Chapter 12 #2
Just the thought of moving on without Levi sent a cold wind howling through him.
It didn’t matter. He knew exactly what his lover expected of him.
It wasn’t like Levi was too dumb to have caught on by now.
Caleb could only trust that his boyfriend already knew, or if he didn’t know the extent of Caleb’s deviation, that he would at least learn to accept it in time.
But Caleb couldn’t go on pretending—walking around in a fading, ill-fitting guise of something he was not and could never be.
Both Levi’s and his uncle’s reactions aside, Caleb knew—he couldn’t keep faking it. He didn’t want to. He was tired. He wanted a life he could be proud of, one that was his and didn’t depend on whose son he may or may not be, or who approved of him.
Drawing in a deep breath, he blew it out, rose to his feet and held both arms out. “So? You happy with this, Mr. Designer?”
“Actually…” Mitchell looked thoughtful a moment. “Not quite.” For the next few minutes, he muttered to himself, dug through one of the bags, and finally, with a shout of triumph, held up a snarl of black belts. “Come here.”
Caleb stood patiently while Mitchell draped the belts over his shoulder and across his torso, picking and choosing until he had three that somewhat matched. “Can you sew?”
Caleb grunted. “You think the outfits I wear come off the rack? I know my way around a needle and thread. What do you need?”
Quickly, Mitchell arranged the belts across Caleb’s shoulder and pinned them in place, the buckles set in a diagonal row just below his right shoulder and across his chest to the opposite lower hem of the sweater. “You’ll have to cut them and angle them, like this—like one of those…scarf thingies…”
He went on muttering as he worked, and Caleb listened carefully as Mitchell explained how he should attach the thick leather to the heavy wool without ruining everything. It didn’t seem that difficult, and for the next few hours, he was happy to sit in the comfortable silence and work.
As the week progressed, Caleb organised desserts baked by the culinary students in the hospitality department and music for the reception from students looking for performance experience.
He figured he could at least try and pull the college together on some level, and hoped the student body would pull together for the sake of the kids they were trying to raise money for.
He tried not to think about how he just wanted to keep himself occupied so he couldn’t miss Levi’s presence.
Mitchell’s determination to make his show about the students, and remind the Student Council exactly why they were there, became the glue that held the whole event together. It was the glue that held Caleb together, too.
He’d failed some test his boyfriend had set him that he hadn’t known about, and he didn’t know how to ask for a re-take.
While they hadn’t officially broken things off, Levi was distant and preoccupied, leaving Caleb to fill his spare hours seeking some kind of companionship from Mitchell and his designs.
“You have a knack for this,” Mitchell told him.
They sat together once more in the main room of his tiny apartment sewing trim on jackets and belts. Most of the outfits were basically done except for finishing touches and fittings, which couldn’t happen without models. Caleb was just one person. He couldn’t walk every piece down the aisle.
Caleb shrugged. “I just know what I like.”
“Well.” Mitchell focused his attention on the belt in his hands.
“That’s more than half the battle right there.
Do you know how many people wear jeans and T-shirts because it’s easy?
Because that’s what everyone wears? Half the world has no idea what they even like—never mind the guts to actually dig it out of their closets and put it on. ”
Caleb snorted. “You think I have the guts to do that?” He thought about the purple skirt still stuffed in the back of his own closet. “You’ve listened to half the school, all month, denigrating this whole show, right?”
Mitchell shrugged. “They have no idea what they’re talking about, so who gives a rat’s ass what they think?”
Caleb set the jacket down. “You don’t?”
Mitchell’s hand wavered. His needle jolted into his fingertip and he yelped, then cursed. “I can’t.” He stuck his finger in his mouth and sucked for a minute.
Caleb watched him.
“I can’t,” Mitchell said again, examining the jacket for blood. “This is what I want. I’m good at it, and these clothes are what I want to design. I have to have the guts to go for it, or I might as well be taking Business.” He looked up at Caleb. “Right?”
“Fuck you.”
