Chapter 32 #2
We survive the rest of dinner on safe topics, game recaps, neighborhood gossip, and Mom’s ongoing romance with various grocery store sales.
Every once in a while, Dad veers close to something sharper—“Have you thought more about what you want to do after graduation?” “What does next season look like?”—but he doesn’t step on any of our agreed-upon landmines.
It’s not easy.
But it’s not a disaster.
When the plates are mostly cleared and Mom stands, she pauses, turns back to us, and points a finger.
“Okay,” she says. “New house rules.”
Caleb’s face goes pale. “For spring break?” he squeaks.
“For my sanity,” she corrects. “You’re both grown men. I am not going to pretend you don’t do what you do.” She crosses herself dramatically. “Dios me ayude.”
Caleb makes a dying noise.
I just smirk… Because what the fuck else am I to do?
Dad pinches the bridge of his nose. “Celeste,” he says, with warning in his voice.
She waves him off. “Tranquilo, Ashton. I’m just saying—they’re staying here, they are together, and these walls are thin. So.” She looks at us pointedly. “At night, you keep things… down. Soft. I do not need to hear the… enthusiasm. You’ll scare your father.”
She winks so hard I can hear Caleb’s soul leave his body.
All I can think about is Halloween. Him in this house, me sneaking into his room after everyone was asleep, hand over his mouth when he got too loud, both of us sure we were being stealthy when we absolutely were not.
Caleb makes strangled eye contact with me, cheeks blazing. I lose it and start laughing. Not polite, not containable—full chest, head back, can’t breathe laughter.
“You’re evil,” he hisses at her.
Mom just smiles. “I am honest,” she says. “And I would like to be able to go to Mass without thinking, ‘ay, last night my boys were—’”
“Mamá,” Caleb and I say at the same time, horrified.
She cackles. “I’m kidding. Mostly. Now go. Shoo. I will finish the dishes.”
Dad stands, clearly desperate to restore some kind of order. “You boys should—ah—sleep in your own rooms,” he says, very lawyerly. “You haven’t been home in a while. It’ll be good to… get a full night’s sleep. Alone.”
“Mm-hmm,” Mom says, carrying plates to the sink. “You heard your father. Sleep in your own rooms. Or not. I’m not checking. Just be respectful.” Another wink.
Dad looks like he wants the floor to open up and swallow him.
I clap him on the shoulder on my way past. “We’ll be quiet,” I promise. “Scout’s honor.”
“You were never a Scout,” he mutters.
“That’s true.” I nod, smirking. “Never could get down with the whole conforming to a group thing.”
“I need a drink.” Dad rolls his eyes, and he turns down the hall toward his office.
We do the bedtime bathroom shuffle, teeth brushed, face washed, and towel slung over the rack that Mom will come in and fold properly tomorrow. Caleb sprawls on “his” bed in the room down the hall, one arm flung over his eyes. I lean against the doorway for a second and just look at him.
Same posters we picked out when he moved in full-time. Same chipped dresser. Same scuff mark under the window where he once threw his shoe at a spider and missed.
“You good if I crash in here?” I ask, voice low. “Or do you want real Alone-Childhood-Bed vibes tonight?”
He peeks at me from under his arm, curls sticking up wrong, face still a little pink from Mom’s commentary. “Miggy,” he rolls his eyes. “You think I’m gonna choose my trauma over your body heat?”
“Fair point,” I say, closing the door behind me.
The mattress is as good as I remember, soft in the right places, and broken in by years of teenage tossing and turning and more recent things. I climb in next to him and he immediately rolls into me, head on my shoulder, hand splayed on my chest.
We lie there in the dark, the distant sound of the TV in the living room muffled through the wall. His breath evens out after a minute, not asleep yet, just settling.
“So,” he whispers finally. “On a scale of one to ten, how badly did we embarrass ourselves at dinner?”
“Us?” I say. “Three. Max. Mom, though? Solid twelve.”
He laughs into my shirt, shoulders shaking. “She really said keep it down so we don’t scare your father,” he groans. “I am never looking either of them in the eyes again.”
