The Coffee Shop Ch 08

The next morning, breakfast was tense.

Peyton could practically feel Caleb's heat from across the table, the hunger in his body reflected openly in his gaze. Getting through breakfast was a challenge, and her mother's moody behavior didn't help things either. Something had put Lola in a mood, which only added to Peyton's worry.

"Do you work today, Caleb?" her father asked as they started putting away dishes.

"Yes, sir," Caleb replied, hesitating at the sink when Peyton held out her soapy hand for his breakfast plate. Their eyes met and Peyton felt her right knee wiggle as it began to give out like something out of a cheesy romance movie.

Then, suddenly, the heat in his eyes was gone in a flash and replaced with a cool aloofness that had her head spinning.

Caleb dropped the plate in the sink and his eyes from hers, backing away like he had been set on fire. "I have the brunch shift -- I'll be back by three."

Daniel and Lola seemed oblivious to Caleb's change in behavior. Daniel dug in his coat pocket, not even lifting his eyes up from his paper as he pulled out car keys and held them up for Caleb to take.

Caleb had the keys in his hands and his coat halfway on by the time it registered to Peyton that Caleb was leaving for work an hour earlier than he needed to. The sound of gravel kicking up and the mad dash down the drive told Peyton that he clearly needed to be somewhere -- far, far away from here.

"Peyton," Daniel said quietly.

Peyton looked away from the kitchen window to find her parents sitting at the kitchen table, staring up at her expectantly. Lola eased out Peyton's chair with her foot, her smile polite but not quite reaching her eyes.

A cold shiver went down her spine as tension rose between the three of them, again. Peyton wiped off her hands and took a seat before clasping her hands in her lap so her parents wouldn't see them shake.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

For a brief moment the three of them were lost in a tense silence.

It was Lola who finally had the nerve to break it. "Peyton, we know you aren't a little girl anymore, but we have been treating you like one," Lola began slowly, as though she was feeling her way through the conversation. Peyton knew for certain then that this was serious. "The only reason why we let you stay at the Barn so long was so our little girl could get better -- and you are, we can see that now."

Lola reached out and picked up Peyton's shaking hands from her lap so she could hold them in her own. "Your father and I understand how much you needed this place to get back on your feet, and how it helped you finish your book." Understanding flickered through Peyton then.

"But it's time for me to get back to L.A.," she finished for her mother.

Tears swelled in Lola's eyes and she rolled them over to Daniel. "I knew I'd cry like a little baby," she told him, laughing a little as she shook her head and tried to gather up her control again.

"You can't run away from your problems, Peyton," Lola sniffed, patting her hands. "It's time for you to go back and face them head on and move forward with your life." Daniel nodded in agreement with his wife, his blue eyes both sad and comforting in turns.

Peyton nodded and pulled her hands from her mother's so she could wipe at the silly tears that had formed in her eyes. She understood where her parents were coming from completely. She was twenty-five for Pete's sake, an adult now. Hiding away at sleepy little Hamish wasn't going to solve her problems or make them go away. It was time for her to head back.

Peyton eyed her father reproachfully. "But what about Caleb?" she whispered. "I can't leave him here."

Daniel and Lola exchanged telling glances that told Peyton that they must've had this conversation before.

"Well," Daniel began tentatively, "Caleb won't likely be able to get into a university somewhere this late in the game, not unless he goes to a technical school or community college. If he decides to take that route that would keep him here in Hamish, which is fine by us." Daniel shifted in his chair and shrugged his shoulders. "But your mother and I were thinking that maybe you should take him to Los Angeles with you. Let him see UCLA or the other campuses if he wants. Let him see a life outside of Hamish. If he likes it -- great. If not, well..."

Lola took Peyton's hands again. "If not," she continued, "then he will always have a place here."

"But..." Peyton squirmed in her seat, hating to sound like a little kid, but knew there was no other way around it. "But what if he doesn't like L.A.?" she asked them. "The people, the crowds, the city...Caleb may have a meltdown. What do I do then? I can't...I can't just leave him here."

Lola smiled sympathetically. "That's something you and Caleb will have to work out with one another if it comes to that."

"Don't sell that boy short," Daniel piped up. "He is full of surprises. He may bend over backwards to get his butt out to L.A. But you won't know until you go."

