Exotic - Chapter 40: Chapter 40

Monday came, and Caleb still hadn't responded to my increasingly insistent messages. I was past the point of being ashamed for double texting; anyone who went through Caleb's phone would have me painted as desperate. Despite the humiliation of being ghosted, I was still vibrating with anticipation to see him when Aaron pulled into his usual spot.
"Don't you have Modern History first period?" Aaron asked, flicking off his wipers. A light drizzle had been falling all morning, cloaking the city in a light fog. On any other day, I would have been reluctant to leave the warm cocoon of his car. My fingers were itching on the door handle, only just restraining myself from throwing it open. "Why so eager? I know you didn't have time to finish the homework."
I slapped my forehead. "Fuck."
"I cannot believe I remember these things. I don't even take Mod," Aaron snorted.
From over my seat, Max clapped my shoulder, "You guys are picking me up after training, right?"
"In your dreams, you freeloader," Aaron slapped him in the back of his head. "I do have a life outside chauffeuring you around, you know."
Max's smile faltered a little, and I wondered if he was remembering our conversation from the day before. But it was fixed in place not a moment later, and he dragged his soccer bag out of the backseat with a hurried goodbye before the door slammed, and Aaron and I were alone in the car.
I went for the door handle again, only to find it locked. I jiggled it a little and turned to find Aaron fidgeting with the central locking panel. His eyes were pinned on me with laser focus, and I knew I wasn't getting out of the car until he was done with me. I found myself gulping.
"So," he finally said with a dramatic pause. "Caleb Proust."
I let my eye fall closed like shutter doors. I'd been avoiding the subject whenever Aaron raised it. He had let me back out of talking about it five times in total, and I got the distinct feeling he had run out of patience.
"How long?"
I sighed through my nose, long and loud and exceptionally Aaron-like. "You get why I didn't tell you, right?"
"Of course I get it," he said gently. "It wasn't your secret to tell. But I wish you'd told me there was someone. Then I wouldn't have made dumb assumptions about the source of your brooding, like unrequited crushes on straight men."
"I don't brood."
"Too true. You mope. It's thoroughly depressing to watch."
I kicked my feet up on the dash. We were going to be there for a while. "For the record, we're not... anything. We weren't. I don't think we'll... he's..."
Aaron, cruel as he was smug, just let me stammer. I finally slammed my hands down by my sides.
"We're not together."
Aaron raised both eyebrows. "Does he know that?"
I dropped my head to my right shoulder to glare at him. "He was drunk last night. He's not usually like... that."
"I know. He's one hundred percent the brooding type," Aaron mused. "So, you and Lauren was just a cover for you to carry on your torrent love affair behind his parents back? How Downtown Abbey of you."
"I prefer Game of Thrones," I slipped down to the floor, staring blankly at the ceiling. "It's a little more... complicated than that."
So, I told him everything. By the time I wrapped up, with a flustered recap of the night before, Aaron's face had gone from giddy to concerned, with an expressionless mask that I couldn't decipher.
He wiped his hands on his thighs. "Fuck. What a mess."
I huffed a little laugh. "Thanks."
"No, seriously, Miles," the side of his mouth turned down, and he knitted his fingers into a tight knot in his lap. "What are you doing with that guy?"
I flinched, retreating into the hunched shell of my shoulders. "What do you mean?"
"Miles, as your best friend and current only source for relationship advice, considering you haven't told anyone else about this – red flag, by the way," he cut off my protest with a lip-zipping gesture. "I'm about to lay down some truths. One. He threatened to out you to Reece."
"He apologised," I protested. "And I threatened basically the same thing. It was a bad night for both of us."
Aaron looked sceptical. "You came back at him for threatening your anonymity and livelihood. But moving right along. Talk about mood swings. He tells you not to talk to him at school, then wants to hang out with you on the weekends? How is that okay?"
I snorted. "Come on, Aaron. He can't hang out with me at school. People would talk."
"If he really cared about you, he wouldn't mind," he retorted. "If he wanted something real with you, he wouldn't have made up a girlfriend so he had a heteronormative excuse to mess around with you. How exactly did you benefit from the Lauren situation? I can tell you how he did."
"Lauren was a stupid idea, which was my fault," I said firmly. "That's why I ended it. Look, Caleb never made any real advances before last night. He made our relationship clear, I was the one with the crush."
He stared at me, disbelieving. "You cannot be this dumb."
"Enlighten me."
"I'm going to make this real simple. Primary school level stuff," he said, carefully. "Boy don't give rides to drunk boys they don't like. Boys don't play footsies under the dining table with boys they don't like. Boys don't freak out and sleep in a park after kissing a boy they don't like. Boys don't..."
"Alright. Got it," I pulled at my collar, feeling overly hot. "Why are you mad then?"
"Because he's treating you like a... prostitute!" Aaron cried, exasperated. "No. Not even, because you're not getting to do the fun stuff. He's treating you like an ex-girlfriend he can call up for advice and PG13+ fondling then ignore in front of his friends. He gets touchy and sad when he's drunk. He tells his family he's with a socially acceptable date so he can grind on you in a club without having to answer any uncomfortable questions. And now, he isn't texting you back. You are his ex-girlfriend, Miles."
"No," I said loudly, although my tone fluctuated. "You don't know him. He's so caught up in being the perfect son, perfect friend, perfect student, perfect fucking human that he won't even consider an alternative where some people might take issue with him."
"I am taking issue with him. Right now," Aaron said, firmly. "He's jerking you around."
"He doesn't know what he wants," I countered. "He doesn't know he's allowed it."
