Anna Martin's First Love Box Set: Signs - Bright Young Things - Five Times My Best Friend Kissed Me

by Anna Martin

  While Caleb took deep, calming breaths, Luc ran his fingers gently through Caleb’s hair, soothing and reassuring. It felt good, Caleb realized, to be able to let go with someone like this. Luc had pushed him, but not too far.

  They had three more sessions of Luc Le Bautillier branded speech therapy over the weekend. In the second session Caleb had pulled out the dreaded hearing aids and was forced to reluctantly admit that they helped, just a little bit. He made a list too of the most important words for him to be able to use. “Please.” “Help.” “Caleb.” “Deaf.”

  After each time Caleb said something that Luc considered good or really good, he leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to Caleb’s lips. This was what had been missing from his previous speech therapy lessons—motivation in the form of kisses from Luc. He wasn’t sure what he desired more, to get the word right or to get a kiss. Probably the kiss.

  16. $

  When Luc arrived home in New York late on Sunday afternoon, he was tired and heartsore. Playing speech therapist with Caleb was exhausting, testing both his patience and his total adoration of his boyfriend. This was something that clearly tested Caleb too. He was quick to snap and grew easily frustrated. By the time Luc needed to leave on Sunday, kisses were no longer enough to keep Caleb motivated.

  He parked the car in Ilse’s garage and walked up the block to the house, wanting nothing more than a shower and his bed.

  But his mother was home. She smelled faintly of vodka, something Luc had stopped noticing, and he thought it was maybe only because he’d been hugged by Caleb’s mom that he recognized the smell this time.

  “You were with your boyfriend this weekend,” Frances said, leaning back in one of Ilse’s leather wing chairs. Her feet were bare, and there was a hole in the toe of her nylons.

  “Yeah,” Luc said. For a moment, the smallest moment, he considered lying to her, claiming that Caleb was just a friend, nothing more. He had no issue with lying to his mother. He did, however, have a problem with reducing Caleb to anything less than what he was. Luc hesitated by the door of the living room, hoping desperately not to be sucked in. “He needed me.”

  “Oh?”

  “He wants a cochlear implant to help him hear again. But he got rejected for the trial, and it hit him pretty bad.”

  “That’s really too bad.”

  Luc watched as his mother toyed with the edge of her coffee cup. The contents were likely Irish as well as Columbian.

  “I want to help him,” Luc said.

  His mother shook her head, sighing heavily. “You cannot save the whole world, Lucien. It is a young fool’s dream….”

  “I don’t want to save the world. I want to save Caleb,” he said angrily.

  “How?”

  “I don’t know… you could help. Get in contact with the people in your family, the ones with all the money. He’s ready for this treatment. They just can’t afford it. The trial was his last hope, and he won’t ask his parents to do it for him. He won’t bankrupt them even though it’s what he wants more than anything—”

  “Luc,” Frances said sharply, interrupting her son. “I cannot go to them for money. I cannot. We have spent this long without asking them. It is not the time now to start.”

  “So it’s not that you can’t help him, it’s that you won’t,” he said.

  She was quiet for a moment, then sighed again. “No,” she said, agreeing. “I won’t.”

  “Then let me pay for it.”

  “How?” she asked with a little laugh.

  “I have an inheritance,” he said defiantly. “A lot, I checked. What Dad left us. I want to take some of it out.”

  “Absolutely not,” Frances said.

  “Not all of it,” Luc said, protesting, “just some. Just enough to get him through the operation and his care and therapy afterwards.”

  “That’s still a lot of money, Lucien,” she said. “It’s out of the question.”

  “But Mom—”

  “No, Lucien,” she said firmly. “I absolutely forbid it. That money is for your future.”

  “Caleb is my future.”

  “Be that as it may, he is not your responsibility.”

  Luc stood, the anger fizzing in his veins, then stomped back up to his room, slammed the door behind him, and set his music on loud. Obnoxiously loud. He was very aware of how much she disliked his music—not that she disapproved of it, she just didn’t like it.