Peyton sniffed and nodded. "I'll talk to him about it tonight."

"We'll talk about it together," Lola said firmly as she straightened up in her seat. "I don't want Caleb to think we're kicking him out of this house. This is his home, and we're his family."

Peyton smiled a little at her mother's firm resolve. "Mom, you've already convinced Caleb of that," she said softly, laughing a little. "You two have been great with him -- he's opened up a lot more than he would have with just me. I can't thank you two enough for being here to help. Caleb will tell you the same thing."

Daniel opened his mouth to reply, but the sound of his emergency cell interrupted him. Peyton and Lola waited on edge as he scrambled to answer it, both of them unabashedly eavesdropping on the short conversation as Daniel paced the room. They watched him recede down the hall moments later before he went silent.

Daniel came back from the bedroom with his City of Hamish jacket and matching baseball cap, the look on his face grave. "Someone set a fire on the reservation. They need some extra hands."

"Call me," Lola said with a sigh as she watched him don his uniform with a look akin to pride and sadness, the lines of her face etched with worry. When Peyton had been younger, her mother's expression had been more urgent, more worrisome. Now Lola watched Daniel with almost a resigned expression, because she knew that this was Daniel's life. Nothing would change that, not even her.

"I will," Daniel promised, kissing his wife softly before moving to Peyton.

"Be safe, dad," Peyton told him, voicing the familiar mantra that she had since...well...forever.

"Always," he replied with a Cheshire cat grin. He tugged on the end of her braid before setting off, the house feeling abruptly cold with his absence. Peyton closed her eyes at the sound of a diesel engine cranking up. Her dad always used the truck whenever he went out as a volunteer, because it had the dual uses of towing cars off the bridge over the Narrows or carrying equipment for road crews or just anything really. It was a familiar sound in the Gray household, and a sobering one. Peyton knew neither she nor her mother would feel normal again until that same diesel truck pulled into the drive.

The rest of the day was a blur. Peyton's nerves were frazzled by her father's absence and Caleb's abrupt leave, so she spent most of the day fighting with her mother over chores to do around the Barn. Without her book to distract her, Peyton realized she had nothing truly constructive to do. Perhaps leaving for Los Angeles wasn't such a bad idea after all -- if nothing else, it'd keep her from getting cabin fever.

Or is it Barn fever?

Shaking her head at the terrible joke, Peyton finished folding clothes away into the laundry basket she used to carry clothes in, separating her pile from Caleb's. Normally she let him wash his own clothes, but boredom had prompted her to take over the job before her mother had. That and it grossed her out to know her mother was touching Caleb's underwear.

With a shiver, Peyton picked up the basket and walked out of the washing room and down the hall to Caleb's, pushing open his door with the basket before taking the first step inside.

Caleb's room was as neat as a pen. His bed was neatly made -- with perfect square corners, too -- and not a single article of clothing littered his floor space. He had finally added a few personal touches to the room: dinky frames with pictures of him and Chelsea, medals from cross country events, a framed article cut-out of him placing first at a robotics event hosted by MIT, and a lone frame on his bedside table holding an aged and sun-bleached photo.

Peyton put down the basket of clothes on the bed and picked up the frame gently to take a closer look. The instant photo was of a couple and their newborn baby, all three fresh from the hospital by the looks of it. The male was tall and pale-haired, his dark eyes shining with unshed tears of joy up at the camera as he held his tanned arms around his family. The woman, pale and tired looking, smiled wanly up at the camera as well, her large green eyes happy and teary, her black hair tucked back in a messy bun. In her arms was a tiny blue bundle turned white by the sun exposure. A crop of black hair peeked out from the blanket, the face beneath the hair squishy and pink.

Written in clear, beautiful cursive on the white stock at the bottom were three simple lines:

CALEB JAMES VAUGHN BORN 10-11-1991 8 LBS, 7 OZ.

Peyton's eyes turned to the handsome blonde man in the photo, her heart pounding hard and fast in her chest.

This was the man responsible for the eighteen years of hell that was Caleb's life. In the photo he looked so unassuming, so proud of the tiny bundle in his wife's arms. Nothing about the photo looked out of the ordinary. Nothing about Jeremiah Vaughn screamed "wife beater" or "drunk" or "child abuser."

