Exotic - Chapter 28: Chapter 28

I spent Sunday moping, because Aaron was dodging my calls. He'd sent me a pre-emptive message letting me know Max and his nose would be fine for the most part, and then preceded to let me go to voicemail all day.
Aaron wasn't going to tell me I'd disappointed him, but the cold shoulder was new. He usually gave me the chance to grovel and explain myself, no matter the circumstances. Granted, my explanation was likely to be more white lies and half-truths, but I didn't like the shift in our dynamic.
Aaron didn't ignore me. Aaron didn't do passive-aggressive.
I'd really upset him.
I spent my Sunday venting my frustrations on my face. I painted my face bare, then pressed my hands in orange paint and cupped them over my eyes. The butterfly effect it created took an hour to dry before I could paint over it with black eyeliner, turning it into a surreal monarch butterfly mask. I traced my lips in a mandarin shade, fixed a sweeping wig over my hairline, and uploading it to Sephora's Instagram with a scathing political caption.
I wondered how my small world would have responded if I'd shown up to Max's game in that getup. I felt it was a shame to wash it off every time, within the confines of my closet. At least my following got to see each of the looks; now cresting a halfway decent 600.
@themagnificent_zsazsa: trump palette ~
I sent the graphic sketch of the look, accompanied by a madame-butterfly gown and six foot wings, (which I imagined I would be able to replicate one day with a metric tonne of fabric and wire once I was making a living wage) to Lauren. She returned with a few stills of her own sketchpad, filled with bold lines and strong figures which matched her personality perfectly. She was good and she knew it; my linework looked positively timid next to hers.
wow, you're good!
I don't need you to tell me that but thanks <3
I considered sending her the real-life imitation, but I didn't know how I felt about an image of Sephora floating around on her phone. Even though Caleb's whole family had seen me in drag, l didn't like to think about that. Steph, for all I cared, could disappear into obscurity. She was besmirching the identity of Sephora Utah.
I thought Monday would bring a chance to make things right with Aaron; but when I approached a familiar lanky figure with wild curls and turned him around, I found Max with a tiny strip of white tape across his nose.
"Miles!" he said cheerily. "Did you know McCaffrey's been suspended? Suspended? They actually did that. And Maya only had to make five or so threats to sue the school and Mr. Troutman individually."
I raised an eyebrow. "Wow. Truman Senior High School prioritising the wellbeing of their students over blatant favouritism. That's a first."
"His dad offered to pay my medical bills twice over if we didn't take it to the police. Aidan's eighteen. He'd be tried as an adult," Max told me. "Even bought up quotes for a nose job and offered to pay that."
"Wow," I exhaled. "Are you going to take it?"
"Probably," but Max's grin was purely sadistic. "I told them I'd think about it. I want make him sweat for a few days."
It wasn't the revenge fantasy I'd always pictured, but kicked from the team, replaced by the guy he'd sucker-punched, suspended with a lawsuit hanging over his head and his sister was still in love with Maximillian Sanchez? It was the kind of humiliation Aidan deserved, and he'd bought it all on himself. "Where's Aaron?"
"He had a migraine this morning," Max's expression didn't give anything away. If Aaron was lying, he wasn't making Max do it for him. "I think he's stressed about mid-terms. He yelled at me this morning. He's never done that before."
I felt my brow furrow. "Aaron yelled at you?"
"Well, he apologised right after," Max added quickly. "It kind of lacked the commitment it needed to land. But yeah, I was ribbing him about working too hard and he snapped. And then said he was sorry and that he had a headache."
I pulled up my collar over my chin to hide my grimace, sucking in the fabric slightly.
"So, hey, you and Lauren Proust?" Max whistled. "How long has that been going on? Why didn't you tell me?"
I let my eyes drift closed. I had my own migraine coming on. "I don't think it's going to work out."
"No?" Max clapped a hand to my shoulder and jostled me playfully. "Well, she's cute. And smart. It doesn't have to be true love. Just hang out. It's high school, man."
