22. Chapter 22

Chapter twenty-two

Caleb

She did look fucking great. More than great.

Juliette, with her lipstick smeared and her hair ran through by another man. I wasn't expecting the painful drop in my stomach. After all, I'd encouraged her to go on that date. I was excited for her to see him and then give me some gossip to spill to Kelsey. But when I saw him buttoning his pants, I could have wrecked him. If I hadn't been helping Kelsey, I probably would have kicked him out myself. What was a twinge of jealousy the other day when she told us about said date turned out to be significantly more.

It made my skin crawl to know—to imagine—his hand up her skirt and hers down his jeans. It was no use even attempting to admit anything other than the truth.

I was fucking jealous. More than I thought I would be... could be.

I hope I scared the motherfucker off.

Now that I saw him, I understood the appeal. He looked straight out of a magazine. My hands gripped the steering wheel so hard my palms hurt.

He'd had her perfect muscular thighs wrapped around his waist. Juliette's sexy stilettos digging into him.

She wore her hair down for him!

My stomach lurched to my throat.

I pulled over and tossed up my whole dinner onto the pavement.

How's Kelsey? I texted Juliette the next morning. I spent the night praying to the porcelain gods in Erin's master bathroom and stumbling back to her previously untouched bed. I was too weak to call.

I also woke up with my dick in my hand from a vivid dream about watching her get fucked by Fedex Man; and that may or may not have contributed for the text as opposed to phone call.

Juliette answered. Still throwing up. At least she can keep down some water.

I left her on read, turned the pillow to the cold side, and fell back off to unconsciousness.

Even in my fever dreams she was with me. Panting in my ear while she touched herself, looking up at me while I came across her chest. I throbbed everywhere, drifting in and out of sleep, plagued by more of her. Each snippet of nightmare more vivid and filthy than the last. My sheets were drenched, and I couldn't move. Juliette was the sleep paralysis demon of my own making, torturing me.

At some point my cock couldn't take the edging pressure anymore and I came in my boxers while I dreamt, like a fucking teenager. Half-consciously, and completely mortified, I peeled them off me while I ran to the bathroom to retch again. With nothing in my stomach, I dry heaved and eventually dropped to the floor, my body on fire and exhausted.

Everything hurt. Even my eye sockets were sore.

The cold tile felt so good on my back that I decided to lay there a minute, too weak to drag my ass back to bed.

Juliette

"He's not answering his phone," I said out loud. Kelsey sat at the counter wrapped in a blanket, shivering. She hadn't spent more than twenty minutes in bed all night, spending her time instead in the bathroom. I'd stayed up with her, wiping her brow with cool compresses and handing her cups of water to rinse her mouth with.

She hadn't thrown up all afternoon, so I passed her a bowl of chicken soup. She turned green at the sight of it. "Try to have some of the broth."

"Are you worried?" she asked.

"I've called and texted all day. The last time he texted me back was at eight in the morning."

She squinted to see the clock and I made a mental note to tell Caleb to have her eyes checked. "Maybe I gave him the plague."

"I didn't think of that." I wasn't about to admit that I thought he was avoiding me because of what he saw and how painfully awkward it had been for us both to stare at the elephant in the room and deny it was there: Yes, Miss Juliette enjoys sex. Not often, but yeah, I was going to have sex with Nate. And yeah, Caleb probably saw my thigh highs. And yes, I did notice how jealous he'd looked. But no, we weren't going to address any of that. Ever.

I wasn't going to be having any sex at all, now. It seemed a fitting punishment for insisting we go back to my house because I hadn't wanted to go to his and then ask to be driven home before midnight. I would have had to explain why, which was a secret I kept from him. So, of course fate should have the two of them rushing home early, unraveling all my lies.

"Maybe you should go and check on him," Kelsey said. I didn't acknowledge it, but smiled inwardly that she cared.

Any progress was progress.

"Are you okay here?"

"I've got a toilet, a tv, and a phone," she replied with a flourish of her hand.

I grabbed my keys and was at Erin's old house in record time. "Caleb?" I called out. His car was in the driveway, but there was no response. A ripple of fear cut through my abdomen. "Caleb?" I said a little louder and a little more desperate than I intended .

I found him, butt naked, with a pair of socks on, sprawled across the bathroom floor. "Fuck!" I hissed and dropped my bag at the door. "Caleb!" I crouched to wake him and found that he was on fire.

He groaned, a promising sign of consciousness.

