The Debt 5 (8 page)

Raven chewed on her graham cracker, took
a sip of coffee.
 
“Okay, Caleb.
 
What did you want to say to me?”

“Wow, you get right to the point.”

“Yeah,” she said.
 
“I didn’t come here to chat and pretend
we’re old friends catching up.
 
You
told me you wanted some kind of closure.”
 
She sat and waited for his reply.

Caleb brushed his bangs away from his
face.
 
She noticed he had the
tiniest lines starting around the corners of his eyes and mouth, and it was
disconcerting.
 
It was as if she was
suddenly able to see him as he was now, rather than superimposing the Caleb she
remembered on top of him.

The reality was that Caleb looked
different.
 
His face was fuller, and
somehow a little tired, like life had gotten the best of him over the last four
years.

“First of all, I didn’t know Andre was
going to pull that crap the other night at the bar,” Caleb said.
 

“Andre’s been pulling that kind of crap
ever since we were kids,” she said.
 
“I don’t think you can keep claiming ignorance.”

“You’re right,” Caleb said, nodding.
 
“The truth is
,
I’ve always been afraid to leave Andre behind.
 
We were always best friends since second
grade.
 
And as we got older, he got
weirder and weirder but I didn’t want to see it.
 
I felt like I needed him.”

“I don’t care if you stay friends with
him,” Raven said.
 
“But you know who
he is, and you’ve known for a long time.”

“I can’t argue that,” Caleb said.
 
“I should have kicked Andre to the curb
a long time ago for the things he did, especially to you.
 
You didn’t deserve any of it,
Raven.”
 
He looked intently into her
eyes and she realized he meant it.

“Thanks for saying that,” Raven
whispered, surprised that his words did actually help her a little bit.

“I never meant for that video to get
out,” Caleb said.
 
He leaned forward
and one of his hands crept forward on the table.
 

Raven sat back.
 
“You must’ve showed it to Andre.”

He shook his head.
 
“No, I never did.
 
He looked through my phone and found it,
sent it to himself and then started passing it around.
 
By the time I realized what he’d done,
Andre had already told half the school and made up the whole story.”

“You could’ve stood up for me, told
everyone it was a lie.
 
All you had
to do was say that I never did any of that,” she told him, her voice starting
to shake with emotion.

Caleb looked away from her,
blinking.
 
He wiped at his upper
lip.
 
“I was scared,” he said.
 
“Andre and the other guys told me if I
got them in trouble that they’d fuck me up, beat my ass, all that good stuff.”

“Nice friends you have,” she muttered.

“I never said they were nice,” Caleb
said, and his voice betrayed anger for the first time.

Raven stared at him.
 
In all the time she’d known him, he’d
never gotten angry.
 
He’d always
been mellow, passive, and even when everything had fallen apart amidst the lies
and lawsuits and scandal, he’d never lost his temper.

The few times she’d tried to discuss
things with him when all the lies first began circulating, Caleb’s blasé
attitude had infuriated her.
 
It was
as though he’d just refused to see what his silence was doing to
her,
how he appeared to be backing up the lies his friends
were telling about her.

“I just don’t understand why,” she
said.
 
“Why did Andre make up all of
those lies about me and why is he still doing it?”

Caleb took a deep breath.
 
“Back in high school, I didn’t really
know why he did any of it.
 
But I
think I’ve figured it out, especially after what happened at the bar.”

Raven saw that he was growing
uncomfortable, maybe even nervous.
 
“It’s okay, Caleb. You can tell me.”

He wiped a hand across his face.
 
“It’s weird,” he said, “and pretty
embarrassing, too.”

“Sounds like you just described every day
of my life,” she joked, trying to lighten the mood.
 
Of course, she was curious, desperately
wanting answers as to what had caused all of the madness four years ago.

Caleb met her gaze again, and he seemed
determined now to tell her the truth.
 
“Andre and I had a big argument after what happened at the bar with you
and Jake Novak.
 
I really let him
have it when I was driving him home.
 
For the first time in my life, I didn’t pull any punches.
 
I told him that he was a psycho and I
was done being friends with him.”

“Wow,” Raven said, “that must have been
difficult.”

Caleb smiled bitterly.
 
“You know it was way past due, Raven.”

She smiled back at him.
 
“I’m trying to be nice.”

“I appreciate that.”
 
He took a sip from his coffee and then
put the cup down and spun it idly.
 
Condensation dripped down the sides and pooled around it on the table.
 
“Anyway,” he continued, “Andre showed up
at my door later that night, drunk as hell.
 
He was crying, telling me we had to talk
and work things out, that he couldn’t stand to have me mad at him.”

Raven’s mouth was open as she
listened.
 
“What did you say?”

Caleb laughed.
 
“I told him to get the hell away from
me.
 
I said that I was going to call
the cops if he didn’t leave.
 
And
that’s when he said the weirdest thing yet.”

Raven already had an inkling of what Caleb
was going to tell her, but she didn’t want to interrupt him, not when he was
finally going to speak the truth.
 

Caleb shook his head, as if just
recalling it was leaving a terrible taste in his mouth.
 
