Chapter 32
THIRTY-TWO
MIGUEL
It’s only a twenty-minute drive across town to our parents’ place, but Caleb’s acting like we’re crossing state lines.
He’s in the passenger seat with his feet on the dash, hoodie strings between his teeth, absolutely annihilating the chorus of some pop-punk song he insisted on adding to my playlist.
“That’s not the line,” I say, laughing as he screams it anyway.
“This is the remix,” he fires back, drumming his fingers on his thigh. “You’re welcome.”
I love seeing him this happy and carefree.
I’m praying his father doesn’t ruin it during the break.
I’d really hate to have to sit in jail.
We hit a red light near downtown and the truck idles.
Outside, Santa Cruz does its usual thing: people in wetsuits on bikes, someone with a surfboard on the crosswalk, and a guy arguing with a parking meter.
Inside the cab, it’s just us, my too-loud speakers, and Caleb trying to pretend he’s not nervous.
He reaches for the volume and turns it up a notch, too casually. “Okay, but this one… this one is a karaoke classic,” he says, scrolling. “You’re legally required to sing.”
“I don’t karaoke sober,” I say.
“Bold of you to assume that you’re emotionally sober,” he shoots back, then finds the song he wants and hits play.
An old reggaetón track fills the truck. He grins and starts moving his shoulders and rolling his hips in the passenger seat like we’re not three lights away from our parents’ street.
“Stop,” I groan, reaching down to adjust the front of my jeans. “You are not allowed to do that in a residential zone. I’m going to drive up on somebody’s lawn.”
That makes him laugh, head tipping back, and for a second the nerves drop out of his eyes and it’s just him being dorky and alive, windows down, wind in his hair.
My chest aches at how close we came to not having this.
The light flips green and I turn, heading deeper into the neighborhood—bigger trees, older houses, and the ocean just a smell now instead of a view.
Caleb flicks the music lower on his own. The quiet closes in a little. “My stomach’s doing parkour,” he admits, twisting the hem of his hoodie.
“I know,” I say. “Mine too.”
He glances over like he half-expected me to pretend otherwise. “You don’t have to be nervous,” he says. “You’ve lived with them.”
“Mm, I’ve lived with them as your ‘responsible older stepbrother,’” I point out. “Not as the boyfriend who sucks your dick.”
Caleb snorts, but it’s thin. “You’re only two years older. Calm down.”
I reach across the console and squeeze his knee. “Hey. Look at me.”
He does, lashes fluttering.
“We’re just… across town,” I say. “Sleeping in beds we already know, eating food we already love, and dealing with a dad we’ve already come out to. This isn’t the final boss. It’s like… a mini-boss. Mid-level. Annoying, but beatable.”
“Your video game metaphors are really something,” he mutters, but his shoulders unkink.
“Also,” I add, “we have the list.” I tap my pocket where my phone is. “Ground rules, red flags, emergency eject button. We’re not walking in naked.”
“Speak for yourself,” he says under his breath.
I choke on a laugh. “Caleb, what the fuck am I gonna do with you?”
I turn onto our parents’ street and pull into the same cracked driveway. Same stucco house with the crooked palm in front and the ceramic Virgin Mary statue half-hidden by rosemary bushes. The porch light’s already on.
So thoughtful of them.
“Too late to floor it and pretend we missed the turn?” Caleb sighs.
“Yup,” I say, pulling into the driveway. “Welcome to Spring Break: Awkward Family Edition.”
He laughs, but his fingers are twitching when we climb out. I come around the truck to grab his duffel and he lets me because right now, letting me carry a bag is one less thing his brain has to juggle.
The front door opens before we even hit the porch. Mom appears first, apron still on, wiping her hands on a dish towel. Her face lights up like she’s been waiting at the window.
“?Ay, mis hijos!” she exclaims, hand to her heart.
Caleb barely has time to inhale before she’s got him in a full-body hug. “Mijo,” she says into his shoulder. “Look at you. You’re skinnier. I’m going to feed you until you can’t run anymore.”
He laughs against her. “Hi, Mamá. I can’t overdo it or Coach will get mad and make me run sprints.”
Then she turns to me and I get the same treatment, just tighter. “Mi nino,” she murmurs, arms tight around me. “You’ve been working too much. I can feel it.”
“I’m fine,” I lie into her hair.
She pulls back and squints at me like she can see through it. “We’ll talk about that,” she says softly, patting my cheek. Then, louder, “Ashton, mira quién llegó.”
Dad steps into the doorway behind her, no tie, sleeves rolled, bare feet,which always makes him look almost approachable. His jaw tenses when his eyes catch on our proximity, then smooths out like he forces himself to breathe first.
