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or even Peter’s for being such a fucking gentleman that he couldn’t leave Caleb crying in peace.
It was his own fault for relying on anybody but himself.
a matched set of soft-looking blue leather luggage that had Caleb wanting to defect to the Soviets.
way. It was stupidly satisfying to lash out at somebody, especially somebody like Peter Cabot who couldn’t be hurt one way or the other.
“Did you tell me because you want to get into my pants? Because if you think I’m paying for the car ride with blow jobs, let me tell you I’m worth far more than the price of a Greyhound ticket.”
Caleb hadn’t seen that coming at all. He was by no means an expert at identifying fellow travelers, but Cabot seemed, well, too boring to be queer.
“Ahh, why is it doing that?” he cried, shielding his eyes with his hand. “The sun? Why is it shining?” asked Peter, unfairly amused. “It often does.” “Does it need to be so annoying about it?”
“Highway 66. I’m impressed.” “You really shouldn’t be.” “You’re not the boss of me,” Caleb said, and Peter could hear the smile in his voice.
“The Chicken Basket,” Peter announced. “The sheep bucket,” Caleb declared promptly. “What game is this?”
“Do you ever get homesick?” Peter asked. Caleb chewed and swallowed. “I feel homesick for the way I wish things were,” he said. “I miss my mother and my sister and even my stepfather, and I’ll send them whatever they need, but I’m not going back.”
“Here’s to being secret disappointments to our families.” “Speak for yourself. I’m an open disappointment.”
Caleb didn’t have the energy to be anyone’s existential crisis.
If he cut himself free from his family, then he wasn’t only free—he was adrift, alone in a world that suddenly seemed much too large.
“Well, what had you thought of, then?” Caleb asked, barely recovering himself. “When you’re jerking off,” he clarified, because he was apparently teaching a course in remedial horniness.
Poverty was one of the many topics about which Senator Cabot was frustratingly correct, and Peter had more than once thought that it would be easier to brush off his family’s disapproval if they were Republicans. But, no, they were relentless about being on the right side of history, and Peter couldn’t help but look up to them.
But he didn’t know anyone who was poor in the way Caleb was poor. He felt guilty even thinking the word, as if poor was a slur, rather than an objective fact.
Peter just didn’t know anything at all, because he was a complete nightmare of loveliness and Caleb didn’t know what to do with him.
now he was under the utter conviction that Peter Cabot could bend space and time through sheer will power. He was so good at acting competent and confident that buildings and landmarks simply rearranged themselves according to his needs.
Without his sunglasses, his eyes were a frankly irresponsible degree of blue. Nothing really needed to be that blue.
Again, he had the sense of heading towards something, something that mattered, rather than merely running away from a life he couldn’t stand anymore.
“You’re allowed to be imperfect. Anybody who expects perfection secretly likes being disappointed in people. You’re good enough exactly the way you are. Everything else is a lie.”
“I’m beginning to think you’re a bit biased when it comes to me.” He thought Caleb would give him one of those rare blushes or go into one of his snits. Instead his jaw set into something almost fierce. “Good. We all need people in our corners, and somehow, for reasons I can’t begin to fathom, the people in your corner are horrible and I want to hit them with a pipe.”
Caleb thought it was a testament to the depth of his affection that he was no less fond of Peter even when he spoke in an offhand manner about the disappointments of a trip to Paris.
There were enough tragically stupid people in the world without having anyone indulge in recreational stupidity.
“You know, you’ve totally lost the ability to insult me and sound like you mean it,” Peter observed cheerfully. “It all comes out like sweet nothings.”
As he listened to his mother, he thought about how Peter hadn’t even had that much—the things and people he left behind weren’t even precious to him, or he to them.
But then Caleb’s wet hands were on Peter’s face, pulling him close for a kiss. “Every time you start saying unkind things about yourself, I’m shutting you up,” Caleb murmured. Peter thought this was only likely to train him to ever-greater feats of self-disparagement, but he certainly wasn’t going to complain.
And if his family couldn’t be bothered to remember that he existed, then he wasn’t going to waste his time explaining that his priorities did not include them any more than theirs included him.
