Chapter Twenty
Cal's truck was in the drive when Jake pulled up, which he'd expected, and Bobby's old Civic was there too — parked with the particular stillness of a car that hadn't moved in some time, leaves gathered against the front tires, a thin film of dust on the hood. Jake looked at it for a moment before getting out of the truck.
He was okay. That was the thing he kept coming back to. A week without Duncan — the first real week, the protocols in practice, the morning texts and the evening facetimes and the particular quiet of the caretaker's cottage at night — and he was okay. Not fine in the way people say fine when they mean the opposite. Actually okay.
He wasn't sure what to do with that yet.
He got out of the truck.
Bobby answered the door before Jake knocked, which meant he'd heard the engine, which meant he'd been listening for it. He was holding a Diet Coke and wearing the particular expression of someone genuinely glad to see a specific person.
"Right on time," Bobby said, stepping back to let him in.
"Cal said ten," Jake said.
"Cal said ten," Bobby agreed. "He's in the front room."
Cal was in the armchair by the window, a coffee mug on the side table, a man entirely at rest in his own space. He looked up when Jake came in and nodded once at the sofa opposite.
Jake sat.
Cal let the quiet settle for a moment the way he always did, not filling it, just letting Jake find his footing in it.
"So," Cal said. "You made it through your first week of separation. How do you feel about it?"
Jake opened his mouth to say something measured and came out with something else entirely.
"I'm okay," he started. "Which is weird because I thought I'd be more of a mess. The first night was strange — the caretaker's cottage is really quiet when Duncan's not in it. I didn't realize how much space he takes up just by existing in a room." He paused. "Then Sunday morning Ellie — Duncan's mom — showed up with champagne and pastries at nine in the morning and told me stories about Duncan as a kid for two hours and I laughed until my chest hurt. I didn't expect that."
Cal said nothing. His expression hadn't moved.
"And then Monday happened and classes started and I just kept going. The morning texts help — the schedule thing, having to think about my day and write it down — I thought it would feel like reporting in but it doesn't. It feels more like touching base. Like there's a thread between us and every morning I pull on it and he pulls back and it's still there." He shifted on the sofa. "The facetimes are harder. He looks tired. He didn't get into a seminar he wanted and he's not talking about it but I can tell it's still bothering him and there's nothing I can do about that from here."
He stopped. Cal waited.
"Zach came Tuesday with pizza and fell asleep on my sofa and I put a blanket over him and went to bed and it was —" Jake almost laughed — "really normal. Just a normal Tuesday with my brother. And then Thursday my mom came with Zach and cooked and she saw the pillory and I gave her the Duncan built it speech and she gave me the look that meant she absolutely knew what it was for and decided not to know." He shook his head. "That's exactly my mom."
Cal's mouth moved slightly. Not quite a smile. Close.
"Friday night Duncan facetimed and said one week and I said one week back and —" Jake paused — "I didn't expect to feel held from a distance. I thought distance would just feel like absence. But it doesn't. The structure holds. What we built holds."
He looked up. "Is that a weird thing to say?"
Cal picked up his coffee. Took a slow sip. Set it down.
"No," he said. "That's exactly the right thing to say."
Cal set his mug down and stood with the unhurried efficiency of a man who had somewhere to be and had known it all along. He picked up his jacket from the hook by the door.
"I need to go out for a bit," he said. He looked at Jake with the particular directness that meant what came next wasn't a question even though it was phrased as one. "Would you mind hanging with Bobby until I get back?"
Jake recognized the phrasing. Cal wasn't leaving Jake in Bobby's care. He was leaving Bobby in Jake's company. The distinction was Cal all over.
"Of course," Jake said.
Cal nodded. Shrugged on his jacket. "Bobby," he called toward the kitchen.
"I know," Bobby said, appearing in the kitchen doorway, his face doing something warm and uncomplicated.
Cal paused at the door. "Show him the new toy," he said, and left.