“You already looked them in the eyes and told them I was your person,” I remind him. “You survived that. You’ll survive her jokes.”
Humming, he rubs his nose against my collarbone. “I liked how she phrased it,” he admits. “That she’s just happy we feel safe enough to talk to them.”
“Because she’s smart,” I say. “That’s why I let her marry our collective problem.”
He snorts. “Leave my dad alone.”
“Never,” I say. “He married into this chaos. He should’ve read the fine print harder.”
We’re quiet for a second. Then he says, “He did okay tonight.”
“Yeah,” I agree. “He did.”
“He’s still… weird,” Caleb says. “You can see him trying to stuff us into frameworks that don’t exist. But… He didn’t say ‘phase’ once. That’s… new.”
“Progress,” I say. “We’ll take it.”
Caleb tips his head back to look at me in the dim light from the streetlamp outside. His eyes are huge and soft. “You were good,” he says. “Answering his questions. Talking about your therapist. I know that’s… not easy. Especially when he’s the one who made ‘handle everything’ your job.”
I shrug a shoulder, careful not to jostle him. “I promised you I was going to do the work,” I say. “That includes letting your dad know he’s not the only one babysitting your brain anymore.”
He snorts. “We need to unionize.”
“Caleb’s Mental Health Local 831,” I deadpan.
That makes him chuckle, then sigh, long and quiet. “Thank you,” he says, softly. “For being here. For… all of it.”
“Always,” I say, stretching a bit. “Couldn’t get rid of me if you tried.”
His hand slides up and curls around the back of my neck, thumb rubbing that spot that always makes me soften. “You know,” he murmurs, “if we were being really respectful, we wouldn’t be in the same bed right now.”
“We are being respectful,” I say. “We’re just… cuddling aggressively.”
He huffs. “Is that what we’re calling it?”
“Yes,” I say firmly. “Cuddling. Very PG. Extremely innocent.”
“You’re full of shit.” Soft kisses on the corner of my mouth, almost daring to push things further.
“Language,” I whisper. “You’ll scare your father.”
He shoves my shoulder, laughing into my neck. “You’re the worst.”
“You love me,” I remind him, bringing my hand up to cup his cheek.
“Yeah,” he says, but he snuggles closer, one leg hooking over mine. “Okay, if this is cuddling, it’s my favorite kind.”
“Good,” I say. “Because that’s all you’re getting with my mom three doors down and your dad pretending not to hear us breathing.”
“It’s enough,” he whispers.
We talk a little more—about nothing, about everything. The stupid kids we grew up with on this street. The time we tried to skateboard down the hill and ate shit at the corner. Little anchors to other versions of us that existed before this particular storm.
Eventually, his words taper off and his breathing slows. His hand goes slack on my chest. I lie there in the dark listening to the house settle. Mom’s footsteps. The TV turning off. Dad’s low voice in the other room, indistinct.
Then just quiet.
I press a kiss on Caleb’s forehead. “Sleep, hermoso,” I whisper. “You’re safe.”
He doesn’t answer.
He doesn’t have to.
In the morning, the house feels different.
Caleb’s still snoring into my shoulder when I slide carefully out from under him.
The sun is just starting to push past the curtains, painting the room in gray-blue light.
His hair is a mess, his mouth is open, and one foot is hanging off the side of the bed.
I stand there for a second, watching, heart stupidly full. Then I tuck the blanket back over his bare shoulder and slip out. The hallway smells like coffee and tortillas, just like it used to when we lived here full-time, and I follow it to the kitchen on autopilot.
Mom’s already at the stove, hair twisted up, wearing one of those old T-shirts from some retreat ten years ago. She’s flipping tortillas over the burner with her bare fingers like they’re not lava.
“Buenos días,” I say, rubbing the back of my neck.
She glances over, eyes sweeping me from head to toe in one practiced flick. “Buenos días,” she says. “You slept?”
“Some,” I say. “Enough.”
