Chapter 34 #2
The men’s room is nicer than most with dark tile, fancy sinks, and some framed black-and-white photos of the Boardwalk on the wall, which makes taking a piss here an elevated experience.
There’s one guy already at the urinal.
No one else in sight.
Caleb’s shoes are visible under the last stall. Toes turned inward, heel bouncing.
I knock lightly. “It’s me, baby,” I say. “You decent?”
There’s a shaky exhale. “Define ‘decent,’” he mutters.
“Wearing pants, not actively peeing,” I say. “That’ll do.”
The guy at the urinal snorts under his breath, zips up, and leaves without washing his hands, the heathen. The door swings shut behind him.
I try the stall and, to my surprise, it’s unlocked.
Caleb’s perched on the closed toilet lid, elbows on his knees, head in his hands. He looks up when I slip inside and close the door, eyes too bright, breathing a little too fast.
“Hey,” I say softly. I brace one hand on the metal partition and the other on his shoulder. “Talk to me.”
He laughs, a choked, brittle sound. “I’m fine,” he says.
“Try again,” I say.
His mouth twists and his eyes go all glassy. Then the words spill out. “It just… feels like being sixteen again,” he says. “Like any second I’m gonna say or do the wrong thing and he’ll just… look at me like that. Like I’m a problem he has to manage instead of a kid he actually… wants.”
His hands shake. He curls them into fists. “I know it’s not the same,” he says. “I know he’s trying. I know. But my body doesn’t fucking know. My body heard ‘don’t do that’ and went ‘copy that, you’re disgusting, stop.’ And now my head is halfway down that tunnel and—”
“Hey.” I crouch in front of him, hands on his knees. “Look at me.”
He does.
Barely.
“Can you breathe with me?” I ask. “Box breath. Just once.”
He nods.
We do it together.
In for four. Hold for four. Out for six.
Once. Twice.
His shoulders drop half an inch. Not enough, but better than nothing.
“What do you need?” I ask quietly. “Right now. Not what you think you should need. What will actually help?”
He laughs again, more of a hitch in his chest. “You’re gonna think I’m fucked up.”
“Newsflash,” I say, taking his clenched fist in my hand and kissing it. “I already know you’re fucked up. So am I. What do you need?”
He swallows, throat working. “Something… stronger than my thoughts,” he says, and there’s that wild edge creeping into his eyes. “I need out of my head. I need…” He drags in a breath. “I need grounding. Fast. Before the spiral gets teeth.”
“Okay,” I say slowly. “What does grounding look like for you right now?”
Caleb holds my gaze like he’s daring me to flinch. “I need you to get on your knees,” he whispers. “I need… your mouth on me. I need to lose myself in you so much that there’s no room for anything else.”
Fuck me.
There’s a part of me that wants to say no purely on principle because I don’t want sex to be our only fire extinguisher, because we both have enough tangled associations with pain and pleasure and coping.
But another part… knows him. Knows us. Knows that his nervous system doesn’t always respond to gentle things first. Sometimes he needs the intensity before he can let any of the quiet stuff in.
Next time, we’ll start with other tools. Right now, we’re in a restaurant bathroom and he’s about five minutes away from a full dissociation event.
“Are you sure that’s what you want?” I ask quietly. “You’re asking because it helps you, not because you think it’s all you’re good for?”
The question hits hard enough that his eyes flinch.
He doesn’t look away. “I want it,” he says.
Steady, now. “I want you. I want this. If you don’t…
if it’s too much, I can white-knuckle it.
But right now?” His knee bounces once. “Right now, I need to be in your mouth or you inside me, because if something intense doesn’t anchor me, my head is going to run laps around that table until I puke. ”
Okay.
That, at least, is honest.
“Say stop if you need to,” I tell him. “At any point. I mean it.”
“I know,” he says.
I kiss him first because if we’re doing this, it’s not going to be some clinical exchange of favors. His mouth is soft and shaky under mine, the exhale mingling with mine in the too-small stall. My hands slide up to frame his face, thumbs brushing his cheekbones.
“You’re not disgusting,” I murmur against his lips. “You’re not a problem. You’re mine.”
His breath hitches. “Miggy…”
“I’ve got you,” I say.
I drop to my knees on the cold tile.
What happens next is quick, quiet, and entirely for him.
I don’t make it a show. I don’t drag it out and I don’t push for more than he’s offering.
He asked to get out of his head so I give him something else to live in.
Sensation. Heat. The knowledge that even here, in a shitty stall with its bad fluorescent lighting, he is wanted.
Chosen.
Caleb bites down on his fist to keep from making noise. His other hand is in my hair, not yanking, just anchoring. When he comes, it’s with a sharp, muffled sound and a tremor that runs all the way through him.
He slumps back against the tank, panting, eyes closed.
I stand, knees protesting, and exit the stall to rinse a paper towel to wipe his face, his neck, and the places where panic left a sheen of sweat. Then I wet another and hand it to him.
“Okay?” I ask softly.
He nods, eyes still closed. “Yeah,” he whispers. “Yeah. Fuck. I… needed that.”
I kiss his forehead. “Next time we’re trying breathing and ice cubes first,” I murmur.
That makes him huff out a wet little laugh. “Deal.”
We sit there like that for another minute, him on the closed lid, me crouched in front of him, forehead resting against his shoulder, both of us listening to the faint buzz of the overhead light and the beating of our hearts finally slowing.
“I don’t want to go back out there,” he says eventually.
“I don’t either,” I admit.
The difference between me at eighteen and me now is that I don’t immediately frame that as a failure. There’s a limit. We hit it. Pushing past it to make the night more comfortable for someone who just told us to disappear would be an act of self-harm, not courtesy.
“Okay,” I say. “So we don’t go back.”
