Exotic - Chapter 19: Chapter 19

I woke up semi-hard, semi-hungover, and fumbling for my mobile phone.
Caleb had not texted me.
I dropped it back onto the bedside table with a clatter and groan. There was no moment of temporary amnesia. I remembered every excruciating moment of the night before, in vivid technicolour.
I lifted a heavy hand to my mouth, running a thumb along my bottom lip. I couldn't feel Caleb there, but my brain was very capable of providing flashbacks to the night before, namely, how it had ended.
Caleb had given me an inch, and I'd taken a mile. He was never going to speak to me again.
Downstairs, Reece was cooking up a greasy breakfast for one. I salivated at the mere scent but made do with an apple and a glass of juice. Reece didn't try and make me sit at the dining table, while was a small blessing. He seemed intent on ignoring me completely this time, and I had absolutely no problem with facing that consequence.
I sank into the sofa, which smelt of Reece. I opened Sephora's Instagram and was immediately greeted by an hour old direct message from @themagnificent_zsazsa. My stomach sank at the directness of the message, with no emojis or exclamation points. He'd posted his number and simply written, call me.
I walked out of the front door and dialled the number on the porch. After two rings, Zsa Zsa picked up with a wary. "Hello?"
"It's Seph," I replied, keeping my tone light. "Morning."
"Oh. Morning," Zsa Zsa's tone was flat. The pause lasted the time it took for Mrs. Dodie to cross in front of the house on her morning walk. "This is weird. Why have we never done this before?"
"What?"
"Talked over the phone," he replied, and I heard running water through the speaker. "I've known you for a year and I don't really know you, you know? I don't know anything about you. You could disappear off the face of the earth and I wouldn't know the first place to start looking for you."
I dropped down onto the porch steps, my legs covered in goosebumps under my pyjama pants. "Why would you need to know where to look for me?"
"Because we're friends, you bitch," Zsa Zsa snapped, harsher than I thought possible. The running water stopped.
I waited.
"So, Peter came over early this morning" he breathed, and my blood went cold. "And he had a story to tell. Very scathing. He told me he dropped by Crescendo last night before work and you were all over him from the door. Practically tearing his clothes off him and kept telling him that I wouldn't mind. He told me he had to yell at you to get you to back off."
I took a deep breath. "Zsa..."
"Grayson."
I felt my brow furrow. "What?"
"My name is Grayson," Zsa Zsa repeated, the name foreign on his lips. "We're having a serious conversation and it's weird having you call me by my stage name."
"Oh," I was stunned. The name didn't feel right to say, so I continued without it. "I should have called you last night. I didn't know how to talk to you about it, because you guys were doing so great and I didn't know if I had a leg to stand on..."
"Fuck!" Zsa Zsa – Grayson – shouted into the phone.
"What?"
"Sorry. I'm making herbal tea. I burned myself," he held the phone away from his mouth as he blew on his finger. "Seph, please do not tell me he was actually telling the truth."
"No!" I squawked immediately. "No. What kind of person do you think I am?"
"Not that kind of person, despite not knowing anything about you," he sighed. "That's why I kicked him to the curb without a second thought. So. Thank god I was right in assuming."
My shoulders immediately relaxed, and I collapsed over my knees. "Jesus Christ. You could have opened with that."
"Yeah, I wanted to be sure. See how you reacted," Zsa Zsa took a loud sip of his tea. "I caught him in a couple of lies but I didn't really want to believe it. So, what actually went down?"
I gave him a quick rundown, walking out into the front yard to make sure none of it was picked up by Reece. Seeing Peter, with Caleb – who I described as an innocent bystander horrified by the idea of becoming a homewrecker – and his semi-threatening response. Zsa Zsa remained mostly quiet throughout, occasionally sipping his herbal tea, or making small disgusted noises down the phone.
When I trailed off, Zsa Zsa sniffed indignantly. "Too good to be fucking true."
"Zs – Grayson," I corrected myself, and the name felt foreign on my tongue. "I'm so sorry."
"Don't be. I'm glad you were around to catch him out," he responded. "He's probably been fucking around from the minute I met him. Must have been having a good laugh, thinking he had one over me."
"He seemed to really like you," I offered. "But... and I'm going to get real cliché here, get ready... he doesn't deserve you."
Zsa Zsa groaned loudly. "I'm so finished with closet cases, Seph. The insecurity and sneaking around gets old real fast."
I swallowed obviously. "Peter seemed pretty out."
