Page 34 of Lace

“Between now and next weekend?”

“Well. Boots, right?” Caleb replied. “A two-inch heel shouldn’t be that bad. I can practice.”

A soft snort escaped Mitchell as he folded the discarded coat over the back of his couch. “Whole hog, huh?”

“If I’m going to do it,” Caleb said quietly, “then I might as well do it right. If Levi’s going to see it, best he sees the real thing. He deserves that much, even if he decides it isn’t what he thought it would be.” He sighed. “Or what he wants.” He raised his gaze from the frills and lace and once again looked at Mitchell. “But I need you to do something for me.”

“If I can, absolutely.”

“I have this skirt.” Heat flushed like wildfire up into Caleb’s cheeks, but he pushed through it. “It’s nice, but… you could make it better.”

Mitchell grinned a small, wicked grin, though he’d already dropped his focus to the skirt in Caleb’s hands, unpinning the seam so Caleb could try it on properly. “I dare say,” he agreed. “Tell me about it. Tell me what you want.”

“Can you sew leather between now and then?”

Mitchell’s head wagged. “Don’t ask for much, do you?”

“It’s the black coat you did—the short one, with the pleats up the back—that gave me the idea. You would have to take out a panel of the skirt’s material and replace it with a panel of leather pleats. Then the boots, and plain leather pants, and that jacket.”Caleb risked lifting his gaze back to his own reflection. “I’d look killer. It’d be, you know, for the after party.”

“For Levi, you mean.”

More heat sizzled through Caleb, but he nodded. “Yeah. For Levi. If?—”

“Oh, he’ll eat it up, trust me.”

“Can you do it?”

“You inspired the entire look.” Mitchell stopped fussing with the skirt and looked him in the eye. “You helped me get it this far. You made the entire school open up to the idea. At least they’re talking about it, and they’ll come if only just to see what the fuck I’m doing and try to boo me off the stage. I’m pretty sure I can find the time to help you get your boyfriend back.”

Thirteen

It took every spare moment they had to pull the show off. Each night when Caleb tiptoed into the house late, he found his uncle in his customary chair in the living room, waiting. The first few days, he said nothing, just nodded and watched Caleb drag himself, exhausted, up the stairs to his room.

Around day three, he started asking questions like “Were you with that designer kid again?” or make comments like— “I hear Eric Sinclair is back involved with the Student Council. Someone said he was going to model in this show. You got the whole school dressing up now?”

Soon enough, when the one-word answers Caleb offered weren’t satisfying, Uncle Jase’s questions dug deeper, getting more probing, and it occurred to Caleb that he’d never seemed this interested before.

Caleb wasn’t sure why he always waited up, why he kept asking. He did his best to answer the questions as neutrally as he could, but whatever was going on with his uncle, he wasn’t sure he could keep his comments on his activities neutral enough.

Still, he didn’t want to get into it, not ready to reveal all. Not yet. Maybe not until he walked down that runway and UncleJase saw for himself the full extent of all the things about Caleb he could never understand.

If there was any real hope for a relationship, Caleb would have to tell him everything. He knew that. He just didn’t know how to say any of it. Showing him, on the runway, would be easier.

But maybe it wasn’t fair to let Jase find out in a room full of perhaps otherwise jeering people, but Caleb didn’t have the guts to do it face to face. He’d come out of the closet once already, and got kicked out of his home, out of his family, for the trouble. Never mind he now knew the man he’d thought was his father had just been waiting for an excuse. The fact remained—he’d used Caleb’s sexuality as that excuse.

Caleb wasn’t willing to take the same risk again, even though he knew, ultimately, he had to tell Jase his truth. But he could put it off as long as possible.

Couldn’t he?

“Where were you?” Uncle Jase asked this time, as Caleb slipped into the house.

Fitting the show’s centrepiece had taken longer than either he or Mitchell had anticipated, and it was well past even bar closing time.

Caleb let his bag drop with a thud to the carpet. “Out.” He tried not to sigh, but he was tired. He was definitely not in the mood for one of Uncle Jase’s nightly bouts of twenty questions.

“Left some ‘za in the fridge for you.”

“I hate pizza, Uncle Jase. Pretty sure I’ve told you that before. Like, a few hundred times,” he mumbled under his breath as he crossed his arms and leaned on the railing by the front door.

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