Peter Cabot Gets Lost by Cat Sebastian

Day 9

Joshua Tree, California

“Where are you staying?” Peter asked when they passed Flagstaff and rejoined Highway 66. “I have a Los Angeles map in the glove box.”

“Oh,” Caleb said, taken by surprise, even though it was a perfectly reasonable question. Every time he thought about Los Angeles, it felt almost jarring. “A classmate who was a year ahead of us. Jon Epstein. Did you know him? I’m sleeping on his sofa for a few weeks.”

“Did you want to call him and let him know to expect you tonight?” Peter asked neutrally. He had probably noticed that Caleb hadn’t made that call yet.

“I sent him a postcard, but yeah, I should do that.” Caleb dug his fingers into the steering wheel. He didn’t want to think about why this line of conversation was making him uncomfortable. He didn’t want to think about why he hadn’t called Jon yet.

When, an hour later, they stopped at a gas station, Caleb pointedly took his address book out of the trunk and went inside to find a pay phone. He called Jon, but of course there was no answer, because it was the middle of the morning on a weekday. He called Jon’s office and left a message with a bored sounding secretary.

“You could stay with me, you know,” Peter said. He was leaning against the wall beside the phone, his hands in his pockets. “Or with my aunt, I guess. She already knows that I’m traveling with a friend.”

“I can’t.”

“Okay,” Peter said easily, strolling outside. “The offer stands.”

On the blacktop of the parking lot, the sun beat down hotter and brighter than Caleb had ever thought possible. They were in the desert now. There was a cactus across the street, an actual literal cactus, looking like it had been stuck there to add some desert scenery to a movie set. It felt unreal. Everything about it felt unreal. He had the feeling that he’d get to Los Angeles, start his job, find an apartment, and the last week would recede into the past, into the world of things he had left behind. It would be a memory, and one that didn’t have any relevance to his life. There would be no context for it.

He wanted to hold onto it with both hands, wanted to dig his nails in and cling, but he didn’t know how.

In the car, they kept the windows rolled down in order to get a breeze, which meant the map flapped around too much for Peter to find Jon’s address. “I’ll look for it later,” Peter said, half shouting over the sound of the wind in their ears.

They stopped for lunch at a roadside stand that looked like it had been around for the better part of a century. It might have been whitewashed at some point but was now the same dusty color as the sandy soil around it, the same color as the edges of the sky. They bought peaches and hot dogs from a man with brown skin and long black hair, who wordlessly took their money and then returned his attention to a book he had propped up on the counter.

They sat on a bench outside and ate, watching the cars go past, pressing cold bottles of Coke to their necks.

“Hot dogs are the same everywhere,” Peter said after a while. “Same hot dog, same bun, coast to coast. Fenway Park, the middle of the Mojave Desert, it doesn’t matter. Completely standardized.”

Caleb took a bite of his peach and let the juicy tartness fill his mouth. It was better than any peach he had eaten in years, since he was a little kid, maybe ever. He pressed the other peach into Peter’s hand. “Eat,” he said.

As they ate, Caleb couldn’t shake the feeling that this was a mirage, that he’d wake up in his bed somewhere else, somewhere far away, somewhere he hadn’t been yet.

“You could stay with me,” Peter said, apropos of nothing.

“Are you going to keep saying that?”

“Yeah. If you don’t mind.”

Caleb couldn’t think of any reasonable response to that, so he finished his peach and threw the pit into a waste basket. “Come on,” he said, rising to his feet and dusting his hands on his trousers. “It’s time.”

At the next gas station, Peter found Jon’s apartment on the map. “Not far from my aunt’s house,” he said, pressing the tip of his index finger to the place that marked the apartment. “You can—”

“I know.”

Caleb looked at the place where Peter’s finger rested. There was nothing to differentiate it from the surrounding lines and squiggles, nothing to show him that this was where his journey was going to end for now.

“I start work next Monday. I’m going to get an apartment,” Caleb said when he slid into the passenger seat. “And pay rent, and buy my own groceries, and send money home.”

“I know you are,” Peter said.

“I need to.” That was an understatement, but he didn’t know how to explain to someone like Peter that the hope of being both independent and reasonably comfortable had been the only thought that got him through the past several years.