"Oh, it was completely nocturnal. He switched it off the second he was at work. Which, I get, the world is a shithole and people suck and it's not like I've never played it straight for customers. But he wasn't out to anyone. Friends, family, therapist... I don't know how I ever expected to settle down with someone with that much weight on his back. It was all, 'I wish you could meet my mother', 'I wish my friends understood'... like, fuck, tell them. If they don't get it, cut them loose."
I curled my toes into the soles of my shoes, chewing on the side of my lip intensely. "Amen to that."
"Sorry, rant over," Zsa Zsa sighed. "I'm going to go eat my weight in breakup food and feel bad about it for a week. Me jode la vida."
"Do you need company?" I asked, even though I didn't know what I would do if he said yes.
"Nah, babe. But I'll see you next Friday," he assured me. "And hey. If Peter tries to contact you, just tell him to fuck off. He knows this is all his fault, but he didn't exactly go gently into that good night. You haven't seen the last of me may or may not have been yelled."
"How dramatic," I mused.
"Have a good day, babe."
I thought about correcting him with my name. My real name. I wondered what it would feel like to bridge the gap like that; I definitely felt closer to Zsa Zsa. It might have been nice to have a real friend on the other side.
I held off too long, and Zsa Zsa had hung up by the time I mumbled, "Miles."
I stood by the fence with the phone pressed to the side of my head, breathing in the morning air. The air was crisp, and the grass was wet with dew from the night before. Mrs. Dodie's daughter had parked in the same spot the Uber had stopped off the night before, her white Mini Cooper blocking my ability to replay the night. I couldn't remember if I'd looked back over my shoulder.
The phone rang sharply against my ear, and I just about jumped to the power lines. My phone tumbled from my grip face down into the grass. Heart pounding against the bars of my ribcage, I ducked to pick it up.
Lauren Proust's caller ID stared up at me. I wavered, finger hovering above the DECLINE button. I didn't have much to say to Lauren, and I doubted she was calling to talk about tutoring. At the fifth ring, I pulled my head out of my ass and answered.
"Hey."
"Hey, Steph," Lauren said nonchalantly, and I fell against the fence, gripping the pickets with my clenched right fist. My entire body tensed up, waiting for a barrage of venom over the phone line.
"Sorry. Not funny," Lauren admitted. "Hasn't been a great morning. 'Sup Miles."
"Lauren, you can't..." I forced through gritted teeth. "I don't know what Caleb told you, but... you can't go around telling people that I... scratch that. You can't tell anyone, because if it gets back to me..."
"Relax," she cut me off breezily. "I haven't even considered telling anyone. Besides, what's to tell? It's the twenty-first century. You do you."
"You don't understand, it wasn't..."
"Was it just a prank, bro?" Lauren deadpanned into the speaker. "Miles, I'm not dumb. I mean, it took me a while there to figure out it was you. The eyes really threw me off. And pretending like you were into me? Next level."
"What?"
"You kept getting all choked up when you saw me," she said slowly, as if she were reminding me of the fact. "And gazing into my eyes. It was really weird. But hey, props to you for going the extra mile. I was almost convinced I was seeing things until you and Caleb put your feet in each other's mouths."
My head was spinning with colours and sounds and I rocked on the fence, fingers tense around the phone. "What do you want?"
"Oh. Yeah. Wait," Lauren covered the speaker of her phone quickly and yelled have you tried Mark's house? Someone in the background, whose voice was semi-familiar, yelled Which one? "Is Caleb at your place?"
My heart skipped a beat or two. "No. Why would he be here?"
The silence was palpable. I heard the front door unlock and spun around. Reece staggered onto the porch with an unopened can of beer and a busted packet of cigarettes. He didn't spare me more than a cursory glance before settling into a deck chair and lighting up.
"Miles..." Lauren said carefully. "I know you don't really know me that well, and I am not about to claim I know you but... I know my brother. I know him better than he knows I do. I just... I know, okay? So, can we cut the shit, and can you just put him on the phone?"
My lip was at risk of being chewed entirely off. "Lauren, I was serious. He's not here. We're not... what's going on?"
Lauren muttered a curse. "Well, that's me fresh out of ideas."
"Caleb's missing?" I demanded, quietly as I paced the fence all of six feet from Reece. "Since when?"
"Well, he said he was at Aidan's last night, but he didn't come home when he said he would and a quick call to the McCaffrey residence poked a gaping hole in that story," she explained. "So basically, we don't know where he's been all night and he's not answering his phone and... yeah."
"Fuck," I said, a little too loudly. I saw Reece raise his head slightly. "Alright, uhm... can anyone else hear us?"
