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Bodhi shook his head. “Sorry. Ravi has way more functional hearing than I do. Want me to go grab him?”
Caleb blinked in surprise. “No. We don’t need Ravi.” He eyed his car, which would be in the moms’ sightline, but he decided he didn’t give a shit. Let them try and stop him. He moved to take a step, then felt a tap on his arm and he looked back.
“Want me to distract them so you can go?”
Caleb couldn’t help his laugh. “Fuck them,” he signed with as much emphasis as he could muster.
Bodhi’s lips twitched and a bit more of his expression went relaxed and calm. “Okay. Race you.”
Caleb let out a short noise of surprise as Bodhi darted past him, and he quickly caught up, laughing as he punched the button on his key fob and quickly got into the car. He had no idea if the moms saw or recognized him, but that playful moment sloughed off a ton of weight from his shoulders.
He was still grinning as he turned to face Bodhi who was smiling back, his fingers dancing over the tops of his jeans. “You think they saw us?”
Bodhi shrugged. “Fuck them, right?”
Caleb grinned wider as he pushed the button to turn his car on, then got a good glimpse of them as he backed out. They were watching him with narrowed eyes, and he knew he was probably going to wake up to a waterfall of Yelp complaints, but in that moment, he couldn’t bring himself to give a single shit.
Chapter6
The weightof what he was doing didn’t hit Caleb until he pulled into his parking spot and turned the car off. He and Cameron used to race for it every night since only one was assigned and Cameron refused to concede that since Caleb was the one paying for it, he should get to use it.
It had started out like a cutesy little competition, but it didn’t take long for it to get passive aggressive and mean. The ugly feeling sat like a boulder on his chest, and he had to take a few breaths before he was calm enough to turn the engine off and look over at his companion.
He didn’t regret bringing Bodhi over, but while it was mostly to make up for the fact that he’d scared the absolute shit out of the guy, a small piece of it was self-serving. If he could focus on literally anything else, he wouldn’t have to feel everything about losing Cameron all at once.
“You look pale,” Bodhi told him.
Caleb took a short breath and nodded. “I haven’t been back here since that night.”
Bodhi’s face morphed into surprise—the expression kind of foreign on his face which was usually so quiet. “Are you okay? Do you want to have someone else be here for this?”
Caleb’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
Bodhi’s lips parted and Caleb felt a short breath ghost over his cheeks. He realized it was a laugh. “You don’t like me, so it might be better to have someone you care about with you.”
The knife twisted deeper, but the wound was his own making. He bowed his head to gather himself, then he looked back up at Bodhi. “I’m so sorry. I do like you.”
Bodhi’s mouth twisted in a scoff. “I know you don’t. I might be autistic, but even I can read that cue. And it’s fine. Not everyone needs to like me. Most of my old friends—”
Caleb reached out, curling fingers around Bodhi’s wrist to quiet him. Their gazes didn’t meet, but Caleb felt the weight of those brown eyes as they darted from his mouth to his neck, then back to his mouth again.
He pulled his hand away in a slow drag, and he pretended not to notice the air between them was charged. “I like you, Bodhi. Sometimes I can be a huge asshole, but that isn’t your fault. It’s mine.”
Bodhi’s eyebrows shot up, but he didn’t respond.
Caleb shook his fingers out, then swiped them on the pants again. He hated the scratchy fabric and wanted to change so badly, but he was still working up the courage to get out of the damn car. “Your slow progress,” he started, going slow and trying to use signs that Bodhi would understand, “reminds me of the way society fails people like us.”
Bodhi swallowed heavily. “You and me?”
“You, me, my brother, Jori,” Caleb clarified. “We don’t have Deaf legacy the way Luke does. We were born to parents who don’t understand. We have families who don’t want to learn for us.”
Bodhi flinched, but Caleb was damn sure it wasn’t his own words. It was something from Bodhi’s past. He took a slow breath that made his ribs expand, and it almost looked painful.
Caleb waited until he had his attention again before going on. “I got lucky, even when I was unlucky. My implants failed so as a last resort, my parents sent me to Deaf school, and I was given a gift there that they could never give me at home.”
“But not Wren,” Bodhi said.
Caleb shook his head, feeling the old, atrophied hurt twinge. He used to be mad at his brother for it, like somehow Wren had control over the choices his parents made. Caleb was mad at him for not fighting harder to go with him, forgetting that his parents were immovable and convinced they were right, even in the face of the way the system had failed both him and Wren.
