by Nicki Rowe
“Stop being dramatic, Caleb. We're your family.”
“I have a family here.”
At that moment Greta stopped in my doorway. Her frail arms were crossed in front of her chest, and she looked the most pissed off I have ever seen her. She nodded at me sharply. “That's right. You have a family right here.”
I smiled at her.
“The faggots and heathens? That's who you chose as your family?” Father scoffed. “The Lord—”
“The Lord loves me just the way I am. Good-bye, Father.”
“Are you okay, my dear?” Great asked as soon as I hung up.
I choked back the tears that threatened to fall. “I—I don't know.” I felt numb. I didn't know what to do with myself. I just sat in the middle of my bed, staring at my hands in my lap.
I felt the bed shift as Greta came to sit next to me. Her long gray hair tickled my shoulder as she wrapped her arms around me.
“What do you need, my boy?”
“Edward,” I mumbled, the word coming out just above a whisper. I needed to feel the safety of being wrapped in Edward's arms. How in such a short amount of time did he come to mean so much to me?
Edward
“Here.”
I placed a plate of spaghetti in front of Cody whose nose was buried in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. He didn't even look up as he poured cheese on top.
“You're welcome,” I snarked, rolling my eyes.
“You've been in a crap mood lately.”
I sagged into the chair opposite my brother, and placed my elbows on the table, cupping my cheeks and looking at him. “I'm sorry.”
Finally, Cody looked up at me. “Is it because of Mr. Samuels?”
“He told you that you could call him Caleb.”
Cody just shrugged. “Do you like him?”
I tilted my head at him curiously. “Does it bother you that I am seeing your teacher?”
“No. I like Mr. Samuels.”
“Caleb.”
“Whatever,” Cody shrugged again, and turned his attention back to his book.
I guess that was the end of the conversation.
We ate in silence for about fifteen minutes, then there was a soft knock at the door. I stood and opened the door to a distraught looking Caleb. His light brown eyes were rimmed in red, and his was breathing in shallow breaths. He was visibly shaking.
“Oh, baby,” I said as I pulled Caleb to me. “What happened?”
Caleb sagged into me, as if he had been wound too tight, and my arms around him had relaxed him. I tried not to smile at the fact that it was my touch—me—who had caused this man to release the tension he had been holding.
Caleb's hands smoothed up and down my back. He nuzzled my neck, and inhaled my scent as I inhaled his. He smelled like man and something spicy that I couldn't put my finger on.
“My father,” he whsispered. “He called me.”
I pulled back, and led Caleb to the kitchen. I found Cody sitting in the same spot, his food eaten, and his nose still in a book.
“We're going to my room, Codes. You going to be okay?”
Cody just shot me a thumbs up.
I gently pulled Caleb behind me. I think if I hadn't been tugging on his hand he wouldn't have the energy to move. I sat on the edge of bed and then pulled Caleb into my lap. He protested only a little, and tried to get up. I tightened my hold on his waist, holding him to me.
“What is going on?” I asked.
“There's things you need to know about me. Things that have turned other people away. Things that I fear will turn you away.”
“Are you a serial killer?” I asked, nuzzling my nose to his cheek. “A cult leader? A—gasp—republican?”
Caleb snorted. “Nothing so drastic. I—my father abused me. I know other kids who had been abused by their parents have suffered far worse than I have—”
“What did he do? I'm sorry I didn't mean to cut you off.”
Caleb shook his head, and snuggled his head further in the crook of my neck. “I have to show you.”
Caleb stood and faced away from me. He pulled his dark gray shirt up slowly revealing inch after inch of his back. There were so many scars, the sight of them made me want to cry. We were both silent, his breath coming out short and hollow. I stood and ran the tips of my fingers over the ridges of his scars. He stiffened, and began to lower his shirt. I stopped him with a gentle touch to his wrist. There were at least forty or fifty white scars that criss crossed along his back; some were short and some long, some deep and some shallow. I placed a kiss to each of them. My tears mingling with the slight sweat that had broke out between his shoulder blades.
