Chapter 13 #3
Caleb made a face, but Mitchell just winked one of those strange blue eyes at him. “Just decide quick, because I have a shitload of alterations to make if you say no, and I hope to God the musicians can cover my ass while I do it, because I am shit out of time.”
Caleb managed to quirk half a grin. “I won’t say no. I’ve come this far, right? And Levi made his choice. He told me he loves me. My skirts are the deal breaker. So. This is who I am, too. It is time.”
Decision made, actually walking out onto the runway wasn’t as hard as Caleb had feared it would be. His first trip, in the same red sweater and kilt he’d helped touch up himself, was actually exhilarating, and he didn’t spare a single hip sway.
It was glorious to have every eye on him.
The cool thrill sliding down his spine as people commented on the design boosted his energy.
He flicked a hip at the very end of the walk, and there was Uncle Jase, right where Caleb’s gaze fell.
And the man had a sea-to-sea wide grin on his face.
Caleb lifted both brows in surprise and Uncle Jase gave him two unabashed thumbs-up.
To think he’d been terrified of this moment when he walked out in front of this surrogate father and showed him all of himself.
He wanted to laugh out loud and very nearly did.
Lifting his gaze further, he caught a glimpse of Shank, saw his lips moving and the sneer on his face, and realised he couldn’t hear the man over the sounds of clapping.
Tossing off a wide, fuck-you grin, he sauntered back up the catwalk to the sound of wild applause trailing him.
He was barely off the stage stairs when Mitchell was on him, arms wrapped around his neck. “This is going to work!” he crowed.
“It’s your clothes they’re cheering. Now get me out of this. I have to get the next outfit on.”
They worked in practiced silence, Caleb stripping down to his bare torso and leather pants. The next look was simpler—the pants and a long blouse pleated across the small of his back and flowing down to mid-thigh.
“Thank God I don’t have to unlace and buckle these boots,” he muttered as he fiddled with the ghillie ties on the front of the shirt.
“No, but gimme your left leg. I have to change the flashes.” Mitchell knelt and yanked a bright red garter tie loose from under the woolly sock sticking up from the tops of Caleb’s boots. He replaced the tie with a white one and hurried to the other side to change that, too.
“All set?” Caleb asked.
“Just one addition.” Mitchell held up the armband Levi had given Caleb. “I think you should wear this. Even if he’s not watching, you should.”
“It’s not part?—”
“Styling, Caleb. Gimme your wrist. There are a million buckles on this thing and we only have another minute.”
Caleb relented and held out his hand.
Mitchell fastened the many-buckled bracelet on his wrist over the cuff of the shirt and declared him ready just in time to hurry him out onto the walk as the previous model jumped down to his waiting dressers.
The rest of the show passed in a blur of smiling faces, applause and hurried changes. Caleb was exhausted by the end of it and surprised he could still find his feet as Mitchell guided him off the stage and down to one of the changing booths.
“Wait, I thought we were done.” Caleb looked down at the flowing waft of silk gliding over his leather pants, falling in love all over again with the way the skirt skimmed the tops of his boots and draped in loose pleats and a high slit to show tightly, leather-encased thigh.
“The show is done. You have one more look to pull off, and you’re coming out there to accept the donation on behalf of the Benevolent Fund Committee.”
“Wait, what?”
Instead of replying, Mitchell reached outside the booth and brought back Caleb’s mauve skirt.
Caleb gasped. He’d forgotten all about giving the skirt to Mitchell to modify for him. Now he looked at the way the new panel of pleated leather offset the flittering silk and his mouth watered.
“Come on. Put it on. I have to see it on. And take this.” Again, Mitchell reached outside and came back with the black leather jacket Caleb had coveted since he’d seen the drawing.
“I can’t.”
“You can, and you will. I never would have been able to do this without you.”
“You would have found someone to help you sew on a few belts and buttons,” Caleb scoffed.
“I would have. But I never would have had the guts to go through with the whole thing if you hadn’t been right there by my side the whole time. You brought people here who actually want to use my designs. You made this happen for me, and I can never thank you enough for that.”
“I just did what anyone would.”
“No one would risk putting on a show like this, and you know it.”
“Well, we did it for the kids, right?”
“Right. Now move. Angel is only going to be able to stall for so long. Those people who came and donated their hard-earned cash aren’t going to sit around forever.”