  He flung himself onto his bed, frustrated almost to the point of tears, although he refused to allow them to fall. Even though this wasn’t his battle, he wanted to fight it. He just had to think smarter.

  After a while he became aware of a knocking at his door, which he ignored. Then his phone rang. He gave it a cursory glance, not thinking there was anyone he wanted to speak to on the phone. It was Ilse.

  He stood, went to the door, and opened it to his sister.

  “Can you turn that down, please?” she asked.

  Luc rolled his eyes, stomped over to the stereo, and turned it down a few notches—barely enough to make difference. When he turned around, Ilse was right behind him, hovering, and pressed the button to stop the music altogether.

  “Hey—” he said, starting to protest.

  Ilse just sat down on the edge of his bed. It was her house, after all. He didn’t feel like he could tell her to get lost.

  Instead he stood, arms folded across his chest, foot tapping in irritation.

  “How much is it?” Ilse asked, looking up at him calmly.

  “What?”

  “Caleb’s operation. How much does it cost?”

  He wasn’t aware that she’d overheard the conversation with their mother. Luc looked at her, waiting for something. Anything. An answer. But she was waiting for that from him.

  “About sixty-five thousand dollars,” he said eventually. “There’s only a few places in the country where they’ll do it too. So possibly more for rehabilitation.”

  Ilse nodded. “I’ll give it to you,” she said.

  Luc gaped at her. “What?”

  A tiny smile tugged at the corners of her lips. “I’ve got that,” she said. “In the business and in my own inheritance which, unlike you, I have access to. I want to give it to you. For Caleb.”

  “You can’t do that,” he whispered, slightly awestruck. His arms dropped to his sides.

  She shrugged. “You don’t have to accept it,” Ilse said. “But I’m not sure where else you’d get it from. Mom isn’t going to change her mind, you know. I know how to put it into a trust for Caleb, so he won’t necessarily know where the money has come from. I’m sure in his position I wouldn’t want to know.”

  “I… I….” Luc stuttered, then stopped. “Thank you,” he said.

  “Luc. You’ll learn this as you get older. I’m not doing this for you or because Caleb is your boyfriend. It’s the right thing to do.”

  “I’ll tell him.”

  “Wait for me to work the transfer out,” she said. “It might take a few days.”

  “Okay. Ilse?”

  “Yeah?”

  Thank you wasn’t enough anymore. Luc hesitated, then threw himself into his sister’s arms. She smelled a little like lavender fabric softener, and the stuff she put in her hair, and the perfume she’d spritzed on her collar that morning. He squeezed her tighter.

  There was a thick white envelope waiting for Luc when he got home from school. It had his name printed on the front in an elegant type font and, when he flipped it over, the address of the New York University on the back.

  All of a sudden he couldn’t breathe.

  He didn’t want to open the letter while hovering in the hallway and took the stairs two at a time as he raced up to his bedroom. Once there Luc flopped on to the bed and took a few deep, calming breaths before sliding his thumb under the flap to split the envelope open.

  Dear Mr. Le Bautillier, he read.

  When Caleb was a child, form filling was a job his mother did for him, answering question
s on his behalf and knowing how to spell the complicated medical words to describe his condition. There had been a change as he’d grown up, and it was increasingly common for Caleb to have to do the form filling himself. He’d learned how to spell the words.

  There was one box on nearly everything, from applications for part-time jobs to college applications, to anything where he had to interact with someone who didn’t know who he was.

  “Do you consider yourself to have a disability? Please check Yes or No.”

  Yes.

  “If yes, please tell us how we can assist you during your interview.”

  I am deaf. I can read lips but may require a sign language interpreter in order to communicate with the interviewer. I use ASL.

  Then, in his experience, there was a massive fuss wherever he went, the sly glances and “This is the deaf guy,” oh God, where’s our translator.

