Someone else should be doing this. Someone who is not me. But there was nobody else there, hanging around in their garden after midnight, so Caleb steeled himself. “Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.
Leo was silent for a long-drawn-out moment. Caleb assumed that he was struggling with what to say, how to say it. How to tell you to get the fuck out, that unhelpful voice added. Except that wasn't how it felt at all. Leo seemed . . . almost glad he was here, creeping around their old backyard.
“Would it be crazy of me if I wanted to try again with you?”
With one sentence, one single question, Leo broke Caleb apart all over again.
He'd never stopped hoping—because hope was an insidious thing, creeping in where it didn't belong, asserting itself when it shouldn't exist—but he'd never, not in a million years, ever expected Leo to even wonder if it was possible for them to get back together. Caleb had assumed that no matter how much it hurt, it was over. There were some things that were unforgivable, and he'd committed a whole string of them.
“Leo,” Caleb said, the words torn from his throat. He'd tried so hard not to say his name too much, because every time he did, it felt like the letters imprinted again on his heart. “Oh, god.”
“You can't answer as you,” Leo continued, like he hadn't said a word.
“Okay, who am I supposed to answer as?” Caleb wondered.
He glanced over as Leo bent his knees and tucked his chin on top of them. Looking so much like he had at sixteen it ached. “My best friend,” he mumbled, and the pain grew ugly, tearing and slashing at Caleb, reminding him he'd had this, and he'd thrown it away. Too weak, it taunted him, too powerless, not enough self-control to even keep the one good, pure, amazing thing you had.
For anyone else, he wouldn't do this. Wouldn't subject himself to any of this, but it was Leo who was asking, and he was powerless to turn him down. So he tried to tamp down the inevitable swamp of love and affection and adoration and focus instead on the friendship they'd shared. The problem was, it had always been intertwined. It felt like there'd never been a time when he wasn't in love with Leo Humphries.
“Okay,” Caleb said. “I'm ready. Now tell me more. What do you mean by crazy?”
Leo laughed, a sharp bitter sound. “Crazy? Well, like I've been fighting you so hard. Fighting getting close again.” Caleb knew how that felt; he'd long since acknowledged that his end of the fight was a pointless exercise, doomed to failure. “And then Benji said the other night, maybe I was fighting the wrong thing. That maybe I should fight to trust you again.”
Nobody was more surprised than Caleb that Benji had not only said something deep and meaningful and actually helpful, but that he was actually, kind of, sort of, taking up Caleb's side. Benji had been the one giving him the worst cold shoulder since he'd been back. Caleb hadn't even been sure he blamed him necessarily. But this? This was something else entirely.
“But then there's part of me that doesn't want to be the stupid guy who trusted his ex again, only to be betrayed again. There's always that one person in a relationship, you know. The one who won't learn, no matter how many times they get burned. I don't want to be that person.”
Caleb didn't even want him to be that person. He wanted Leo to be set free, to live his life and make good choices. To be happy. But that thought was immediately accompanied by another, far stronger one. I don't think he can really, truly be happy without you.
That was the kicker, wasn't it? They were doomed to go around this circle, over and over again. It wasn't fair. Caleb was tired of railing against fate for dealing him what had seemed to be a fantastic hand that had only turned out to be secretly terrible. An exercise in futile frustration.
“You would never be that person,” Caleb said. Because he wanted it more than he actually believed it.
“I know,” Leo said wryly. “I'm far too paranoid.”
He was, and he wasn't. Leo wanted to believe he was jaded, that he'd been around the block too many times to truly trust, but the facts were that Leo still believed the best in people. Even Caleb, it seemed.
“No, that's not it at all,” Caleb insisted, because all that bitterness just didn't sit right on Leo—even if he believed it. “You're like . . .” Caleb swallowed hard, holding back the words that wanted to come out. You're still in love with me. Just like I'm still in love with you. “I know you would never let someone in unless you were sure.”
He had to believe that, or else this whole thing would blow up in their faces, and it would make the first implosion look like child's play. Even five years removed, he loved harder now, clung tighter, needed it more.
“I'm sorry, I shouldn't have asked. It was . . .”
Leo shouldn't have asked, but that didn't mean that Caleb wished he hadn't. The opposite. It helped, even as it tore him apart, to know that Leo felt the same way he did. Still. Forever.
“It's okay,” Caleb said softly. “Honestly I've accepted that we're done. I would never expect you to take me back.”
He'd never expect it, but god, he would want it. Crave it. Die if he didn't have it.
Leo didn't say anything for a long time. Caleb assumed that maybe his words had shut him up.
But then he spoke, and nothing made sense. Not anymore.
“But you're still here, in my garden. Our garden,” Leo corrected. And Caleb couldn't help but hear the fucking hope in his voice.
“I know. I didn't ever want you to know.” Not just because he'd seem like a creep, but because it inevitably would cause this conversation to happen, and Caleb wasn't ready to have it.
“That you were sneaking in?” Leo didn't seem devastated or confused anymore. He sounded curious. “You can talk to me too,” he added.
“I didn't think you’d be interested in any of it,” Caleb said. He'd hoped. Two very different kinds of hope warring inside of him.
“What if I am?” Leo asked.
Caleb couldn't quite believe it—maybe he wouldn't have, if he hadn't heard Leo's particularly flippant voice. The one he always used when he cared very much about something and didn't want anyone to know.
“If you were, I'd tell you that I missed you a lot.” Understatement of the century. “When things got hard, I'd imagine that I was back here. We'd be kicking around a ball, and you'd be running circles around me, celebrating obnoxiously every single time you scored on me.”
Leo smiled. He obviously remembered it too. Maybe Caleb should have picked a different, more romantic memory. But the one he'd chosen was well worn and soft and warm. It didn't reflect everyone else's perfect idea of how Leo could be—but who he really was.
Maybe he should've stopped—but that smile bolstered his determination to tell Leo everything. At least everything he could. “And when I came back to LA, just thinking about it didn't help anymore. You were so close, but somehow so far away. I'd come down to the beach, late at night, when I couldn't sleep.” The fresh air helps, he wanted to add, it reminds me there's something else than craving oblivion. “One night I ended up here, and that was it. I kept coming back. It felt reassuring . . . kind of like home.”