I huffed. "Yeah, no wonder I never came to you for advice on girls."
Max frowned, perplexed. "What?"
"You dated Georgianna just to jerk around her brother like a puppet," I snapped, nostrils flaring, and back teeth clenched. "You go from girl to girl even though you knew you were never going to settle down with them. Do you think they just shrug and think well, it's high school whenever you don't call them back? Yeah it might not be true love, but don't you think going into something with a little faith that it could be might be a better use of your time?"
Max was rendered speechless, mouth hanging open enough to catch dragonflies. I dropped my arms by my sides and jerked my backpack straps, turning on my heel and rushing in the opposite direction. I hesitated to label it as storming away, because on school grounds I would never be able to bring myself to be so dramatic. Even when I knew Aidan wasn't lurking around to call it out.
"Why is everyone mad at me today?" Max called behind me, incredulous.
I hadn't sat at lunch alone since my first year of high school. It was an odd experience, eating in silence underneath a tree in the yard because the lunchroom didn't provide one-person tables. I decided I didn't want to make a habit of it, and harassed Aaron with a wall of shameless texts, apologising for my deceit and asking to come to his after school to explain myself.
I didn't get a response until last period. There were far too many full stops and far too few I forgive you's in it for my liking.
Thanks for apologising, but I actually do have a headache. Not a great day to get into it. I'm taking tomorrow off. See you on Wednesday.
That mediocre response had me distracted all day, up to and including my tutoring session with Lauren.
"Okay," she finally said after a half-hour of ineffectualness. "I normally wouldn't ask because you're obviously going to blow me off, but what is up with you today?"
I glanced up from my blank workbook, to which I hadn't put my pen to in over fifteen minutes. We were situated at her kitchen table, textbooks spread across it in a mess of paper and ink. Mrs. Proust kept wandering through the kitchen under the guise of topping up her tea, and even when she wasn't around, I had to cope with her galah glaring at me from his cage in the corner. Lauren had told me that he didn't like blondes.
The Proust kitchen was organised in a way the rest of the house was not. The cabinets were polished wood, and there were no stacks of bills and dirty dishes like my kitchen at home. There was a row of dark oak cutting boards behind the bronze sink faucets, and a hanging array of sharps and pots. A corkboard decorated with cut-out recipes was hung by the fridge, adorned with magnets and family photos.
"I'm fine," I brushed her off, pulling my textbook close. Lauren's hand landed in the middle of a passage about the Cuban missile crisis, effectively forcing me to meet her eye. Lauren's dissecting gaze was even more intense than her brother's. It obliterated my defences, and I slouched over in my seat.
"Mmhmm," she glowered. "Say it again, and make it believable this time."
I leaned in, making sure I wasn't in Mrs. Proust's realm of hearing. "I'm just fighting..." fighting was inaccurate, but I couldn't find a better word for it because it had never happened before, "... with Aaron. Not really, I apologised. He's upset with me."
"Why?" she didn't remove her hand from the page.
"Because..." I paused, trying to recall exactly how much Lauren knew. Keeping track of each and every person's level of intel on my life was beginning the grate on me. Each person had a different level of awareness, and it was hard to remember how much I'd let slip. It made sense why Aaron would want to put everything out in the open; it made talking to people much easier when they knew it all and you weren't constantly checking yourself. It was probably what made Caleb so easy to talk to, "... he heard about you and me, and I'd just come out to him and he probably thinks I'm messing you around."
Lauren extracted her hand, frowned deep. "... Alright. Yeah, I'd probably be pissed with you if I was him. Why don't you just tell him the truth?"
The truth. She made it sound so easy. "I just can't right now. There's too much hanging in the balance."
Her face told me she wasn't buying it. "Can't you just tell him I'm in on it?"
"He'd still think I was an asshole," I hissed. "Aaron... is really fucking brave. He'd never pretend to be someone he wasn't and he wouldn't understand me needing to. He probably thinks I'm making a mockery of everything he went through by playing straight. He probably hates me right now."
