Chapter 17 Caleb
SEVENTEEN
CALEB
Dr. Kaur’s office always smells the same.
Lavender-scented cleaner, printer ink, and that faint underlying tang of strong coffee. The waiting room is quiet when I check in, it’s just me and some faded motivational poster about “growth not being linear,” and somehow that feels like a personal attack.
Dana at the desk smiles when she sees me. “Hey, Caleb. You’re right on time. You can head on back, she’s ready for you.”
Great. No time to bail.
I knock once on the half-open door.
“Come in,” Dr. Kaur calls.
She’s in her usual chair, notebook in her lap, pen at the ready. Soft lighting, a bookshelf, and a plant in the corner that’s somehow still alive. It’s all very safe. Very gentle. The kind of place where normal people say normal therapy things.
I lower myself onto the couch, backpack on the floor at my feet. My leg’s already bouncing.
“Morning, Caleb,” she says. “Rough day yesterday?”
I huff out a half-laugh. “You could say that.”
She nods like she expected this. “You asked Dana to mark it as urgent.”
“Yeah.” My throat feels tight. “I was… not doing great.”
Her gaze softens. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”
Not really.
But I pick at a loose thread on my sleeve and start anyway. “It was a lot. The away game, coming back to campus late, my dad calling as soon as I got to my room… classes, misplacing my paper, forgetting to eat. Just—” I make a vague gesture in the air. “Everything.”
“What did your dad say?”
I stare at the pattern in the rug, she knows my dad is one big trigger for me. “Same old shit. Did you meet any girls? Don’t isolate yourself. Don’t let Miguel drag you down.” My mouth twists around the last part. “He thinks I’m regressing.”
I watch as she scribbles something down. “How did that make you feel?”
It’s such a textbook question I almost laugh. Instead, I sigh and shrug. “Like I’m broken and wasting everyone’s time. Nothing new.”
Her brow creases, just slightly. “Do you think you’re regressing?”
I think of the way I cried into Miguel’s chest last night. The way I couldn’t get my lungs to work. The way I realized halfway through the day that I hadn’t eaten, my body had been running on nothing and my mind was paying for it.
“Yes” is what I should say.
I shrug instead. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s just a setback. You said progress isn’t linear.”
She watches me and I can tell she hears what I’m not saying, but she doesn’t push at that angle. “Tell me about last night,” she says. “What was the aftermath?”
My chest tightens, then loosens when I hear his name. “I texted Miguel because I felt like I couldn’t breathe. My brain was… loud. Dad’s texts, school, the game. I kept trying to work. Clean. Do something to feel normal. And it just got worse.”
“What made you reach out?”
I swallow the lump forming in my throat. “I didn’t want to be alone with myself anymore.”
She nods slowly. “That sounds like progress to me.”
“Falling apart on him isn’t progress.”
“Not the falling apart,” she says quietly. “The part where you let someone see it.”
I pick at the couch seam, jaw tight. “Doesn’t feel like letting. Feels like I’m… dumping everything on him.”
“Is that what he said?”
“No.”
“What did he do?”
The images flash in my mind: his hand cradling my head, his voice in my ear, “You’re okay, I’ve got you,” the food he brought, the way he sat on the toilet lid and talked to me while I stood under the water, his hands in my hair, and the way he curled around me in that tiny bed.
“He came over. Brought food. Made me eat. Sat with me. Washed my hair. Stayed the night.”
“How did that feel?”
Like the only safe place I’ve ever had.
Like I’m a burden he keeps choosing to carry.
I swallow. “Safe,” I admit, then quickly add, “Which is stupid because I’m not five anymore. I shouldn’t need—”
“Stop,” she says gently. “Needing connection isn’t childish, Caleb. Needing comfort isn’t juvenile. You went through a kind of neglect and abuse that rewired your nervous system. It makes sense that in moments of stress, your body wants proof you won’t be abandoned or hurt again.”
I stare at my hands. “It still feels like too much.”
“It sounds like you feel… guilty. For needing him.”
The word lands. “He already does so much. He’s my… he’s Miguel.” I scrub my palms over my face. “Sometimes I’m scared I’m gonna make him hate me. That one day he’s gonna realize I’m too much and just… walk.”
“And then what?” she asks softly. “What do you imagine happens if he leaves?”
I flinch.
“I don’t know,” I lie.
“Caleb,” she says, voice gentle but firm, the way she gets when she knows I’m dodging. “You do know. I’m not asking to hurt you. I’m asking so you don’t have to carry it alone.”
My throat burns and the words sit heavy on my tongue.
I imagine the empty bed. The silence. No soft “breathe with me,” no calloused fingers tracing circles on my arm until I fall asleep.
