you and his brother both act like we’re barely getting by!”

Caleb, to his credit, held his peace. He was good at gauging what to say and when to say it once I started losing my temper.

“This is how life is,” I said after a calming breath. “People try things and sometimes they don’t work and sometimes they do, but I’m too young to tell myself that I just have to choose the guy that’s safe. And that’s what you’re selling yourself as—the safety net. Is that really what you want to be for me? For anyone?”

“That’s all I’ve got when it comes to you.” Caleb dropped his hand, letting every inch of his bruised face show. The purple and red shadows beneath his eyes, the nick on the bridge of his nose, and the remnants of dry blood. “I tried to make you happy, and I don’t know how or where I failed, but I did. I couldn’t please you. All I could do was support you and do for you, and even that wasn’t enough.”

“Because you’re not my parent, Caleb. You were my boyfriend. It’s supposed to be more, and me wanting more doesn’t mean I’m stupid or delusional. There is such a thing as romantic love, and I think—”

“Oh, you have it with Raymond?” Caleb’s voice was heavy with scorn.

“Yes! I think about him all the time, and I want to be with him all the time, and I think it’s the same for him. We can’t stay away from each other. No matter what happens between us, no matter how we argue, we still want each other and want to be together. And you can’t say—” I hesitated, going on only after Caleb waved his hand brusquely. “You can’t say that you ever felt that kind of intensity with me. I know you didn’t.”

“How could you possibly make that assumption?”

I could have dodged the you-never-wanted-to-fuck-me bullet by diverting the conversation back to everything else that had been wrong, like his desire to parent and coddle me, but his earlier words still rung in my ears. I had censored myself to spare his feelings, and that was partially why he was still clinging to the belief that we would someday reconcile.

“If you felt that kind of intensity for me, you wouldn’t have rejected me so much,” I said. Caleb’s eyes went hard and narrow, but I kept talking in a low, even voice. “I know we’re different in that way. You didn’t want to fuck the way I liked to fuck, and you would just push me aside or make an excuse, and, goddamn, I started to feel like something was wrong with me because you never wanted me. And instead of just saying you were different, you were condescending about it. Like I was some slutty baby twink or an insane nympho.”

Some of the stoniness fled his expression. “I never meant to imply that.”

“But you did. A lot. I’m not saying anything is wrong with you, but that doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with me. There’s a lot wrong with me. But the parts that make us incompatible aren’t things that I can fix, and they’re not things that you can change either. Sometimes walking away is just the right thing to do.”

“Walking away to him? That brat? He doesn’t even have a real j—”

I put my hand over his mouth and shook my head. “Please don’t. You’re saying that because you’re hurt and angry, but if we’re going to salvage any of this, you can’t talk about him that way.”

I didn’t move my hand until Caleb sighed, his breath brushing against my fingers and warming them. He scooted back on the bed and watched me from beneath sandy lashes.

“Can we salvage any of this?”

“I want to.”

“Why? I hurt you. I was horrible to him. I’m a resentful bitch, right? The asshole ex-boyfriend. That’s the role I’ve cast myself in.”

“And I’m the slutty, cheating ex-boyfriend, but you don’t see me putting that on my résumé.”

Next to us, the Chinese lady peered around the curtain and flicked her dark eyes between me and Caleb. Caleb smiled at her, and she vanished.

“We can be friends,” I insisted. “Maybe not right away, but we know the same people, and I don’t see why we should pretend we don’t exist. You’re a great person, and I was lucky to have you in my life. Just because it didn’t work one way doesn’t mean it can’t work another.”

“And Raymond will be okay with this?” The question was colored with doubt. “After what just happened?”

“I don’t know.”

Caleb scoffed softly and tilted his head back again. “What a mess we’ve made.”

I nodded in agreement, and my thoughts skipped back to Raymond, of him sitting in the precinct in a cell. The sick feeling returned, that bottomless sour curdling of my stomach.

“I can fix it,” I said, trying to keep my voice firm. “I have to.”