Bobby looked at Jake. Something in his expression shifted — not quite pride, not quite shyness, exactly halfway between the two.
"Come on," Bobby said. "Bring your drink."
They settled into the sitting room the way they always did — Bobby in his corner of the sofa, feet tucked under him, Jake in the chair across. The lamp was on even though it was mid-morning, the cabin light filtered and quiet the way it always was.
Bobby opened a fresh Diet Coke. Jake wrapped both hands around his coffee mug.
"How's the new major sitting with you?" Bobby asked.
"Good," Jake said. "Better than good. It feels like the right thing finally in the right place." He paused. "I spent a year studying Business Administration because I didn't know what else to put on the form."
Bobby nodded. "And now you know."
"And now I know," Jake agreed.
They sat with that for a moment.
"Lab partner?" Bobby asked.
"Charlotte. She's from a farming community south of campus. Very organized. Brought me coffee on Wednesday without being asked."
"She know about Duncan?"
"Found out by accident on the first day," Jake said. "I mentioned my boyfriend's last weekend before Alderton without thinking. She overcorrected for about forty five seconds."
Bobby smiled. "They always do the first time."
"She was endearing about it," Jake said. "Her boyfriend's in the air force. Shipped out just before classes started."
Bobby absorbed that. "Good lab partner then."
"Yeah," Jake said. "Good lab partner."
Another comfortable silence settled between them. Bobby finished his Diet Coke and reached for another without getting up, the particular economy of movement of someone who knew exactly where everything was in their own space.
"So," Bobby said, not looking at him, pulling the tab on the fresh can. "You want to see the dungeon?"
The door was at the end of the hall, past the bathroom, past the room Jake assumed was Cal and Bobby's. Bobby opened it without ceremony and flicked on the light — a warm amber glow rather than the harsh overhead Jake had expected — and led the way down.
The stairs were solid. The space at the bottom was larger than the footprint of the cabin suggested, the walkout wall on the far side all glass, the woods pressing close outside. Someone had thought carefully about the light in here. It didn't feel like a basement. It felt like a room that knew what it was for.
Jake stood at the bottom of the stairs and took it in.
The equipment was arranged with the same deliberate organization as everything else in Cal's world — nothing haphazard, nothing decorative, everything with a purpose and a place. A St. Andrew's cross against the far wall. A padded bench. A wooden cabinet Jake recognized as the same design as the one in the caretaker's cottage front room. Various pieces of rigging hardware mounted to the ceiling joists with the kind of care that suggested an engineer had been involved.
And in the corner, under its own light, the chair.
It didn't look like much from across the room — high backed, heavily padded, dark leather, fitted with restraint points at the wrists, ankles, chest and head. But there was something about the proportions of it, the way it was shaped, that suggested it had been built for a specific body rather than a general one.
Bobby drifted toward it the way you drift toward something that belongs to you.
"Cal made it," Bobby said. "He's good with wood, better with leather. Took him three months." He ran his hand along the headrest. "He took my measurements first. Every point of contact."
Jake walked closer. The padding was thick and precise, the leather worn soft in the places where Bobby's body had shaped it over time.
"What does it do?" Jake asked.
Bobby looked at him. "It holds you completely," he said. "Every point of contact fitted to your body specifically. The head support, the way the back is angled — when you're in it and the restraints are on —" he paused — "the world outside it stops existing. There's just the chair and Cal's voice and nothing else."
Jake looked at the chair for a long moment. He thought about Bobby at the threshold of the front door, toes at the lip of the doorframe, the world outside having too many edges. He thought about the collar as perimeter, as proof, as the thing that held when everything else felt too large.
He understood what the chair was for.
They moved on. Bobby led him around the rest of the room with the easy familiarity of a tour guide in their own museum. He stopped at the St. Andrew's cross, ran his hand along the wood.
"I was scared shitless of that at first," he said. "The exposure of it. You're completely open, completely visible, nothing to hide behind." He paused. "Now it's one of my favorite things in the room."
