CHAPTER 7: Orbit

Derek texts me on Wednesday.

“Gathering at mine Friday”. Nothing big. Just come.

I stared at it for a while. Then I typed back “maybe” which in our sibling language means yes and he knows it because he sends back a thumbs up without pushing which means he already knew I was coming before he even asked.

I spent Friday afternoon talking myself out of it.

By seven I am in my car.

Derek's apartment is on the third floor of a building that is slightly too loud and slightly too warm and always smells like whatever he cooked last because he refuses to open windows in winter on principle. When I arrived,there were maybe ten people already there, scattered across the living room with drinks in hand, the particular easy noise of people who know each other well enough to not need a reason to get together.

Derek opens the door and pulls me into a hug before I am fully through it.

"You came," he says.

"I said maybe."

"You always come when you say maybe."

He takes my jacket and disappears with it and I step into the living room and scan the room the way I always do when I walk into a space and my eyes find Caleb immediately like they have already been looking for him before I told them to.

He is on the couch. Talking to someone I don't know. Relaxed, one arm along the back of the cushion, the way he sits in every room like he has always been in it. He didn't look up when I walked in,

I told myself that it was fine.

I went to find myself a drink.

Lena is not here which means I have nobody to hide behind so I do what I always do at gatherings which is find the person who looks most like they also would rather be somewhere quieter and talk to them. Her name is Simone and she works with Derek and she has strong opinions about bad reality television and within fifteen minutes I have genuinely forgotten to be anxious.

For about twenty minutes.

Then Caleb laughs at something across the room and my body registers it before I do and I lose the thread of what Simone is saying completely.

"Sorry," I say. "What?"

Simone gives me a look that is not unkind. "I said do you watch it?

"Watch what."

"The show I've been describing for the last two minutes."

"Right. Yes. Sometimes."

She narrows her eyes slightly. I picked up my drink and took a long sip and resolved to be a better conversationalist.

The evening moves. People shift around the room the way they do at these things, conversations breaking and reforming, Derek turning the music up and then down again when someone complains. I talked to three different people and I laughed at things and I am present and engaged and I am doing completely fine.

Except.

Every time Caleb is near me the air changes in a way I feel before I see it.

It is never obvious. He never manoeuvres toward me in a way anyone would notice. It just keeps happening that we end up in the same orbit. Standing near the same wall. Reaching for things at the same time. Pulled into the same conversation by the natural gravity of a small apartment and a group of people who all know each other.

And every time it happens he is completely normal.

He talks to me the way he talks to everyone else. Easy, unhurried, nothing in his face that shouldn't be there. He makes a comment about something Derek says and I respond and we go back and forth for thirty seconds and it is completely ordinary and completely unbearable at the same time.

Once, during a lull in the room, he looks at me across the space between us and there is a moment, maybe two seconds, where it is just us and everything that hasn't been said hanging in the air between us and then Derek says something loud and the moment breaks and Caleb looks away first.

I look away second.

I am losing every version of this evening.

Around nine I need a minute.

I took my empty glass to the kitchen and stood at the counter and breathed. The kitchen is small and yellow lit and the noise from the living room is muffled enough out here that I can actually hear myself think. I refilled my glass and stood there longer than I needed to.

I heard footsteps.

I know before I turn around.

Caleb comes in and goes to the fridge and takes out a beer and closes it and leans against the counter on the opposite side of the kitchen. He does not say anything immediately. Neither did I. The living room noise fills the silence between us and for a moment it is almost manageable.

Then he says it.

"You've been avoiding looking at me all night."

His voice is low. Not accusatory. Just calm and straightforward the way he is about everything, like he is pointing out something obvious that he has been patient enough to wait until now to mention.

I kept my eyes on my glass.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Yeah you do."

I looked up.

He is watching me with that steady unhurried attention and there is nothing aggressive in it, nothing that is trying to corner me. He is just being honest and somehow that is worse than if he had been trying to start something because I can argue with someone who is trying to start something.

I opened my mouth.

"MAYA." Derek's voice booms from the living room, the volume of a man who has never once in his life understood that you could just walk to the room a person was in. "COME SETTLE SOMETHING."

I closed my mouth.

Caleb holds my gaze for one more second.

Then he pushes off the counter, picks up his beer and walks back toward the living room without another word. Easy and unhurried, like always. Like nothing happened.

Like he didn't just say the one thing that made everything harder.

I stand in the kitchen alone.

My hand finds the counter.

I grip it.

One minute.

I just need one minute.