“And you’re going to stay on your friend’s sofa while you save up money to get an apartment,” Peter said.

“Which is fundamentally different from shacking up with a boy I met a week ago, and staying at his aunt’s house, no less.”

“Okay,” Peter said, not arguing with him. “I get that. The offer stands. Do you want to get dinner with me tomorrow?” He turned the key in the ignition, and the sound of the engine drowned out the exasperated noise Caleb made.

* * *

Los Angeles, California

By the time they got to outer edges of Los Angeles, Caleb was radiating nervousness. Peter could almost feel it seeping out of him, beneath the dust and sweat, when he reached for Caleb’s hand.

“Is it anything in particular?” he asked gently.

Caleb just shook his head tightly, but then half an hour later, while they were stopped at a traffic light, he cleared his throat. “You should give me your phone number at your aunt’s house.”

Peter tried not to look too smug. “I already put it in your book. Under C for Cabot, Patricia. Did it days ago.”

“You can just let me out,” Caleb said when Peter searched for a parking spot near Epstein’s apartment building.

“Sure I could,” Peter said evenly, as if it were even an option for Peter to leave Caleb in the middle of a strange city when the man could hardly find his way down a hallway without making a wrong turn. “I’ll help you carry your things in and say hello to your friend. I think he and I took economics together freshman year.”

“Fine,” Caleb said, with the air of granting Peter a favor.

“You are so much work sometimes,” Peter said happily, finally pulling into a parking spot. “What do you want me to cook you for dinner tomorrow? Spaghetti?” Peter did not mention that this was all he knew how to make.

Caleb sighed, but didn’t protest, and when Peter looked over, he saw the beginnings of a smile on the other man’s face.

Epstein remembered Peter and seemed genuinely happy to see Caleb, which made it slightly easier when the door closed between them and Peter returned alone to his car. They hadn’t said goodbye. Instead, Peter’s final words had been a cheerful “I’ll pick you up at seven tomorrow” and that had been that. He hoped Caleb would be there.

Peter wound his way through the city as it shifted from town to suburbs and back again, finally arriving at his aunt’s address. He almost cried when she opened the door, took his luggage, pressed a bottle of beer into his hand, and finally held him at arm’s length to look at him.

“I haven’t seen you in an age,” she said, even though they had definitely seen one another at Christmas. “You look wonderful. The fugitive life agrees with you.” And then she laughed, something bright and happy and unrestrained, and Peter realized she was actually glad to see him. He had gotten used to most of the adults in his family not wanting much to do with him and only ever noticing him if he had done something to annoy them.

“Oh, no, I’m filthy,” he protested when she moved to hug him, but that only made her laugh again.

He showered and began to unpack his things in the guest room, which was actually the pool house, and which Aunt Patty had acted like Peter would be doing her a huge favor by occupying. All the while the silence of the space around him felt oppressive. Now that he was here, the magnitude of what he had done struck him anew. He had walked away from his family. He had caused the sort of rift that couldn’t be smoothed over easily, and he had no intention of even trying. He was going to make it worse, and at the earliest opportunity. He showered and threw on clean clothing, then went to find his aunt.

She was sitting at the kitchen counter reading a magazine, a glass of wine in her hand.

“I sent my mother a postcard from Illinois,” he said. “And I left a message for my father’s secretary letting him know I was helping a friend move. They don’t know I’m in California, so I don’t think they’ll bother you.”

She regarded him shrewdly. “I can handle your father.”

The front door opened then, with such a clatter that Peter thought he’d jump out of his skin. But his aunt only called out, “In the kitchen!” then turned to him and said, “It’s only Harry,” as if that explained anything.

Half an hour later Peter was seated cross legged on the living room floor, while Harry—who turned out to be an English woman who wore trousers and called Aunt Patty “Patricia darling” and sat very near her on the sofa—kept all their glasses filled with wine.

“Wait,” Aunt Patty said as Harry lit a cigarette and handed it to her. “Did you tell me that you sent your mother a postcard?”

“It had a picture of a basket of chicken on the front,” Peter said, which made both women laugh. “I said that I was looking forward to seeing her in July for the convention and that I hoped she was enjoying her summer. I used my best handwriting.”

