Chapter 39 Caleb
THIRTY-EIGHT
MIGUEL
Dad’s name pops up on my phone halfway through my lunch break.
Dad
Lunch this week? Just you and me, if you’re open to it.
My stomach does a slow roll.
Not we as in “you and Caleb.” Not “the boys.”
Just me.
Why does this feel like the setup before getting murdered in a horror movie?
I stare at the screen, thumb hovering, brain instantly splitting into two scenarios.
Scenario number one: He wants to yell at you without upsetting his golden child.
Scenario number two: He’s trying. This is an olive branch, not a noose.
I take a breath. Box breathing, the way I’m constantly drilling Caleb to. Gotta walk the walk if I talk the talk, right?
In for four.
Hold for four.
Out for six.
I text back before I can overthink it.
Miguel
Yeah. I can do lunch. When and where?
The dots appear almost immediately.
Dad
Thursday, 12:30? That café near the courthouse you like. My treat.
Of course, he picks somewhere within sprinting distance of his office. Man doesn’t know how to exist further than three blocks from a legal document.
Miguel
Okay. See you then.
No emojis. No jokes.
I slide my phone face-down on the workbench and stare at the panel I’m supposed to be fixing.
“Everything good?” Benny calls from the other side of the basement, where he’s rewiring an ancient light fixture.
“Yeah,” I say automatically. “Just… parent stuff.”
He makes a sympathetic noise. “Ah, the ultimate short circuit,” he says. “Good luck with that, mano.”
I huff out a laugh and get back to work.
This café is half lawyer hangout, half “cute place with plants” that my mom would call un cafecito caro. Exposed brick, hanging ferns, mismatched mugs. The kind of place where they write quotes on the chalkboard and overworked paralegals cry into salads.
I get there five minutes early on purpose, because apparently I enjoy torturing myself and also because I don’t want to walk in and see who he’s already talking to.
The barista gives me a nod, he recognizes me from the times I’ve grabbed coffee here on my lunch break when I’ve done jobs in the area. “The usual?” he asks.
“Nah,” I say. “I’m meeting someone. I’ll wait.”
The bell over the door jingles behind me.
“Miguel,” Dad says.
I turn.
He’s in court-adjacent mode, tie loosened but still there, sleeves rolled up, briefcase in hand instead of over his shoulder. He looks tired around the eyes in a way I don’t think is from work.
“Hey,” I say. “You look like a walking bar exam.”
That gets a laugh out of him. “That bad, huh?”
“You’re the lawyer,” I say. “You tell me.”
We order—him an iced latte and some turkey sandwich, me a black coffee and whatever looks like it won’t make my stomach flip. We sit at a little table near the window, slightly away from the cluster of other lawyers.
He sets his phone face-down. That’s new. The Ashton Burton I met when I was six would’ve kept it between us like a third party in the conversation.
For a minute, we do the neutral small talk dance. Work, Mom, whether the Giants’ season is cursed. It’s fine. Polite. Like we’re acquaintances who only know each other from some committee.
Then he clears his throat. “I, uh… wanted to talk about the dinner,” he says.
My shoulders go tight. “I figured,” I say.
Dad looks down at his hands, fingers laced around his coffee cup, then back up. “I didn’t like the way that went,” he says. “The whole… hallway conversation. I’ve been replaying it since.”
“Welcome to our world,” I say before I can stop myself.
His mouth twists, but he doesn’t argue.
“I owe you an apology,” he says finally. “Both of you. But I wanted to talk to you first. If that’s… okay.”
I lean back in my chair, crossing my arms, trying to keep my tone level. “I’m listening.”
He takes a breath like he’s about to argue a case. “The way I said it—‘you can’t do that in public’—” he grimaces. “That was… wrong. I made it about me. My reputation. My comfort. I’m not proud of that.”
I say nothing. Just raise my eyebrows a little.
“I was… afraid,” he admits, and the word seems to physically hurt him.
“Afraid of my colleagues’ reactions. Of being whispered about in the office.
‘Did you know Burton’s sons…’” He gestures vaguely.
“Old wiring. Old biases. I like to think I’m more evolved than that, and clearly I’m not as far along as I thought. ”
I take a slow sip of coffee, buying myself a second to think.
“That’s honest,” I say. “And I appreciate honesty. But you know that doesn’t undo the hit, right?”
He nods. “I know. I’m not asking you to pretend it didn’t hurt,” he says. “I just… I don’t want my fear to make you hide. That’s the part that’s been… eating at me.”
I let that sit between us for a minute.