“Andre told me that he was in love with
me.”
 
Caleb stared at her with wide
eyes.
 
“Can you believe that?”

“Actually,” she said, “I kind of can
believe it.”
 
She thought some more.
 
“It explains a lot about why he acted
the way he did.”

“Maybe you can,” Caleb said, “but I
couldn’t.
 
I told him to go home and
sober up, but Andre just kept saying that he loved me, that he’d always loved
me since we were little kids.
 
And
then he tried to approach me, like…I don’t know…I think he was going to try and
kiss me.”
 

Raven half wanted to laugh, half wanted
to cry.
 
It was pathetic and sad and
also tragic in a way.
 
She had hated
Andre for years, and still did, in many ways.
 
Yet she couldn’t help feel bad for him
at the same time.

“I suppose he wanted to break us up
because he was in love with you,” Raven said.
 
“And he didn’t know how else to express
it.
 
He was jealous of me, and my
relationship with you, so he tried to destroy me and run me out of the
picture.”

“Yeah, and the fucked up thing is that it
worked.”
 
Caleb sat back in his
chair,
his hands were curled into tight fists.
 
“When I think about what I let him get
away with—it makes me insane, Raven.”

“We were kids, Caleb.
 
We were seventeen.”

“Yeah, it’s no excuse.”
 
His face was drawn, his eyes tired, as
if the conversation had taken something out of him.
 
“I don’t know why I was so afraid of
Andre, afraid of just standing up to those guys back then.
 
And I don’t really understand why I
never left, and I just stuck around town and kept hanging with that same old
crowd.”

“Maybe you didn’t think you could make it
on your own,” Raven said.
 
“I know
it was hard for me.
 
Almost
impossible.”

“But now look at you,” Caleb said,
smiling, his eyes lighting up as he looked at her.
 
“You’ve really done something with
yourself.
 
You got away from all the
bullshit, and you’re living in the city, living your own life, and you’re more
beautiful and amazing than ever.”

She felt her cheeks flush.
 
“It’s not quite that simple.”

“Are you and Jake Novak still seeing each
other?” he asked.

She looked away from him, then, not
knowing what was motivating his question.
 
“We probably shouldn’t get into all of that,” she said.
 

“Okay, I won’t push.
 
I was just curious.”
 

“Funny thing is,”
Raven
said, “I think you would like Jake.
 
If you two had met under different circumstances.”

Caleb nodded thoughtfully.
 
“Yeah, well, I do like him, from the
little I’ve seen of him.”

“All you saw him do was fight your friends.”

“Exactly,” Caleb said, and his jaw
tightened.
 
His eyes were moist and
he looked away, taking a long drink from his coffee, his Adam’s apple bobbing
in his throat.

“Listen, I should go,” Raven sighed.
 
“I’m glad you came and we had a chance
to talk though.”

Caleb looked back at her again.
 
“I’m actually going to be in town for a
few days.”

“Really?
 
Why?”

He shrugged.
 
“I’ve got some job interviews,” he said.

Her eyebrows shot up.
 
“You’re going to move to Boston?”

“Maybe.”
 
He wiped his mouth with the back of his
hand.
 
“At least I’m going to give
it a shot, put myself out there and see what happens.
 
Like you did.”

She laughed and shook her head.
 
“Caleb, it’s not that simple.”

“Maybe if you have a free minute we can
get together again before I leave town?”

“I don’t know,” she said,
uncertainly.
 
It felt too fast to
already be making plans to see him again.

Caleb seemed to understand her
reservations.
 
“Well, you have my
number now.
 
Text me if you
want.
 
I should be around in between
interviews.”

“Okay.
 
Maybe.”
 
She got up and started to leave.

“Hey, Raven,” he called, turning in his
seat to look at her.

She spun around and waited.
 
“Yeah?”

“Thanks for being so awesome,” he said,
loud enough that the other patrons turned and stared for a moment.

“Oh, well, it just comes so natural to
me,” she joked back, and then left the Starbucks, still smiling.

***

Raven woke up early the next morning,
rubbing her eyes, wondering where she was.

Oh,
right.
 
I’m in the apartment that a
famous celebrity rock star rented for me after I was hired to be his escort for
a few days.

She sat up on the couch, where she’d
apparently fallen asleep, and tried to recall how late she’d stayed up.
 
The television was still on, and she
vaguely remembered watching some late night PBS special where Wayne Dyer was
pacing around the stage and talking about living from a place of gratitude.

She hadn’t been able to fall asleep
because she’d been thinking about
him
again.
 
Jake.
 
Wondering what he was doing.
 
Reading every article about him, trying
to see if he’d been spotted out anywhere, refreshing Twitter and Facebook and
Instagram for updates.
 
Checking her
phone to see if he’d tried to message her, even though she knew he wasn’t going
to.

He’s
got a show tonight in Boston.
 
Maybe
you should go there and see if you can get a ticket from one of the scalpers.

But Raven knew she wasn’t going to do
that.
 
She wasn’t going to humiliate
herself, stalking Jake at one of his own concerts.

Jake had paid her very well to get rid of
her—the least she could do was respect his wish to forget she’d ever
existed.