"No. I'm in my room."
"I know where Caleb was last night," I said under my breath. Lauren released a little, know-it-all huff. "Not like that. We shared an Uber. It was three am, I think? I got dropped off, and I thought he was going home too."
"Well, he must have if he got an Uber," Lauren deducted. "His car is missing."
I released a breath I hadn't realised I'd been holding. At least Caleb hadn't been gone for the whole night without anywhere to sleep. "Does your family know?"
"Duh. Mum's flown off the handle. Wants to phone the police," Lauren told me. "She thinks he's been kidnapped. She doesn't think St. Caleb could ever do something like this if he wasn't in trouble."
"Shit. She's not going to, is she?"
"I don't know," Lauren paused. "Unless you know where he is... maybe he is in trouble?"
I sighed down the receiver. "Can you hold her off for like, half an hour? I might be able to get a hold of him."
"He wouldn't be ignoring me," Lauren argued. "He's got to have his phone off."
"Half an hour. Please."
"Fifteen minutes."
"Deal. I'll call you back."
We parted ways, and I jogged back up to the house, already jumping back into Instagram. Reece waited me fumble up the steps, cigarette hanging from his teeth. He surprised me by calling out, gruffly. "Y'right?"
I didn't look up. I was typing @caleb.proust into the search bar. "Fine."
"You look worked up."
I tapped into his profile, and, still logged in as @mormon.vixen, I hit the request to follow button. After completing the task, I granted Reece the eye contact he was looking for. "I've got a lot of schoolwork to catch up on."
"Maybe get off your phone and get on that, then."
I set my jaw and shouldered into the house. I slouched up against the door, tapping my phone in my hand as I waited for a response. The lampshades were in dire need of dusting.
My phone buzzed quicker than I imagined it would. Caleb's phone was definitely not switched off.
What do you want?
I quickly hit the call button, before he had the opportunity to toss his phone aside and ignore me. It rang out but, remembering how he had persisted with me when I'd been in bad shape, I shelved my pride and rung again.
That time, he picked up on the fifth or sixth ring. He didn't say a word, so I took the lead of the conversation.
"Caleb," I said seriously, pushing up off the door and pacing down the hallway. "Call your fucking family before they call the police."
I heard a sharp intake of breath over the phone. "They called you?"
"Lauren did," I reassured him gently. The last thing I needed was for him to dive down my throat because he suspected his family knew anything about us. I suspected all talk of never doing that to me would go out the open window. "They're all looking for you though."
Caleb didn't respond. For a moment, I thought he'd hung up on me, but I could just make out his unsteady breathing.
"Where are you?" I asked. "You have your car, right? Are you safe?"
"I'm fine," he finally uttered, completely unconvincingly.
"Where are you?" I persisted.
Caleb sighed through his nose, and I could picture him rubbing his eyes and smoothing out the creases in his clothes. He must have been frigid cold if he'd slept in his car all night. Or maybe not, because Caleb was pretty much a human radiator. "I'm at the park. Whitley Park."
I breathed out an exhale of relief. "Good. Alone?"
"Who else would I be with?" he asked dryly.
I wrapped myself in my own arm, as the tingling sensation set off underneath my skin. "I can't help but feel partially responsible for your choices after I left last night."
Caleb laughed, bitingly. "Don't let it weigh on your conscience. You were drunk. You probably don't remember much of the night, right?"
My heart stung. Caleb was very clearly giving me an out. An out from explaining what had gone through my mind the night before, even though it was about the most intentional thing I'd done in years. Drunk or sober. The fact I'd been riding the high of drinking gave me the perfect excuse, and he was pretty much forcing my hand.
He didn't want to talk about it.
"Right, Miles?"
"Right," I heard myself say, faintly. My phone chimed. I found a message from Lauren, a cascade of urgent question marks. I responded quickly.
he's fine. talking now.
Her reply came impressively quick.
Cool. Tell him he's an idiot.
Also, Mum is on the phone with the police.
"Miles?" Caleb asked softly.
"Just give me a second," I said tersely. "Your mother is about to put out an amber alert."
Caleb groaned. "Fucking hell."
"You haven't exactly set up a precedent for this behaviour," I reminded him. "Although your whole story is going to fall apart if you don't give me a good excuse as to where you are."
He hesitated. I could picture him again, slouched over in the front seat of the sedan, running his hand through wicked bed-hair. "Tell her I was with a girl."
I ran my tongue along the backs of my teeth, nodding gently to myself. "A girl?"