She didn't immediately respond with reassurances. But then she placed a hand on mine, squeezing gently. It was the same gesture Aaron had extended to me plenty of times before, a platonic reassurance. I'm here.
"He doesn't," she said firmly. "But you should tell him. For my sake. I don't want to be seen as some hapless idiot who can't tell her fake boyfriend plays for the other team. It kind of messes with my image."
I snorted. "Valid point..."
"But you should also tell him because you owe him the truth," she continued. "Has he ever lied to you?"
My silence spoke for itself.
"Right. And has he ever reacted poorly to you telling him the truth?"
I pulled back my hand, irritation boiling to the surface. "You know, I have a therapist for this shit."
Lauren didn't even bat an eye. "Do you lie to her too?"
"I don't lie," I protested.
"Sure. Neither did Caleb, at first," she countered. "He just played the trust card to get what he wanted, and Mum bought it until she didn't. And then he had to lie to her face. Because what else was he going to do, trust her back? After he proved to himself that trust was just a bargaining chip to..."
"Stop it," I interrupted, louder than was necessary. "I know you think you're just 'telling it how it is' but you don't understand. You live a sheltered life in upper fucking suburbia, with a scholarship to a school richer than a small country and you're going to graduate top of your classes and go on to become a doctor or a lawyer just like your parents wanted you to and have a nice heterosexual wedding and give them grandkids. You'll never understand what it's like for me, and you'll never understand what it's like for him."
Lauren blinked. Her eyes flickered to something like hurt for a split second, before returning to their usual crystal hardness.
"Does that usually work?" she asked earnestly. "Does that usually get people to back off?"
I remained stubbornly silent.
"Because that was quite the rant," she continued. "If you were that eloquent all the time you might be able to write a decent essay."
I slapped my books closed. "This was a bad idea."
"Miles," she said sharply, reaching out to stop me from packing up in a huff. I sat back in the chair with my lips pursed. Mrs. Proust passed by the kitchen door obviously, her shoes clicking down the hallway and the nails of eager dogs rushing up behind her
Lauren dragged her chair around, sitting close enough that she could whisper to me.
"I don't understand," she admitted. "Not the specifics of anything you're going through. And I don't understand lying to people who love me because I don't see the point in it. But when you needed help last Saturday, I didn't hesitate to lie to my mother's face. And yet, you think I can't sympathise with what you're going through?
"I'm not being mean because I think you should tell everyone the truth. I'm being mean because you should tell Aaron the truth, and I think it's stupid that there's even a question."
What I'm trying to say is there is pretty much nothing you could ever tell me you've done that I wouldn't be able to forgive, Aaron had said to me on the beachfront. It had given me the strength to come out to him and made me question why I'd even hid it from him in the first place.
Being out had just been one of the things I thought could only ever exist when I was in Sephora mode. Crossover wasn't something I'd ever thought possible. Then again, there was a major difference between coming out to Aaron and letting him in on my illegal goings on at Crescendo and the rest. I couldn't expect him to keep that secret. And if he couldn't, my reputation would be in shambles. I didn't want to put that kind of pressure on him.
My personal constitution dictated the clear separation between daily life and Sephora.
"I'm sorry," I managed, rocking back in the chair. "I didn't mean to imply that you didn't get it."
Lauren waited for me to speak further. "And...?"
I swallowed. "And... I'll think about it."
She looked disappointed but didn't push. Instead, she drummed her fingers on my textbook and lured me into cracking it open.
"Come on. We'll get more work done before the cavalry arrives home."
We covered a good portion of my textbook before cars started pulling up outside. Lauren had me write and rewrite an essay introduction until she could, quote, 'bear to look at the next paragraph'.
"Always use plethora instead of various," she suggested. "I've used it in every essay since I was ten and I've never gotten below eighty percent."
"I'm holding you to that."
"Hey now, it's one of many things," she added quickly. "You should probably learn how to spell Czechoslovakia right as well."