He stopped at a low padded bench with restraint points at each corner.
"That one I asked for," Bobby said simply. "Cal didn't suggest it. I did." He glanced at Jake. "It takes a while before you know what you want to ask for. But you get there."
Jake followed him around the room, asking simple questions when they came to him. How long. What for. What was it like the first time. Bobby answered each one without performance, without clinical distance, just one person telling another person what their life had been like.
They ended up back at the chair.
"Do you want to sit in it?" Bobby asked.
Jake looked at it. Thought about it honestly.
"Not without Duncan," he said.
Bobby nodded once, the nod of someone who had been hoping for exactly that answer.
"Good boy," Bobby said quietly. Not in the dynamic sense. Just — good. Right. Correct instinct followed correctly.
Jake didn't say anything. He just looked at the chair for another moment, understanding something he didn't quite have words for yet, and then followed Bobby back up the stairs.
They came back up the stairs into the kitchen. Jake's phone buzzed on the counter where he'd left it. He picked it up and looked at the screen.
"Oh, Toph Islip," Jake announced, for no particular reason.
Bobby looked up from the refrigerator where he was retrieving a fresh Diet Coke. "Put him on speaker," he said. "He's awesome."
Jake looked at Bobby for a half second, then at the phone, then accepted the call and set it on the counter between them.
"Jake," Toph's voice filled the kitchen. "Calling to confirm next Saturday morning at the river. Ryan just got back to me so that leaves you, Sean and Zach."
"Hey Toph, it's Bobby. Please tell me you're not putting them in matching outfits."
A beat of silence on the line.
"Bobby," Toph said, his voice warming immediately. "Did you actually leave the cabin?"
"Jake came to me," Bobby said, with the dignity of a man who has made his peace with his situation and doesn't require commentary on it.
"Of course he did. Hey Jake —" Toph's voice shifted to business — "it's a family portrait. Tell your brothers to wear something they'd actually wear. No one coordinates colors." He laughed. "And we still need to coordinate the shoot we talked about. Maybe later that same Saturday — didn't you say Duncan would be home then?"
Jake glanced at Bobby, who was watching him with the particular expression of someone enjoying themselves quietly.
"Yeah," Jake said. "He comes home that weekend."
"Good," Toph said. "Talk to him. We'll make a day of it."
Jake ended the call and said his goodbyes to Bobby, and drove back to the caretaker's cottage. He pulled into the drive and killed the engine. The caretaker's cottage sat quiet and familiar in the late afternoon light.
He got out of the truck.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. He looked at the screen.
It was Preston.
Hey, Duncan made me promise I'd invite you dancing while he was gone. He's gone. Wanna come dancing with me and a couple guys?
Jake stared at the message. Of course Duncan had. Of course he'd thought three steps ahead from three hours away and planted Preston like a card in a deck, face down, waiting to be turned over at exactly the right moment.
He typed back.
Aren't you away at school?
The reply came instantly.
Nah. I got to State.
Jake stood in the drive for a moment. Then he went inside and climbed the stairs to the bedroom. He stood in front of Duncan's dresser and opened the top drawer looking for something to borrow to wear out.
There was a box.
On top of the box was a card in Duncan's handwriting.
If you're going dancing with Preston, wear this. If not, why the fuck are you looking in my drawers?
Below the words, a crude drawing of a heart. Duncan's scrawl.
Jake stood at the open drawer for a long moment holding the card.
He opened the box.
A compression tee. Black skinny jeans. Covers everything, reveals everything. Duncan's eye in every choice.
Jake got dressed.
He stood in front of the mirror for a long moment. Picked up his phone. Took the selfie — full length, mirror, the compression tee and the black skinnies and the particular expression of a man who had been dressed by someone who knew exactly what they were doing.
He sent it.
The reply came back in under a minute.
Have fun, not too much fun!
Jake smiled at the screen. Put his phone in his pocket. Picked up his keys.
Preston was waiting.
