Exotic - Chapter 41: Chapter 41

Aaron offered to wait for me after school, but I optimistically told him I'd find my own way home. He's spent most of the day trying to talk me out of meeting Caleb, as I moved from location to location to avoid Jake. Eventually, he gave up, but the concerned glances didn't stop until he was in his car, forcing himself to leave me behind.
Modern History wasn't the only homework I had neglected. Mr. Bloomsbury expressed his disappointment in me in front of the entire class, lamenting about how much better I'd been doing. I hid in my collar as my classmates gaped and snorted.
After school, I walked circles through the library until it closed, and then laps around the science block until a concern Ms. Trudeau left her office to ask me if something was wrong. I forced myself to sit still after then, burrowing under a tree, drumming my fingers on an unopened textbook in the quadrant until my watch read 4:25. I was worried that I'd get to the soccer field and find myself being stood up. Or worse, run into Jake. It was his hunting ground as well, after all. I was a trespasser.
Boys from the soccer team were escaping to their cars as I crossed the carpark to get to the field, blasting music and swinging bags and punching shoulders. Max waved to me, but my focus was singular. He frowned before ducking into a friend's car, and as the last stragglers swung out to the road, Truman High School was left unnervingly quiet. Save one pattern of noise.
I heard Caleb before I saw him. Thump. And then silence, thick with frustration.
Thump. Pause. Thump.
"Fuck."
I shoved my hands in my pockets to hide my fidgeting and ducked out onto the field. Grass squelched under my school shoes, heavy enough to drag my feet. It had been raining steadily all day. It had turned the world into a soggy mush, like soaked cardboard – although the smell was intoxicating.
Caleb was out on the goal square, booting soccer balls into the net with an intensity that made my pace stutter to a stop. It was as if he was trying to break a hole in the back of the net, and every time it held was a personal failure. Thump. Fuck. Thump. Shit. Thump.
"You're going to rip some poor goalkeeper in half."
He faltered and the next ball went sailing over the net and into the stands. Caleb folded himself over his knees, sucking in breath, very pointedly not looking at me. I stayed where I was, holding my ground a fair distance from him. While the sun made him glow, the overcast sky made the lines of his body bolder. His hair was damp, hanging his eyes, but he made no move to push it back.
He stared, and I stood, and we both said nothing at first.
"Hey," I broke first because it was so fucking awkward.
He didn't respond, but he didn't look away. His jersey was dragging at the shoulders from the weight of the rain. His gaze was uncertain, deciding whether to fight or flee. His chest rose and fell, hands gripping his knees as he caught his breath.
"What the fuck, Caleb," I said shortly, keeping my tone level.
He looked away at that, kicking up a patch of grass with his toe. "You wanted to meet. Say what you have to say. I've got shit to do."
"You want to lead with that?" I demanded.
His lips pursed in a hard lip, and he righted himself. "I don't know what you want me to lead with. You were the one who wanted to meet."
"What about explaining why you're ignoring me?"
He paused, spat over his shoulder, and walked over to the boundary line. I followed him to his gym bag, head aflame with seething resentment for his passive attitude. I hadn't expected him to sweep me off my feet and plant one on me under the showering sky, but this cold indifference felt like we'd fallen back to square 1.
He pulled a water bottle from his bag and took a swig. "I haven't been ignoring you. I haven't been messaging you, sure, but I never did before. We're not friends."
"No," I let out a short, harsh laugh. "We're not."
He pumped the water bottle over his head, and then shook his hair, sending crystal droplets flying off in every direction. Water streamed down his face as he pulled a windbreaker from his bag and pulled it over his quivering bare arms. "Look. What I did on Saturday was out of line and you don't need to worry about it happening again. Ever. Is that what you wanted to hear?"
Fuck no. If I died with your lips on my skin, I would die happy. "No. No, that's not what I want to hear. I don't want to shelve this and carry on like we did last time. I want to talk about it."
Caleb seemed to consider this, cheeks hollowing and un-hollowing as he clenched his jaw. "What is there to talk about? I was hammered."
I had come battle-ready, but my defences were quickly abandoning me. "That's how you're going to play this off? A drunken mistake, like kissing your boss's girlfriend at a Christmas party. Do you think that makes me feel better?"
Water was dripping off the arc of his lip. "It's the truth."