“They're ugly.” He let out a short breath. “I'm ugly.”
I turned him, and brought my hands to his scruffy cheeks. He wouldn't look at me. He looked like he was waiting for me to reject him. Never. I could never reject him. He meant too much to me.
“Look at me, baby.”
I waited patiently until those light brown eyes met my own. He looked so sad, and something uncomfortable squeezed around my heart. “You are beautiful. I have never thought, and will never think that you are anything less than stunning. Do you hear me?”
He nodded.
“Tell me. Tell me you understand what I am saying to you. I want to continue dating you. I will not reject you. You are beautiful. You are quiet, but dominating, and I love it. I love everything about you. Tell me you understand me.”
“I understand,” he mumbled, and I took that as good enough. “Kiss me. Please.”
“You never have to ask me for a kiss, Caleb.”
I groaned as our lips met. His lips were salty from the tears that had dried there. His kiss was soft, tentative and unsure. I pushed my tongue passed the seam of his lips, and explored his mouth with frevor; begging him to deepen the kiss and take charge like I wanted him to. I thought about him so much over the last five or six days, and I had come to realize that I needed him. Something stirred inside of me, and even though I recognized what it was, I didn't give it any thought because I felt like that was too early for the 'L' word.
Finally, he nipped my bottom lip between his teeth so hard that I moaned in the pleasure/pain of it. He licked away the sting. I pushed up against him, grounding my hips against him. He needed this. He needed to know how much I still wanted him. I wasn't rejecting him. I wanted him as much as he wanted me. I would be with him for however long he wanted me. He was mine.
“Stay the night.”
“Okay.”
I stripped out of my pants and shirt. I stood before him in my boxers. He still looked unsure as he slid his pants down to the floor. His fingers twisted in his shirt as he contemplated if he should remove it.
“All your clothes,” I commanded gently.
He jerked and looked up at me, searching my eyes for something, but all he would find was heat and hunger. His legs were leanly muscled and covered in a light dusting of brown hair that had me practically drooling. He removed his shirt, and dropped it to the floor.
My eyes roamed over his body. I couldn't believe this man was all mine. His chest was muscled like a swimmer's body or a runner. He didn't have abs, but his stomach was flat and trim. A small smattering of hair covered the middle of his chest, but he was bare everywhere else. His light brown nipples were small and pert. I sucked in a breath.
“Perfect.”
I crawled in the bed, and waited for him to join me. He slipped in under the covers, and I pulled his back to my front. I hitched a leg over his hips, and just held him. He seemed to relax even further.
“I'm a cuddler,” I told him.
He chuckled, but there was something still off about the sound. “Good. I am too.”
I stroked a finger over one of his scars; he stiffened, but then relaxed. “How? Why?”
“I came out to my father a few months before Jayson moved here, of course he blamed Jayson for turning me gay, but he also blamed me. Told me that God was punishing me, but
I don't know what he thought God was punishing me for. He told me he had prayed for a way to make my 'sin' go away, and that the only way to cure me was by weekly whippings. Every week for a month and a half I was whipped by my father, and when he couldn't whip me he would burn me.” Caleb held one of his arms up to the light, and I saw the almost faint circular scars running up and down the length. “As soon as I finished college I moved to Arizona and got a teaching job. I haven't looked back since. I haven't talked to my father in three and a half years.”
“I'm sorry,” I said. I didn't know what else to say. I had never been good at comforting people.
I felt Caleb shrug. “He called me tonight to tell me that my grandmother was dying.”
“Was she nice to you?”
“No. She was much like my father. She believed children should not be seen nor heard. When I came out she blamed my father, and I think that's a lot of the reason that he treated me the way he did. All he has ever wanted was his mother's approval.”
“Are you going to go back?”
Caleb shrugged again. “I don't know. Probably not.”
