Chapter 5: He knew

Maya's pov 

I sat across from Caleb at my parents' dining table, the same table I had sat at every Sunday for as long as I could remember, and I ate roast chicken and passed the bread when someone asked and laughed at the right moments and asked questions I didn't care about the answers to. The whole time, my mind ran so loud I was genuinely surprised no one could hear it.

He knew. He had known the entire time.

"So Caleb, how are you finding being back?" my mother asked, refilling his glass with the particular attentiveness she reserved for guests she had already decided she liked. She decided within minutes. She was rarely wrong.

"Good." He leaned back slightly, easy in his chair. "Honestly better than I expected. The firm's a good fit, and it helps having Derek around."

Derek pointed at him with his fork. "I told you Chicago was the right move."

"You told me that approximately forty times."

"And I was right approximately forty times."

My father laughed. My mother laughed. I laughed too, because everyone was laughing and my face knew what to do even when the rest of me was in complete freefall.

I reached for my water glass and took a long sip, two seconds, enough to look at Caleb properly for the first time since we'd sat down.

He was talking to my father about the architecture firm, something about a mixed-use development on the south side, relaxed and engaged and giving absolutely nothing away. There was nothing about him that suggested he was sitting across from a woman he'd had in his bed four nights ago. Nothing that suggested he had spent the last twenty minutes watching me pretend he was a stranger, while he did exactly the same thing with considerably more ease.

He was so calm it was almost offensive. I was using every resource I had.

"Maya, you're quiet," Derek said.

I looked at my brother. He had always had that quality, casual, observational, the kind that missed nothing even when he looked like he was paying attention to something else entirely.

"I'm eating," I said.

"You've barely touched your plate."

"I had a late lunch."

He watched me for a beat longer than necessary, then let it go and turned back to Caleb. I released a breath so carefully that nobody noticed.

The conversation moved the way Sunday dinner conversation always moved in this house, work, neighbourhood news, something my father had read in the paper, Derek's ongoing commentary on everything. My mother got up twice to bring things from the kitchen that didn't need bringing, which was what she did when she was happy and wanted an excuse to keep moving.

Caleb fit into it easily. That was the thing that made it worse. He wasn't performing ease the way I was performing ease. He was actually easy, responding to my father's questions with genuine engagement, making my mother laugh twice with the real kind of laugh that crinkled the corners of her eyes, trading half-sentences with Derek the way people do when they've known each other long enough to skip the rest.

He belonged here in a way that made my chest tight for reasons I couldn't fully untangle.

Once, only once, he looked directly at me.

My father had asked me something about a client project and I was mid-answer when I felt it, that particular weight of someone's attention, and I glanced across the table. Caleb had his elbow resting on the edge, completely still, watching me with the same quiet steadiness he'd had on the rooftop before any of this happened. Not guilty. Not smug. Like I was something worth his full attention.

I finished my sentence and looked back at my father. Under the table, my hand pressed flat against my thigh.

Dessert was my mother's lemon cake and I ate all of mine, which surprised even me. Hunger, apparently, survived humiliation. Derek and Caleb moved to the living room afterward and I stayed to help clear the table, partly because it gave my hands something to do, partly because the kitchen was the one room in the house where no one would think it strange that I was quiet.

My mother handed me plates and I rinsed them and she asked something about Lena and I answered on autopilot, thinking the whole time about that photo in the lobby. The grin I had recognised at six in the morning and talked myself out of believing.

I hadn't been wrong. I hadn't been tired. I knew exactly what I'd seen and I had let myself unsee it because unseen was easier than the alternative, and now I was standing in my mother's kitchen in my Sunday clothes, rinsing dinner plates, while the alternative sat in the next room watching football with my brother like everything was completely normal. Like he hadn't stood on a rooftop and let me believe he was nobody.

Everyone drifted toward the door around eight the way they always did, that gradual Sunday wind-down where coats got retrieved and leftovers got packaged and my mother hugged everyone twice.

I got my bag from the hallway table. Hugged my father. Hugged my mother, who held on a second longer than usual and said you look tired, sweetheart, go home and sleep. I told her I would and I meant it, because I had never wanted my own apartment more than I did right then.

Derek was already outside, loading something into his truck. My mother had disappeared back into the kitchen.

Caleb was in the hallway pulling on his jacket.

I was two feet away, digging for my keys, and we were alone for the first time since he'd walked through the door. The air shifted the moment the room emptied, something that had been holding itself back finally letting go.

I didn't look at him. Found my keys. Zipped my bag. I was already turning toward the door when he stepped slightly to the side, not blocking me, just enough that I stopped.

I looked up.

He was close. Not inappropriately close, not close enough that anyone glancing in would have thought anything of it, but close enough that when he spoke quietly I heard every word.

I opened my mouth.

He got there first.

"You left before I could make you breakfast."

His voice was low and completely even, like he was commenting on the weather. Like he hadn't just detonated something in the middle of my parents' hallway while my brother stood thirty feet away in the driveway.

I stared at him.

He held my gaze for exactly two seconds. Then he stepped back, raised his voice to a perfectly normal volume, and called toward the kitchen: "Night, Diane, thanks for dinner." My mother called something warm back, and he was already moving, already at the door, already pulling it open.

He walked out. The door swung shut behind him.

I stood in the hallway alone, keys in hand, lemon cake in my stomach, with the quiet and absolute certainty that my life had just become significantly more complicated.

Outside, I could hear Derek and Caleb saying goodbye, easy and loud the way they always were with each other. A car door. An engine.

I looked at the closed front door for a long moment.

Then I put my keys back in my bag, walked to the kitchen, and said, "Mom, do you need help with anything else?" because I needed another ten minutes before I was capable of driving, and washing dishes was better than standing alone in that hallway with what had just happened.

My mother looked at me. "You sure you're okay?"

"Perfect," I said, and picked up a dish cloth.

My hands were completely steady. I had no idea how.