They all looked so happy.

Well, except for Caleb, Peyton recanted. He looked like he had just gone in his diaper.

The sound of tires on the road drew Peyton out of her thoughts. She quickly replaced the photo on the table and dug into the clothes basket to remove Caleb's things, placing them into piles along the edge of his bed just like he did. She had just set out his jeans when she heard the hallway floorboards creak with footsteps.

Peyton gathered up the basket and turned to see Caleb standing in the doorway, his expression like stone. His right arm was raised and his pointer finger was extended into the hallway.

"Out," he said quietly.

"I-I was just putting your clothes away," Peyton said quickly, feeling heat rush to her cheeks when Caleb's eyes darkened. "I know you don't like people to wash your clothes, I just...I just thought‒"

"You moved it."

Peyton froze.

"W-Wha-What?" she stammered, taking a small step back when Caleb approached.

"You moved the picture."

Peyton swallowed hard and nodded. There was no use in lying about it. "I wasn't snooping," she said quickly. "I just picked it up for a second, Caleb, I swear."

Caleb's expression darkened and Peyton was so glad in that moment that she had her arms full of something to defend herself with.

"Caleb, I‒"

"Get out."

"Caleb, just let me explain‒"

"Peyton," he interrupted sharply, his voice a tight growl. "Get out."

Peyton had to try though, just one more time. "Caleb, please‒"

The next thing Peyton knew, she was staring at Caleb's closed bedroom door, the snap of the wood still echoing in her ears. Her right upper arm stung and throbbed in unison where he had grabbed her, but the icy ache in her chest soon took precedent.

She had backed Caleb into a corner with her actions. She knew that Caleb got weird about his stuff, that he needed that room, that small space, to be his sanctuary. It was where he felt comfortable enough to escape. And she had just barged in carelessly, taking all that security away from him.

Tears of shame clouded her eyes but she blinked them away.

Peyton knew in that moment that she had gotten complacent with Caleb. He was still hiding something, still crawling back into his shell when someone got too close.

What if this happened in L.A.? she couldn't help but wonder. Where would Caleb go to hide? To him, the Barn was his home and his room was his hideout. Los Angeles was a new territory, a new monster to face. Without a sanctuary, Caleb would panic. And if Caleb panicked, she could only imagine the damage he would cause, not just to himself, but maybe even to her.

Peyton wiped away her tears with the back of her hand and slowly turned away from Caleb's door. She walked up the stairs slowly, each footstep separating her from Caleb in a way that she couldn't quite explain.

After shutting her bedroom door behind her, Peyton dropped the basket on the floor and leaned back against the door's wooden frame before slowly sliding down it. With her forehead resting on her knees, Peyton tried to calm her worry with deep breaths.

Her actions may have just put the wall she had been removing brick by brick between her and Caleb back into place, but her future actions could remove the wall altogether. She would have to be more careful, more vigilant. And she needed to find a way to get Caleb out of his comfort zone and to get him to open up to her, specifically.

She had proved to him over and over again that she would be there for him every step of the way. But it was time for Caleb to grow up. He couldn't hide behind her parents and cling to the familiar. He needed support, and obviously Peyton would never deny him that. But he could never be free -- truly free -- if he didn't stick it out on his own.

Maybe, Peyton thought with a sigh, maybe going to L.A. isn't such a bad idea after all.

+ + +

After taking an hour for her bloodshot, swollen eyes to return to normal, Peyton washed her face and returned back downstairs to help her mother with dinner. While her thoughts were clouded with returning to Los Angeles and the California sun, she still absent-mindedly listened to her mother chat about Broadway show tickets, humming and nodding in all the right parts.

"...and then a purple spotted kangaroo started punching your father right in the belly like a WWE champion."

Peyton looked over at her mother in surprise. "What did you just say?"

Lola smirked as she tossed the salad. "I knew that'd get your attention," she chuckled.

The sound of the back door of the Barn opening interrupted what Peyton was about to say. The heavy clump of boots on the floorboards announced her father's return, as did the telling sigh that escaped his lungs. Peyton and Lola turned and watched as Daniel stiffly shrugged out of his jacket and tossed the keys into the tray by the coat rack limply.