No more whispers of “Te amo, hermoso.”
I imagine… nothing. A world where nothing hurts because it doesn’t exist.
“I think…” I start, voice barely above a whisper. “I think if he left, I’d… stop trying.”
The room goes quieter somehow.
“Stop trying… what?” she asks carefully.
Staring at the pattern on the rug until it blurs from the tears. “To do this. Classes. Therapy. All of it.”
Her pen is still now. “Have you been thinking about hurting yourself?”
My heart skips.
There it is.
The question.
I sit with it for a moment, sorting through the static in my head.
Have I thought about… ending it? Not in a planning way. More in a what if it all just stopped kind of way? What if I didn’t wake up? What if I disappeared and everyone could go on without me dragging them down?
“Not… actively,” I say slowly. “Not like plans or… anything.” I force myself to meet her eyes. “Sometimes it’s just… passing thoughts. Like… maybe everyone would be better off if I wasn’t here.” My voice drops. “Especially him.”
Her expression doesn’t change. Just quiet concern. “How often do those thoughts come?”
Ouch.
“Only sometimes,” I say. “When I fuck up really bad. When I feel like I’m drowning. When my dad talks to me like I’m a project he’s failing at. When I see how hard Miguel’s working to keep me from… falling apart.”
“Have you ever tried to act on them?”
My stomach flips and I see the scar on my wrist, the one Miguel traced last night, and the bandages from years ago. The hunger in that dirty kitchen. The bottle of pills I counted once freshman year and then put back, shaking.
“No,” I say. “I thought about it a couple of times… before. But I haven’t. I wouldn’t.” I swallow hard. “I promised him.”
“The promise matters?”
“Yeah.” My chest tightens. “I can’t… do that to him. Or Celeste. I just… sometimes I wish I could stop existing without hurting anybody. Like just… fade out, you know?”
She nods slowly, writing something down. “Thank you for telling me that,” she says. “That’s important.”
Great. Now I’ve said the quiet part out loud.
“Does talking about it make the thoughts louder?” she asks.
I wait, checking in with my brain. The thoughts are still there, but they feel exposed now. Less shadow, more shape.
“A little,” I admit. “But… also not? I don’t know. It’s scary. But I’m not saying it was worse.”
She nods. “Okay. So here’s what I’d like us to do. We need a safety plan—for when those thoughts start creeping in. People you can reach out to, things that actually help when you’re spiraling. Not the things you think should help. The things that do.”
Miguel’s name screams through my head.
“Okay,” I say.
We spend the next twenty minutes making a list. It feels childish and necessary all at once. I sit with the paper that has my chicken scratch on it.
1. Call Miguel.
2. Text Mom.
3. If I can’t say the words, send them a song or an emoji code we come up with.
4. Walk to the cliffs and just focus on the ocean.
5. Put something in my stomach.
6. Cold water on my face.
7. If it gets too loud, call the crisis line.
Dr. Kaur writes the number on a card and slides it to me. She makes me repeat it all back. Simple steps. One at a time.
“Do you feel safe going home with these thoughts today?” she asks at the end. “Or do you feel like you might act on them?”
I think about Miguel waiting for me at the condo with caldo and clean sheets and that look that says I’m not going anywhere. “I feel… safe enough,” I say honestly. “I’m tired. But I’m not going to do anything.”
“Okay,” she says. “Then remember what we talked about. Thoughts are just thoughts. Not facts. Not orders. When they come, I want you to tell yourself, ‘This is a thought. I don’t have to believe it.’ Then use the plan.”
I nod, tucking the card into my wallet like it's something sacred. Folding the paper up, I shove it into my pocket for later.
“See you next week?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I say, standing, my legs a little shaky. “See you next week.”
The condo smells like home the second I walk in. Onions, garlic, simmering caldo de pollo. The warm, humid air hits my face and I feel my shoulders drop a little. There’s music playing low in the background—corridos, something guitar-heavy that I know Miguel hums along to when he’s cooking.
“Hey, baby,” he calls from the kitchen. “Shoes off, or mom will appear out of thin air and beat our asses.”
I huff a laugh and toe my sneakers off by the door. “Pretty sure she loves me too much to hit me,” I call back.
He appears from around the corner, apron on over his black t-shirt, ladle in hand. His eyes sweep over me, quick and assessing. “You say that, but you’ve never seen her catch me walking on her freshly mopped floors.”
“You survived.”
“Barely.”
He comes closer, free hand sliding around the back of my neck, thumb rubbing at the tense spot under my hairline. “How’d it go?” he asks, voice softening, as he places a kiss on my forehead.
I could tell him everything.
I could tell him I confessed that if he ever walks away, I don’t know what I’ll do.