Chapter 13 #2
“I don’t get why you wear that stuff.” Jase shrugged.
“You don’t seem to get that I don’t really care that you do.
Just so long as I know you’re good. Safe.
Happy. Closest thing to family we both got, Caleb, is this, right here.
You and me—we get to choose, right now. To be family, or to chuck it.
I chose you once, when that teacher called.
Yes, I knew then there was no blood between us.
I took you in anyway. And I’m choosing again now.
I don’t have to understand you to know you’re my family.
I just have to accept you are who you are. ”
“Just like that?” Caleb eyed him.
Thick arms, spread a little wider now. Jase’s big, calloused hands were splayed wide, his broad chest stretched out underneath the white T-shirt. He was all power, strength, calm, and Caleb longed to have that around him, protecting him, like he was the tossed away fourteen-year-old again.
Caleb’s lip trembled. He had to steady it with a sharp bite of his teeth. “Just like that?” He crossed his arms over his own thin chest. “You decide it’s fine I’m a freak, as long as I’m your freak?”
Again, Jase shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. We don’t need blood. Just… the decision.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean, why? Because. I’m sorry your mom died. I’m sorry… about the rest. I can’t change any of it. You have to live with him turning you out. You don’t have to live with it happening again. I won’t do that to you.”
“Why?” Caleb dug his fingers into his sides. It was something to hold onto. Something to feel in the confusion.
“Because you’re a good kid. You’ve made my life better being here. I want you in my life. I might never have kids of my own, but I have you. And you’ll always have me. I promise.”
He held out both arms, and for the second time in as many weeks, Caleb found he couldn’t resist the need to feel them, thick and strong, wrap around him in a way his father’s never had. Not even when he was little.
“Might not be your dad, kid… I can’t be, but I hope… I mean, I can try. If you’ll let me try… maybe?—”
“Yes,” Caleb mumbled, trying to stop the poor man fumbling for words he didn’t have when the embrace was more than enough to convey what they were both feeling.
“Good.”
Uncle Jase patted his back, squeezed, and Caleb was sure he heard the older man sniff quietly. It made him smile through his own tears a bit. At least he had this.
In the end, with everything ready to go, Caleb gazed out at the filled seats, at the way his uncle sat in the midst of the Outdoor Rec faculty—his friends, the other high school coaches, and his peers—a smug smile on his face, and he knew he couldn’t go through with modelling the skirt.
He noticed Larry Shank and his cronies standing at the back of the Student Hall—just waiting, ready with their cat calls and hate, to tear him down.
He couldn’t bring himself to visit the ugly side of what he was on the fragile new thing he and his uncle had found.
Uncle Jase might be tough, a man’s man coach, but all the gossip, whispering, and people wondering about his nephew would just make his position at the local high school harder.
Caleb couldn’t force this kind of controversy on him.
No. Caleb couldn’t bring himself to shower all that hate onto his uncle. Not now.
“You stupid fucker!” Mitchell spat at him as he frantically searched for tools to rip out stitches and let down hems to suit the taller model who would end up with the showpiece.
“Dumb-ass chicken-shit asshole.” His voice lowered as he continued to curse Caleb out and his hands flew through his tool kit.
“What can I do to help?” Caleb asked, picking up the rest of the outfit from the floor where it had slipped off the hanger.
“Wear the damn thing,” Mitchell muttered. “And stop being a hopeless idiot. If you think your uncle has no idea about you, about Levi?—”
“It isn’t that. He knows. I know he knows. He’s here waiting for me to walk out there, and he’ll clap loudest and smile proud.”
“So, what is the fucking problem?” The garment crumpled in Mitchell’s hand as he turned, fingers clenched into a tight fist at his side.
He stomped his foot on the floor and glowered.
“Why are you doing this to me? Now? The show is going to start in two minutes. If he’s on your side, despite what the whole frickin’ hockey team is out there chanting?—”
“I was wrong,” Caleb admitted, reaching for the skirt Mitchell was crumpling.
“He’s braver than I am, maybe, but he’s still a high school teacher, and they aren’t as tolerant as the college.
It’s bad enough he’s got a younger gay man living with him, when this comes out?
It could be enough to get him fired when they find out we aren’t related. He doesn’t need that.”
“And you don’t think that’s his decision to make?”
“If I can avoid putting him in that position, why wouldn’t I? If I can just keep the assholes from making his life more difficult than it has to be, maybe I owe that to him. They don’t deserve to have that much power over him, of all people.”