  Sometimes his mom came with him to provide the interpretation. Others, like when he applied for college, they wouldn’t let her. Instead he had to meet with someone who used ASL and let them put it into words for him. Writing things down wasn’t allowed.

  Maybe unsurprisingly, he got on best with the interpreter from NYU. She was a current student who greeted him wearing jeans and an NYU sweatshirt, her hair pulled neatly back from her face so it wasn’t a distraction. Her name was Heather, and she used the sign for the flower in place of finger signing her name. He thought it was cute. They chatted for a few minutes before he was called into the interview, so he had a chance to get to know her and she could learn his style of signing, before he was thrown to the lions.

  Heather took the time to make sure she understood what he was saying before repeating it back to the interview panel. She was expressive in a way Caleb found excruciatingly difficult when he signed, and she encouraged him to sign directly to the interviewers, even though they didn’t understand him.

  Unlike the interviews at Vassar and Boston University, Caleb found himself relaxing and talking openly about his love of photography, how his academic studies had supported his extracurricular activities, not clashed with them. He wanted to be able to pursue an academic education without letting his artistic side disappear, and he wanted to find a college where his talent would be nurtured and his brain pushed.

  At the end of the interview he was thanked, both vocally and with signs, and he left the room while Heather stayed behind for a few minutes to talk with the panel. He waited outside anxiously, not sure if he should leave or wait for her to come back out. The hallway was empty, no one around to ask. Afraid of making a mistake, he’d waited until she followed him out a few minutes later.

  “Well done,” she signed. “You did really well.”

  “Thank you. And thanks for your help.”

  “You’re welcome. Good luck, Caleb.”

  Although all the colleges had made a special effort to accommodate him, Caleb was convinced his confidence at NYU had more to do with Heather than his abilities. For a while, after the interview, he wondered if he’d been wrong about his sexuality. His feelings toward the girl could possibly be described as a crush. She was pretty and intelligent and had taken the time to get to know him as a person, rather than just the deaf guy she was translating for.

  He’d experimented with his own body that night, wondering if his reaction had been more than just curious, if there was any lingering desire underneath. His body had reacted, maybe unsurprisingly, but the movie in his head soon changed from a soft, curvy body to a smooth flat one. The angles sharpened, the face changed, and suddenly he was faced with Zac Efron. Zac, well, he was a familiar figure in these late night fantasies.

  When the white envelope landed on his doorstep with the NYU logo on the front, Caleb’s flashback was immediately to that late night fantasy of Zac Efron and his impossibly chiseled chest. Which was a strange reaction, because this wasn’t supposed to be his first thought when receiving that acceptance or rejection letter.

  Caleb split the envelope open, and his eyes scanned the words quickly, his heart thumping too hard in his chest. This mattered. More than ever before, this mattered.

  His iPad buzzed on the kitchen table. Incoming video call.

  Luc.

  Caleb answered it, his chest feeling too full as Luc’s face appeared on the screen.

  “I got into NYU,” Luc said.

  For a long moment Caleb looked at him. Then a smile broke out across his face. He held up his own slightly crumpled letter.

  “Me too.”

  Luc blinked and pressed his hand to his mouth, then pushed his hand through his hair, messing up his careful styling. Caleb grinned at him.

  “Oh my God.”

  “I know. What will you do?” Caleb signed, setting the letter back down. When they’d met Luc had been so sure he wanted to go to a west coast school. His heart was set on Seattle. There was no way Caleb’s parents would let him move that far away, though. He anticipated a battle just to get as far away as New York.

  “I want to go to NYU with you,” Luc said. His eyes were defiant, flashing beautifully.

  Caleb nodded. “Me too.”

  “Are you serious? Are you sure? We should probably talk about this properly. Figure it out.”

  “Luc,” Caleb said. “I love you.”

  “Me too.”

  “We’ll make it work.”

  “Promise?”

  “Yes.”