He blinked more when he was lying. He was blinking so much I could hardly see through to his eyes, couldn't catch a glimpse of those cold pools of water to draw answers from. His eyelashes guarded his soul against me like rod-iron spikes.
"I should feel sorry for you," I spat out. "You must really hate yourself to keep up all this self-torment. Fake girlfriends and locker room talk and shutting down every instinct you have, because god forbid you show someone a little vulnerability. We're not all wolves, Caleb. We won't jump on it."
He played with the zipper on his jacket, shoulders hunched to his ears. Thunder rumbled ominously overhead, advising me in no uncertain terms to get to the point.
"Don't you think your big Greek family is going to want to meet Steph eventually?" I demanded. "Start asking where their grandchildren are? Are you going to cut them out of your life just so you can keep up the heterosexual illusion? Or are you going to trap some poor girl while you're pretty and make both of you miserable because you'll never get it up for a woman..."
"Jesus, Miles!" he snarled, nearly tearing the zipper off as he jerked it closed. He shot up, dragging the bag up over his shoulder. "How you ever thought, for one second, what it would be like for me to come out at this school? What would happen? I wouldn't be captain of the team anymore because no way those boys would take direction from a queer. Aidan would come after me, and he'd probably have half the boys in Truman back on his side. I'd become a sexuality instead of a person, something to be gawked at. Forgive me if I don't want to spend my final year being poked and prodded like some fucking science experiment."
I threw up my hands in the air, exasperated. "I'm not asking you to come out!"
"Then what do you want, Miles?" he demanded, rather abruptly, "Me. Right? You want me."
I stammered through a half-coherent thought and then sealed my lips. I had no response. And I was sure I was as red as Caleb, and that was all the answer he needed. My blush prickled at my cheeks like a thousand sewing needles beneath my skin.
"You had your chance," he clenched a fist on the strap of his bag. His jaw was clenched, but in his hard stare I saw a quiver of hurt. Hurt he was desperately holding at bay, disguising with short, harsh words. "I asked you to come back. I waited for you to come back. You didn't. We're done here."
He turned and started walking. I had to jog to keep pace with him. There were knots in my throat, my gut, my lungs but I pressed on, no matter how desperate I probably looked. If Aaron saw me running after Caleb like some spurred dog, he'd be horrified.
"Right. So this is about Saturday," I circled around to cut him off, but he immediately shouldered past me. We were almost to his car, halfway across the deserted parking lot. "Well I'm sorry I left you with your dick in your hand, but bullshit if you think that's what I want. A drunken fuck, and then I get to sneak out the back window, so your friends don't see me?"
Caleb's pace slowed, and then ramped up again. "Leave me alone, Miles."
I stayed on his heels all the way to his car. He threw open the trunk and tossed in his bag blindly. When he rounded to the driver's door, I cut him off. Crossed my arms over my chest as if I stood any chance of stopping him if he really wanted to get by me.
"Would you talk to me?" I demanded. He put a hand on my shoulder and weakly tried to shift me. When that failed, he rocked back on his heels, irises flickering like blue fire.
"What do you want to talk about? Saturday?" his voice were shaking a little. I doubted it was the cold. "I'd rather forget."
"Not Saturday," I groaned. "This. Us."
Caleb's eyes flicked skyward as if asking for help from cosmic forces. Or maybe he was just hoping lightning would strike him down, saving him the embarrassment of the conversation I was demanding we have. Tension rippled between us like a current, a cord jammed haphazardly through our ribs and into the meat of our hearts.
Then Caleb pulled the plug.
"There is no us," he said, so firmly that I almost believed he meant it. My resolve remained, but I was sure he could read my disappointment as plain as day because he dug the knife in deeper. "Are you this clingy with every person you've ever kissed? Or am I just unlucky?"
It stung like he knew it would. And it threw me off enough that he was able to slip by me and throw open the car door. He got behind the wheel, but I slotted myself between the car door and the frame, close enough to feel the heat rolling off his body and effectively blocking him from driving off.
"If it didn't mean anything," I hissed, "Then what's the problem? I'm not giving you an ultimatum here. I want to be your friend. I want to help you. You keep shutting me out."
"I have friends," Caleb said sharply.
"The kind of friends who would turn their backs on you if they knew the first thing about you. The real you," I countered. "I'm not a child. I know that hooking up isn't an admission of feelings. But I'd hate for you to throw it all away, if there is something here, because you're scared."
It hit home, and Caleb breathed out unevenly. "I am scared, Miles. Of you. You fucking confuse me."
