AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter4
Bodhi wasn’tan expert at hiding his feelings. People were just experts in not understanding when people like him were more subtle about expressing themselves. He’d been called low affect his entire life, and everyone assumed that he didn’t feel things.
In his crueler moments, Ravi had even accused him of being a sociopath, though he’d later apologized for it.
Bodhi had just never known how to explain that he felt things deep in his chest, but there was something like a wall between his feelings and his body. That he could be a raging hurricane inside full of sadness or grief or even pleasure and joy, but all that would be able to escape were the most miniscule expressions and movements.
It was only when everything shattered into a million spiderweb cracks and he had a meltdown that he was able to fully let go, but those tended to scare the shit out of people, so he did everything in his power to prevent them.
But he knew Caleb had seen the hurt on his face. That one was a tender wound that would never fully heal. He’d been denied access to the community and culture that would have made his life so easy growing up, and when he could finally reach out and touch it, he was constantly singled out for his slow progress.
And he would have blamed it on people being shitty, except that Ravi had taken to it like a fucking fish to water. It was just Bodhi and his damn processing. If ASL was his special interest, it might have been able to counter his raging anxiety of being watched that made him want to vomit all the time.
More than once he admitted he’d give anything—money, a limb, his book collection, his Funko Pop figures—to be able to ignore his fears about signing in public the way he could with giving a class presentation about Diogenes or about the Ptolemaic Empire.
But he didn’t get a say in how it worked. He just got to sit and suffer through cluster-panic attacks while trying to remind himself that anxiety couldn’t kill him. No matter what his fears wanted him to think.
Today felt a thousand times worse though, having to admit the perfection of his brother to the man he had a raging crush on. The man who would never see him as worthy of his time.
Caleb made him feel three feet tall, but Bodhi still found himself trying to offer comfort because what he was going through was the worst. And to make matters unbearable, every time Bodhi had a quiet second to think, all he could do was relive the moment Caleb’s thumb had brushed over his chin.
He was fucked. Completely and entirely.
Under his blanket, rocking so hard that his head was hitting the wall on every second pass, Bodhi noticed the lights flashing through a small crack in the fabric. He knew it was likely Ravi, so he didn’t stop moving, even when he felt the space beside him dip low with Ravi’s weight.
A minute later, a slender hand made its way under the covers. “OK?"
Bodhi tapped Ravi’s wrist twice, their tactile home sign for no. No, he wasn’t fucking okay. He’d shaken apart and screamed into his pillow and banged his head on his cushioned chair until he could breathe again.
And now he was coming down.
Ravi waited patiently and Bodhi once again lost time—which was his usual state of being. When his rocking turned into more of a barely-there swaying from side to side, he pulled the blankets off his head and turned to look at his brother.
They were technically identical, but they didn’t look alike as much anymore. They were both tall, but Ravi spent his free time hiking with friends, or hanging out at the gym, and recently he’d taken up surfing so he was building muscle like he was born to do it. His hair was shorter and neater, and he was fit, and he looked…
Well. If happiness had a look, then that was Ravi.
Except now, of course. His brows were furrowed, and he had one leg tucked up near his chest, his forearm resting against his knee as he signed with lazy motions, “Who hurt you? Who’s getting murdered?”
Bodhi laughed softly and shook his head. “No one.”
“Liar.” The sharp, cutting sign looked even sharper than usual, and Bodhi flinched.
Bodhi passed a hand down his face, then laid one hand against his fuzzy pillow so he could run his fingers through the short faux-fur, and with the other he signed, “I had a bad day.”
“I heard about the café,” Ravi told him with a grimace. “We had almost no customers and Chase eventually came in and told me that BrewBiz went viral because of your boss’s breakup.”
Bodhi felt bile rise against the back of his throat. He dropped his head back against the wall and took a deep breath. “It was bad.” He lifted his hand so he could use both to sign. “Caleb didn’t know until someone called him in to work. Everyone was there to try and see him. He couldn’t show his face.”
“Assholes,” Ravi signed, baring his teeth. “Did he tell them all to…” Bodhi didn’t understand the last few signs, but he figured it was something along the lines of, go fuck themselves with a rusty pitchfork.
“No.” At least, he didn’t think so.
Bodhi threw himself into work and deliberately avoided going into the kitchen after he abandoned Caleb at the tea shop. He couldn’t handle seeing the look of contempt on Caleb’s face that afternoon. He was so torn between hurt at how little Caleb thought of him, and empathy because he was clearly suffering. But by the time Bodhi was forced to brave the kitchen, Caleb was long gone, and Jori was in trying to keep up with orders.
“I think he’s hiding.”
“That’s bullshit,” Ravi said. “They should close for a few days and let it calm down.”
