Cal took a five-minute shower, toweled off behind the curtain, and headed for his closet. I had rebuffed him at least three times and he finally seemed miffed. He dressed in off-white lounge pants and a Henley shirt and jogged downstairs as if I weren’t there.
The pale pants, I knew, were for my sake. Look, Michael: No blood.
For the time being, I tucked his knife into my laptop case. I wanted to throw it away, but it was a Benchmade, meaning it cost over a hundred dollars, and anyway, if Cal really wanted to hurt himself, there were dozens of knives in the kitchen. I couldn’t throw them all away. I couldn’t replace his utensils with plastic spoons. I couldn’t follow him around for the rest of his life.
I drifted glumly into the family room and sat on the couch.
He was at the stove, cooking something. Every slide and ting of silverware made me flinch. Should I have showered with him? Was he more or less likely to hurt himself now? Was he five seconds away from plunging a cooking knife into his stomach?
The tension grated along my nerves until my whole body was singing with fear.
“Michael.”
I peered over at him. He had set two plates at the kitchen table.
“Breakfast,” he said.
“Oh.” And now I felt like a douchebag. I wandered over and sat in front of an omelet and a glass of orange juice.
“I hope you like spinach.”
I gave him a leery glance. “Spinach is fine.”
He sat beside me, prayed, and cut into his omelet. Leaves of spinach and cheese stretched between thin layers of egg.
“I’m fine,” he said. He could actually read my thoughts. “I just like spinach.”
“That time you passed out ...”
“I was tired. I fell asleep.”
“No, you passed out.” I stared at my omelet, my mouth souring. “You could have died. I wouldn’t have known. Or you could have needed medical attention, and I would have been sitting there like an idiot when I should have been calling for help.”
“What exactly do you want?” He lowered his fork.
I wanted him to stop. I wanted him to be free. I wanted to change the way he saw himself and the world. “I want”—I cleared my throat—“to spend the night.”
“Will that make you feel better?”
I nodded, because technically it would make me feel better, for the night.
“Fine. Knock yourself out.” He continued eating.
“Could I show you something?”
He didn’t look up from his food. “Sure.”
I retrieved a rubber band from my laptop case. I couldn’t believe I was actually doing this. (That quote about desperate times is appropriate here.)
“I read this online.” I took his hand and stretched the rubber band around his wrist. “So, when you want to ...” His dark eyes bored into me. I nearly lost my nerve. “Well, it’s a coping technique.” Gently, I snapped the rubber band against his wrist.
He continued to stare at me for a while and I wondered if he was going to laugh in my face or order me to leave. He did neither. Instead, he brushed a thumb over my cheek and smiled sadly. “I see. Thank you.”
As always, his off-kilter response flustered me. “Yeah, no problem. There were other things. I mean, some of them were stupid, but ...”
“But this one was a keeper.”
The dry humor in his voice hit me wrong. I stuffed a bite of omelet into my mouth and swallowed past the lump in my throat. At least I was trying.
“That was a joke,” he said.
“It’s not funny.”
“You won’t let me hold you. You won’t let me show you affection.” He pushed away his plate. “I don’t know how else to comfort you.”
“You think showing me affection is wrong. Do you get why I can’t let you do it if you feel that way?”
“Honestly? No.” He sounded sincerely nonplussed. “I know it’s wrong, but that’s between me and God. It’s not your problem.”
“It is if you ...” My hands shook. Why was this so difficult to talk about? “If you do that to yourself. That makes it my problem.”
He stayed quiet.
“Have you ever considered the possibility that it’s not wrong? What if your family and your religion are wrong about this?”
His silence was becoming ominous.
“I’m not trying to be rude,” I continued, “but Christianity is—”
“My turn to show you something.” He excused himself, went to the office, and returned with a manuscript box. He pushed it toward me. “Go on.”
My pulse quickened as I lifted the lid.
A slab of papers lay in the box and the top page read The House of Faith by Caleb Bright, which wasn’t the title of any of his other books. “Is this—”
“My fourth novel,” he said. “I stopped publishing. I didn’t stop writing.”
I flipped through the front matter. “Can I?”
“Go for it.” He shook a cigarette from his pack. “You can write about it in your profile. How’s that?”
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah. Talk about it all you want”—he gestured to the manuscript—“so long as it’s clear I won’t be publishing it. That’ll drive people crazy.”
“Cal, this ...” I shook my head. “This is huge.”
“I know.” He took his plate to the sink. “You deserve it.”