I rocked back on my heels. Out of all the things he could have said, the excuses he could have made, the one he'd chosen caught me the most off guard. Scared? There was nothing scary about me. I ran from every confrontation I'd ever come up against - unless you counted the confrontation of current, because I was far from ready to back down - and I was slighter than the average middle schooler.
It was Caleb who was the scary one, with his present unreadable expression, hot-and-cold disposition and good looks that had rendered me dumb on more than one occasion. I gaped openly at his lack of self-awareness.
"Because I gave you blue balls?" I demanded. "Because I didn't drop to my knees like everyone you've ever had, just because you showed a passing fancy?"
"No," Caleb snapped. His hands found his hair, wringing through it in despair. His knee was jumping on the spot, and his eyes were wide and helpless. "Because you play games. You flirt and flirt and get me all worked up for you and then the second I open up and make myself vulnerable, you're running. And somehow I'm the pussy?"
I leaned against the frame of the car, resting my hand on the doorframe and caging him in my with my body. I lowered my voice to a cordial hum, speaking to him quietly, intimately. "I wasn't scared to go back. I wanted to. It would have been so easy."
Caleb sat motionless, staring dead ahead. Waiting. Trembling, ever so slightly, as if with anticipation. The unspoken, why didn't you? was palpable.
"But you were drunk. And I've never..." I bit my lip and pressed my eyes shut. "I don't want you like that."
I pushed myself upright, bracing on arm against the door. My heart was in my throat, hammering away behind my pulse, and I thought I might pass out. My words came out garbled and messy.
"I thought... flirting, I thought we were just talking, y'know? Like people do when they..." I felt my toes curling inside my shoes. My eyes were fixed on a wet patch on a grass skid on the inside of his thigh, and his hot heavy breathing against my sternum. "Of course I wanted to go back to that party, you're fucking... you know, fucking beautiful. But you know that, and you know I think that already because I consistently fall over myself around you, but I thought you just wanted Sephora because everyone wants Sephora, but on Saturday I wasn't even in drag, I was just me and you still... look. I didn't want you to wake up and look at me and feel like you'd made a mistake. Can you honestly say if I had come back, you wouldn't have woken up the next morning not hating yourself? Hating me?"
"Why would you care?" Caleb's voice was barely audible.
"Because I don't want you. I like you," I hated the way my voice wavered when I said it, so I added, "Idiot."
The steering wheel groaned, and I could see that Caleb was clenching it too hard. I finally tilted my head to look at him, and I hoped the wetness in my eyes was just condensation from the rain. I hoped he thought it was, anyway. His gaze was so intensely sincere that it should have made my heart melt. It should have been followed by his hands around my waist and tumbling over the centre console with our legs hanging out the car and our mouth sealing in hot relief.
I watching his expression melt off, dripping down into his lap and then slipping out of the car. It replaced with a cold hardness, icy eyes resolute, and jaw set. It warned me of what was to come before it even came out of his mouth.
It didn't soften the blow. Not in the slightest.
"You're not my type."
The words hit like a column of fire. His face was angled down. There was something in the way his body was hunched over that was profoundly sad, which made me want to kneel down and tell him I knew he was dropping that bomb just to get me to run in the opposite direction, but that I wasn't going to. Not from him. Not when he needed me the most.
I swallowed. Stepped back from the car. Caleb didn't close the door immediately - he waited for my response, the gentleman.
"Yeah," I shoved my hands in my pockets. "I'm starting to think you're not mine either, asshole."
And the lie was as obvious as anything, and the agony in my gut meant I could barely get the words out, but Caleb slammed the door in a split second. The engine roared to life, and then he was peeling out of the parking lot, leaving me coughing on exhaust and furiously wiping at the prickling feeling behind my eyes. A rolling stone of razors sat in my chest, painful and heavy and constant.
I staggered to my knees in the gravel, just as the clouds opened above me. I rolled onto my back with my knees at my chest, ignore the digging grit in the bare strip of my back. The droplets were fat and soaked me quickly, as I stared up at the endless sky. My limbs were useless to pick me up and carry me out of the rain.
My heart was in tatters.
If anyone looked out on the parking lot, they would have found a strange sight; Miles Stewart, social hermit, insouciant C student, sprawled out in the carpark as the rain soaked him through. But at least the tears, when they came, mingled with the rain and made them indistinguishable.