“Cooked chicken? Or a basket of little chicks?” Aunt Patty asked.

“That’s your question? That’s what you want to know?” Harry demanded.

“I need to have the full picture, so I can properly imagine Gloria’s face when she read it.”

“Cooked chicken,” Peter said. “Fried. I need to look for a job.”

“So you’ll be staying, then?” asked his aunt.

“Yeah. I’m not going back.”

“Good. Well, you’re welcome to the pool house for as long as you like. God knows nobody else uses it.”

“I invited my friend for dinner tomorrow. I should have asked, but I can take him somewhere else if that doesn’t work for you.”

“Ah, the friend,” Aunt Patty said. “I was told you might be bringing one of those. That’s fine, Peter. Please don’t worry.” It seemed to Peter that she rather pointedly put her hand on Harry’s leg at that moment.

“Oh,” Peter said. “Thank you for—yes. Thank you,” he said, hoping his aunt understood that he was thanking her for the hospitality and also for that hand on Harry’s leg.

“He’s a twenty-two-year-old boy,” Harry said, addressing Aunt Patty. “You can’t rely on subtlety.” She turned to him. “We’re all queer.” She made a gesture encompassing the three of them.

“I don’t think they say queer anymore,” Aunt Patty said. “You’re really very old fashioned, Harry.” Harry gave her an exasperated look. “Peter, darling, what are you going to do while you’re in California?”

Peter groaned. “I don’t know what I’ll do. I don’t have a plan. I don’t even have a reason to be here, except…”

Aunt Patty leaned forward and refilled Peter’s glass of wine. “So tell me more about this friend who you drove out with.”

Peter quickly drank the wine so he didn’t have to answer.

“Ah,” said Harry.

“I see,” said Aunt Patty, leaning forward. “Traveling across the country to be with a lover is a venerable tradition.”

Peter nearly choked on his wine, but before he could get too embarrassed, Aunt Patty set about interrogating Peter about what he might like to do, and then talking to Harry about various people who might hire him, and then interrogating Peter some more. The CIA could learn a lot from Aunt Patty, Peter realized, when after half an hour Peter was promising to write to his thesis adviser and telephone the history department at UCLA.

When she suggested it, it sounded so feasible it was almost obvious. If you want to go to grad school, then you should apply. If you want to apply, then have your former professors write letters of recommendation. Aunt Patty wasn’t old enough to be his parent—Peter was old enough to remember when she and Uncle Tommy got married—but she was a parent, and old enough that her approval mattered to Peter. Peter couldn’t imagine his own parents approving of anything he did, let alone supporting him. A few weeks ago he had taken their disapproval for granted, but maybe eight days with Caleb Murphy had left him thinking the best of himself. Maybe spending time with someone who really liked you let you see yourself reflected in their eyes, even just a little.

Peter had another glass of wine and let himself get tipsy in the warmth of the house, in the sound of the chatter of two people who might be family, in the slow crystallization of a future he might get to have.

Day 10

Caleb did his laundry, folded his clothes, studied the bus map to figure out how he was supposed to get to work the following week, found a barber shop and got his hair cut, refolded his clothes, scrambled some eggs, and still it was only noon. And still he was alone in a strange apartment, in a strange city, restless down to his very bones.

The unsettling beauty of the landscape had been replaced by a pea green sofa, a sinkful of dirty dishes, and a bus schedule, all intensely mundane. There was no sky-blue convertible, no greasy food from roadside diners, no radio stations that were never quite in tune. There was no friendly chaos of Peter’s belongings scattered across the room. All the details that had characterized his trip across the country and made it feel separate from his real life were gone.

He opened his address book and found where Peter had written his aunt’s name and phone number in neat black capitals. He had also included her address. Jammed between the back cover and the Zs was the folded-up map on which Peter had outlined their route. A bold line of blue ink led all the way from Boston to Los Angeles, all the way from one coast to the other, one clean line with an inch and a half detour north of Flagstaff. Caleb squinted. Well, nearly all the way. The line ended somewhere near the O of Los Angeles, which, knowing Peter, was probably damned near the apartment he was sitting in right now.