By the time we'd closed the books, the house was teeming with people. Seth and Jake had trailed through the kitchen, fixed me with looks that made me shift to the edge of my seat, as far from Lauren as the confines of the table allowed. Lauren's aunt was a less scary, younger version of her sister, introducing herself as Dimitra in such a way that I actually felt comfortable calling her that. Her daughter was an adorable chatterbox, leaping all over Lauren and her books with grabby hands and a laugh that melted my heart.
Caleb arrived home on the dot at five pm – "Mum loosened his leash since he got punched," Lauren had told me, "He's got a five pm curfew" – and I was ashamed at myself for recognising the splutter of his car before he even trailed into the kitchen, meeting my eye on the way to the living room.
We exchanged nods and hey's, but with the house buzzing with his family, we couldn't engage in much more.
I didn't know what to expect between wrapping up my tutoring session and the dinner I had been panicking about all weekend but being offered a glass of wine hadn't been part of it. I declined, citing my age and Mrs. Proust seemed impressed by my candour.
"Trial one, passed with flying colours," Lauren informed me under her breath.
Her father arrived home in a casual suit, booming voice travelling from the corridor and almost making me drop Lauren's sketchpad. She'd bought it out for me to flick through, in the living room, where Mrs. Proust had permitted us to retire to as she started on dinner. Lauren snickered, and patted my knee comfortingly as Mr. Proust marched closer. He slid into the kitchen, setting his messenger bag down and greeting his wife enthusiastically.
The way Mrs. Proust melted at the sight of her husband, breaking out into a smile and rushing to embrace him, made my heart yearn for simpler times. My mother had once greeted Reece with the same vigour when he came home from work each day, spinning him around the loungeroom as I groaned and told them to get a room.
Mr. Proust smacked a kiss to the top of his wife's head, and then his eyes narrowed in on me.
"Miles!" his volume made me cringe, but what confused me was his overtly cheerful tone. "Nice to finally meet you. Come over here."
I handed Lauren her sketchpad, and shuffled over to him. "Afternoon. Hello. Good to..."
He clapped my hand in his, nearly pulling me off my feet with the enthusiasm of his shaking. He towered over me, easily two heads taller than I was in plain sneakers. "We keep missing each other. Great to have you finally around; where are the boys?"
"In their rooms," Mrs. Proust sighed obviously.
"Seriously?" he rolled his eyes to me, bringing me in on the joke. He released me, leaving my hand tingling slightly from the intensity of his grip and threw open his arms to Lauren. "How did the big debate go, sweetheart?"
"We won," Lauren said simply, kissing both of her father's cheeks. "They've agreed to give the option of shorts in the uniform shop."
"She could convince a pilot that the sky is green, this one," Mr. Proust told me, rubbing his daughter's shoulder affectionately. "Can I offer you a glass of wine, Miles?"
Lauren pinched his side. "He already passed that test, Dad. Leave him alone."
"Ah, good," he flashed me an easy smile. Caleb clearly got his RBF from his maternal side. "Well, I'm going to drag those boys out of their dens. Look forward to sitting down with you, Miles."
I nodded curtly and sucked in my stomach to avoid brushing up against him as he passed. Lauren wriggled her eyebrows at me, and I flipped her off as subtly as I could with both her parents in the room.
As the smell of tomato, basil and melted cheese wafted through the house, the kitchen filled up with bodies and voices. I sat awkwardly off to the side as in-jokes were laughed at, arms were punched, and days were caught up on. Caleb had situated himself with his back to me, which was probably for the best in his case; however, it was torture for me to keep my eyes forward, careful not to be caught lingering on anything objectionable. He was still in his uniform, thankfully the school trousers rather than the shorts I had on. Lauren was the only one not dressed from school, which was understandable considering the Tranquillity uniform was a whale-bone corset away from being two-hundred years out of style.
"So, Miles," Mr. Proust, with one booming remark, directed the attention of everyone in the room towards me. I immediately felt hot, and wished I'd accepted the wine, parent impressions be damned. "How's your final year treating you?"
