Page 37 of Too Many Beds

I exchange a look with Caleb, me excited to have a new person to drag, kicking and screaming, into our business, Caleb horrified by the future events he can probably see unfolding.

“Here, Tim,” I say, stepping up closer to him, “help us settle something important. What is this?” I gesture at the bed Caleb assaulted.

“Important?” Caleb mutters in disbelief. “Really? Is that the right word?”

I hold a finger up in the universal “hold on, shut up” signal, keeping my attention on Tim. Caleb huffs in the background, but he doesn’t say anything else.

Tim clutches his clipboard a little tighter and visibly resists the urge to step away from me. I sigh inwardly and back up, having no desire to make the man feel genuinely intimidated. Sometimes I forget how big I am. I’ve always been the tallest and broadest in the room, even when I was a kid, and people tend to react to my size with instinctive discomfort or occasionally outright fear. My tendency to be loud and physically expressiveprobably doesn’t help although that’s mostly unconscious so it’s not like I can stop that any more than I could stop myself from growing bigger and taller than anyone else.

With the space between us re-established, Tim manages to get out a response to my question, eyes darting between me and the duvet. “Uh, it’s a …. comforter?”

Interesting.

“Huh?” Caleb shoots the duvet a squinty-eyed look as if he suspects it of camouflage or some other such duplicity.

“He’s American,” I say when Caleb glances back up at me, “it doesn’t count. They have a vendetta against Us and therefore cannot be trusted with vernacular-based opinions.”

Tim doesn’t look like he knows whether to be offended or not. He opens and closes his mouth a few times before saying, “I’m not sure if that’s a fair?—”

Caleb swoops in like the hero he is and tries to save the shop assistant from himself. “Just walk away, Tim,” he encourages. “Don’t let yourself be dragged down to our level.”

Tim peers at Caleb with admirably surreptitious appreciation. He’s been trying not to let his gaze catch and linger on Caleb too much. I understand the need, and I’m more than used to watching people struggle to hide their very obvious attraction to Caleb.

Caleb is the level of gorgeous that draws just about everyone’s attention. He has those classically handsome features and the artfully messy, dark-brown hair. Over six foot and impressively muscled, although more the sleek-and-compact type rather than bulky. My favourite thing about him is his storm-cloud grey eyes. As with all Liquid Onyx survivors, there’s a distinctotherness to them, the iris one solid colour rather than a mix, and an internal fire that makes them almost appear to be glowing from the inside.

There’s a broken-boy sadness to Caleb as well, in the soft downturn of his full mouth and the heavy aura of cynicism he emanates, the life-weary grit to his jaw, and the haunted look in his eyes when he sketches. These days, he rips up and throws away every bit of art he creates. He’s quite literally that damaged-but-beautiful artist archetype come to life. People can’t help but be drawn to Caleb’s specific brand of magnificent destruction, like those storm chasers who are always running full speed towards the danger.

But none of them know where that pain comes from like I do. I was there when all that despair was born inside him. I saw it grow from his heart and branch out through his body, a corrosive weed, until he carried the weight of it all like a thick layer of lead coating his bones. They don’t know what it takes to alleviate that pain if only temporarily. Not like me. I know Caleb, better than my own heart can sometimes take.

“You don’t need help?” Tim asks, his gaze thoughtful as it darts between Caleb and me.

“From a professional therapist?” Caleb responds, wry and quick. “Yeah, probably, but you don’t need to concern yourself with that right now.”

Feeling bad at the deflated slump of Tim’s shoulders, I raise my hand to get his attention. “Do you have any race-car beds?” I ask him. “Or ones with a slide?” I make an excited noise and click my fingers. “Or with a secret cupboard underneath?” I grin at him. “I like my furniture to have the potential for secrets.”

Captain Buzzkill steps in to ruin my bonding moment with Tim. “We are not getting a race-car bed, T,” Caleb says. He sounds so sure, and I can’t have that. Gotta keep things interesting around here.

“Oh, come on,” I wheedle. “I’ll let you have the first go in it.”

“I don’t want ‘a go’ in a race-car bed!” Caleb huffs.Liar.

“I mean. Seriously,” I say, aghast. “Who even are you if that’s true?”

Caleb gifts me with the great-grandmother of all scowls. “I’m a twenty-one-year-old man, that’s who, and twenty-one-year-old men don’t sleep in race-car beds.”

He’s being so fake right now, it’s unacceptable.

“I don’t remember you signing a contract on your twenty-first birthday saying you would, from that moment forward, become a boring weirdo who doesn’t like race cars anymore,” I say, scrunching up my nose at him.

Caleb opens his mouth to retort, then pauses as if considering something. “Who would have delivered that contract, do you think?”

I shrug, then think it over for a second before offering, “Some kind of uptight pigeon with low career goals?”

Most people might be stumped by that, but not Caleb. We’re both too well-versed in the bizarre back-and-forth after growing up in the same family as the chaotic-nonsense machine himself, Rex Nova.

“Can pigeons be career orientated?” Caleb ponders.

“Well, yeah, I think so. Like, some of them went to war,” I reason.

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