“Boys.”
“Hey,” Caleb says, shoving his hands in his hoodie pockets. “The house looks the same.”
“It should,” Dad says. “You haven’t been gone long enough for us to renovate.”
It’s not really a joke, but it’s an attempt. The corner of his mouth twitches like he’s trying it on.
“Come in, come in,” Mom clucks, ushering us over the threshold. “I have dinner almost ready. Go put your things down in your rooms, wash your hands, and then sit. You look tired.”
“You look like you’ve been preparing to feed an army of hungry soldiers.” I say, catching the smell of roasting garlic, tomatoes, and something with cumin and onion.
“You boys eat like an army,” she says proudly.
Caleb hesitates for half a heartbeat, glancing back at me. I bump his shoulder with mine. “Same rooms as always,” I say quietly. “You get the good mattress, remember?”
His mouth quirks. “VIP suite.”
We drop our bags—mine back in my old room with the too-firm bed and the posters still half-taped on the walls, his in the slightly bigger room Mom insisted on giving him “so he feels safe.” It still has the broken-in mattress we picked out together when he moved in full-time.
I catch his eye in the hallway as we head back out. He’s flushed high on his cheeks, which tells me he’s remembering the same thing.
“Stop,” I murmur under my breath. “Later.”
“Not my fault,” he mutters back. “The house is haunted by bad decisions.”
“Our bad decisions,” I correct. “Equal opportunity haunting.”
Dinner is shredded beef, arroz, beans, fresh tortillas, and a salad Mom pretends is the main event. We sit at the table we’ve sat at a thousand times—Mom at one end, Dad at the other, and Caleb and me on the long side, close enough that our knees can bump if we want them to.
Caleb wants them to.
His jeans brush mine, light and tentative, and I press back.
Mom talks first, like she always does, filling the air so no one else has to.
She talks about how the bakery she likes reopened under new management.
How the lady from church keeps nagging her to join a committee.
How she told her, “I don’t have time to argue with Father about women in the altar society. I’m too busy.”
Caleb chokes on his water, laughing. “You really said that to her?”
“I said it nicely,” she says, offended. “With a smile. Like this.” She shows us the smile and we all know that smile.
Dad listens, quiet, sipping his beer. His eyes flick to us often, like he’s checking how long we can coast before we hit something sharp.
It doesn’t take long.
“So,” he says at one point, after Mom launches into a story about a neighbor. “How are classes going, Caleb? Midterms?”
Caleb straightens a little, instinctively. “Good,” he says. “Busy. Stats is trying to kill me, but Dr. Kaur says my coping strategies are… better.” He glances at me.
Dad’s jaw tightens, but not in the way I used to dread.
More like the word “therapist” still nicks him somewhere tender.
“I’m glad you’re… using your resources,” he says carefully.
“Do you… feel like you’re keeping things balanced?
Basketball, therapy, this—” a vague gesture between the two of us “—all at once?”
Caleb’s knee presses into mine under the table and I flip my palm up, leaving my hand on my own thigh, open, where he can reach it if he wants.
“I’m… doing better than last semester,” Caleb says, honest in that careful way he’s been practicing. “I’m tired, yeah, but it’s… normal tired. Not ‘spend all day in bed and ignore the world’ tired.”
Mom nods approvingly. “That’s progress,” she says. “And you’re eating, sí? You look too thin to me.”
“I’m eating,” he assures her. “Miggy force-feeds me whenever I’m at the condo.”
I snort. “You make it sound criminal.”
“It’s suspicious,” he says. “I’m investigating.”
Dad’s gaze flicks to me. “And you?” he asks. “How’s work?”
“Busy,” I say. “We’ve got a remodel on the Westside and someone’s Victorian that decides to cry every time it rains. Benny almost fell through an attic last week.”
Caleb elbows me. “He told me that one. I’m telling you, you guys need hazard pay.”
“I get paid in trauma and tetanus,” I say.
Mom tsks. “Don’t joke about tetanus, Miguel. You keep your shots up to date.”
Dad’s fingers tap a quiet rhythm on his glass. “And you feel like you’re… managing?” he asks me. The word is loaded. “With… everything?”
I shrug one shoulder. “I’m… figuring it out,” I say. “I met with the counselor Dr. Kaur recommended. It helps. A little.”
He nods slowly. “Good,” he says. “I’m… glad you’re taking that seriously.”
“I am,” I say, meeting his eyes. “He’s worth taking seriously.”
The table goes quiet for a moment and Caleb’s hand slides over my knee under the table, staying there this time.
Mom breaks the silence. “I’m glad you both have people to talk to who are not me,” she says briskly. “I don’t like seeing you carry everything alone. Either of you.”