by Natalie Ann
She was going to tell someone about her appointment.
Sparky was barking when she climbed out of her car. She didn’t even have a chance to knock on the door before Caleb had it open.
“Hey, did you come back to make use of my tub?” he asked, his eyes sparkling.
He’d never had a look like that in his eyes before, and she was pretty sure the conversation she wanted to have with him would extinguish it. Part of her didn’t want to do it, but the other part thought this was long overdue. Whether he talked or shut her out was yet to be determined.
“Maybe later. Do you have time to talk?”
“Sure, come on in. Are you okay? You don’t look good.”
“I’m fine,” she said as happily as she could. Put the cheerful front on like always, she reminded herself. Max told her not to panic, so she was going to listen to him, even if it was difficult to do.
“What did you want to talk about?”
“I just got back from the doctor’s. I went to see Max about a mole on my arm.” She’d taken her jacket off already and then turned to show him after she pulled her sleeve up. “See that spot right there? If you hadn’t pointed out all the soot on my arm yesterday that I had to scrub off, I might have never seen it. So thanks,” she said, smiling.
He leaned down and put his face close to her arm. “I can barely see it. How did you find it?”
“I’ve learned to look for things. Anyway, Max is removing it on Wednesday next week.”
“What did he have to say about it?” he asked, frowning at her.
“He told me not to panic, so I’m not. What’s one more scar, right?”
“But it’s not that, is it? You’re upset over it. You’re not as cavalier as you make it all out to be.”
She was surprised he understood that. “I try, but you’re right. Sometimes it hits me. Actually, this is the first time I’m telling someone before the fact.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that normally I don’t say anything to my family until after it’s removed and I get the results back. Then I can say it was done and it wasn’t a big deal.”
“So you bottle it all up and carry the burden yourself?” he asked.
“You could say that. Speaking of burdens…can I ask you something?”
“Of course. Do I have to answer it?”
He looked serious, so she answered in kind. “Not if you don’t want to, but I was hoping you would.”
“By the look on your face, I think I’m going to need coffee. Would you like one?”
“Sure.”
She sat in the living room and waited for him to fix both of their cups. He came back and handed hers off. “What’s your question?”
“It’s not really a question. I was wondering if you’d talk to me about Kasey.” She paused when he tensed. “Only if you want to. It’s just we’ve never talked about her, and yet I get the feeling part of what is going on with you has to do with her, too. Am I wrong?”
“No, you aren’t.”
“Did you have a bad relationship? Did it end horribly?”
He paused for a second and she thought he was going to end the conversation, but instead he said, “Yeah, it ended horribly, but not like you’d think.”
She wasn’t sure what to think, other than she figured things weren’t well. How could they be when their child had died and Caleb barely spoke Kasey’s name?
“Where is Kasey now? Do you mind me asking?”
“She died five years ago.”
“Oh.” She hadn’t expected that and now was wondering if that was what caused him to leave California. The timing seemed right in her mind.
“Do you want to know?” he asked.
“Only if you want to tell me.”
“I probably should. I guess you deserve to know why I am the way I am.”
“Your mother did tell me a bit. Nothing about Kasey at all. Just more about you being a certifiable genius and how it affected your childhood at times.”
He laughed. “She loves to equally brag and bust my balls about it at the same time. So I’m sure she told you how awkward I was and how I didn’t have a lot of friends.”
“Among other things, but that is the gist of it. We didn’t go into a lot of detail, and it was no more than I suspected, if you want to be honest.”
“Kasey was a lot like me.”
“A genius?” she asked.
“I guess. But she wasn’t ahead of her class like I was. We were the same age, but I was a few years ahead of her in school. She was starting pre-law and I was working on my MBA. We ended up in the same dorm together and met one night studying in one of the halls. Two lone souls, you could say. Both of us were more focused on college and our work than the partying going on around us.”
“So then you really stood out even more.”
“Obviously. Bet you were invited to all the parties.”
“I went to my fair share, but I focused on my studies, too. I had a clear outline of where I wanted to go with my life. I was given a second chance at it, and I wasn’t going to blow it, but I wasn’t going to give up on fun, either.”
“I wish I could have separated the two like you did. Like you do all the time.”
“It takes work to balance it all. Then again, such is life.”
“We weren’t good at balancing much at all. We were both so focused on school and succeeding that neither of us had time for relationships. Or if we did, it didn’t work out because we didn’t put the time and effort needed into them. I guess we were a good fit that ended up falling into the old friends-with-benefits category.”
“Ah. Never tried that myself.”
“I don’t know that it works for everyone, but it did for us. I loved her—as a friend, but nothing more.”
“No matter how much your parents wanted it to be different.”
“And her family,” he said.
“Did she have an older brother that put you through the wringer, too?” she asked, trying to keep a serious conversation as light as possible, even if she knew that most likely wouldn’t work.