I felt obliged to fill the silence immediately. Silence was even worse in a room with eight other people. "It's... going. Slowly. But quickly at the same time. I'm looking forward to it being over. Get out into the world."
"Yeah?" Mr. Proust leaned back against the kitchen counter. His head reached the top of the cabinets; if he reached up too quickly, he would have hit the ceiling. "What do you want to do next year?"
I should have known the question was coming, but I hadn't prepared for it. Lauren saved me from garbling my response. "Oh, Papa. Next you'll be asking him what his intentions are with me."
Mr. Proust raised his hands in self-defence. "I'm interested! Sue me."
"University?" Mrs. Proust prompted, more adamantly than her husband.
"Maybe," I managed. "I might work for a year."
"See, Ma?" Jake spoke up, gesturing wildly at me. "Everyone works straight out of school these days. It's not just for dropkicks."
Mrs. Proust let out a despondent hum, and Jake clutched his heart in mock offence.
"Where do you want to work?" Mr. Proust asked.
"Anywhere that will have me," I said weakly, earning me a laugh.
"You should sell commissions," Lauren told me, leaning back on the couch we were situated by. "I got a couple of jobs from posting my watercolours on Twitter."
"And how much did you make exactly?" Caleb asked, playfully snide.
Lauren glared him into submission. "Miles's art is more accessible."
"What, no dicks?" Seth chortled, and Lauren snapped her incensed gaze to him. It apparently had no effect on her immediate family, because Seth just laughed in her face. She pushed off the couch to make a dash at him, smacking his arm with her sketchpad while Mr. Proust told them to behave half-heartedly.
Caleb turned, and part of me was grateful because there was no longer a temptation for my eyeline to drop, but the other part of me cursed him because his face was much harder to look at without swooning. I focused on the wall slightly behind him, fingers drumming on the couch.
"You could get a busking permit," he suggested, eyes glistening. It felt like it was a statement just for me, but of course we were surrounded, and follow-ups were bound to be made.
"Busking?" Dim repeated. She was bouncing Frankie on her knee in the loveseat. "What do you play, Miles?"
"He sings," Caleb elaborated when I failed to answer immediately.
Mrs Proust looked doubtful. "Really?"
If I was on my own with Caleb, I would have answered that question with a demonstration. Stammering out the affirmative didn't seem to convince his mother of anything, least of all my vocal abilities.
"Busking and art commission," Mrs. Proust mused. "Not exactly a living wage."
Despite her condemnation, I tried not to fall back on introversion. "Well, I was planning on getting a job at the bank. Your children are pushing me to a starving artist lifestyle."
At first, I worried my joke had fallen flat. But Mrs. Proust's face finally cracked a smile, and she gave me an approving nod. Caleb laughed lightly, and then the oven timer went off, finally pulling the attention off me. It was like a lead weight removed from my chest; my shoulder dropped, my lungs expanded, and my heart rate slowed back to a safe, everyday rhythm.
After two years of improvised dinners, meat and frozen vegetables in a separate side of the house to Reece, with my only reprieve being dinner at Aaron's house, eating at the Proust's dining table was as bizarre as it was delightful. Mum had always insisted on family dinners, even when it had been just the two of us. Mrs. Proust was a much better cook than she had been, but the memory made me swell with emotion. I was thankful for the copious amounts of food piled onto my plate, because it gave me an excuse not to talk.
Lauren sat to one side of my and Caleb sat across from me. Mr. Proust sat to my other side, at the head of the table opposite his wife, and every time he laughed the table shook.
"Is it just you and your dad?" Dimitra finally directed a question at me, catching Frankie on her second lap of the table. I swallowed my mouthful, and with it, my immediate desire to bite back the age old not my dad.
"Reece was my mum's partner," I explained level-headedly. "She passed away two years ago."
