Chapter 19 #3
They lie there together, draped in a blissful haze until Asher’s knee starts to complain.
Caleb offers Asher a hand up, a deep kiss with Asher perched on the edge of his dresser, one knee hooked around the back of Caleb’s thigh, Caleb telling him he’s incorrigible and dragging him back down to the living room to watch a movie.
They don’t, obviously.
Then his parents come home. The first thing they do is shoot him a knowing glance, and Asher thinks maybe he’ll just become a monk after all. The thought vanishes the moment Caleb rakes fingers through his disheveled hair.
Dinner passes in the blink of an eye, his mom only sharing a couple of embarrassing baby pictures and anecdotes while his dad bombards Caleb with threatening but well-intentioned comments.
After dinner, Asher stops outside the kitchen.
Leaning against the doorframe, he is quiet as he watches Caleb wash the dishes side by side with his mom, who sings along to her favorite Mandopop songs, ones that Caleb teaches her to pull up on Spotify.
When he overhears Caleb asking his mom about his comfort food and how to prepare them, the ground tips beneath his feet once more.
Something akin to hot, acidic sludge rises in his chest. At first he thinks it is fury, but upon closer inspection, finds it’s more that he’s plain sad.
It’s a creeping resignation that seeps into the cracks with each passing day, one that becomes increasingly hard to ignore.
Now, watching Caleb move around his mom, dishrag in hand, peering over her shoulder at an old binder of passed-down recipes, it saturates every fiber of his being.
How could anyone possibly look at them and see it as something wrong?
As something that should be hidden? As two people who cannot even exist together for the sake of entertaining the masses?
Going into this business, Asher knew there would be things he had to give up in order to succeed.
He had been prepared to do it, to fight and claw through mud and dirt for greatness.
It’s just that he’d always imagined those things as being creature comforts, like sleep or a proper home, a debt that he could eventually get back.
Not a life. Not a once-in-a-lifetime kind of love. It shouldn’t have to be this hard.
“I am going to take your entire family to the Bahamas to swim next summer,” Caleb announces when he steps out of the bathroom that night, toweling his damp hair.
And Asher just wraps himself around Caleb and kisses him and kisses him, because it’s so much.
Too much. He doesn’t know where to begin untangling the web of his feelings, doesn’t know what to do.
And just like that, their second day in LA goes by.
Caleb is not in the bed Asher increasingly thinks of as theirs when he wakes up the next morning.
He finds him on the rooftop deck, nursing a small glass of bourbon as he stares out into the ocean.
“When they said it’s five o’clock somewhere, I don’t think they mean in the morning,” Asher says, settling down beside Caleb. He follows Caleb’s gaze, looking out at the white foam racing up the sand before it gently recedes and fades away.
Caleb huffs out a laugh. It sounds a little broken.
“What’s going on in that little peanut brain of yours?”
The orange light from the rising sun deepens the scars across his cheek, and he says, “Do you want to know the cheesiest thing my mom ever said?”
Asher tucks himself under Caleb’s arm, his murmur of assent buzzing against the column of Caleb’s neck.
“When I was little, my mom used to tell me that her love for me was as high as the sky and as deep as the ocean. And I would always laugh, you know? A love like that . . .” Caleb sucks on his teeth.
“It’s too vast. Too impossible and dangerous.
” He inhales. “Then I met you. And I get it now. I understand what she meant.”
Asher feels his heart lodge in his throat. “Caleb,” he attempts. “I—”
Caleb puts a hand over Asher’s and winds their fingers together. “I just needed you to know before . . .” His voice trails off into a sigh. There is no need to say it. The ticking clock has hung over them this whole time. Less than half a day to go before the world takes them back once more.
“Time is fake,” Asher says weakly. Insufficiently. Miserably. He tilts his head up and kisses the roughened underside of Caleb’s jaw, nudging his nose against the taut tendon there, trying to draw out some of the tension with his touch.
In the end, he tugs Caleb back to bed, sleeping until the sun insists they wake up.
Later, he steals one of Caleb’s sweatshirts, pulling it on like he's heading out to grab some food, but Caleb easily lures him back, caressing the arch of his spine, the cut of muscle down his thighs, and every other inch he could recognize in any lifetime.
“We could stay here forever,” Caleb says. “Fuck off and run away together.”
“Move into a glass dome in Kakslauttanen and chase the northern lights for the rest of our lives.”
“Buy an island in the Maldives for just the two of us.”
“Okay mister money bags.” Grabbing his phone, Asher begins to search for menus from nearby cafés.
“I could be a social worker,” Caleb says, and when Asher furrows his brows, he plows on. “Months ago, you asked what I’d do in another life. That’s my answer. I think I’d be decent at that.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Kids like me. I’d protect them.”
There’s a pang in Asher’s chest, and he forces himself to take a steadying breath. “I know you will.”
The questions don’t stop coming, even as he waits in line for a Tahitian ahi tuna.
Is this what it’s going to be like forever? Swapping cars in dingy parking lots? Renting out building after building? Caleb having to hide in his house, never to see the sun? How can they build a home—a life—on wispy foundations like these?
He walks back down the beach, coarse sand between his toes, paper bag in hand, and thinks of the golden belt at the bottom of his carry-on bag. That’s his whole world. But so is Caleb.
He can see it, clear as day: a seat for Caleb at every family dinner, meshing perfectly with his ridiculous parents, who he loves so dearly. Caleb enveloped in sunlight, sturdy shoulders and powerful, capable hands. Caleb bathed in the moonlight, long and languid lines, pale thighs and soft spine.
All that for this.
Yet the one resounding thought threading through it all, the one he knows with an unshakable finality: I love him. Goddamn.
The rest of the afternoon passes in a blur of making out, packing up, and getting distracted and making out some more.
There simply isn’t enough time, and before he knows it, he’s kissing his mom and dad on the cheek, promising he’ll call more often so they know he’s alive and kicking.
He loads his bag onto the bike, weighed down by what seems like a lifetime supply of milo that his mom insists on shoving in there.
His parents speak quietly to Caleb, his mom placing a hand on his cheek before she pulls him in for a long hug.
“Well . . .” Asher takes one final glance at his home. From here, it’s hard to imagine how they’ll even make it to next Christmas.
Caleb blows out a breath. “We should go.”
Nodding, Asher flips the kill switch and turns the key clockwise. The motorcycle roars to life.
Other than a few muttered curse words and pleas to slow down, Caleb doesn’t say much on the drive to the airport. His arms wind tightly around Asher’s waist.
Asher drops Caleb off a short distance away from the departure hall. They plan for Caleb to check in while Asher grabs a coffee, figuring that should factor in enough buffer time between both appearances.
Caleb stands on the sidewalk, backpack slung over one shoulder.
“Last chance to run away into the sunset.” He laughs humorlessly, staring at his feet.
“Baby.” Before he can think better of it, Asher flips up his visor and pulls Caleb in, kissing him, fingers pressed against the hollow of his neck, feeling the beating of his boyfriend’s stubborn heart.
That’s his whole world—his fight and his choice, wrapped up in one.
“We’re going to make it work. It won’t be like this forever. ”
Those are the last words he says to Caleb.
When they land in San Francisco and he takes his phone off airplane mode, the notifications don’t stop streaming in.