Mom nods like I passed some test. “Coffee’s ready. Ashton went to the office for a few hours. Some emergency with a filing. He said he’d be back for lunch.”
Sounds more like he needed a breather and it was the perfect excuse to get away.
I pour coffee, lean against the counter, and watch her work. She lets the silence stretch just long enough to make me think I might get away with no serious talk.
Then she kills that hope.
“So,” she says, turning off the burner. “How is my son?”
“Which one?” I ask, stalling.
She gives me a look. “Both,” she says. “But I asked you, not him. So I want your answer.”
I blow out a breath and stare into my mug. “He’s… better,” I say. “Caleb. Not cured. Not… fixed. But… better. He’s doing the work. Using his tools. Honest with Dr. Kaur. Honest with me. Mostly.”
She nods, plates tortillas, and slides them into a warmer. “And you?” she asks, quieter now. “How is my baby?”
I shrug, because that’s my oldest trick. “I’m okay,” I say.
“Wrong,” she says immediately.
“Define wrong.”
“You say ‘okay’ when you mean ‘I don’t know how to answer that without worrying you,’” she says matter-of-factly. “So. Try again.”
I grimace. “You’ve been talking to my therapist,” I mutter.
“Maybe he just understands Mexican mothers,” she says, lips twitching.
I hesitate, watching the steam curl off my coffee. “I’m… tired,” I admit finally. “Different tired than before. Less… panicked. More… heavy, sometimes. But I’m… working on it. With Luis.”
She smiles a little at his name. “You like him?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I do. He’s… calm. Doesn’t make me feel stupid for worrying. Doesn’t tell me to just ‘relax.’ He… gets that I can’t watch Caleb almost drown and then go back to the beach like nothing.”
Her eyes shine, but she doesn’t tear up. “Good,” she says. “I like him already.”
I take a breath. “He asked me who I am if I’m not the one handling everything,” I say. “I didn’t have an answer.”
She turns fully to face me then, dish towel in her hands. “You know what I constantly thought while you were growing up?” she asks.
I blink. “That I was going to break your plates?”
“That you were already carrying too much,” she says simply. “This little boy with big eyes who thought he had to be the man of the house, the protector, the one who never cried. I thought, ‘if I’m not careful, he’s going to disappear under that.”
My throat tightens. “I didn’t,” I say. “I’m still here.”
“Because you are stubborn,” she says. “And because you love hard. And now…” She steps closer and reaches up to cup my face in both hands like she did last night.
“Now you have to learn how to let yourself be loved back. Not just in bed. In the boring parts. In the hard parts. You are not just the handler, mijo. You’re my son.
You are Caleb’s partner. You’re a man with your own heart and your own pain. ”
Her thumbs brush my cheekbones. “You deserve care that is not only what you give away,” she says softly.
She lets go before it can spill over. Turns back to the stove like she didn’t just pry my chest open with three sentences.
“And with Ashton,” she adds, flipping an egg into a pan, “you don’t need my permission to set limits.
He is your stepfather, yes. He is also a man who is learning.
Slowly.” She makes a face. “Very slowly. But if you are tired of carrying his guilt about Caleb and his opinions about you, you can put some of that down. It’s not all yours. ”
I stare at the pattern in the countertop until it blurs.
Don’t fucking cry.
“I know,” I say quietly. “Luis said something like that too. That I am one line in Caleb’s safety net. Not the only one.”
She nods like that tracks. “Good. Smart man.” She slides an egg onto a plate and sets it in front of me. “Eat. Then you can go wake up your novio.”
“Ma,” I groan.
Her eyes soften. “What?” She taps my chest lightly. “I am proud of you, Miguel. For loving him. For getting help. For letting us see you.”
The words land somewhere deep, in the same messy place Luis has been poking at.
“Thanks,” I say, voice rough.
“De nada,” she says. “Now eat before it gets cold. And remember—tonight, if you two make too much noise, I will throw holy water at your door.”
That makes me choke on my coffee.
She laughs, pats my back, and hums to herself while she cracks another egg.