Only Between Us

by Mila Ferrera

  I look back at the lit windows of the co-op classroom. “We haven’t spoken to each other in a few weeks, Daniel. I mean—”

  “You shouldn’t judge him for being with Claudia.” His blue eyes are on mine, challenging. “He’s trying to survive. But it didn’t mean anything.”

  He says it like it’s in the past, and I can’t help it, a spark of hope glitters in some corner of my brain. “Why are you saying this to me now?”

  “Because he’s had a rough day, Romy. It would be nice if one thing could go right for him.”

  I squint at him, trying to read the words beneath his words, waiting for him to say more. “I’m not his friend, not like you are.”

  “You could be. He could use more of them, that’s for sure.” He glances over my shoulder at the co-op. “Anyway, it’s up to you. I just needed to say it.” He flashes a brilliant smile. “It’s my good deed for today. I’ll see you around.” He turns on his heel and walks up the street.

  I stare after him for a moment, then tuck my toolbox into the trunk of my car and get behind the wheel. I sit there for a minute, turning Daniel’s words over in my head. I lean my head against the seat and remember Caleb’s expression tonight. It looked like someone had slammed him in the face with something. Did he get in a fight? Did he get in a fight with Daniel? Is that why Daniel’s telling me that I should talk to Caleb?

  In the rearview mirror, I watch the other students scurry out into the rain, their umbrellas blossoming beneath the silvery drops. Headlights wink on and pull away from the curb. The street is empty within a few minutes. Did Caleb leave already, or is he still in there? If I showed up at his studio stall again, would he be glad to see me, or would it be a huge mistake?

  Should I try, even if he pushes me away? Does he deserve that?

  “Of course he does,” I hiss at myself. He’s never been anything but nice to me. He didn’t owe me anything, even after what happened between us. I never even gave him the chance to be a jerk; I was so focused on myself. On what I wanted. “You’re acting like a selfish bitch, Romy.”

  I throw my car door open, and someone who had been jogging along the sidewalk crashes against it and stumbles backward, cursing. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry!” I yelp. I leap out of my car and see Caleb straightening up, clutching at his middle.

  “I didn’t see you coming,” I say, walking toward him. I don’t know how to understand what I’m feeling. Relief and protectiveness and giddiness all at once. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” he says quietly, rubbing at his ribs. “Fine.” He’s staring at the pavement. “I’ll see you next week.” He steps around me.

  “Where are you going?” I ask.

  He looks down at me, rain dripping from the hood of his coat. “Home.”

  “Is it far?”

  He shrugs. “Less than a mile.”

  “Want a ride?”

  For the first time in two weeks, our eyes meet, and there’s this odd, swooping feeling in my chest. “You don’t have to,” he says.

  “I know.”

  The corner of his mouth lifts for a fraction of a second. “You sure?”

  “Come on.” I gesture toward my car and he walks around to get in on the passenger side. My heart is racing as he opens the door and sits next to me. It’s so strange, being in this tiny space with him. His coat smells like turpentine.

  He fastens his seatbelt. “It’s the Academy Hills complex on the south end of campus.”

  “I live about five blocks from you,” I say with a laugh.

  A shadow of a smile crosses his face. “I’m glad it’s not far out of your way.”

  “I take it your truck is still in the shop?” Has he really been walking back and forth for the past two weeks? He’s wrong about the distance—it’s actually almost two miles away.

  Caleb gives me the strangest look as I pull onto the street. “How did you know I have a truck, let alone that it’s in the shop?”

  Oh. Oops. “I … heard some of the other students talking about it.”

  He lets out a huff of dry laughter and pushes his hood away from his angular face. “Let me guess. Claudia?”

  There’s no point in lying. “I heard her mention it, yeah.”

  “She mention anything else?” he asks, an edge creeping into his voice.

  “Caleb, I’m not sure what’s going on with you, but we don’t have to play games. It sounds like that’s the last thing you need tonight.”

  “What does that mean?” he asks quietly.

  I touch his arm. “It means you don’t have to worry about what I heard. It doesn’t matter right now.”