I always had trouble following up that particular piece of information; it generally prompted a pitying silence and aww from whoever was listening, and I never knew how to respond to it. 'Thank you' seemed plain odd; thank you, for expressing sympathy for my situation?
Dimitra didn't skip a beat. "I'm so sorry to hear that. You two must be close."
I could feel Caleb's eyes on me, and I shrugged. I didn't want to make Reece sound like the top bloke everyone though he was, but it wasn't the platform to air my grievances. "I don't have any family on this side of the world. It was Mandurey with Reece or England."
"And you choose Mandurey?" Lauren groaned. "You could have been British."
"I don't do well in the cold," I tilted my shoulder towards her. "And if I'd gone to England, I never would have met you."
Lauren poked me in the side ruthlessly. "Dream a little bigger, Stewart."
I cringed around my ticklish areas, eyes flicking to Caleb. He granted me a private smile. I had expected him to be at least as on edge as I was, but he seemed positively relaxed in my presence.
Then I remembered he had a safety net in the form of a fake girlfriend, and one he didn't need to prove to his family. There was no reason for him to be nervous, so long as he trusted me to keep playing my part. Which I would, faithfully; as long as he kept brushing knees with me under the table, one too many times to be totally accidental.
Conversation was surprisingly easy, after the ice had been broken. Caleb's parents seemed legitimately interested in my life, and Lauren kept every discussion safe by cutting off anything too close to home with a snarky comment. The Proust's didn't let a stranger at their table interrupt their dynamic, and when I managed to keep up, I was made to feel very much at home. Jake ranted about Aidan McCaffrey and asked me for an update on Max, which prompted an equally passionate tirade from Mrs. Proust in which she kept dropping into Greek, which Caleb continued to remind her about. Mr. Proust asked what sports I played, and Seth perked up when I confessed, they weren't really my thing. He declared me living proof that his aversion to team games was not an abnormal sentiment.
Frankie told me my hair was pretty and asked to touch it. That was honestly the highlight of the night.
The Prousts didn't give me many chances to recede into my own mind, and I appreciated it; there was a sadness there that had nothing to do with them. I'd never have a family as large and close as them, would never sit at a dining table piled with food trying to get a word in. Mum had been my one chance at that. I'd never resented not having siblings, I was a very content to have all of Mum's attention as I was growing up, but watching Lauren, Caleb, Jake and Seth made me pine for the impossible. Someone who knew all the ways there were to drive me up the wall but also every way to make me laugh. Someone to share the burden of experiences with, someone who often understood me more than I understood myself like Lauren did with Caleb. I supposed the closest I'd ever had to that was Aaron, but Aaron also had Max. If he decided I'd betrayed his trust for the last time, if this period of silence was him distancing himself for good, he would be just fine and I'd have no one.
The reality of dinner with the Proust was that I'd never get to be a part of their world. As soon as Lauren and I staged a tasteful breakup, they'd never want to see me again. My developing friendship with Lauren wouldn't survive that, and whatever was emerging between Caleb and I would be cut off. Who got with their sister's ex? I had screwed myself in that department. At least I could enjoy it while it lasted, before I was back to eating leftovers in silence across from Reece.
I felt a faint pressure on the arch of my foot and emerged from the dark recesses of my mind to find Caleb staring at me. His foot pressed lightly on mine again and he tilted his head, a subtle question in his eyes. Shaking off the dredges of my own thoughts - there was no point mourning for the future when it was inevitable - I shot him my brightest smile and turned my eyes back to the chaos of the conversation. I expected Caleb to remove his foot, but it remained there, an anchoring weight that kept my head in the present.
Before I knew it, the dinner I'd been dreading for all weekend was over. Mrs. Proust forced the leftovers into my arms at the door, claiming my skinniness as her next personal project to cure. I never thought I'd have two European women who weren't my mother so determined to feed me. Mr. Proust shook my hand again, welcoming me back anytime – "well, not anytime," Mrs. Proust clarified, eyeing me cautiously – and Seth and Jake farewelled me with much less sinister undertones than the last time I'd met them.
