Caleb liked to sleep late on his days off. Often he felt like he needed it, especially after an overnight shift. The last overnight had been particularly harrowing. A dog had been hit by a car. The dog, miraculously, hadn’t sustained any life-threatening injuries, just a broken leg, but the stress of having to test for internal bleeding coupled with the frantic owner who blamed herself for the dog bolting out into the street had left Caleb feeling wrecked when he finally got home.
So the doorbell pulled him out of a deep sleep. He was a little startled to see it was nearly noon. He hastily threw on a robe and went to the door, expecting it to be a package, probably some clothes he’d ordered a few days before.
But, no, it was Lauren.
Caleb rubbed his eyes. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m sorry. I’m on a Diane-mandated day off and I got bored so I thought I’d come over to say hi. So, hi.”
“Hi. Um. Come in?”
Caleb stepped out of the way to let her in. As wakefulness came over him in waves, he realized he was somewhat uncomfortable to have her here. They weren’t the sort of couple who just popped over to each other’s apartments. They weren’t even really a couple. Well, okay, they were, it was hard to deny that now, but he did not like her showing up unannounced.
“I brought lunch,” she said. “Sandwiches from that Italian deli on Joralemon.”
“Oh. Um. Let me just put on a pot of coffee.”
He went to the kitchen and tried to shake off the sleepiness as he got the coffee maker going, mostly through muscle memory. He was curious what Lauren had brought, mostly because he was hungry, but he wondered how she knew what to get him.
Well, they had eaten a lot of meals together, hadn’t they?
When he returned to the table, there were two heroes wrapped in white deli paper. “Meatball parm,” Lauren said pointing to one, “and prosciutto, mozzarella, and roasted red peppers. Pick one, or we can each have half of each.”
Both sounded good. But Caleb was still uncomfortable with Lauren in his space. He decided to keep the peace while he got some food and caffeine into his bloodstream. They wound up sharing both sandwiches, and the meatball was particularly delicious. Lauren pulled some of the prosciutto off her half of the other sub, declaring it too salty.
He liked this woman. A lot. But this was not the sort of relationship they had.
As if reading his thoughts, Lauren said, “What is it?”
“What?”
“Something is clearly bothering you. You’ve been fidgety and looked uncomfortable since you sat down.”
He should really just tell her. No sense in putting himself through this anytime she got a notion to see him. “You’re gonna think I’m a dick.”
“Just tell me.”
He sighed. “Okay, I don’t love that you just showed up without calling or texting first.”
“Oh. All right. I’ll text next time.”
“Well, no, that’s not precisely the issue. It’s just that… This is not the relationship we have.”
She sat back in her chair. “Oh.”
“We had fun the other night, but nothing has really changed for me. I don’t want to get married again, not that we’re anywhere near that, but still, I wouldn’t want to mislead you. Nothing has changed.”
Lauren swallowed and nodded slowly. “I’m not… I’m not asking you to marry me. I don’t even need some big commitment. But I like you. I just want a chance to see where this goes, and I feel like you’ve basically made a fort out of your baggage and you will not be budged.”
Caleb put a hand over his mouth so as not to laugh at the image, which was apt. “I do have some baggage. My divorce was… Well, if not traumatic, it was awful, all the way through. Not just the fact that Kara cheated on me and left me, but the fact that this thing I had put so much faith and work into turned out to be flimsy instead of solid. And it’s not that I don’t trust you, but I don’t trust…life.”
And that was basically true. He wasn’t sure what he’d done to piss off the universe, but this whole year had been shitty. And the worst of it had been, when he’d been fighting with Kara over every last penny in their clinic, he’d felt like the biggest idiot. Why hadn’t he seen how doomed their relationship was? Why hadn’t he seen Kara was unhappy? Had he really been so committed to his life plan that he hadn’t seen the ways it could be turned upside down?
It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Lauren. He did. But he didn’t trust himself. He didn’t trust his own judgment.
“That’s kind of fucked up,” Lauren said softly. “How do you even function if you don’t trust life?”
Caleb looked away because his chest hurt with…weakness? Embarrassment? He wasn’t really sure, but he didn’t like it. He didn’t want to feel this way in front of Lauren. He wanted to live in the magical bubble where he was just ill-tempered and they had good sex and talked about TV over takeout food and took long walks where she pointed out interesting things about the city. He didn’t want her to know how deeply fucked up he was, how he felt.
“It’s a challenge,” he said.
“Right. So this is your nice way of saying, ‘It’s not you, it’s me.’”
“I don’t…this isn’t a breakup. I don’t want to stop seeing you.”
Lauren frowned. “But you also don’t want anything to change.”
