Page 175 of Disarm
“You’re evil,” he hisses at her.
Mom just smiles. “I am honest,” she says. “And I would like to be able to go to Mass without thinking, ‘ay, last night my boys were?—’”
“Mamá,” Caleb and I say at the same time, horrified.
She cackles. “I’m kidding. Mostly. Now go. Shoo. I will finish the dishes.”
Dad stands, clearly desperate to restore some kind of order. “You boys should—ah—sleep in your own rooms,” he says, verylawyerly. “You haven’t been home in a while. It’ll be good to… get a full night’s sleep. Alone.”
“Mm-hmm,” Mom says, carrying plates to the sink. “You heard your father. Sleep in your own rooms. Or not. I’m not checking. Just be respectful.” Another wink.
Dad looks like he wants the floor to open up and swallow him.
I clap him on the shoulder on my way past. “We’ll be quiet,” I promise. “Scout’s honor.”
“You were never a Scout,” he mutters.
“That’s true.” I nod, smirking. “Never could get down with the whole conforming to a group thing.”
“I need a drink.” Dad rolls his eyes, and he turns down the hall toward his office.
We dothe bedtime bathroom shuffle, teeth brushed, face washed, and towel slung over the rack that Mom will come in and fold properly tomorrow. Caleb sprawls on “his” bed in the room down the hall, one arm flung over his eyes. I lean against the doorway for a second and just look at him.
Same posters we picked out when he moved in full-time. Same chipped dresser. Same scuff mark under the window where he once threw his shoe at a spider and missed.
“You good if I crash in here?” I ask, voice low. “Or do you want real Alone-Childhood-Bed vibes tonight?”
He peeks at me from under his arm, curls sticking up wrong, face still a little pink from Mom’s commentary. “Miggy,” he rollshis eyes. “You think I’m gonna choose my trauma over your body heat?”
“Fair point,” I say, closing the door behind me.
The mattress is as good as I remember, soft in the right places, and broken in by years of teenage tossing and turning and more recent things. I climb in next to him and he immediately rolls into me, head on my shoulder, hand splayed on my chest.
We lie there in the dark, the distant sound of the TV in the living room muffled through the wall. His breath evens out after a minute, not asleep yet, just settling.
“So,” he whispers finally. “On a scale of one to ten, how badly did we embarrass ourselves at dinner?”
“Us?” I say. “Three. Max. Mom, though? Solid twelve.”
He laughs into my shirt, shoulders shaking. “She really said keep it down so we don’t scare your father,” he groans. “I am never looking either of them in the eyes again.”
“You already looked them in the eyes and told them I was your person,” I remind him. “You survived that. You’ll survive her jokes.”
Humming, he rubs his nose against my collarbone. “I liked how she phrased it,” he admits. “That she’s just happy we feel safe enough to talk to them.”
“Because she’s smart,” I say. “That’s why I let her marry our collective problem.”
He snorts. “Leave my dad alone.”
“Never,” I say. “He married into this chaos. He should’ve read the fine print harder.”
We’re quiet for a second. Then he says, “He did okay tonight.”
“Yeah,” I agree. “He did.”
“He’s still… weird,” Caleb says. “You can see him trying to stuff us into frameworks that don’t exist. But… He didn’t say ‘phase’ once. That’s… new.”
“Progress,” I say. “We’ll take it.”