Caleb turned and placed his hand against my cheek. “Thank you,” he said, his eyes shining with tears. “Thank you for not rejecting me. My last boyfriend saw the scars one day when I had bent over to get something off of the floor, and he told me it was too much. He told me I had too many issues and I wasn't worth the trouble. I don't think I could handle it if you had looked at me the way he had before he walked out of the door.”
I placed a hand over his hand on my cheek, and squeezed his fingers. “I will never reject you, Caleb. You are worth the trouble. We all have issues. There are some days when I wake up thinking that I will see Mom and Dad in the kitchen—Mom making her famous chia seed pancakes and Dad teaching Cody a new magic trick, but then I remember that they're dead, and it takes me hours and hours to feel normal again. I spend hours, even days in a funk, and those are the issues I deal with.
“Cody is so antisocial that I fear that there may be something actually wrong with him sometimes, and that worries me. Cody has never been a normal kid, but before Mom and Dad died he had friends, and he was more social than he has been for the past two years. I think I may be screwing him up, and I am constantly afraid that he may get taken away from me.”
Caleb's arms wrapped around me as I shook with sobs. He pulled me flush against his body, and I barely registered his whispered “shh, baby, it's okay” in my ear.
“Shit,” I said, rubbing the tears from my face. “This is supposed to be about you.”
“This is about us, Edward. Your pain. Your happiness. Everything about you is as important to me as mine is to you.”
“What does this mean for us?” I asked. I needed him to say the words. I needed to hear him say what I wanted to hear.
“You are mine and I am yours. It's new, and we still have a lot to learn about each other, but I am sure of that.”
I smiled. “So, you're my boyfriend?”
Caleb rolled his eyes good naturedly. “If you want me to be.”
“I want you to be.”
I snuggled deeper into Caleb's chest.
“Go to sleep, baby. We'll go to breakfast tomorrow.”
“Tomrrow is pancake day,” I said.
“I know,” he says. “Cody talked about it in class. We'll get a huge stack of blueberry pancakes and see how fast you and Cody can eat them.”
I smiled and gave his shoulder a small kiss. It wasn't long until my eyes closed and we both drifted off to sleep.
Chapter Six
Caleb
“Two minutes and thirty-seven seconds,” I practically shouted in the over crowded restaurant this was the third Pancake Saturday I have been invited to. There were a few new faces in a booth next to us; three tattooed men that I had never seen. I think they were opening a new tattoo shop on the other side of Arthur's bookstore. They all looked at Cody, Edward and I like we had seven heads. I was cuddled up with Edward in a booth, my hand resting on his knee that he had pulled up on the seat. Cody smiled at us with a mouth full of blueberry and syrup.
“That's a new record!” Cody looked over to the motherly looking waitress, Betty-Anne. “Did you hear that?”
“I'll write it on the board, Cody,” Betty-Anne replied, heading toward the booth with the entire Glensville fire department.
“See the board, Caleb?” Cody asked, pointing above my head.
I turned and saw a picture of a woman with Edward's eyes, and a man with Cody's unruly brown hair. Next to the picture was a three numbers: 2 mins 56 secs.
“Betty-Anne was Mom's best friend,” Edward said sadly. “Her and Mom ran The Diner when Hal got sick.”
“She was a waitress like Betty-Anne,” Cody informs me. “The first waitress Hal ever hired.”
I took Edward's hand in one hand and Cody's in another; they both looked so sad, I wanted to offer comfort in anyway I could.
“Look at this picture perfect family,” Diego's voice cut off what I was going to tell them. I looked up to see Diego and Mason. “I'm so happy you guys hit it off.”
“Do you guys want to join us?” I offered.
“No. We'll leave you guys to it,” Mason said, losing his balance as he talked. I noticed one of the bearded tattoo guys with scars on his face in the booth next to us watching Mason. That was interesting. “Just came to pick up a to-go order for Carter and Lucky.”
“Cart's got you out picking up his food?” Edward teased, tweaking Diego's hat. The man always wore a hat, no matter what. His long hair was tied at the nape of his neck today, but he usually wore the strands loose.