"Great. Let him figure that out. On his own."
Silence hung between us. My heart was hammering, and my vision was a little blurred, but my head was hung, defeated. The part of me that didn't ache for Caleb constantly, the part that wasn't tensed in preparation to argue back, knew Aaron was right.
"I know boys like Caleb," when Aaron spoke again, his tone was gentle. "I've locked lips with boys like Caleb. Remember Robert Thompson? Remember how that ended?"
He's different. I was desperate to say it. But the words wouldn't come out. The blank notification screen of my phone made me wonder, is he?
"What's the most you'll ever be with Caleb, at this rate?" Aaron proposed. "Fuckbuddies?"
I winched at the harsh language.
"If that's what you want, I'm not going to stand it your way," Aaron swallowed. "But I have seen the way you look at him, and I think he's going to break your heart. Please don't let him."
I licked my lips slowly, deep in thought. I hadn't left out the best of Caleb. I'd told him about the phone call during my panic attack. The gentle touches, the kind words. You're braver than I am. Sticking up to Aidan, and his realisation that being friends with a homophobe made him an accessory the fact regardless of his own sexuality.
Come back to me.
But the fact Aaron had still drawn that, despite my internal bias, might have said something all on its own.
"I'm not going to ask him to come out," I said quietly. "Not for me. Fuck, I don't know if he even wants to talk to me after the other night. But I'm not going to stand in front of him and tell him I don't want to... don't want us to..."
Aaron's hand slipped into mine and he squeezed, a little too hard. As if he thought I'd slip away if he didn't remind me I was still there. "I'm not saying Caleb's a bad guy. I'm not saying he has to walk into Truman in an 'I Heart Miles Stewart' clapperboard, although, it wouldn't hurt if he did."
I laughed at the mental image and then blushed. Students had begun streaming up the steps as the morning siren sounded, like ants to escape the rain.
"I'm not saying that you two shouldn't be... friends. Hell, he would be lucky to have a friend like you," he conceded. "But I am saying that if you and Caleb get together now, you will spend whatever short time you are together trying to fix him, and getting mad that he isn't ready to come out, and being miserable when he looks through you in the hallway to keep up appearances. And he will spend it either freaking out that you two will be seen together, or apologising for said freaking out. He's split down the middle. Until he comes to terms with whatever self-loathing is keeping him from being himself, he's not ready to date anyone."
I stared at my hands and didn't say a word. Aaron might not have realised it, but he might as well have been talking about me in the same breath.
He's split down the middle. Until he comes to terms with whatever self-loathing is keeping him from being himself, he's not ready to date anyone.
I checked my phone again.
Caleb still hadn't texted me.
"You're going to meet with him anyway, aren't you?" Aaron asked quietly.
I swallowed, tucking my phone away. Out of sight, out of mind. "I have to. I'm going out of my mind. And I want to know if he is too."
Aaron unlocked the door and slouched back in his seat. "Just... please. Keep your guard up. Put aside how you feel and actually listen to what he says to you. And ask the questions you need to hear the answer to, even if you think they will hurt you."
I reached across the centre console to squeeze his arm. I placed three fingers in the air in a mock Scout salute. "I promise. Caleb Proust is not going to break my heart."
He gave me a weary smile as I slid out of the passenger seat, flipping up my hood and dashing through the rain. I slipped and stumble my way up the precarious steps, fumbling with my phone, trying to compose a message that would catch Caleb's eye in the way the others hadn't.
alright, name a time and place or i'm signing up for the soccer team.
max told me you were looking for benchwarmers.
"Miles!"
My blood ran cold at the familiar voice. I glanced over my shoulder to see Jake Proust shouldering through the swarm of students, with an expression that could only be described as determined. It might have been my imagination, but he seemed taller and broader than I remembered, dark hair shadowing his eyes. The students around him seemed to notice this and got well out of his way. A few perked up, clearly keen to see a fight go down. Bloodthirsty mongrels.
I did the only reasonable thing. I turned and bolted.
Thankfully, my Modern History class was only a little way down the hall. I ducked inside, sidestepping through the aisles and hurdling over open bags before collapsing over one of the front desks. Miss Riley looked up from the stack of test papers she was grading with a jolt, blinking at me behind her glasses. I pulled my hood over my head and hid my face against the biting plastic of the desk.
"Miles?" she asked unsurely. "Is everything alright?"
I gave her a weak thumbs up.
The girl beside me gave me a sharp poke in the arm. "This seat's taken. Don't you usually sit up the back?"
"We don't have assigned seats in this classroom, Jocelyn," Miss Riley said sharply. I usually would have moved, but there was no way I was taking my usual place near the door, where anyone could just grab me and drag me out into the hallway.
The room filled out and went quiet, and Miss Riley stood behind her desk. "Alright. Homework in the right corner of your desk so I can collect it, while you turn to page 345. Becca, if you could read for us this morning?"
While everyone else rustled around in their bags for homework I had left, uncompleted, on my desk at home, I opened my phone craftily under the table. My heart leaped when I saw an alert for a new message. Caleb had finally broken his silence.
I finish soccer at 4:30. I can meet after that.
Come to the field.
I locked my phone and hoped my cheeks weren't as red as they felt. Being so lightheaded after such a paint-by-the-numbers message was ridiculous. Miss Riley stopped by my desk, glanced at the empty corner of my desk, and breathed out a sigh. She didn't say a word, to her credit; just moved forwards and started to write on the board.
I had five hours to find the questions that, as Aaron had put it, I might not like the answers to.
Caleb had five hours to figure out what he wanted.