"I'm going to take a shower," he grumbled before leaving the kitchen without another word.

Lola put the salad bowl on the table and wiped her hands nervously on a dish towel before following after him. The sound of the bedroom door closing sounded eerily similar to the one that Caleb had slammed on Peyton's face earlier. Clearly something had gone down at the rez, something bad enough to put Daniel into one of his rare foul moods.

Peyton shook her head at the drama and began to set the table, muttering under her breath absently.

"What's up with your dad?"

Peyton jumped at the sound of Caleb's voice in her ear and in result knocked over the butter tray. Caleb helped her rescue the table cloth with napkins and when Peyton's heartbeat returned to normal, she responded. "He was called on emergency leave this morning after you left. He just got in."

"Did something bad happen?" Caleb asked as he tossed the soiled napkins away in the trash can.

Peyton shrugged and turned away from him, making a noncommittal noise as her answer.

There was a slight pause before Caleb whispered, "Peyton."

She closed her eyes at the sound of regret in his voice and turned her ear into her shoulder, not wanting to hear it.

Peyton tensed when fingertips traced over the span of skin between her shoulder blades as he pushed aside her braid and tucked it over her left shoulder in the front. A soft kiss dropped on the exposed skin of her neck before two arms wrapped over her own, his larger fingers slipping between hers to hold them in a close embrace.

"I'm sorry for how I acted earlier," he murmured against her hair. "I completely overreacted." Caleb inhaled deeply and let out the same breath before speaking again. "You were just trying to do something nice, and I threw it all in your face. My actions were uncalled for."

Peyton slowly relaxed against his hold, leaning back into him a little as the bitterness in her drained away. "I'm sorry too, Caleb," she whispered, opening her eyes slowly. "I know how you need your space, every person does. I guess I just thought you felt safe with us and with being here by now. I thought you had gotten over that."

Caleb's arms tightened around her a little. "I do feel safe," he vowed. "I love your parents, they've been great." He squeezed her again. "You've been great." He released her then and turned her gently to face him, his hand cupping her chin and raising it so their eyes could meet. "I freaked out because that photo is all I have of her," he said quietly, his voice thickening with emotion. "It's the only good memory I have, even though...even though I can't really remember it. At least in one point in my life, my parents actually loved me and wanted me. That photo is the only proof of that that I have."

Peyton nodded quickly, pulling her lips into her mouth to fight against the tears. "I understand," she murmured. Peyton felt her eyes tear up and she sniffed, feeling more terrible in that moment than she had when Caleb slammed the door on her face.

Peyton nearly lost her composure when Caleb pulled her tight into his body, his strong arms clinging to her like she was his anchor. Peyton unfolded her arms from across her chest to hug him back, letting out a noise torn between a sob and a sigh into his chest.

"Peyton?" Caleb whispered in her ear a bit later. She pulled her face out of the dip in between his pectorals and lifted up her chin to meet his gaze. Caleb's light green eyes bore intensely into hers, filling the tiny bit of space between them with pure unadulterated tension. She felt the hand at the small of her back tense and tighten its pressure against her skin, pushing her hips closer to his. All at once, the gentle and needing hold of his embrace became hard and needing in a different fashion. Peyton felt her breath catch in her throat as she realized what exactly that look was. Caleb was gazing at her as though he was ready to toss her onto the table and ravish her on spot.

Her body flamed with heat at the thought of it and Caleb responded with a tighter hold on her body and a telling nudge of his hips against hers.

But it was the sound of her parent's bedroom door opening that had them pulling apart from one another, regret laced in both of their faces.

Peyton pressed a cool hand to her flushed face, wishing that it wasn't so transparent what had happened between the two of them.

Caleb led her to the table and was just starting to pull out her chair when her parents walked in. Daniel looked freshly scrubbed and ready to keel over, Lola's face seemed more lined than usual. Daniel gave the two of them a forced smile as he helped Lola into her chair before falling a bit heavily into his own, like his legs were too weak to hold him up any longer.

Silently, the family began to fill their plates, the tension from breakfast having nothing on what was currently filling the air tonight at dinner. It made Peyton nervous to see her mother so down and to see her father so tired.