“Two older brothers. Cole wasn’t my first go-around at that rodeo. The thing is, neither one of us was going to conform for them.”
“So what happened?” she asked.
“The years went on. I graduated, got a lot of start-up money, and went into business for myself. I’d had two patents for software already, so securing funds was easy. I became successful and Kasey went on to get her law degree. She started working for me as our corporate attorney and things were great. Then our friendship seemed to get strained and she confessed that she really wanted her own practice. She wanted to branch out on her own. She appreciated that I gave her the experience, but it was time to move on.”
“Were you upset over that?”
“Not really. Like I said, we were friends first and foremost, so we transitioned around her opening her own practice. The less we worked together, the more we saw each other outside of work. It seemed to put us back to the way we were in college. We’d go out and drink, get together, have sex, and go back to our lives.”
“It sounds simple, yet anything but simple at the same time.”
“That’s exactly what it was. Then she found out she was pregnant and she was unsure. She never knew if she wanted kids and really didn’t want them when she was just getting her practice off the ground.”
“But you wanted the baby?” Connie did say Caleb was meant to be a father and she saw all of that with the way he was with Sparky. He was a nurturing soul himself…if you looked deep enough.
“Yeah. At first I was scared and nervous, but then I was excited over it. Someone that would be mine, you know. Someone that would depend on me and love me just for being me.”
It was exactly what she’d suspected before.
“So then what?”
“We had our separate living quarters. I had a high-rise condo, she had a townhouse, and we were trying to figure out how to make i
t all work. She slowly started to come around to the idea of being a mother and was trying, I could see it. As she neared her due date, I moved in with her to help her out, to be there in case she needed anything. We got her home ready for Adam and pretended to play house for a bit.
“How was it living with her?”
“Funny you should ask that. It was the first and last woman I lived with. It was okay, I guess. We shared a room because it was just a two-bedroom townhouse and the other room was the nursery. I didn’t want to give up time with the baby when he was born so I was fine living there for the time being, but I kept my condo, too. We figured there was time yet to work out the details as we went along.”
So he’d never lived with anyone, which didn’t really surprise her.
“We can skip forward through the pregnancy and Adam’s birth. We brought him home and put him in the nursery. I wanted him in our room at first, but she didn’t. She said she wanted her own space and it was easier for her to get some sleep if she wasn’t listening to every noise he made.”
“Do you blame yourself for that? Do you blame her?”
“I guess I do a little. Blame both of us, I mean. I wondered if Adam had been in our room would we have noticed anything. I thought we did all the right things. No blankets on him at night, put him on his back, nothing in the crib for him to grab and put by his face. But we still became a statistic.”
“Have you ever told anyone that before? What you just said to me.”
His eyes were glossing over, but other than that he seemed surprisingly calm.
“No.”
“It doesn’t feel so bad saying it now, does it? Voicing it out loud.”
“Not as much as I thought.”
“So what happened after Adam passed away?” She couldn’t bring herself to say “died,” it just seemed too harsh for a baby.
“I was devastated. Kasey was, too. Though she wasn’t as maternal as I hoped, she tried, and she was heartbroken over the loss. I had ended up officially moving out a few months after the funeral.”
“What do you mean by officially moving out?”
“I wasn’t staying there often at that point. I spent a lot of time at work, and so did she. Anything to not go back to that house, to not remember we’d had a child there…a child that passed away in his sleep there. I only stayed to help her through the loss, but she didn’t want the help anymore than I did.”
“You two had each other but weren’t helpful at all?”
“More like hurtful. Toxic is probably a better description,” he admitted. “She wanted to go out if she wasn’t working. Go out and drink, party, hang out with friends. I just wanted to be alone. She was turning into the person that neither of us were in college and it seemed odd to me.”
“Opposite reactions, then,” she said, not sure she liked where this might be going.
“Yeah. The more time I spent working, the more she spent out. We were both spiraling out of control. Instead of being there for each other, we left the other hanging to fend for themselves.”
She reached her hand over and held his. “How did she die, Caleb?”
He blinked his eyes once, looked up, and then looked over at her. “She called me one night after she was finished with work asking me to go out with her and have a drink. She wanted to talk, but I brushed her off. I only did because the last few times she asked to do that, it was only to get drunk, then go back to her place and purge out anything she was feeling. I just couldn’t put myself through it again.”
The lack of drinking on Caleb’s part made more sense. A choice, he said, not a recommendation. “So she went out alone?”
“She did. Drank too much and got behind the wheel of her car. As you can guess, it didn’t end well. That call in the middle of the night was the second worst thing I ever had to deal with, and in such a short period of time. It was almost a year after Adam had passed.”
“Why did you leave?”