I put my cold hands on his cheeks.

Caleb flinched. I yanked a towel from the rack and covered his lower body.

"I'm going to find some meds. You're burning up."

"What?" he croaked.

"I'll be right back."

He groaned, eyes still closed, and mumbled. "Tile feels nice," was all I could make out.

I ran to the kitchen and rummaged through the cabinets for something, anything, to lower his fever. A thermometer that looked at least thirty years old peeked up at me. I grabbed it and jogged back to him.

"One-o-four?" I couldn't believe the reading, so I stuck it in his mouth again, jumped over him, and turned the faucet on. My hands trembled as I tested the temperature of the water. Kelsey's body temperature had reached one hundred three, and I had almost lost my vision at the reading. One hundred four made me feel like my skin was numb.

Behind me Caleb got to his knees and dry heaved into the toilet, the towel forgotten on the floor. The sound rattled my bones.

I covered him again and put a hand on his shoulder. "You have to get in the tub," I said softly.

He flew backwards, landing on his ass at my feet. "Juliette?" His back hit the corner of the cabinet. Stunned, hurting, with sunken eyes, he blinked up at me, unable to make sense of anything. "What are you doing here? Get out!" He cupped himself and curled away from me.

"You're burning up, get in the tub. I ran cool water for you. Why didn't you tell me you were so sick? I need to go find some Tylenol."

"Juliette!" he urged.

I raced out of the bathroom but called through the door, " I didn't look!"

"I'm sure your gaze was perfectly averted." The sound of water sloshing in the tub followed by a pained howl, "It's fucking freezing!"

"Don't you dare turn on the hot water," I warned through the door.

The sound of the water faucet changed slightly, as though it was losing pressure.

"Caleb, I said no!"

"It's f-fucking c-cold," he stuttered.

"If you don't turn that back where I had it, I'm coming in."

The water pressure increased immediately. "You just want another excuse to see me naked. To get a good look." His voice was shaky from his teeth chattering.

"Retake your temperature!" I hollered through the door.

"Yes, sergeant."

I went on a mission to the hallway bathroom to search the medicine cabinet.

I stopped at his room (which was still the den where he slept on the pullout couch) and picked up some clothes from one of the baskets he had by the door. I sniffed a shirt and paused. It was saturated with his scent, cologne and antiperspirant that I'd only smelled faintly from a distance. The muted undertone of warm skin had me holding the shirt a millisecond too long.

I tossed it back onto the pile and chose from the other laundry pile. This one was pleasantly detergent-scented. I dug through to finish an outfit, packaged it all in a fresh towel and knocked on the door. "Are you okay?" I said through the wood.

"Yeah," he answered, "Just caught whatever Kelsey's got."

"You didn't answer my calls."

"I've been asleep all day."

"I've got your clothes. Can I come in?"

"Promise you'll only look at my good side?"

I suppressed an eye roll and a smile. I looked away from the tub as I entered. "What's your temperature?"

"Cold." His teeth chattered violently .

Instinctively, and by accident, I turned to respond to his snark. Our eyes met and I slapped my hands over them. He was the gray kind of pale, his lips devoid of color, and his whole body shivered violently. My heart dropped with worry. "You're not fine. Get dressed, you're coming home with me."

He wasn't too sick to be an ass. "Oh my, you're forward."

"I made soup, and I'm not wasting time going back and forth to bring it to you."

"Don't talk about food to me," the sound of water sloshing as he stood, "I can't even keep water down."

"I wonder if it's food poisoning."

He gagged. "No food!"

"Sorry! If you need help, I'll be outside."

Caleb emerged from the bathroom sometime later and flopped face-down onto the bed. "I haven't had a fever in a decade."

"Kelsey's fever was high, too. Did you take the pills I left for you?"

He grunted in response.

I nudged his shoulder. "C'mon. Kelsey's worried. She texted me back-to-back three times to ask what happened."

That pulled Caleb out of his exhaustion. He opened one eye and raised his brow. "Isn't it a crime to double text?"

"Triple-text," I waggled my eyebrow.

"Maybe there is hope." He smiled with his eyes closed. "I feel like shit, I'm going back to sleep."

"No, you're not." I stood and headed for the car. I couldn't explain how I was so sure he'd follow me. I simply knew that he would.

Kelsey

Caleb looked horrible. I didn't admit that I was worried when Juliette said he hadn't talked to her all day. But I was. When she told me she found him on the bathroom floor, I got really worried.