“Just sayin’.” Mitchell gave a small shrug as he pinched more blood from the tiny pin prick. “Not that I’m judging. Just saying.”
“No. Not judging at fucking all,” Caleb muttered as he yanked a tissue from a nearby box and handed it to Mitchell.
“Thank you. And I’m not. Much. Just pointing out that a person has to decide where their compromises are going to be, and for me, this is not the place.
It’s too much who I am to compromise. Like, I could go to a fish fry with a friend if they really wanted me too, even though I’m vegan. Because I’m vegan by choice.”
“You saying your clothes style isn’t a choice?” The idea of that squeezed at Caleb’s chest. Made it hard to breathe. He’d never considered anyone else feeling the way he did about where his fashion sense stopped, and his soul began.
“Obviously, anything you put on your body is a choice you make when you get out of bed in the morning.” Mitchell wrapped the offered tissue around his injured finger, still lecturing while he secured it there with a bit of tape.
“What I’m saying is sometimes the choice makes me feel more myself, or less, depending on what decision I make about it.
And that I have the skills to give myself more choices in that particular arena.
” He smiled grimly at Caleb. “So why wouldn’t I do that? ”
“Great for you, I guess. Not the same thing as choosing Business over music. Playing the piano doesn’t pay.”
“So?” Resuming his work on the garment, Mitchell went on without looking up.
“Why spend your life doing what you hate and ignoring what you love just because someone else thinks it’s better for you in the long run?
Are they in your skin? Do they know? I don’t think so.
You have to tell yourself you don’t give a shit what anyone else thinks.
You have to say it over and over again until you believe it. ”
“You think I haven’t been saying it over and over in my head for my whole life?
” Caleb asked. “He’s my uncle. The only family I have, and so yeah—I care what he thinks.
And he thinks I’m a freak. Someone he can never understand.
” He sighed and tried to temper his voice.
None of this was Mitchell’s fault, or even his problem. “At least I can try.”
“Has he actually said he thinks you’re a freak?”
Caleb shook his head. “But look at him. He’s a jock. The guy would wear track pants to work… in fact, I think he used to.”
Mitchell turned the jacket over, inspecting his own work and motioned Caleb to his feet as he stood. “But he doesn’t now…”
“Well, no. Not in the past little while.”
“Why?”
“How the hell should I know?”
“Ask.”
“Why?”
“Because maybe…” Mitchel held the jacket up to Caleb’s body, speaking through the pins in his mouth.
“You ever think he looks at you and thinks maybe there’s something to that whole dress-for-success thing?
Maybe he’s paying more attention than you think.
Maybe, and this is just a wild, out-there theory”—he waved his hands around his head and made a face— “but just maybe he’s trying to understand things a little more from your perspective.
Trying to meet you somewhere closer to your side of the field. ”
“What do you mean?”
Michel tucked and pinned for a few minutes without responding, then he held the coat out, indicating Caleb should put it on. “Put your arms in.” He spread the coat.
Reluctant, Caleb pushed his arms down the tight sleeves and Mitchell rested the jacket on his shoulders. He tried to face the mirror, but Mitchell turned him away. “Not yet.” He busied himself buttoning up the slick silver fasteners and wrapping the belt securely around Caleb’s waist.
“There.” Mitchell stood back and examined the effect, turning Caleb to let him look in the mirror.
“Tell me again how important it is to hide this”—he waved his hands up and down to indicate Caleb’s appearance— “in the hopes that a few intolerant pricks will ever understand and accept who you are? While you hide behind the idea you need some sort of approval from an uncle you haven’t even tried to talk honestly with, the one person who has never asked you to hide anything is slipping through your fingers. Why are you letting him go?”
Caleb ran shaking hands over the coat, letting his fingers linger on the delicate lace trimmings and trace the stiff wool pleats.
He could deny what he saw in the mirror, what he felt, but he knew Mitchell wouldn’t believe a word he said.
Yes, he loved the coat in all its gender-blurring glory.
