Джей Эшер - What Light

“Because they trust me over you,” I say, “as they should.”

He looks me in the eyes. There’s so much hate inside. “They had a right to know their daughter’s dating a… whatever he is.”

My fury builds. “This is none of your business,” I say. “ I’m none of your business.”

Caleb comes up behind me and takes my hand. “Sierra, come on.”

Andrew looks at both of us with disgust. “Wherever you go, I hope they don’t serve anything that needs cutting. For both of your sakes.”

Caleb lets go of my hands. “What, so there are no knives?” he asks. “That’s clever.”

I see Dad move out from between two trees, watching us. Mom walks toward him, worried, and he shakes his head.

Caleb’s jaw tightens and he looks away, like he could snap at any second and punch Andrew. The angry part of me wants that, but I need Caleb to stay cool. I want to know he can do that, and I want my parents to see it.

He flexes his fingers and then roughly rubs the back of his neck. He looks at Andrew, but no one says anything. Andrew looks afraid, one hand gripped to the netting like it’s the only thing that keeps him from backing away. Seeing Andrew’s fear, Caleb’s expression shifts from angry to apologetic. He takes my hand again, lacing our fingers together, and leads me to his truck.

We sit in silence for a few minutes, both of us calming down. I feel like I should say something, but I don’t know where or how to begin. Eventually, he starts the engine.

The lot recedes in the rearview mirror and Caleb breaks our silence, telling me he picked up Abby from the train station three hours ago. He looks at me and smiles. “She can’t wait to meet you.”

I realize Caleb hasn’t told me much about how things are between them. Is it better now that she’s with her dad? Are things tense when she returns?

“My mom can’t wait to meet you, either,” he says. “She’s been bugging me about it since I met you.”

“Really?” I can’t hide my smile. “Since we met?”

He shrugs like it’s no big deal, but the smirk gives him away. “I may have mentioned a certain girl at the lot after I brought home our tree.”

I wonder what he could have possibly said about me without the opportunity to gush about any dimples.

His house is a three-minute drive off the highway. When we enter a residential area, I sense him growing more nervous. I don’t know if it’s his sister or his mom or me, but he’s a wreck by the time we pull to the curb. The house is two stories, but narrow. A Christmas tree in the front window is lit with colored lights and topped with a golden star.

“The thing is,” he says, “I’ve never brought anyone home like this.”

“Not like what?” I ask.

He cuts the engine and looks at the house, then at me. “How would you classify what we’re doing? Are we dating, are we… ?”

His nervousness is adorable.

“This may be a shock coming from me,” I say, “but sometimes it’s okay not to define everything.”

He looks down at the space between us. I hope he doesn’t think I’m pulling back.

“Let’s not worry about finding a word for us,” I say. “We’re with each other.”

“ With is good,” he says, but his smile is thin. “I’m most worried about the time we have left, though.”

I think about the text I sent last night, telling Rachel to break a leg at tonight’s performance. She still hasn’t responded. I called Elizabeth, but that hasn’t been returned either. He’s right to be worried. I’m worried. How long can anyone be in two places at once?

He pops open his door. “Might as well get started.”

We reach the front step and he takes my hand. His palms are sweating and his fingers are fidgety. This is not the cool, smooth guy I met that first day. He drops my hand to rub his palms along his jeans. Then he opens the door.

“They’re here!” squeals a voice from upstairs.

Abby skips down the steps, looking much more confident and beautiful than I did as a freshman. What is so annoyingly cute is that she and Caleb have matching dimples. I bite my cheek to keep from pointing this out because I’m sure they’ve noticed. When she reaches the landing, she extends her hand. For the briefest moment as our hands touch, my mind flashes through everything I imagined happening that day between her and Caleb.

“It is so nice to finally meet you,” she says. Her smile is as kind and genuine as her brother’s. “Caleb’s told me so much about you. I feel like I’m meeting a celebrity!”

“I…” I don’t know what to say. “Well, okay! It’s so nice to meet you, too.”

Caleb’s mom comes out of the kitchen with a similar smile, but no dimple. At first glance, by the way she holds herself, she seems more reserved than her children.

“Don’t let Caleb keep you by the door,” she says. “Come in. I hope you like lasagna.”

Abby swings around the banister on her way to the kitchen. “I also hope you can eat a lot of it,” she says.

Caleb’s mom watches Abby walk into the kitchen. She keeps staring in that direction even after her daughter is out of view. Eventually, she lowers her head a moment, and then turns toward us. More to herself, she says, “It’s nice when she’s home.”

With those words, I’m overwhelmed with the feeling that I shouldn’t be here. Their family deserves to share this first night together without a stranger taking attention away from them. I glance at Caleb, and he must sense that I need to talk.

“I’m going to give Sierra a little tour before dinner,” he says. “Is that okay?”

His mom waves us away. “We’ll set the table.”

She walks into the kitchen, where Abby is pulling a small table away from the wall. She touches Abby’s hair as she passes, and my heart breaks.

I follow Caleb into the living room. Deep maroon curtains are pulled back, framing the Christmas tree.

“Everything okay?” he asks.

“Your mom has so little time with the two of you together,” I say.

“You’re not interrupting anything,” he says. “I want you to meet them. That’s important, too.”

I can hear Caleb’s mom and Abby talking in the kitchen. Their voices sound cheery. They’re so happy to be together. When I look at Caleb, he’s staring at the tree, his eyes incredibly sad.

I step close to the tree and look at the ornaments. You can tell a lot from the ornaments on a family’s tree. This one is a mishmash of things he and Abby must’ve made when they were small, plus some fancy ornaments from locations all over the world.

I touch a twinkling Eiffel Tower. “Did your mom visit all these places?”

He nudges a Sphinx wearing a Santa hat. “You know how collections start. One of her friends brings back an ornament from Egypt, another friend sees it on our tree and brings back something from her trip.”

“She’s got some globe-trotting friends,” I say. “Does she ever go anywhere?”

“Not since the split,” he says. “At first, it was because we didn’t have enough money.”

“And then?”

He looks toward the kitchen. “When one child decides to leave, I guess it’s harder to leave the other for even a short time.”

I touch an ornament of what I assume is the Leaning Tower of Pisa, but it dangles straight up and down on the tree. “Couldn’t you go with her?”

He laughs. “And now we’re back to the money issue.”

Caleb leads me upstairs to see his room. He walks ahead of me down the narrow hall toward an open door at the other end, but my legs stop fast at a closed door painted solid white. I lean in close and my breath catches. A series of painted-over cut-marks are clustered at eye level. Instinctively, I feel them with my fingertips.