That tiny gap between the end of the line and the blue expanse of the Pacific Ocean bothered Caleb. It couldn’t be more than a quarter inch, barely anything at all. But on the other side of the map, the line started right at the edge of Boston Harbor. The lack of symmetry bothered him in a way that a naked quarter inch of map really shouldn’t.

He showered and dressed, then changed his shirt, then combed his hair, all the while telling himself that Peter coming by was not a big deal. Then he shaved and changed his shirt again, as if Peter hadn’t seen him in wrinkled, dusty clothes for the past week.

When he finished being nervous about his shirt, he got down to the business of being nervous about the possibility of Peter leaving and breaking his heart. He had been warning himself about this for days now, but he found that the warning had no teeth anymore. If Peter left, Caleb’s heart would be broken, and that’s all there was to it. There was nothing Caleb could do today to prevent that, and he couldn’t go back in time to stop himself from falling for the man in the first place. Even if he could, he didn’t think he’d want to.

Now that thought was terrifying. He hardly recognized this version of himself, this utter idiot of a human being who let his attention shift away from the steady march toward making something of himself. He ought to be furious with himself. Instead he decided that he needed to polish his shoes and clip his nails and part his hair more carefully as the hands on his wristwatch edged closer to seven o’clock.

“It’s still a terrible idea,” he said when he opened the door after the first knock. “Just so you know.”

“Okay,” Peter said, smiling. “Want to go have some terrible ideas together? Or, if not terrible ideas, then maybe spaghetti? I made spaghetti sauce.”

“Ugh,” Caleb said, trying not to smile like a loon. “I hate you.” He was already out the door, following Peter to the car. He was a dog on a leash, his heart thrilling in his chest. Peter looked good—even better than usual, somehow. He had on a white t-shirt and jeans and Caleb was dressed like he was going to church and felt like an idiot about it.

Peter had obviously gotten the car washed, because it was no longer coated in half the Mojave Desert and filled with doughnut crumbs and pen caps. It smelled the same, like leather and aftershave, and Caleb realized that he’d spend the rest of his life connecting those scents with Peter. He found himself leaning closer, as if to bury his face in Peter’s neck, because he had obviously lost his mind at some point since Oklahoma. His sense of self-preservation was scattered along Highway 66, left in pieces at service stations and motels, at restaurants that served pancakes all day long. And now his heart, which he had worked so hard not to think about, belonged to a man who was brave and impetuous and—and kind and generous and—

“Ugh,” Caleb repeated.

“I know,” Peter said, and patted his leg.

Peter’s aunt lived in a house that looked far more normal than anything in which Caleb had expected to find a Cabot. It wasn’t small, and it had a pool, but it wasn’t a palace.

“I’m staying in the pool house, which is where I made dinner, but would you mind sticking your head into the house and meeting my aunt? She’s dying to ask me about you, and I don’t think she’ll hold out much longer, so let’s reward her restraint?”

That, Caleb figured, was Peter’s way of saying he had told his aunt about them. Caleb didn’t know what to think about that. Or at least he didn’t until Peter showed him into the kitchen and he saw two women in very close proximity. One was a pretty blond who looked like a slightly older Grace Kelly. The other was a short-haired brunette who lounged against the counter in what looked like a man’s suit while the other tugged at her collar.

Well, thought Caleb. He hadn’t expected that.

Peter cleared his throat and made the introductions with the sort of easy grace that startled Caleb into remembering that Peter was a Cabot. Caleb answered all Mrs. Cabot’s questions about the job he was about to start and about his family back home. About five minutes into the interrogation he realized that this wasn’t polite conversation—this was Peter’s family making sure that he hadn’t taken up with someone who wasn’t worthy of him. He had seen his own aunts and uncles do this to his cousins’ dates and had never in a million years anticipated being on the receiving end of this treatment.

The entire conversation cast the past week into a more domestic light. Whatever had happened on their trip also existed under the florescent lights of Mrs. Cabot’s suburban kitchen. He and Peter weren’t just two people who had fallen for one another too fast and in strange circumstances—they were…dating, Caleb supposed, and Mrs. Cabot was treating Caleb like anyone Peter might bring home.

