Page 22 of Lace

“Its a scarf, Uncle Jase.” He tried, with little success, to conceal the eye roll.

“Take it off.”

“Fuck you!” No point in hiding that. The asshole might intimidate his ball players, but there was no way he would make Caleb cower.

“I’m only concerned you’ll get hurt, son.”

“No, you’re not. You’re concerned if I get my ass kicked, you’ll have to come claim my body, and that would mean having to explain the guyliner. We wouldn’t want anyone to think you ever tolerated such a thing, would we? Mustn’t tarnish your perfect boy’s club rep.”

Jason blinked at him. “I don’t even know what guyliner is.”

Caleb snorted and turned on his heel, but he didn’t get more than a few steps before Uncle Jason was once more following him.

“What is with you lately, Caleb?” Uncle Jason moved further down the hallway, herding Caleb up against the heavy wood of the closed front door. “You come in without a word, leave with barely any acknowledgement of my presence, and now you throw that at me. You think I would ever deny you? Really? That’s what you think of me?”

“No, Uncle Jase. That isn’t what I think.” He knew it sounded insincere. He didn’t really care. Nine years later, and he still had nothing in common with this man except that they lived under the same roof.

Uncle Jase’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t even try, Caleb. You think you know me, but you have no idea. You’ve never stopped for even a minute to really talk to me, so do not judge.”

Caleb pursed his lips and crossed his arms over his chest, leaning in his uncle’s face. “I know you let me live here under conditions you dictate to make yourself feel better. From the courses I take”—he pointed to the pizza box on the living room table— “to the food you want me to eat, you have no idea who I really am. You never did. If you actually cared, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. You say you want me here, that you want what’s best for me, but all that really matters is what makes you feel good about it all. Kinda like my own father, that. He’ll say he didn’t kick me out. No. He just dumped all my shit on the front lawn and locked the door and told me it was for my own good. You can call it whatever the hell you want. The results are the same.”

“Do not lump me in with that man!” Uncle Jase never raised his voice. The fact he was shouting now had Caleb regretting his tirade. He could hold his own against anyone, but this was his uncle. His family. “Bad enough I have to call him my brother. He’s not your father and does not deserve the title.”

“He just doesn’t want to be my father,” Caleb reluctantly had to agree with that. “Any more than you want to be the uncle of a gay, slightly cross-dressing freak.”

“Enough!” Jason snarled and took a step back, fists clenched. “Enough, Caleb,” he repeated in a slightly less voluminous voice, though his entire body shook with the effort of controlling his temper. “I did not take you into this house because I didn’t want to. I took you in because my brother is a stupid, delusionalasshole, and he didn’t deserve you, even if you had been his…” He let out a loud, sad sigh, cutting off his own tirade.

“His what?” Caleb slumped back against the door, shaking hands hidden behind him, palms pressed against the rough wood grain. “If I had been his what, Uncle Jase? His ideal son? His perfect little suburban prince, following in his banker footsteps? Screw that. He couldn’t even stand me being a musician. Just imagine what he’d think about me liking—“He cut himself off before he got too vulgar, but Jason flushed red anyway.

His uncle ran a hand over the greying stubble on the top of his head. “You have to talk to your father about all of this, Caleb. It isn’t my place to tell you what he was thinking, but tossing you out had nothing to do with you being gay or anything else. As for me taking you in, I did that because you needed a place, and I didn’t want my brother’s actions to be all you knew of our family.” He turned away, all the anger and confrontation gone from him. His shoulders sagged and he suddenly looked like a man who didn’t know which way was up anymore. “If you’re going out, please take the scarf off until you get where you’re going. Believe what you want—I don’t want to collect you from the morgue or the hospital because that would break my heart. It has nothing to do with what anyone else thinks. They can all go fuck themselves, for all I care. I just want you to be safe.”

Caleb stared at him, incapable of retaining his own ire. “Wait. What is it I’m asking Dad about, exactly, Uncle Jase?” He left the rest. He didn’t even know how to process the open plea for prudence or the admission that this man gave two flying fucks about Caleb.

“Ask him why he really threw you out. Ask him…” Another huge sigh leaked out, a hissing release of frustration as thick fingers tightened on the door jamb to the kitchen and his uncle visibly pulled himself up and around to face him again. “I am acoward, Caleb, in some ways. I had hoped he would be the one to tell you. That I could be the good guy. I had this stupid idea, once, that it could be you and me out here doing our thing in spite of your father and your grandfather, and-…” he shook his head. “But it’s too late now. I could have told you years ago. I didn’t. I told myself it was none of my business. That it was his responsibility. Or your mother’s, but then she died and he found out for sure, and everything hit the fan. After that, it was all I could do to keep you in one piece. I didn’t want to throw more shit on you. So, I kept quiet. Maybe I shouldn’t have. I just don’t know anymore.”

“Told mewhat,Uncle Jase?” It required all of Caleb’s will to keep it together as cold dread zipped along just under his skin, leaving behind goosebumps and shivering and those tightening bands of constriction around his chest.

“He isn’t… he isn’t your father. He always suspected, but he never really knew for sure until he read your mother’s will. It was in there.”

“But you knew.” Certainty made it even harder to breathe.

Jason nodded. “She told me. She knew it wasn’t Robert. She didn’t know who it was, but she knew it wasn’t him.”

“And you knew this.”

“Caleb—”

“Youknew?” Caleb wished, suddenly, irrationally, that he had something to throw. Something he could launch across that room at his uncle. Something that would hurt the man as bad as he was hurting. There was nothing. He turned and fled.

“Caleb!”

He didn’t stop. He didn’t care what else his uncle had to say. He didn’t care that he’d left his inhaler behind, or his phone, or that he didn’t have a clue where he was going to go. He wanted, somehow, to believe that the past nine years of drudgery under this man hadn’t all been more lies and secrets.

He wanted everything to be as simple as dancing and a bar fight, and fucking.

Eight

It had been years since Caleb had ridden the ‘snob hill bus’, but after what felt like hours of running, his breath was too short and his legs too wobbly. So, when the bus rumbled over the hill behind him and he found himself beside a stop, he flagged it down and got on. He had to know for an absolute certainty that Jason hadn’t made it all up or imagined something that wasn’t true.

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