  I stop at a red light and look over to see him staring at my fingers on the sleeve of his coat. “You haven’t even looked at me for two weeks. I thought you …” He rubs both his hands over his face, pulling the elastic out of his hair. He tugs it loose and jams it in his pocket. “I don’t know what I thought.”

  “I didn’t know what to say to you,” I murmur, glad for the distraction of the road, the need to keep my eyes on traffic as I steer through downtown, past the movie theater, past the turn off to Lake Park.

  “I get that. I didn’t know what to say to you, either.” He shifts in his seat. “I wanted to say something, though.”

  My fingers tighten on the wheel. “Do you want to say it now?”

  “I don’t know yet.” He’s leaning against the window, staring at the side of my face.

  “Fair enough,” I breathe, turning into his complex. “Here we are.”

  “It’s C block,” he says, pointing to a building at the far edge of the lot.

  I maneuver over there and park in a spot closest to the front walk. Then I pull the key from the ignition and turn to him. “What happened to you today?”

  “Just a bad day.” He laughs, humorless, hopeless. “But I’ll be all right.” He glances at the building. Some of the windows are lit, some dark. It doesn’t seem like he’s looking forward to going in there.

  “Are you sure?” I ask, and then, because it feels right, I brush the backs of my fingers gently against his cheek, along the edge of the spot that’s red and a little swollen. It’s hot to the touch.

  He closes his eyes and sighs as I touch him. “No.”

  “Do you have a roommate or something?” Is he fighting with that person? Did they hurt him?

  “Not anymore,” he says sadly, looking back up at the windows of the building.

  “Are you okay to be alone?” I ask, my mental health training kicking in. Or maybe it’s that I can’t bear to think of him being by himself right now.

  “Well, I don’t have much choice in that, do I?” he says.

  I stare at him, this mysterious guy who has a surprisingly strong grip on me, one I don’t really understand. Everything Daniel said to me echoes in my head. He’s the nicest guy, and that’s pretty amazing, considering some of the things he’s been through. What’s happened to Caleb, in the past and now? Do I want to get closer to a guy with baggage like that?

  No, that’s not really the question. The question is: do I want to get closer to Caleb?

  “You have a choice,” I say. “I don’t have an early class tomorrow. If you want to hang out.”

  “Hang out?” he says, amusement tingeing his words.

  I smile. “Yeah.”

  He searches my expression for a few long seconds. “You can come up if you want.”

  “Sure, I’d love to.”

  He blinks. That was obviously not what he was expecting me to say. A smile creeps onto his face. “Okay.”

  He opens the door and waits for me to join him on the sidewalk, then heads into the C building and up the stairs. I follow him, noticing the state of disrepair. This is one of the cheaper complexes in town, and not the safest, either. I think the free community clinic where Jude works draws a lot of its clientele from here. Caleb exits the stairwell on the second floor and I trail him down the hall to a door with chipped paint, number 224. He unlocks it and flips on some
lights.

  It’s spotless. Like, I can smell the cleaning products, and not a thing is out of place. It’s sparsely furnished, and I know with one glance that everything in here was probably purchased at Goodwill. A series of eight small paintings hangs on one of the walls, a progression of dark to light, of a shadowed figure emerging from blackness to stand in a startling white background. But the final square painting is pure white, and the black figure has disappeared completely like he was never there. It’s either hopeful or terribly sad, and I can’t figure out which.

  “I did that when I was in high school,” Caleb says. “I know it’s amateur.”

  “I like it,” I volunteer, turning to watch him strip off his coat and hang it over a chair at the kitchen table. “And I guess how you interpret it depends on who you think that figure is.”

  He comes forward to take my raincoat from me. “It won a prize in some regional show. At the time I thought it was a sign of things to come.” He’s smiling as he says it, but it’s not bitter like he’s feeling sorry for himself. More like he’s remembering how easy it is to believe that kind of thing when you’re young.

  I hand him my coat. “You’ve been painting for a long time.”