“Do you want to use our phone to call your mother?” Mrs. Cabot asked after somehow tricking Caleb into admitting that he hadn’t spoken to her since leaving Massachusetts. “There’s an extension in the den. Peter, show him, will you?”

Before Caleb could protest that this was unnecessary, that he could find a pay phone or wait until he had his own phone set up, Peter was ushering him into a small room that was paneled in dark wood and carpeted in forest green. “You don’t have to call if you don’t want to,” Peter said. “It’s just easier to agree with her sometimes.”

“I can tell,” Caleb said.

“I didn’t realize she was going to grill you,” Peter said. “Sorry about that.”

“I don’t mind. She cares about you. It’s kind of nice. You know, I think I will use the phone.” He was going to get better at this, at accepting—not help, not generosity, but kindness. He was going to need to if he wanted to keep spending time with Peter. Caleb could wait a few weeks to call, but he didn’t need to, and so he wouldn’t.

“I’ll be out in the kitchen,” Peter said, and shut the door behind him.

Caleb dialed the familiar number and held his breath while he heard the line ring, twisting his finger in the phone cord. “Mama?” he said when he heard her voice. He asked about Judy’s leg and the piglets and his stepfather’s truck and felt wildly and uncontrollably homesick. He thought that maybe he’d always feel like that when he talked to his mother, but that maybe it would soften when this new place felt like more of a home. He used to think that he had left behind everything that was precious to him, but he had found other things that mattered and would keep on doing so.

As he listened to his mother, he thought about how Peter hadn’t even had that much—the things and people he left behind weren’t even precious to him, or he to them. But somehow, he and Peter were becoming that to one another—the important things that you gathered up and held close. And while Caleb had a whole barnful of questions about how anything lasting with Peter would actually work, he found that he wanted to answer those questions, wanted to make whatever compromises needed to be made, because the one thing he didn’t want to do was let go.

* * *

Caleb had cut his hair. It was such a small thing, but all Peter could think was that this was not the same Caleb who had been with him for the past ten days. What if other things were different too? What if in the last twenty-four hours they had forgotten how to talk to one another? What if whatever connection had existed between them was only one of proximity?

But as they ate spaghetti in the tiny kitchen of the pool house, Peter felt the discomfort drain out of him. Caleb was Caleb, and he was currently complaining about the impenetrable nature of the Los Angeles bus system. “I’m going to have to save up to buy a car,” he lamented. “Of all the bullshit.”

Peter resisted offering to drive Caleb anywhere and everywhere he could possibly want to go. He was trying to act like a reasonable human being. “You’ll also have to learn to read a map.”

“You’ll have to learn to go fuck yourself,” Caleb said amiably.

While they were washing the dishes, Caleb cleared his throat. “I want to date.”

Peter had thought this was a date, possibly even their tenth or eleventh date, but he didn’t say so. “Okay, good. That makes two of us.”

“I mean, I want to put this—” he gestured between them with a soapy hand “—on a more manageable scale. I don’t want to move in with you.” He handed Peter a dish to rinse. “Well, of course I want to move in with you. But not now. I want to tell you that it’s because it’s too soon, and it is, but it’s really because I need to know that I can take care of myself, on my own.”

Had Caleb just announced that at some point he wanted to move in together? Peter was pretty sure he had. He decided not to mention this, and instead focused on the last thing Caleb had said. “Haven’t you been doing that for four years?”

“I want to do more than scrape by. I want to know that I can take care of myself and live the kind of life I want. And I want to know that if someone helps me, or if I’m splitting costs with someone, that it’s a choice I’m making. I want it to be a choice.”

“Okay,” Peter said. “I want you to have that choice too.”

“And if I moved in with you right now, I’d never know if I could do it on my own. I’d spend the rest of my life dividing rent and grocery bills with you and I’d never know if I could do it on my own. So, let me prove it to myself, okay.”

Peter heard those words—the rest of my life—and only avoided dropping a dish by the skin of his teeth. “I promise,” he said.

“Okay,” Caleb agreed. “What do you want?”