“That's what love is, my dear Edward.”
Edward rolled his eyes. “And you, Mase? Why you picking up Luck and Cart's food?”
Mason shrugged. “I was bored.”
Edward just chuckled and shook his head.
“We haven't seen you around, Mr. Knight,” Diego told him with a quirk of his eyebrow. “I'm starting to think you don't like us anymore.”
“I don't,” Edward quipped. “How about tonight? I get off at nine. We'll play that zombie game you love more then you love Carter.”
“Don't tell him,” Diego replied. “I think he regrets getting me that game.”
We laughed, and it felt good to laugh along with friends. I hadn't had actual friends in many years. I haven't had friends like this since Ashley, Jayson, Lance and I were a group. All my friendships since then had been artifical, more like work buddies than actual friends that I wanted to hang out with, and could one day call my family. I knew Jayson and Greta were my family—they always had been, but I can see these guys being close to me too.
“What about you, Caleb? You don't want to hang with your man tonight?” Mason asked.
“Have a bunch of papers to grade.”
Mason ruffled Cody's hair, which I knew Cody hated. “Automatic 'A' for our boy here, right?”
“No,” Cody said seriously. “Caleb treats me like the other kids. I don't want special treatment just because he's dating Edward. It wouldn't be fair to anyone else.”
I couldn't help but see the pride that welled in Edward's eyes at Cody's statement.
Just then my phone rang, and I looked down to see the number my father had called me from flash on the screen. I dropped the phone on the table like it was hot rocks. Edward pulled me to him.
“S-should I answer?”
Diego and Mason slid into the booth next to Cody. They both looked confused, but they reached for my free hand: Diego laid his palm on top of my hand, and Mason's on top of his. I looked at each of them, but none of them had an answer. The phone just kept ringing, and when it fell silent it just started ringing again a few seconds later.
“That's up to you,” Edward said.
“Who is it?” Mason asked, looking from me to my phone.
“My father.”
“Why is a call from your father bad?” Diego asked.
“D!” Edward admonished.<
br />
“No, it's okay, Edward. You can tell him.”
Edward sighed next to me. “His father abused him.”
“Fuck him!” Diego replied, slamming his fist on the table. “Dude, don't answer.”
I reached for the phone and put it to my ear.
“Hello?”
“Caleb!” My father's frantic words cut through the terrified fog in my brain. My lungs felt like they seized just by the sound of his voice. “Where the fuck are you? I told you to get your ass home!”
Father's words slurred, and he had cursed. The only other time I had heard Father like this was when Mom died. I shook with fear. His drunken anger usually meant a lash for me.
“He can't hurt you, baby,” Edward said to me. “Remember you're safe here.”
“Who is that? Caleb, are you with a man? Didn't I tell you that shit would not be tolerated?”
“Good-bye, Father.”
I hung up the phone on my screaming and cursing father, and hung my head in my hands. Edward pulled my head to him and cupped it his chest.
“Do you want me to call Cart?” Diego asked. “I went through something sort of similar last year; I know how scary it is to get phone calls from someone you have no interest in talking to. Cart and Luck will put a restraining order on him no problem.”
I smiled graciously at Diego. I couldn't put a restraining order on my father, but I appreciated the man for offering. “No. I doubt it will come to anything like that. I'm sure he'll just blow off the steam and then go back to not talking to me.”
Diego gave me a skeptical look. “If you're sure. I thought the same thing before Wayne and his friends decided to use my body as a soccer ball.”
“I'm sure, D.” I smiled again. “I really appreciate it though.”
“Shit, dude, you're like family now. Jay loves you and Edward is totally head over heels,” Diego said, earning a wad of napkin to be thrown at his face. “We protect our own.”
The three tattooed men stood, grabbing all of our attention. The scarred one gave Mason a once over that had Mason shivering. Diego quirked an eyebrow at his friend. Edward waved at the older one, but didn't say anything.