  He nods as he hangs my coat over another chair and goes into the kitchen. “You want some water or something?”

  “I’m good.” I sit down on his couch. There’s a little TV in the corner and a few DVDs stacked on the floor. Atop an old desk sits an equally old desktop computer.

  He gets himself some water and falls onto the couch next to me, fatigue etched on his features. For a second, I wonder if he’s starting to fall asleep, but then he sips his water from a plastic cup and sets it on the floor.

  “Why are you here, Romy?” He opens his eyes and nails me with that wolf-gray gaze. “And you said we weren’t playing games, so I’m going to keep that in mind.”

  I swallow. Caleb doesn’t seem like a dangerous guy, but sometimes his eyes are so intense. “Daniel was waiting by my car when I left class tonight.”

  He lifts his head. “What?”

  I hold my hands up, mentally apologizing to Daniel. “He said you’d had a bad day, and I saw enough during class to know it was true.”

  His smile is bemused. “So you thought you’d rescue me again?”

  My cheeks get warm. “Did I rescue you last time? I wasn’t sure.”

  He shifts a little closer to me. “I’m not sure what I’d call it. But I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.”

  He’s only a foot away from me. Close enough for me to see the red mark on his cheek that’s going to be a bruise tomorrow. Close enough for me to see the dark stubble on his jaw, the tiny dent in his chin, the brilliant blue dot of pigment in his right eye. “I won’t either. I don’t … I don’t do things like that. Not usually.”

  “Do you care about what happened between me and Claudia?”

  My heart skips. No games. “Yeah. I think I do.”

  He sighs. “You won’t like it.”

  “Daniel said it didn’t mean anything,” I say quietly. I don’t think I can bear hearing details. Not right now. Not while I’m looking at his handsome face, not while his body is this close. I don’t want to think about Claudia running her hands over him.

  Caleb touches my hand, skimming his fingertip along one of the blue veins beneath my skin. “Daniel was right. And it’s over.”

  I feel my lips trying to pull into a smile, and I fight it as I say, “Good.”

  His gaze lingers on my mouth. “I’m going to say it.”

  “What?”

  “The thing I wanted to say to you a few weeks ago.”

  “And it is?”

  “I want to know you.” His eyes rise to mine. “That’s it. I’m not great with words.”

  I stroke his hair away from his face. It’s like something I might do for Jude, except every time I touch Caleb, my heart flutters. “Not like you are with images and color,” I murmur. “But you know how to express yourself.”

  He looks away. His jaw is tense. “Why do you say stuff like that?” he asks. “Is that some language only therapists know?”

  “I’m not a therapist, not yet.”

  He gives me a sidelong glance. “You’ll be good at it, though. You know how to … I don’t know how you think of those things you say.” He pushes himself up and turns back to me. “All I know is that once you say them, they hit me so hard, and I can’t forget them.”

  “Is that a good thing?” I ask, but it comes out wavering and broken. Being this close to him is messing with me, like it always does.

  He shrugs. “I don’t know yet. Right now it feels pretty okay.” His smile is sad, like he’s already missing me even though leaving is the last thing on my mind. “So will you?”

  “What?” I breathe.

  “Let me know you?” He brushes the backs of his fingers over my cheek, like I did to him. Testing, maybe.

  And I react the same way he did, letting my eyes fall shut and dwelling in the caress for a moment. “What do you want to know?”

  His thumb strokes along my jaw. “Tell me why you stopped painting.”

  “I just got busy…”

  His touch disappears. “No. Please, Romy. You said no games, so tell me you can’t talk about it if that’s true. But don’t lie. I’m too tired for that.” And he does sound tired. So weary that he can’t bear the weight of a single ounce of pretend.

  My eyes open. I have a choice. I could push this away, or I could give him what he asked for. And for some odd reason, I feel like he has a right to know. “When I moved here for graduate school, I met a guy. He was really charming, and even though I wasn’t looking for anything serious, he changed my mind.” I stare at Caleb’s hands while I speak, because looking at his face would steal my courage. “It was really romantic at first. He bought me flowers and all that stuff.”

