Page 212 of Disarm
We sit there with that for a moment.
“So, where does that leave us?” I ask. “Because I’m not dragging Caleb to any more work dinners if the price of admission is pretending to be straight stepbrothers.”
“I’m not asking you to,” he says quickly. “Not anymore. You were right the other night. If my colleagues don’t understand, that’s… my problem. Not yours. You and Caleb should show up where you feel safe. That’s the deal. I don’t want you to feel like you have to audition for my life.”
Relief loosens something between my shoulder blades. I don’t let myself sink into it.
“There’s going to be places that aren’t safe,” I say. “We’re not naïve. We live in the real world. But you can’t be one of those places. That’s the line.”
His eyes get a little shiny, and he blinks hard. “I don’t want to be,” he says. “I know I’ve… been that. I’m trying to… move.”
He waves a hand vaguely, searching for the right phrase.
“Move your feet,” I supply. “Instead of planting them in the old spot.”
His mouth twitches. “Yeah,” he says. “That.”
We eat for a bit, conversation shifting to safer topics: Mom’s latest cooking experiments, his thoughts on my truck making “a noise” and how that’s the most useless mechanic description ever, and his half-baked plan to finally take Mom on a real vacation.
The tension doesn’t disappear. It just… softens. The air between us is still weird, but less brittle.
As we’re gathering our things, he hesitates.
“I’d like more time with him,” he says carefully. “With both of you. But I understand if… dinners and public events feel like too much right now.”
“They do,” I say. “For him, especially. For me… less. But if he’s at a seven or eight, I’m not dragging him into a white-tablecloth arena so you can test-drive your new ally software.”
He winces, but there’s a flicker of something like appreciation there too. “That’s… reasonable,” he says. “Tell him he doesn’t owe me performance. Or proximity. I’m not entitled to them.”
I nod. “You can tell him yourself,” I say. “In your own words. When he’s ready.”
“I will,” he says. “If he… lets me.”
We stand, and there’s a weird moment where I think he might go for a hug. He doesn’t. Just reaches out and squeezes my shoulder, firm and a little awkward.
“Thank you for coming,” he says. “And for… not sugarcoating it.”
I shrug, mouth twisting. “I’m bad at sugarcoating,” I say. “Ask your son.”
His eyes soften. “You get it from your mother,” he says.
We part ways on the sidewalk, he makes his way back toward the courthouse, and I toward my truck. The sun is bright, the sky stupidly blue, and people are bustling past with laptops and briefcases and grocery bags.
It wasn’t a disaster.
It wasn’t a miracle.
Truce, not transformation.
And that’s okay. For now.
Caleb’son the couch when I get home, laptop open, notebooks spread around him like a paper nest. He’s wearing my old UCSC hoodie, sleeves pushed up, hair in full wavy-gone-feral mode.
He looks up the second the door opens. His eyes flick over my face, checking for damage.
“Hey,” he says. “How was the courtroom café summit?”
I kick off my boots and hang my keys on the hook. “Surprisingly non-explosive,” I say. “On a scale of one to ‘everyone cried,’ we were at like… a six.”