“I’m sorry. I like you, too, but this…” He gestured between them. “Some of this, anyway, makes me uncomfortable. I don’t have my sea legs yet where dating is concerned. So this cutesy, spontaneous thing makes me nervous.”
“No, I get it. You got burned, you don’t want to try again, that’s natural. I don’t think any human can get to their thirties without accumulating some baggage. But to just cut this off—”
“You knew what this was, too. We talked about it.”
“Fine. You don’t have to tell me twice. I’ll go.”
“No, Lauren, that’s not what I—”
“You can’t have it both ways, Caleb.”
***
Lauren didn’t like the idea of ultimatums. Often they were unfair or set up impossible choices. But “take me or leave me” was starting to feel like something she should say aloud.
Instead, she said, “All right, I’m sorry for barging in here. I thought after the other night, something had changed between us, but I’m clearly wrong.”
“Lauren, don’t—”
“Or, you know, you could just interpret the fact that I came over with sandwiches as me wanting to have lunch with you on my day off and not like I’m trying to trap you into marriage.”
Caleb frowned. “I didn’t accuse you of—”
“We all have baggage! I’ve been in good relationships and bad relationships and had my heart broken a time or two. I get that you’re skittish. Hell, I’m skittish. My ex just announced on Facebook that his first child is on the way, and I still haven’t figured out how to process my feelings about that.” She paused to rub her forehead. She’d just seen that particular post this morning and was still reeling from it. There’d been a time in her life when she’d imagined making such announcements with Derek. Watching him put out this announcement today was like looking at some kind of alternate universe. But she focused back on the more immediate issue. “Let’s not cut off our noses to spite our faces.”
“We probably spend more time arguing about our relationship than being in our relationship,” Caleb said.
“So…what? Do you even want to be with me?”
“Of course I want to be with you!”
Lauren had half expected him to say no, so the conviction in his words was enough of a surprise she couldn’t speak for a moment. He looked just as surprised he’d said it out loud. She rubbed her forehead.
“Just in a naked way, or…”
Caleb frowned. “I’m not an idiot. I’m not blind to the fact that we’ve done lots of non-naked things together, like watching TV and eating frozen yogurt. I’m enjoying our time together. I don’t want to lose you.”
“But you also don’t even want to be in a relationship. You don’t want to tell anyone we’ve been seeing each other. You just want whatever is between us to exist in a little bubble.”
“What do you want me to say?”
Part of Lauren wanted to run screaming. There was no way to win this argument, no way to walk away without getting some part of her heart trod on, no way to mold this into some happily ever after. So she said, “I need you to trust I’m not trying to trick you. I need you to trust that all I want from you is your company. I want to be able to be with you in public and not feel like a dirty secret. I just want us to be able to figure out what we could be instead of fearing the future.”
Caleb stared into the distance for a long moment, his lips pursed. He never looked more handsome than when he was thinking hard about something, and the fact that she’d caught him this morning just out of bed, with his usually neat hair a mess and sticking up on one side, in only old sweats and a threadbare robe, made her feel like she was seeing the real him and not the Caleb he presented to the world. And because she sometimes got glimpses of that man, the man she got to be with sometimes, she thought she had him figured out.
Maybe he’d agree to at least give them a shot.
But what he said was, “I don’t feel ready.”
This was probably the moment when Lauren should have shut it all down. He was never going to agree to be in any kind of non-secret relationship with her. He was holding onto his divorce and his fear and he wasn’t ready to move on yet.
But what Lauren said was, “If you don’t feel ready soon, there’s only so long this can go on.”
“I know. I’ve always known that.”
“So what do we do?”
Caleb took a deep breath, his chest expanding and contracting. He said, “We’re together. Or we’re not.”
“Yes, but what does that mean?”
Caleb shrugged, which annoyed Lauren so much she almost yelled at him, but she bit her tongue.
He said, “It means that, for right now, we finish lunch. Maybe we come up with something to do this afternoon to make the most of us both having today off. Maybe we go see a movie or take a walk, I don’t know. I’ve got enough stuff in my kitchen to make us dinner tonight, probably some kind of pasta thing. If the mood is right, we have sex and you spend the night, or we don’t and you spend the night, or we do and you go home, or whatever it is you want to do tonight. And if at any time this doesn’t feel good or doesn’t feel right, that’s it, we both walk away.”
“That’s it?” Lauren found it extremely dissatisfying that he was being so casual about this. Did he not feel what she felt? Did he not feel his heart squeeze when she was nearby? Did he not feel his pulse race when she stood near him? Did he not feel giddy when he thought of her, did he not warm when he first saw her walk into a room, did he not think about what they were like in bed together when he was alone?
“That’s all I can give you right now,” said Caleb.
She should have left. What he was offering was not enough, not after everything she’d felt with him, everything they’d done together. But she said, “Then let’s make the most of it.”