“Where is he? Is he here?” I ask, my voice trembling.
She shakes her head, mumbling, “What a mess you boys have made,” then gestures for me to follow her into the living room.Boys. I’m one month older than Vivian.
“You’ve got a visitor,” she tells Sal, who looks like he’s close to strangling the remote. His eyes snap up, annoyance painted across his face, and the moment he sees me, it bleeds into a cold glare.
“What are you doing here?” he snarls, clenching the remote.
“Just tell me where he is, Sal.”
He huffs, then drops the remote on the coffee table, leaning back on the couch, crossing his arms in front of his chest. His eyes bore into mine, his mouth a grim line across his face. Sal has neverlooked at me this way before, with such distrust, like I’ve betrayed him. “I don’t know. And even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you.” His voice isn’t as angry as it was yesterday when he was yelling at me, but the resentment is evident. He’s holding back, maybe for Vivian’s sake. I don’t believe him, though. Kayden would never just take off without telling his parents. Then again, I never thought he’d just take off without telling me either.
“Sal…” Vivian sighs, sitting down next to him. She nods at the recliner across from where I’m standing. “Take a seat, Caleb. You’re making me nervous.”
I don’t feel like sitting down. I don’t feel like doing anything until Kayden is safely back in my arms, but I recognize the look in Vivian’s eyes. It’s herdon’t fuck with melook. It’s the look she gave me when I picked up Sal for his bachelor party before they got married. It’s the look she’s given me a thousand times over the years when I’ve dated one of her friends. So I sit down, eyeing Sal from the corner of my eye. He doesn’t look at me, but instead stares a hole into the floor.
“I know you called in sick for him, Viv, so you know where he is. Just tell me.Please.” I have a feeling Vivian is the one I need to appeal to right now, since she didn’t find out about Kayden and me by accident and has had more time to digest it.
Vivian eyes her husband. “Sal?”
Yeah, I guess I’d be the same if the roles were reversed. I’d never do anything if it meant going against Kayden.
Silence envelopes the room. I’ve known these two people for most of my life. We were pretty much attached at the hip through high school, always together, and now it feels like we’re strangers. A sense of sadness overcomes me, one I haven’t felt since I lost my parents. Sal, Vivian, and Kayden are like family to me, and the thought of… Yeah, I can’t finish that thought.
I clear my throat as I lean forward, resting my arms on my knees. “I know you want to protect him, Sal, but you don’t need to protect him from me.”
Sal’s jaw clenches, and Vivian loops her arm through his like she’s getting ready to hold him back. After a few seconds, he looks up, his eyes dark. “Don’t I?” he grits.
“No, of course not.” I twist my hands in front of me. “Youknowme, Sal.”
He huffs a laugh, the sound bitter and ugly. “Do I? Do I really know you, Caleb?”
“Of course you do!” I say, exasperated. “You’re my best friend.”
“The fuck I am!” he spits before Vivian retorts, “Sal, please. This is not getting us anywhere.” I throw her a grateful smile, but she just looks at me pointedly, like she’s not too impressed with me either right now.
“You need to let Kayden live his life,” I mutter. “You need to let him make his own choices.”
Sal gets up from the couch and points a shaky finger at me. “Oh, you’ve got some nerve, Caleb Morgan, coming intomyhouse, telling me what I should and shouldn’t do when it comes tomykid.” Then he points the finger at his own chest instead of me. “Myson, Caleb!”
“Let’s just… let’s just calm down.” Vivian gets up too, placing herself strategically between Sal and me. “I know you’re both hurting—”
“I’m not hurting!” Sal and I blurt at the same time. Of course, we’re both lying, the stubborn fuckers that we are.
“Okay. My mistake,” Vivian sighs. “Just… don’t kill each other while I go put some coffee on.” She eyes Sal, then me. “I mean it. Behave yourselves.”
“Okay,” I agree while Sal mumbles something that sounds a lot likeassholeandnever.
Vivian leaves the room, and soon I hear the sound of the coffeemaker as it puffs away in the kitchen. I sit back down, and after eyeing me for a few seconds, Sal drops back down on the couch.
“We were going to tell you,” I say after a while. “It wasn’t my intention for you to find out the way you did. I see how that…”
Sal remains silent, looking down at his hands, clenching and unclenching them. Perhaps he’s envisioning choking me to death or snapping my neck like a twig.
Just when the silence is bordering on unbearable, Sal clears his throat. “From the first time I held Kayden in my arms, I knew everything else would come second, including myself. And I’ve kept that promise every day since. Kaydenalwayscomes first.” He looks up at me, a wet sheen to his eyes, his features so similar to Kayden’s, it sends a chill racing down my spine.
Sal clenches his fist. His pain is palpable, like he’s back in the past, holding his baby for the first time. I remember that day like it was yesterday. I was outside in the waiting room at the hospital, pacing nervously, when Sal came flying out of the door to the maternity ward, all flustered and excited.
‘It’s a girl, Caleb! I have a daughter. Can you believe it?’He was only eighteen then. They were just kids, he and Vivian, and still they instinctively knew how to be parents.‘Come on, Caleb. You gotta meet her. She’s so beautiful.’He wiped at his eyes, but it was fruitless because the tears—tears of unspeakable joy—wouldn’t stop. I onlysaw Sal cry one other time, and that’s when he told me Kayden was a boy, and while those were different tears, the love in Sal’s eyes was the same. I remember how he told me he felt like he’d failed Kayden for not knowing sooner, for not seeing it sooner, when he knew something was wrong.