  “I….” Luc looked over his shoulder, then back at Caleb. “We can talk more tonight?”

  “Yes. Later.”

  “Later,” he said and ended the call.

  Caleb sat down in one of the kitchen chairs and picked up his letter again. He was going to college. In New York. With Luc.

  He wondered if this was what it felt like to have all his dreams come true.

  Instead of leaving for school, which he absolutely should have done at least ten minutes earlier, Luc went down to Ilse’s office and knocked lightly on the door. She was at her computer but wasn’t dressed yet, instead wearing only her fluffy robe and bunny slippers.

  “What do you want at this ungodly hour? Shouldn’t you be in school?” she grouched.

  Luc held up his letter. “I got into NYU.”

  “Congratulations,” she said with a small smile and reached for her mug of coffee. “But I thought you wanted to go to a west coast school.”

  “I did,” he said. “But Caleb got into NYU as well. We’re going to go together.”

  “Wow. That’s a big step, Luc. You haven’t been with him all that long.”

  “It’ll be nearly a year by September,” he said, unable to keep the edge of defensiveness out of his voice.

  Ilse shrugged, a disaffected half shrug that she’d undoubtedly learned from their mother. “If that’s what you want, then I’ll support you. You know that.”

  “We’ll move out,” he said. “I don’t expect to live here.”

  “That’s your choice, Luc,” she said again, leaning forward on her desk now. “Make good choices. That’s all I ask you to do.”

  He nodded, knowing she wasn’t scolding him but trying to impart a lesson. Ilse did that.

  With a final grin, Luc ducked out of her office and quickly shouldered his backpack, rushing to the subway station without stopping for his usual morning cigarette. He was going to NYU in the fall. And so was Caleb.

  That thought alone was enough to carry him through the rest of the day on a cloud of perfect bliss.

  17. Demonstrate

  Dear Sirs,

  My name is Lucien Le Bautillier, and I’m writing on behalf of Caleb Stone.

  I hope you remember Caleb. He was put forward for a trial of a new model of cochlear implant a few months ago and was recently told that you wouldn’t be using him as part of your research. I’m hoping to change your mind.

  When you last saw Caleb he had stilted communications skills. He found it difficult to talk to people outside of a small group that he was familiar with and who were familiar with h
is home sign. He didn’t vocalize at all and found it difficult to use facial and body expressions to communicate alongside his ASL.

  I think being turned down for your trial was the spark that initiated an amazing change in Caleb. I’ve been working with him on our own version of speech therapy, and he’s using his hearing aids again (which he wasn’t before). When we go out now, he’ll be the one to order at a coffee shop or if we go out for dinner. He wants to learn new words. He wants to be good enough to be considered the next time an opportunity like this comes up.

  The reason I’m writing to you is because I’ve spent days reading up on CIs, not just what they are and how they work, but how they affect the lives of the user. I’m aware they aren’t a magic cure that’ll make Caleb hear again.

  I know we could go forward with a traditional CI for Caleb, but I don’t want that for him. I know they can make people feel sick or dizzy and give people headaches. I’ve heard about all the pain and discomfort someone goes through before they settle into life with a CI in place. And I know the model you’re planning to use on the trial is different. If I can, I want to reduce the amount of suffering Caleb might have to go through.

  We’ve raised sponsorship for his CI and are able to contribute toward the cost of the trial.

  Caleb is a person who has never been given that single, honest-to-God shot at life. I’m hoping you might be willing to reconsider your decision.

  Thank you for your time,

  Luc

  Dear Mr. Le Bautillier,

  Thank you for your kind letter regarding Caleb Stone. You do not say in what capacity you know him, although from the tone of your letter I am guessing that he is a close friend.

  You are obviously aware of the reasons behind our previous decision not to put Caleb forward for the trial. Caleb is a good example of how physical, emotional, social, and psychological factors all need to come together in order for us to make the right choice, both for the patient and for our company.