I farewelled Lauren with a hug. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me. Just do your homework," she told me.
"Not just that," I squeezed her shoulders. "About Aaron. And... you know what? Just... thank you."
She smiled to me encouragingly before Caleb stepped out onto the porch, jangling his car keys in one fist. "My curfew has been extended to get you home safely. Lauren?"
She made a face. "No thanks. See you soon, Miles."
She left us on the porch, shovelling the dogs aside to slip into the house. Caleb jerked his head towards his car, and we made our way across his front lawn, freshly dewy from the night air.
"I know your angle," I placed my hands on my hips as he unlocked the doors. "Drive like a lunatic to get me home, and then drop by your girlfriend's place. Hasn't your poor mother suffered enough?"
"No need to drive like a lunatic," Caleb retorted, dropping into the driver's seat. "Since my girlfriend lives in your closet."
I flustered, despite the innocence of the joke. Caleb's car rattled to life, his headlights casting shadows across the lonely road.
"I'm sorry that my family are..." Caleb paused, searching the air for the right word, "... hard to follow."
"They're great," I assured him. "There are a lot of them. It's not what I'm used to."
"And to think, I remember when it was just me and baby Jake," Caleb mused. "Auntie Dim's only been living with us for a year. Her husband died doing military service, and she was living in the barracks at the time. They promised to take care of her, but she wanted Frankie to grow up close to family."
"Family means a lot," I thought about how willing Uncle Thomas had been to drop everything and adopt a teenager at peak hormones. "They're really lovely."
Caleb allowed my compliments to linger, only answering when we stopped at the end of his street. "And now you're wondering why I wouldn't tell them, right?"
"It's a little confusing," I admitted.
Caleb breathed out a laugh. He didn't answer, but after we pulled up to the main road, streetlights making the interior of the car glow, he spoke tentatively. "Lauren. She knows, doesn't she?"
I didn't answer, because I didn't really think he was asking me a question. I waited tentatively for his reaction, but he only stared ahead, apparently unfazed.
"You didn't tell her?" he asked.
"No!" I denied loudly. "Jesus. No way."
"I know," he didn't sound entirely convinced. "She doesn't think we're..."
"No," I confirmed, although it probably sounded as put out as I felt. "I made it clear."
The street was packed with roadworks, orange flashing lights rolling across Caleb's features. The silence between us was punctuated by the distance sound of horns as car expressed their annoyance at the holdup in the only way they knew how. I considered switching on the radio, just to give our tension a soundscape.
"So... have the shackles been lifted?" I asked, hoping the change in subject would coax back the more light-hearted side of Caleb.
"Not really. I'm on the clock," he gestured to the time on the dashboard. "But the bruise won me a bunch of pity points."
"Maybe we could organise a pretend double date," I suggested. "That way Lauren could keep an eye on you."
Caleb snorted. "And what, go out on the town with my little sister?"
"Oh no, we ditch Lauren the second we make it out of the house," I assured him. He shook his head, but he was still smiling as I continued. "I've got to say, being an above average student is really putting a damper on my social life."
"Are you saying that dinner with my parents isn't exactly where you want to be on a Tuesday night?"
The car inched forwards, and I rolled in my seat to face him. "It's a close second to clubbing, that's for sure."
Caleb glanced across at me, safe from having to watch the road by the hold up on the road. The orange splashed across his face reminded me of my monarch butterfly look. I kind of wanted to send it to him, just to hear him stumble over his thoughts on it.
"Tell you what, first sign of freedom I get, you'll be the first to know."
I placed an exaggerated hand on my heart. "I'm honoured."
He dragged his gaze back to the road, and I settled in my seat for a long trek through traffic. I became so hypnotised by the flashing road signs that when I felt a hand brush my bangs, I nearly hit the roof. Caleb's hand was gone as quickly as it arrived, leaving a distinctly tingling sensation on my forehead.
"Lint," he said simply, shifting the car into neutral as a way of distracting his hand.