He looks up, startled. “We… can do that?”
“Yeah,” I chuckle. “We’re adults, Caleb. We can leave dinners that hurt us.”
He swallows. “He’ll be pissed.”
“Probably,” I say. “He can be pissed and we can be safe. Both things get to be true.”
I pull my phone out, thumb hovering. “I’ll text Mom. Tell her you’re not feeling well and we’re heading back to the condo. She can run interference.”
He nods, shoulders sagging with relief. “Okay.”
I send the text. Three dots pop up almost immediately.
Mamá
Go. I’ll handle your father. Love you, mijos.
I show Caleb the screen. He smiles, small and wobbly. “She’s the best.”
“Fucking facts.” I smirk.
We straighten ourselves up—clothes, hair, and whatever dignity we can salvage—as we step out into the hallway.
Dad is standing near the entrance to the dining room, talking quietly with one of the associates. When he sees us, he excuses himself and walks over.
His eyes immediately flick over Caleb’s face, searching for damage.
“Everything okay?” he asks.
“No,” I say. “But it will be. We’re heading out.”
He blinks. “What?”
“Caleb’s not feeling well,” I say. Caleb’s not ready to speak, so I do it for both of us. “Mom’s got your message. We’re going to grab a ride home.”
Dad’s mouth tightens. “We’re in the middle of—”
“A dinner where we’re expected to act like roommates, so you don’t have to explain us,” I say. “We’re not really up for that tonight.”
His gaze flicks to Caleb, looking for an opening. “Caleb…”
Caleb lifts his chin, and his voice is painfully quiet, but there’s steel in it. “I’m tapped out, Dad,” he says. “I’m not going to apologize for needing to leave.”
Dad flinches. Just once.
The old Caleb would have rushed to cover that, to smooth it over, to fill the silence with excuses. The one in front of me doesn’t. He just waits.
Dad exhales slowly. “All right,” he says finally. It sounds like dragging a boulder uphill. “We’ll… talk later.”
“Not about how we can make you more comfortable,” I say gently but firmly. “About how this felt for us. Or we’re not talking at all.”
His eyes flash, more pain than anger, this time. “Message received,” he says.
I nod. It’s not forgiveness. It’s not a fix. Just a marker. We said the thing out loud. He heard it and now what he does with it is on him.
I rest my hand lightly on Caleb’s back. “Come on, pretty boy,” I murmur. “Let’s get you home.”
The Uber is quiet as we head back to our parents’ house to grab our stuff and the truck. Caleb leans into my side, head on my shoulder, fingers twisted in my button-up. He’s not shaking anymore. Just tired.
“Sorry,” he mutters at one point, voice muffled.
“For what?”
“Derailing everything,” he says. “Making you play emotional bouncer. Again.”
“Hey.” I nudge his knee with mine. “You didn’t derail anything. A conversation went somewhere your nervous system couldn’t follow. You bailed. That’s self-preservation, not sabotage.”
He snorts weakly. “You sound like a therapist.”
“Think I can make a career of it,” I say. “Might come in handy.”
We watch the streetlights pass in silence for a minute.
“You okay?” I ask.
I stare down at him as he considers the question. “Scared,” he says. “But… not drowning.” A pause. “Less alone.”
I kiss his hair. “Then I’m okay, too.”
Back at the condo, in our mess. Our safe house.
The one place we know that we can be together and not have to worry about being held to someone’s stupid standards.
Caleb takes his shoes off and drops onto the couch like the strings holding him up just got cut.
I sit beside him and tug him into my lap, and he comes without resistance, curling into me like he lives there.
“It was too soon,” he mumbles into my chest.
“For?”
“All of it,” he says. “Dinner. Colleagues. Trying to be normal for people who only know the PG-13 version of me.”
“Yeah,” I say. “It was.”
I’m not going to tell him it’ll get easier next time because I don’t know that.
What I do know is that next time, if there is a next time, we go in with rules we actually enforce. We leave earlier. Or we don’t go at all.
“We can just… stay here the rest of break,” I suggest. “Day trips. Boardwalk. Trash TV. I can take you to the city and romance you there.”
He snorts. “Romance me, huh?”
“Oh, hermoso,” I kiss his nose, “I’ll romance the shit outta you.”
He laughs for real this time and the sound does something good to my ribcage.
“Is it… shitty,” he asks after a while, “that part of me is relieved we’re not staying there?”
“No,” I say. “It’s human. You’re allowed to have limits with the people you love.”
Caleb tilts his head back to look at me. Eyes still a little red at the edges, but clearer now. “You love him too,” he says. “Even when you’re telling him he’s being an ass.”
“Unfortunately,” I say. “Yeah. I do.”
He searches my face. “You okay?” he asks, turning the question back on me. “You caught a lot of shrapnel back there.”
I think of Dad’s face. Of the way his eyes flicked to where our hands were. Of the part of me that still, even now, wants his approval even as I’m rejecting his terms.
“It sucked,” I say honestly. “Seeing him flinch at us. It always will. But… I’m not a teenager anymore. I don’t need him to give me permission to love you.”
Caleb’s mouth trembles. “Say that again,” he whispers.
“I don’t need his permission,” I repeat, slowly, leaning in to press a kiss to his forehead. “To love you. To hold your hand. To build a life with you, if that’s what we decide. He can catch up or he can stay behind. I’m not leaving you halfway, so he feels better about his worldview.”
Caleb closes his eyes, like he’s trying to tattoo the words onto the inside of his skull.
“Okay,” he says.
“Okay?”
“Okay,” he repeats. “We go at our pace. Not his.”
He burrows closer, tucking his face into my neck. “One day at a time,” he murmurs.
“Yeah,” I say, holding him like something priceless. “One day at a time.”