He wanted it. He wanted to be the guy who could walk down the street in it and not care what anyone thought.
He wanted his uncle to accept that, even though he knew the man would never really understand it.
“You think I would subject Levi to this?”
“You’re a fucking ass, Caleb,” Mitchell said in disgust. “You have so little faith in him, it kind of makes me wonder why we’re friends.
You don’t get to decide what he subjects himself to.
He’s a grown man, and he’s chosen you. Except you keep pushing him away, and one of these times, he’s not going to come back. ”
Caleb stared at the coat in the mirror. “What if?—?”
“You’re going to live your life on what ifs?
” Mitchell held up one of his less frilly skirts and positioned it against Caleb’s waist. “What if you spend your entire life waiting for your uncle to see you? What if you give up the one man who’s begging to have all of you while you wait for something that is never going to happen? ”
“He might not actually want all this, once he sees. Once he knows what’s really tucked away in my closet.”
“Open your eyes, Caleb. You spend so much time inside your own head, you’re not seeing what’s right in front of you. You’re not seeing him.”
For a long time, they remained silent, staring into the mirror. Finally, Caleb lifted his gaze.
“Are you done the rest of the pieces?”
Mitchell grinned a grin that made even his oddly blue-contact-covered eyes light up.
“You mean the skirt? Oh yeah.” He scurried into his bedroom and came back with the sumptuous garment.
“Get that coat off.” He waved his hand in the air, then focused on carefully taking the skirt off the hanger. “All finished except for the fitting.”
Caleb glanced up to meet Mitchell’s gaze in the mirror. “The fitting?”
“Well, duh. You didn’t think I was going to fit it to anyone else, did you?
Right now, the only models I have are those great lummox basketball players.
No way is one of them wearing this. Not until I have no other choice and it’s time someone has to wear it out onto the runway.
” He held it up to Caleb and tilted his head.
“Might be a little long. I thought you were taller.”
Caleb took the skirt and pinned it against his hips. “I can be.”
“Between now and next weekend?”
“Well. Boots, right?” Caleb replied. “A two-inch heel shouldn’t be that bad. I can practice.”
A soft snort escaped Mitchell as he folded the discarded coat over the back of his couch. “Whole hog, huh?”
“If I’m going to do it,” Caleb said quietly, “then I might as well do it right. If Levi’s going to see it, best he sees the real thing.
He deserves that much, even if he decides it isn’t what he thought it would be.
” He sighed. “Or what he wants.” He raised his gaze from the frills and lace and once again looked at Mitchell.
“But I need you to do something for me.”
“If I can, absolutely.”
“I have this skirt.” Heat flushed like wildfire up into Caleb’s cheeks, but he pushed through it. “It’s nice, but… you could make it better.”
Mitchell grinned a small, wicked grin, though he’d already dropped his focus to the skirt in Caleb’s hands, unpinning the seam so Caleb could try it on properly. “I dare say,” he agreed. “Tell me about it. Tell me what you want.”
“Can you sew leather between now and then?”
Mitchell’s head wagged. “Don’t ask for much, do you?”
“It’s the black coat you did—the short one, with the pleats up the back—that gave me the idea.
You would have to take out a panel of the skirt’s material and replace it with a panel of leather pleats.
Then the boots, and plain leather pants, and that jacket.
” Caleb risked lifting his gaze back to his own reflection.
“I’d look killer. It’d be, you know, for the after party. ”
“For Levi, you mean.”
More heat sizzled through Caleb, but he nodded. “Yeah. For Levi. If?—”
“Oh, he’ll eat it up, trust me.”
“Can you do it?”
“You inspired the entire look.” Mitchell stopped fussing with the skirt and looked him in the eye.
“You helped me get it this far. You made the entire school open up to the idea. At least they’re talking about it, and they’ll come if only just to see what the fuck I’m doing and try to boo me off the stage.
I’m pretty sure I can find the time to help you get your boyfriend back. ”