Chapter 18 #2
“When Asher’s father and I first suspected he was”—Auntie Soo swallows—“not straight, we were worried that life would be harder for him. How could we not? You read about it in the news all the time—the bullying, the”—she cocks her head, looking exactly like Asher when reaching for a word in a different language—“discrimination and whatnot. But he has you. And look at him.” Asher laughs at something his father says, a dollop of cranberry sauce smeared across his nose. “He’s happy.”
Caleb works his finger over the beer bottle label, pushing his nails under the flimsy paper. “I’m not special. Asher is widely loved and for good reason. He has a heart of gold. He could have anyone else and be just as happy.”
“Perhaps. But he chose you.”
“Isn’t that crazy?”
Auntie Soo considers this for a second. Then she points a finger at Caleb’s heart. “Do you love yourself?”
“I, uh. Yes?”
“Uh huh,” she says dryly. “Shining beacon of confidence.”
Caleb’s ears grow hot. “I see where Asher gets his humor from.”
Asher’s mom laughs, then turns serious. “Listen, Asher’s told us about your parents—don’t blame him, we’re very nosy people—and no one deserves to be treated like that.
You’ve made mistakes, but you’ve owned up to them.
That was very brave of you. And you are here, aren’t you?
In spite of everything? And you want to be better? ”
“I’m trying. I can’t go back in time to change the things I’ve done, but I’m trying to make better choices.”
“Then you are worthy of love. You have to try to believe it before someone else can. He’s ready to love you; you just need to start loving yourself first.”
The silence ebbs and flows for a while. Auntie Soo sits with it comfortably, nibbling on a decapitated gingerbread man.
While she waits, Caleb pulls a throw pillow over his lap, as though it can protect him from what he’s about to tell her.
He drags his finger along the fuzzy geometric pattern, and when he’s ready, he looks up, searching her face.
“When I was younger, whenever all that fear and poison welled up, I’d go to the beach.
Stand on the breakwater. Yell out every awful thought I had about myself to the Atlantic.
It’s like I was carrying all this stuff inside, and it only got increasingly tangled.
I couldn’t put it down because I thought that if I did, I’d lose control. So instead, it festered within.”
He closes his eyes, letting the crash of the waves wash over him. “The first thing I came out to was the ocean. It felt like water up my nose. Eventually, I learned to paddle, but I always wish someone had taught me.”
Auntie Soo sighs. “Just because you carry it well doesn’t mean it isn’t heavy. And, you know, I’ve been told I’m a great coach.”
“Don’t listen to her,” Asher interjects. “All she did was throw me into the deep end and say, ‘Kick.’”
Auntie Soo waves him away. “Does it still feel like drowning?” she asks quietly.
“Sometimes. But most of the time, not anymore.”
She smiles gently and places a warm, weathered hand over the back of Caleb’s. “Good.”
Christmas Eve dinner, when Asher and his father are done preparing it, is a subdued yet cozy affair.
There’s the usual spread of festive dishes—a turkey with stuffing and cranberry sauce, potatoes and carrots and brussels sprouts.
Auntie Soo lugs a stack of presents from below the Christmas tree up to the rooftop deck, and they sit around it with plates piled high with food.
Asher is tucked under Caleb’s arm, a party hat jauntily jabbing into the underside of Caleb’s jaw.
He casually leans into Caleb while Caleb recounts the time he bumped into Dwayne Johnson at the Kids’ Choice Awards, and both of Asher’s parents laugh when Caleb admits that Dwayne could crush his head with his biceps and Caleb would thank him for it.
Even later, Asher is off the couch, rolling on the floor in mortification when Auntie Soo tells Caleb about how he has durian trauma after sitting on one as a child.
“It was an accident,” he yells, voice muffled by the hands clapped over his face. “I am being bullied.”
“Speaking of which,”—Auntie Soo turns to Caleb—“we have a small gift for you.”
Caleb blinks down at the red-and-gold-wrapped package being shoved into his hands. “Oh. Thank you. You didn’t have to.”
“Open it now,” Auntie Soo says. Both she and Asher’s father share a conspiratorial look and lean forward.
When Caleb tears open the wrapping paper, he laughs so hard that he fucking snorts.
There, in his hands, is a framed picture of one teenage Asher Ross standing in a mostly empty bedroom with his chin held high.
Behind him, a picture is taped to the wall.
It’s a familiar one. Caleb still remembers the eye-watering flash of the cameras, the sweat trickling down his back as Prichard stood behind the cameraman yelling at him to deepen his scowl.
Caleb shoves Asher, who is trying to wrangle the picture out of his hands. “You had a picture of me on your wall,” he wheezes through the tears and snot running down his face.
“Ava sent the picture to us last year,” Asher’s father explains. “Is it too late to tell you we have a group chat with them?”
“There are crimes being committed against me!” Asher wails. “You’re not funny. You can’t make jokes!”
“I made you,” Auntie Soo says.
And then it’s a quarter to eleven, and everyone is stuffed full with s’mores and eggnog, spread out across the deck in various states of inebriation and drifting off to a mishmash of Christmas carols being sung throughout the neighborhood.
Caleb runs his thumb over the picture of the younger boy in the frame. He hasn’t been able to take his eyes off it all evening.
“That wasn’t even the start of it, you know,” says Asher, lying with his head on Caleb’s lap. Caleb twists strands of Asher’s hair around his fingers and gently releases them. “I liked you for so long. I made it everyone’s problem.”
“Including mine.” Caleb glances down, and Asher gives him a sleepy smile, eyes crinkled and fond, and it’s just—
It’s perfect.
Back when he still attended Sunday mass, Caleb used to kneel in the pews, sending a silent prayer up to God for this. About a someday in the vague and hazy future when he would find a family again. When he would find someone who would love him as fiercely as he loved them.
And that’s—
Well.
He’d be wrong to say it’s only just happening, because he’s been in love with Asher for quite some time now.
Mega, groundbreaking, dumbass love. Kiss-your-forehead-goodnight-and-then-proceed-to-spend-all-night-dreaming-of-your-smile kind of love.
Move-mountains-and-part-seas-just-to-make-your-person-happy kind of love.
Ridiculous, sappy, cringe-worthy love. Which would be more than fine if their situation wasn’t impossible.
He gathers Asher up in his arms as if to say, God, I love you. And when Asher brushes his lips against Caleb’s, it tastes like, Always.
Three days, Caleb reminds himself. He’s going to make the most of it. Three days out of what could be the rest of their lives.