"Yeah, just a girl. Tell Lauren I slept in but I'm on my way home now," he said dismissively, and I heard keys jingling. I dropped the phone from my ear to text his sister, who had hit me with another barrage of question marks and all-caps swearing. My fingers flew across the keyboard.
he's coming home. he was at a girl's house.
that's what he told me.
Her reply was short.
Then I'll tell Mum that.
I nearly dropped my phone for the second time that morning when a sputtering car engine screamed through the speaker. It was not the sound of a happy car. I heard Caleb swear, and hit something. A car horn blared, and Caleb swore again, slightly breathier.
"You alright there?" I asked, keeping the phone a decent distance from my ear.
"My car won't fucking start," Caleb mumbled, barely audible over the crackle of the phone line. "Because, of course, my car won't fucking start."
"Try turning over the engine again."
Caleb did, for several minutes. He coaxed groans and squeaks and shrieks from the body of the car, making me flinch each time without failure, but never achieving the soft purr of a functioning engine. Eventually, the line went silent and I heard a dejected sigh.
"That's where lying to your mother will get you," I chimed in helpfully.
"Great. Great," he thumped something hard and plastic again, likely the steering wheel.
"Do you have roadside assistance?"
"Nope. Can't afford a tow truck, either," Caleb went eerily quiet, and I couldn't picture what he might have been doing. Staring blankly ahead and reviewing the life choices that had led him up to that moment seemed most likely.
I heard Reece come in, boots scuffing the polished wood hallways. I almost ducked into the kitchen, out of his radius, but paused under the threshold. Reece was wearing a stretched-out pyjama shirt, the faded material almost to the busted knees of his jeans. He shouldered past me into the kitchen, crushing the empty beer can against the table and tossing it into the recycling bin.
He burped into his fist and flipped on the tap, water droplets spraying all over and waterfalling down the stack of dishes.
"Hang on," I told Caleb, and when I got no response I pressed the phone to my chest, effectively muffling the ensuing conversation. "Reece?"
He glanced up, apparently surprised by hearing my voice in any other tone but acerbic. "What?"
"I'm..." I couldn't believe what I was about to do. It was a surrender I desperately didn't want to make, but I told myself Caleb's situation was at least partially my fault and it helped me swallow my pride and force out what came next. "I'm sorry."
I didn't want to elaborate on what I was sorry for. He would probably hear the dishonesty in my voice.
Reece shut off the tap. He braced his hands on the counter and swayed there a little, his back towards me. When he turned around, his bristled chin was set and his mouth was pinched in a hard line. "What do you want?"
I winced at the bitterness in his voice. But he wasn't going to commit to the illusion, there was no way I was going to waste my energy holding it up. "My friend's car broke down. He doesn't have roadside and he'd broke and... are you doing anything this morning?"
He stared me down with an unreadable expression. I stared right back, fidgeting with the volume control on the side of my phone.
"What do you want?" he repeated, slowly.
"Could you just..." I shoved my free hand in my pocket, just to give it something to do, "... tow his car to your shop, and drive him home?"
Reece considered this. I felt sliced open from chin to the groin, all of my inner parts on display for his to scour over like a fine-toothed comb. "Well if he's broke, how does he plan on getting his car fixed once it's in the shop?"
"I can pay for it," I blurted out, before rethinking that sentiment. "Until he can ask his mum for cash. He's in shit with her. He slept in at some chick's house and now his mum is going mental. She's completely neurotic, she wants to call the police..."
"Alright. You only need one sob story," he cut me off, thankfully. I was running low on convincing excuses. "It's not Aaron, is it?"
Uneasy nausea settled in my stomach, and I began to regret asking. "No. This one's straight."
Reece's brows furrowed in the middle, but he didn't come leaping to his own defence. He pushed off the counter and jerked his head at me. "Come on. I've got tow straps in the garage."
I peeled my phone off my chest and raised it back to my ear, "Caleb?"
"Still here," he sounded wary. "What's going on?"
I was functioning on all of five hours of sleep. I hadn't eaten a proper breakfast, I still had last night playing on repeat, and a considerably milder hangover but I told myself that was what was making me feel so ill. There were so many balls in the air, and I felt like I was just waiting for one of them to drop.
"We're coming to pick you up," I told him. "Reece will tow your car to the shop."
"Reece?" Caleb sounded alarmed. "Miles, I don't think it's a good..."
"See you in a bit. Call your mother," I told him and hung up the phone before I had to listen to another set of protests. My own mental objections of 'this will go terribly wrong' were plenty loud enough.