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And it was true. He did. The difference was, it didn’t bother him the same way it bothered Bodhi. Ravi didn’t lose sleep at night thinking of strangers treating him like he had no right to privacy and passing around videos on TikTok or YouTube.
Bodhi would have given anything to shut that part of his brain off and not give a shit, but it didn’t work like that. There was no switch to flip to make it all stop.
“What if he knows?” Bodhi asked after a beat. “What if someone sent him the video? He’ll have to live with knowing the whole world watched him get dumped.”
“It sounds to me like your boss’s ex made a literal ass of himself. Even if the world is watching, they’re going to be on his side.”
Bodhi scoffed. “Yeah, but they won’t even know what they’re saying. They’ll be like, aww two besties talking in sign language outside of a café. Isn’t ASL sobeautiful?”
Ravi sneered. “Fuck those people. I know it bothers you, but I bet Caleb can ignore it.”
Bodhi wasn’t sure if that was a dig at him, or an attempt to make him feel better. Whatever it was, it only increased the discomfort rushing through him and his fingers began to move again. “I’m gonna head back to the room. I think I’m going to skip chem tonight.”
Ravi shrugged though Bodhi didn’t expect him to care considering how many classes he’d skipped since they started at the university. “Want me to bring you dinner?”
“I’ll text you,” Bodhi said. At the moment, eating sounded like hell, and he wasn’t sure it was going to get better for the rest of the night. He was only grateful he had three days off and prayed to whatever god was listening that by the time he had his next shift, the world would have forgotten all about Caleb’s public humiliation.
Chapter3
Pressinga cold pack to the back of his neck, Caleb slipped the front of his hand against Jori’s palm and lifted them both into the air. “Remind me to buy you a muffin basket.”
Jori scoffed, pulling his hand back to reply. “I bake for a living. I don’t want a muffin basket.”
“Then massage oils? Chocolate? Booze?”
“Anything that’ll get a two-month-old to sleep through the night?” Jori asked.
Caleb laughed, tapping Jori’s hand to indicate he found him funny. “I think my mom used to but drops of bourbon in our bottles, but I’m pretty sure that’s child abuse these days.”
Jori made a face. “Rather not add that to the list of how badly I’m doing as a fill-in parent.”
Caleb sat up a bit straighter and let the cold pack rest between his neck and the couch cushion so he could sign with both hands, Jori holding the left one since that eye was worse than his right. “Is it really that bad?”
Jori’s face fell and he shook his head, his chest moving with his sigh. His situation was complicated—and not just because the child under his care was a tiny infant that did little more than eat, sleep, shit, and cry. He was also dealing with the stress that no one could locate the birth mother, his brother’s petition to defer deployment had been denied. If social services found out that a deafblind man was taking care of a baby, they’d freak out.
The last part was a horrific miscarriage of justice—a word Caleb liked to throw around whenever social agencies were being ableist as fuck—but it didn’t change the fact that it was true. None of them had any real money to contribute to a lawyer if anyone reported Jori’s situation, and the only thing he had on his side was that he could function fairly well with his hearing aids in a verbal situation.
Jori had been born deafblind—low vision because of his albinism, and hard of hearing from a genetic condition that had apparently run undetected in his family for several generations. Caleb had met him when he was finally allowed to go to his Deaf school and for a long while, Jori had sort of replaced his brother. Jori was the first person Caleb ever brought home for the holidays, and he felt sick with worry.
But the second Wren laid eyes on him, Jori and Wren had become almost instant best friends. And it was only the fact that Jori never once wavered in his support of Caleb that he didn’t resent it.
Now, Caleb and Wren were doing everything in their power to make sure that Jori’s situation improved, but it wasn’t easy. He hadn’t wanted to become a parent. That had never been in his plan. But he also wasn’t going to let his niece get carted off to foster care because the government sucked.
Caleb could also see the toll it was taking on his friend. Even having Peyton’s help at the café with the baking, Jori was still starting to crack under the strain, and Caleb was officially minutes away from telling him he needed to take some time off.
Of course, he wasn’t quite sure that would be a vacation for the pseudo-single parent. Jori seemed far more relaxed in the kitchen than he did at home.
“I just feel like I’m starting to lose my mind,” Jori admitted, pulling a face. “Khai’s been great with watching Mila, but I can’t ask him to do more than he’s already doing, especially with his new schedule. He’s not even charging me.”
Caleb didn’t know Khai very well. They’d met once in passing and he learned that he was good looking, tall, sweet, fluent in ASL. He was a CODA, even if he had the worst hearing accent Caleb had ever seen. But he helped Jori without asking for anything in return, so in his book, that made him a damn hero.
“What can we do to make it easier?” Caleb asked.
Jori laughed and shook his head. “Nothing. You’re doing enough. You’re paying me full time hours for part time work, which is killing my pride.”
Caleb scoffed and waved him off. “You’d do the same thing for me.”
Jori didn’t argue with him because he knew it was true. Jori had been the one to talk Caleb around when it came to giving Wren a chance to prove he was nothing like their parents. And he’d been there for every breakdown, and every Christmas and Easter he skipped going home because he just didn’t want to be surrounded by a bunch of people who refused to learn his language.