“Which is precisely why you should be walking out there, stuffing their asshattery in their smug-ugly faces and making them eat it.”
“But they won’t. They’ll laugh at me and tear him down. And he’ll stand up for me, for you. He could lose his job. I can’t?—”
“What’s the hold-up?”
Caleb froze. It seemed like weeks had passed since he’d heard that smooth, rolling voice.
“Hey, Levi.” Mitchell removed his pointed glare from Caleb and turned to Levi. “Your boyfriend is going all noble shithead on me. Tell him his uncle is a big boy and can take care of his own shit. I need him to get dressed.”
“Caleb?” Levi’s hand closed about Caleb’s bicep. “What’s going on?”
“Long story.” Caleb jerked his arm free. “You weren’t there, so you wouldn’t know.”
“So, tell me.”
“You care?” He tried to hold back the hurt. It leaked between the words, dripped out, made his throat close, his eyes itch.
“Always. What’s going on?”
“I can’t do this.”
“Caleb.” Levi turned Caleb to face him. “You have to. Mitchell is counting on you.”
“He has backup. I can’t. Uncle Jase is out there.”
“If he says jack shit, I’ll shut him up myself?—”
“He won’t. I mean he will. He knows everything.
He doesn’t care. He’s not like I thought at all.
I had him all wrong. Fuck!” Caleb pushed fingers through his hair and ground his teeth.
“This is so fucked up. I should never have doubted him.” He shook his head.
“Doesn’t matter. I can’t model. If people give me a hard time, he’ll go to the mat for me.
But he has too much to lose to do that, Lev.
” Caleb looked up, met Levi’s gaze. “Way more than I do staying where I am in my cosy little closet.”
“And what about Mitchell’s show? He’s counting on you.”
“There are other models.”
Levi sighed, shifted his feet, and Caleb braced for him to walk away again.
“You’re an idiot. I never thought I’d love an idiot, but here you are.” He took both of Caleb’s hands and gripped them until Caleb’s knuckles ached with the force.
“Cally, you know you can do this. I know you’re scared, and I am, too.
I’m scared I won’t be able to protect you.
Scared I can’t always know what’s going on in your stubborn, beautiful head, that I’m going to get it wrong.
That you’ll write me a love song and I won’t even know it when I hear it, and that I’ll hurt you.
” He leaned close, stopping only when their foreheads touched.
“But I know I have this one thing right. It’s time.
I don’t want to live in this closet with you, Cally.
I can’t. I’m not ashamed of who I love, or what I want in a man. ”
He was too close for Caleb to see his face, but he felt the flutter of a sigh, knew when Levi closed his eyes.
“There are a dozen guys on this campus who would let me fuck them, Cally. And a dozen more I worked my way through trying to find what it was I was missing. Then you. And I swear, if I never get to be on top again, I don’t care.
I’ll take you over any of them, any day of the week.
” He gave a little snort and backed away.
“Look at me, lover. I turned bottoms-up for you, and I’m good with that.
Now it’s your turn. I’m not saying you should do this for me.
You shouldn’t. Do it for yourself. Come out.
Please. Do this. I want you to do this.”
Caleb’s heart thudded in slow motion as Levi moved close again, cupped his face and kissed him softly. It almost wasn’t a kiss at all—a touch of lips, only. It could have been goodbye. It could be a promise. Caleb had no idea which it was.
“I want you to be happy, Caleb. But it’s your choice.” His hands drifted away from Caleb’s face and he backed off. “Good show, guys.”
He turned and walked back the way he’d come. Not out to the front and the audience, but out the back of the student centre and towards the Council office.
“He’s not going to watch the show, is he?” Caleb asked.
“Does he need to?”
Caleb swallowed a sigh. “I guess not. I guess he always knew…” Caleb stared along the narrow corridor between the portable change cubicles and the covered pool tables where Levi had walked away.
“Don’t, Caleb.” Mitchell touched his arm lightly.
“Don’t try and read his mind. Just…don’t do this for him.
Don’t not do it for your uncle. Don’t even do it for me, though I will be rightly pissed at you if you don’t, and you will owe me, like, your firstborn or something.
” He grinned. “But I get it. If you can’t, you can’t, and that’s fine.
I’ll make it work with or without you. This is who I am, and prima donna models come as a clause in the contract.
I’ll figure it out and hash out what you owe me afterwards. ”