The only thing Peter was sure of was that he wanted Caleb, but he was making an effort not to terrify the man. “I want a chance to figure out what I want. I haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about it. I’ve actually done a pretty thorough job of avoiding thinking about it. But I want to do all that with you around.” When Caleb didn’t say anything, Peter swallowed. “I know that’s all really small, and it’s stuff I should have dealt with ages ago—”

But then Caleb’s wet hands were on Peter’s face, pulling him close for a kiss. “Every time you start saying unkind things about yourself, I’m shutting you up,” Caleb murmured.

Peter thought this was only likely to train him to ever-greater feats of self-disparagement, but he certainly wasn’t going to complain. Instead he let himself get pushed back against the counter.

Later they went outside with glasses of lemonade and sat by the pool, looking up at stars that had been much brighter in the middle of the country. He remembered that feeling he had of being alone and adrift in an impossibly large universe, and thought that while he might be adrift, he wasn’t alone.

Epilogue

Peter’s father didn’t stop by until the second-to-last day of the convention. The doorbell rang, and Peter, who was staying in the main house while Aunt Patty was away, answered it to discover his father, flanked by two men who were very conspicuously Secret Service agents.

“Come in,” Peter said, having decided that being patient and cordial would be his best tactic. “Can I get you anything to drink?” he asked his father. Then he turned to the bodyguards. “Gentlemen?”

“No, Peter, for God’s sake, we don’t need a drink,” his father snapped. “I came to see why you aren’t with your mother and Lawrence at the hotel.”

“I wrote to her that I was house-sitting for Aunt Patty,” Peter explained. “And nobody called or wrote with instructions about where and when I was supposed to be at the convention. I assumed you’d all decided to go ahead without me.”

“Well, that was an unfortunate assumption to make, but I don’t know why I’m surprised. Do you have a suit with you? Put it on and get in the car.”

Peter resisted the urge to stick his hands in his pockets or fiddle with his buttons. Instead he looked his father in the eye and absently noted that they were the same height; in his mind, his father was so much larger. “I’m sorry, but I’m not able to. I made plans. I really wish you had let me know earlier and I could have rescheduled.” He would have done no such thing, but his father didn’t need to know that. For the past week, every time the phone rang or the mail slid through the slot on the door, Peter had held his breath, sure that this was when he’d finally be summoned to his father’s side, when he’d finally have to put his foot down. But it hadn’t happened, and eventually Peter realized that his family had, if not outright forgotten about him, then they had certainly not spared him more than a cursory thought. And if his family couldn’t be bothered to remember that he existed, then he wasn’t going to waste his time explaining that his priorities did not include them any more than theirs included him. “But as things stand, I need to be at work in an hour.”

“Work,” his father repeated disbelievingly.

“I’m working as a research assistant to a history professor at UCLA.” Technically, he was volunteering to work on the index for a book the professor was writing, but his father didn’t need to know any of that either.

His father narrowed his eyes. “The fact that you came here and only told Thomas says it all, I suppose.”

Peter pretended not to hear the accusation in his father’s words, but suspected it was either a shot in the dark or an attempt to rile Peter up. “He and Aunt Patty have been very kind to me,” Peter said cheerfully. There were times it was a real advantage when your entire family thought you were very dim. “And I wrote to Mother twice to let her know where I was. I’ve been here for a month, and it’s hardly been a secret.”

“What’s this stunt about, Peter? What is it that you think you’re going to get from me?”

“I’m not asking for anything,” Peter said, amazed that he sounded calm despite his heart racing. “I’ll see Mother at the hotel tomorrow and I’ll wear something you won’t be ashamed to see me photographed in. You don’t need me to do more than that. Lawrence is a thousand times better on a campaign. I’ll just embarrass myself and you. This is better for everyone.”

Peter could see that his father agreed with him, which probably ought to sting, but only meant that Peter was winning. “This is unacceptable,” his father said, but he sounded more annoyed than insistent.

“I’m sorry you think so. Are you sure I can’t get you anything to drink?”

His father threw up his hands and left, not quite storming out, but awfully close, his bodyguards trailing behind him. Peter sank into an armchair in the living room and waited for his heart rate to go back to something like normal.