Caleb straightened from pulling off Mitchell’s show-stopping skirt and held it out to exchange for his own. “You do know that a lot of the audience is here because they wanted to see your designs, right?”
“To see how freaky it was.”
“Maybe some of them, but you were right about them all along. They don’t matter.
You gave everyone else something to admire, and you’re going to walk away with bursaries for the rest of your classes, a contract or two, a huge sum of money for the kids, and more pride than any of those jerk-offs who tried to heckle you have in their little fingers.
“And a good friend, too. Right?” Mitchell kept his fingers and his attention busy on buckling up the straps holding Caleb’s new skirt in place, but his lower lip was clamped tight between his teeth.
“I hope so,” Caleb agreed.
“Good. Now.” Mitchell stepped back, all business. “I think take off the tank top and just wear the jacket.”
“Bare chest?” Caleb watched his blush creep up his cheeks as he gazed at his reflection in the mirror.
“Yep.” Giving the hem of the loose tank a tug, Mitchell tilted his head and made a face.
“For one thing, it’s sweaty, and you don’t want to go out there looking bedraggled.
Or show up on Levi’s doorstep after a sweaty mess, and for another—trust me.
I’m the designer, and I know what works. Take it off.”
“If you say so.”
“I say so. Now move it. Angel’s got about a minute left in his speech before he calls us out there, and then your man’s not going to wait all night.”
Caleb drew in a deep breath and let it out in a long, steady gush. “Who says he’s waiting at all? That might have been goodbye. That might have been him saying he doesn’t want me and my skirts?—”
“Don’t be an ass.” Mitchell held up the coat for Caleb to push his arms into the sleeves. It fit as snugly as if it was made for him, which in retrospect, it probably was. “He wants you—in your skirts—so he can get you out of them. An idiot could see the want all over his face earlier.”
“What if…?” Caleb twisted about to examine himself. He looked good. Damn good. He knew it. He looked dangerous, even in a skirt, or maybe because of the skirt and all the black leather and buckles. He frowned. “Don’t want to look dangerous. Don’t want to feel dangerous. Not tonight.”
“So?”
“I have to lose the pants.”
“Those boots,” Mitchell groaned. “This is going to take forever.”
“They are a pain in the ass, it’s true. But I have to lose the pants. If I’m doing this skirt, if I’m going up to his room in a skirt, I’m doing it right. Where’s my bag?”
“Fine.” Turning to sweep the curtain aside, Mitchell stepped out of the booth.
“I’ll find your bag. You take off those idiotic boots and pants.
You.” He nabbed Eric, who hadn’t changed yet, and pointed to the stage.
“Slip out there and tell Angel I’m giving my thank you speech before the donation presentation. Caleb needs a minute more to change.”
Eric nodded and nipped up the short staircase, nimbler on his heels than Caleb would have expected for a jock, then sashayed onto the stage.
Mitchell delivered the bag, then hurried off again to make his speech, giving Caleb time to get out of the boots and pants. He paused, once they were off, looking in the mirror at his outfit, wondering if Levi was prepared for his shaved legs.
Alone in the flimsy excuse for a change room, he rooted through his pack for the small bag of delicate underwear in the bottom.
He fished out the package. Tonight was going to end his inner debate over whether the expensive lingerie was actually softer.
He pulled the new skivvies out of the tissue wrapping and held them up.
Black, of course, because black silk lace was, in its own way, just as sexy as black leather, the panties were a style he already knew would comfortably support his package.
Carefully, he slipped them on, adjusted himself and once again examined the reflection staring back at him.
It felt different, standing there in the skirt the way it was meant to be worn, the way he wanted to wear it.
The lace cupped him, caressed when he moved, remarkably like the gentle but callused touch of Levi’s fingers.
“But it needs something.” Sifting through the contents of his bag again, he found another package, this one with black fish-net stockings, which he pulled up and fastened in place with a set of garters and clips.
Quickly, then, because he could hear Mitchell getting to the end of his prepared speech, he buckled and laced back into his boots and checked one more time that the effect worked.
“You about ready in there?” Eric called as Caleb decided that, yes, he was satisfied. He felt like himself for once. Like he could take on the world and win. Not at all frightened of it the way he’d been for so long.
“As I’ll ever be,” Caleb admitted and swept the curtain aside.
Eric let out a low whistle. “Not going to lie. Levi is a fucking lucky dude.”