“Because it did,” I say eventually. “Make him want to hide. You saw that, right? The way he went straight back to being in the closet in his head? The way his body reacted?”
Dad’s jaw works. “Yes,” he says quietly. “I saw. I hated seeing it. I don’t always know how to… stop causing it.”
“That’s kind of the job now,” I say. “If you want to be in his life. In our life. It’s not enough to mean well. You have to actually stop doing the thing that sends him into the spin cycle.”
He winces, and I push, because if I don’t say this, who will?
“You asked us to be honest,” I remind him. “You said you wanted to see us. All of us. Then you saw something that made you uncomfortable and your first instinct was to make us smaller so you didn’t have to sit with that discomfort.”
“I know,” he says again. “You were right to call me on it. I just… It’s hard to override fifty years of… wiring.”
“Try living with twenty-plus years of it in your head,” I say, sharper than I intended. “At least you had the option of not noticing yours.”
He flinches like I slapped him.
“Look,” I say. “I get it. Really. I know what you grew up around and the climate back then. I know you didn’t have the language or the models.
I know this is weird and complicated and not what you pictured when you thought about your family.
But Caleb and I spent years contorting ourselves into whatever shape we thought you could handle.
He almost didn’t tell you at all because he was so sure you’d pick your comfort over his reality.
If we go back into the closet now, even a little, we’re telling that scared kid in his head that he was right. ”
Dad stares at his coffee for a long second. “That’s not what I want,” he says, voice rough. “I don’t want him to think he has to hide so I can… what? Have an easier night at a restaurant?”
“Then that means something has to change on your end,” I say. “Not just in here—” I tap my forehead, but I point outside and around us. “Out here. Behavior. Words. Reactions.”
He nods slowly. “I don’t know how to do that perfectly,” he says.
“We’re not asking for perfection,” I say. “What we are asking for… consistency. If you say you’re proud of him, that has to be true when he’s holding my hand at a table full of lawyers, not just when he’s sinking free throws.”
He blows out a breath through his nose. “Fair,” he says. “I… meant what I texted him. I am proud of him. For how he’s playing. For how he’s talking to me. For staying… here. On the planet. There were times I wasn’t sure he would.”
My throat tightens unexpectedly. “Yeah,” I say. “Same.”
Looking up, he catches my gaze. “And you,” he adds, like it costs him something, but he forces it out anyway.
“I’m proud of you. I don’t say it enough.
You’ve been… holding a lot for a long time and I leaned on you more than I should have.
Expected you to be the buffer. The translator. The protector. That wasn’t fair.”
I blink.
That’s… new.
“I put you in a parentified role without calling it that,” he says quietly. “Expecting you to manage his storms and my guilt at the same time. That’s… not a position a teenager should’ve been in. Or a young man now.”
I stare at him, not sure what to do with that. “Did my mom make you read a book or some shit?” I ask because if I don’t deflect, I might actually feel something.
He huffs a laugh. “Several,” he admits. “And she got very vocal about my behavior. You know how she can be when it comes to you boys.”
A flash of guilt hits. “I don’t want us to be a strain on your marriage—”
“You’re not,” he cuts in. “You’re our children. And you love each other. She is advocating for both of you and I need to step up to the plate and do my part.”
We sit there with that for a moment.
“So, where does that leave us?” I ask. “Because I’m not dragging Caleb to any more work dinners if the price of admission is pretending to be straight stepbrothers.”
“I’m not asking you to,” he says quickly. “Not anymore. You were right the other night. If my colleagues don’t understand, that’s… my problem. Not yours. You and Caleb should show up where you feel safe. That’s the deal. I don’t want you to feel like you have to audition for my life.”
Relief loosens something between my shoulder blades. I don’t let myself sink into it.
“There’s going to be places that aren’t safe,” I say. “We’re not na?ve. We live in the real world. But you can’t be one of those places. That’s the line.”
His eyes get a little shiny, and he blinks hard. “I don’t want to be,” he says. “I know I’ve… been that. I’m trying to… move.”
He waves a hand vaguely, searching for the right phrase.
“Move your feet,” I supply. “Instead of planting them in the old spot.”
His mouth twitches. “Yeah,” he says. “That.”
We eat for a bit, conversation shifting to safer topics: Mom’s latest cooking experiments, his thoughts on my truck making “a noise” and how that’s the most useless mechanic description ever, and his half-baked plan to finally take Mom on a real vacation.
The tension doesn’t disappear. It just… softens. The air between us is still weird, but less brittle.
As we’re gathering our things, he hesitates.