That afternoon, after spending a few hours alphabetizing the names of every person Napoleon seemingly ever talked to, he drove to the Los Angeles Times building and waited.

A few minutes past five, Caleb opened the passenger side door and slid in, as easily as he did every time Peter picked him up from work. He threw his jacket into the back seat.

“You’ll never guess who dropped by,” Peter said.

“Finally,” Caleb said. “The asshole. If you drive us to the Santa Monica pier, I’ll buy you an ice cream cone.”

As he drove, Peter related the conversation he had with his father. “In the end, he hardly put up a fight. I’m just not that much of a loss to him, and he knows it.” Caleb made a little anguished noise of protest.

“Come on,” Caleb said after Peter parked the car. “Let’s walk down to the beach.”

Peter raised his eyebrows. As far as he knew, Caleb hadn’t yet seen the ocean. He had been downright cagey about it when Peter had asked if he wanted to go to the beach a few weekends ago. Now, when the ocean came into view, Caleb paused and took something out of his back pocket and began fumbling with it. It took Peter a moment to realize that it was a map, and then another moment to realize it was their map.

“Hold this end,” Caleb ordered, then proceeded to fold and refold the map so only one rectangle was visible. Then he took a ballpoint pen out of his pocket, removed the cap with his teeth, and drew a short line from the center of Los Angeles to the Pacific Ocean. “There,” Caleb said, surveying his work. “That’s better.” He handed the map to Peter.

“Have you been carrying that around?” Peter asked, not sure what to think.

“For weeks, because your father is a coward and an asshole,” Caleb said, and he evidently thought this was sufficient explanation because he pointed. “Look, there’s the ice cream stand!”

Caleb, as promised, bought them each an ice cream cone, strawberry for himself and vanilla for Peter. Peter stuck the map in his pocket, not wanting to get ice cream on it.

“I thought you’d like it,” Caleb said a few minutes later as they leaned against a wooden railing, looking at the ocean. “It’s the distance you came, you know?”

Peter could have pointed out that Caleb came the same distance, but he knew what Caleb meant. Peter had gone the distance from Massachusetts to this afternoon’s conversation with his father, and it felt complete. “I do like it,” he said. “Thank you.” Handing his ice cream to Caleb, he unfolded the map and held it at arm’s length, looking at the unbroken blue line they had traveled.

When he looked more closely, he saw that Caleb had circled the towns where they had spent the night and written in some of the more notable things they had done along the way. In Missouri, “enormous pancakes” was written in Caleb’s neat penmanship. In Oklahoma City, he had written “so many dogs.” Little messages like that were penned in along the entire route, and Peter could imagine Caleb rotating the map around on a table, trying to make sense of it, swearing up a blue streak.

“Caleb,” he said.

“It’s nothing,” Caleb muttered, which was as good as one of his rare I love yous.

“Did you really wait to see the ocean until now?” Peter asked.

“I sure did.”

“You weren’t waiting to make sure I didn’t go back east with my father?” Peter asked cautiously.

“No! I wanted you to know that you weren’t going to go back east with your father. And I thought it would be nice for us to see it together.” And as he always did when he swerved too close to a raw feeling, he immediately began griping. “You know, we hardly did any sightseeing when we drove out here. Eight days in a car and we didn’t see the world’s biggest ball of rubber bands or get our picture taken in front of the giant muffler man.”

“I think we were busy doing other things,” Peter said, and he didn’t need to turn his head to know that Caleb would be blushing. “Besides, we did see some sights.” Peter had already had the photographs from the trip developed and had put all his favorites in an album that he was going to give Caleb when he moved into his new apartment in a few weeks. The photos that couple had taken of them in Albuquerque were good, but Peter’s favorite was one of Caleb standing by the car in Oklahoma City, looking like he was trying very hard not to smile and failing spectacularly. “But if you want to see more, you know we still can. It’s all still out there.”

“I don’t really care about the world’s biggest rubber band ball,” Caleb said after a minute.

“I know.”

“What do you want to do for supper?” Caleb asked, pitching his voice low enough that Peter could hear the real meaning: take me home.

“Come back with me for a swim and I’ll make eggs,” Peter said, and hoped that Caleb could hear his own hidden meaning: always.