  I fiddle with a loose thread on the couch cushion. Caleb starts rubbing at a smear of black paint between two of his fingers. His skin is turning red.

  “I don’t know when I first noticed it didn’t feel quite right,” I continue. “I actually think it was when I realized I hadn’t seen Jude for two months, except in class. Jude finally got so pissed off at my excuses that he called me out on it. So I tried to plan something with him, and Alex got so mad.”

  “Alex,” Caleb says, almost a whisper.

  “Alex,” I confirm. “He accused me of cheating on him.” I laugh. “And he didn’t calm down, even after I told him Jude is gay.”

  “He was the jealous type.”

  “I guess you could say that.” I pull my knees to my chest. “But I let him treat me like that. I let it happen.”

  Caleb moves a little closer, but he doesn’t touch me. “You’re being too hard on yourself, I think.”

  “That’s what my therapist said,” I say with a smile, finding the courage to look him in the eye. “See? You know the language, too.”

  “I’m just halfway decent at stating the obvious,” he replies, leaning his head against the back of the couch. “But you’re not with Alex anymore.”

  I shake my head. “I left him in January.”

  “And he was the reason you stopped painting.”

  “He thought it was a stupid hobby, and he was mad because it meant I wasn’t available for him.”

  Caleb winces. “So he was trying to put you in a little box to keep for himself.”

  I pause, caught by what he’s said. Really, no one’s ever captured it quite so well. “Alex did it with words. They were his weapons, and he’s very good with them. But it wasn’t enough for him after a while. He ended up using his fists.”

  Caleb goes completely still. It’s like he’s not even breathing. And in that space, my confession hangs, ugly and unreachable. I can’t take it back or make Caleb forget he heard it. I don’t know what makes me feel more pathetic—that it happened or that I’m telling him about it now.

  My flight instinct takes over and I start to get up
, but Caleb’s hand shoots out and closes over my wrist. Not hard. I could pull loose if I wanted to. But it’s enough to make me sink into the couch cushions again.

  “You got away from him,” he says. “In January. You got away.”

  I look at his fingers curled over my forearm. “I left him the night he hit me. I ran and didn’t go back.”

  “And now you’re getting back everything that belonged to you. The things he took away.”

  “That’s the idea,” I say, my voice catching. When I saw Alex at Sammy’s, it felt like he took everything from me all over again.

  Slowly, so amazingly slowly, Caleb lifts my forearm and pushes my sleeve to my elbow. With the gentlest of touches, he turns my wrist and looks at the inside of my arm. He’s reading my tattoo. Out of difficulties grow miracles.

  I watch the sweep of his gaze across my skin, and I can tell he’s reading and rereading, that once wasn’t enough for him. His expression melts as he stares. His eyes flicker with a thousand emotions.

  “Do you really believe this?” he says, his voice little more than a rasp.

  “Enough to have it inked permanently into my skin,” I say. “It’s what I say to myself when things get really bad.”

  He lets go of my arm and stands up quickly, grabbing his cup and taking it to the kitchen. He takes his time washing it and putting it in the dish rack, and I get the sense he’s trying to hold himself together.

  I rise slowly. “Do you want to talk about what happened to you today?”

  He laughs as he dries his hands and comes back into the living room. “You heard me say I was no good with words, right?”

  “Do you want to draw me a picture then?” I say it lightly, with a hint of humor, and he smiles.

  “Would you mind …” He sighs. “Would you mind if I didn’t do that tonight? I’m not trying to hide or anything, Romy, I swear. I just can’t. Not tonight.”

  “That’s fine. You don’t have to,” I say, unwilling to push him, not when he looks so weary and sad. “Do you want me to leave?”

  He grits his teeth. “No. But you—”

  “I don’t want to leave,” I blurt.

  He raises his eyes to mine. “Really?”

  “Really. I’m not ready to go.” I walk forward slowly and put my arms around his waist. My head fits snuggly into the curve of his neck. And I hug him, a simple hug, an I’m here hug, a you’re not alone hug.