I mean, I spent a lot of time on the bathroom floor last night, but it was scary to imagine Caleb alone in the house like that. Miss Juliette checked on me every time I puked and helped me back into my bed. There were times where I didn't even remember how I ended up in the bathroom, or back in my bed for that matter. He had no one with him.

"How are you feeling?" he asked the second he got through the door.

"Better. You look like hell."

"I feel worse."

"Sit," Juliette commanded as she ladled some soup for him. I had reheated it since she was gone for an hour.

The ladle dropped into the pot with a clang. Juliette dropped the bowl to the counter. "I think," she turned to face us, eyes wide, "I think I'm going to be sick." With that, she bolted to the bathroom. Caleb and I tried not to make a face at the sound.

"Friends that puke together, stay together," Caleb declared, holding up his soup like he was Jesus at the last supper.

"That's not funny," I said, holding back a laugh, pursing my lips to stop the smile.

"In the name of the father, the daughter, and the ballet teacher. Amen," he continued.

I dissolved into laughter. He was so stupid. His jokes were never funny. I was laughing at him not with him. Or at least, that's what I told myself.

My dumbass father shrugged. "I think I'm very funny," he deadpanned to an imaginary camera.

I didn't really mean it. He wasn't a total dumbass.

He threw up his soup only a few spoons in, and he and Juliette both joined me on the huge sectional. I was binging a teen drama, and nobody said anything, so I didn't offer up the remote. Poor Juliette only lasted one episode before the puking really started. She came back a little paler.

Caleb, who apparently loved drama, picked up on the plot pretty quickly and filled her in each time she returned. "Reese just kissed Mal, and is having a crisis," he said to Juliette. "Here, have some water," he insisted and held the straw to her lips. She made a disgusted face but took a sip and pushed the cup away after one gulp.

"Lay down." Caleb fluffed a pillow for her. "It helps." He started turning a corner several episodes prior and it was kind of sweet how he tucked her in every time she got back from throwing up air. I was glad they were friends. It made all of this so much easier. Without Juliette as a buffer, I don't know how Caleb and I would have ever found anything in common.

"Excuse my language, Kelsey, but I feel like shit," Juliette mumbled as she settled down.

I really liked that. I tried not to dwell on it, but it made me feel fuzzy when Juliette didn't treat me like a student. If it weren't for Caleb, she would have adopted me. There was no doubt in my mind. That was never going to happen… so I held on to this weird limbo she and I were in with the few heartstrings I had left. Passed the time in this routine they created for me, shoving the uncomfortable feelings in a little box labeled Do Not Touch: Volatile.

"Friends who puke together, stay together," he shrugged, tossing the blanket over her shivering, frail frame.

It seemed an appropriate time, so I added, "In the name of the father, the daughter, and the ballet teacher."

"Amen," Caleb and I said in unison.

Juliette groaned, "Don't make me laugh. Everything hurts."

"Kelsey, the authority on all things humor, said it wasn't funny. You're not supposed to laugh." My dad shot me a goofy look and deep inside of me something twinged. Like a piece of me was stirring, warning me not to look at us all sprawled out on the couch, weathering a stomach virus together.

Together .

The word—the feelings that accompanied it—poked at my lungs. It felt so real. All of us. Like a stupid scene in a movie. A family film, real and fake all at once.

These pockets of time where I caught a glimpse of myself forgetting Mom, they never felt completely real. Like I disassociated from my body until I remembered her, and why I was where I was and with whom I was with. This time capsule had lasted several episodes. The sudden snap back to reality made my skin itch from the inside out.

"I'm going to bed. I'm tired."

"Now? Reese and Mal are finally overcoming the miscommunication trope and getting together!" Caleb gestured to the screen.

"You can keep watching," I replied.

Miss Juliette's voice was raspy. "No, that's bad Netflix etiquette."

Caleb was oblivious to the turmoil I suddenly felt. Miss Juliette was too sick to open her eyes and see it.

I watched as he pressed his knuckles to her forehead and frowned. "I'm going to stay a while longer, until she passes out—not passes out like faints—passes out asleep. Anyway, holler if you need anything."

"Holler?" Juliette said, her lips cracking to a smile.

Caleb didn't respond, worry etched into the lines between his brow. He had the same look on his face that Juliette had last night with me. Fussing over me like a mother hen even as I swatted her away.

I swallowed all my emotions and willed them to submission.

I was simply too tired to think tonight.