“Everyone blamed me. Her family was all over my case. They said it was my fault, that I let her get out of control. That I wasn’t there for her. But you know what, Celeste? She wasn’t there for me, either. Not when Adam was alive, and not after he was gone. We were both on our own.”
“Your mother said she tried to help you.”
“She did. They did, but it wasn’t what I wanted. I didn’t need people telling me to get help, I didn’t need advice. What I needed was to be left alone.”
“How did that work for you?” she asked dryly.
“Not well, as you know. I couldn’t stay there anymore. It was hard enough going to work with everyone pitying me about Adam. Then when Kasey was gone, even though we weren’t really together, it just opened the wound up again. I blamed myself. I still blame myself.”
She was wishing she hadn’t started this, but she now had a clearer understanding of him. More than she might have wanted.
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Caleb. We all make our choices in life and they lead down different roads. How those roads end depends on the turns we take. Sometimes we get lost, and sometimes we find our way.”
“She was lost,” he said. “Both of us were.”
“But you were found. I found you,” she said, leaning in and wrapping her arms around him.
And he found her, because right now, he was exactly what she needed in her life and she only wished she could freeze this moment in time, but knew that wasn’t possible.
Full Of Wisdom
Talking about everything didn’t seem to open up the raw wound in his gut like before. The festering sore that never wanted to heal. Not when Kasey’s family tried to call him, not when his own family did.
Selling his business and changing his name, then leaving, seemed like the only way out for him. It gave him the space and time he needed.
Only in that time, and in that space, he never seemed to heal. Not until recently. Not until Celeste.
“Can we talk about you now?”
“What’s there to talk about?” she asked.
“Burdens. Why you always carry yours alone.”
She pursed her lips adorably, but he wasn’t falling for it. “I don’t understand.”
After she’d told him about her past and her illness, he looked a few things up. “Why is it that you hold it all in? You just admitted that you never tell anyone about an appointment until after you know everything is fine. Why is that?”
“Why worry people?” she asked, shrugging. “There’s no reason for it. Once it’s over and done, then it’s easier to explain. I don’t need family or friends calling me to see how I’m doing or if I found out my results yet.”
“So, it’s your own form of hiding? It’s not much healthier than what I do or did.”
“Do I look like I’m hiding anything?” she asked. “Do I look unhappy or upset?”
“I’d say you’ve mastered covering up your feelings for the sake of others and just absorb them inside until they’re gone.”
She lifted an eyebrow. “Think you’re so smart?”
“I am a genius.”
“Cute, Caleb.” She sighed. “Okay, let’s talk about me. What do you want to know?”
“I did my own research a while ago. Though I don’t know everything you went through, what treatments you had specifically and such, I did see that childhood cancers carry a boatload of complications during and after you’re in remission.”
“They did. They do.”
“So is that why everyone doesn’t want you to work so hard? Why everyone is watching out for you so much? Are they afraid it will cause a relapse?”
It was the first thing that popped into his head, knowing that stressing the body physically and emotionally could cause all sorts of health issues. But Celeste never seemed stressed or physically exhausted, so he pushed that aside.
“I’m sure that is part of it, but there is no need. I’ve been healthy for years.”
“But technically there is no cure for cancer. Remission sure, but not really a c
ure.”
“You aren’t telling me anything I don’t already know myself,” she said, grinning at him.
“There are a lot of side effects during the treatments and years later, but you’ve never let on if you’ve had any issues.”
“Are you asking me if I’m sick? Or have complications or side effects from my treatments?”
“No, I can see you’re not sick. I guess I just want to understand what you went through, or maybe what you might be still going through but don’t want others to know. Even me. And I understand if you’d rather not discuss it.”
He didn’t want to upset her, yet she seemed like she was humoring him.
“I’m as healthy as I can be for someone who went through what I did. Obviously, since you did your own research, you know there is a huge risk of other cancers.”
“Do you think that is what caused your melanoma?” He thought it, but was curious if she did.
“I’m not sure. There is no way to find out one way or another. It’s one of those cancers that could come from the sun, too.”
“True, but do you believe that? Deep down, what do you think?”
She was losing some of her composure. He wasn’t trying to put her on the spot but she did it to him, and he felt if he could open up like he did, she should be able to, too.
“Deep down I think they could be related, but who knows? I’m at risk for a lot of other cancers. That’s the thing about the chemo they used on me. It was experimental back then and though now it’s commonly used, it wasn’t at that point. Did they give me too much? Not enough? Who knows? But I helped with their data for the future, I know that. And while it killed all those nasty deadly cells in me, the chemo also killed some good strong protective ones opening me up to tons of issues. Not just cancer, but kidney and liver failure or complications. Heart disease, thyroid disease, female issues, from infertility to osteoporosis. It can trigger anything.”
“Has it?”
He knew he was asking a lot of personal questions right now and realized that he might not answer them himself if she asked him.