Chapter 37: Apologies

Dana froze.

She had inadvertently opened up a scan of her PSU ID. It was the original one, identifying her as David Reed. Her thoughts were a hot, rushing tide. Amidst her panic, there was also self-recrimination. She couldn’t believe she’d kept the document. She’d simply forgotten all about it, heedless of the possibility that anybody else might ever see anything on her computer.

Jules gently placed her hand over Dana’s and closed both the file and the document folder. She placed the whole thing in the cloud sharing folder, which is what they had been doing when Dana had made the mistake.

Jules, Louise and I had been in positions to see the screen. The twins and Josh had not.

I saw Louise’s eyes widen and immediately sent her a message. “Say nothing!”

Her eyes turned to me and she frowned. “As if I would,” she thought, knowing I would hear it.

Dana’s eyes travelled around the room, mentally counting up those that would have seen the picture, wondering if we had realized what it signified. I heard the hope in her mind that we hadn’t made the connection - that maybe we thought that it was her brother or something.

“Don’t be dumb,” she chided herself. “Why would my brother have a pass to PSU? Besides, I already told them I’m an only child!”

“It’s late,” she said. “I should be getting back.”

“I’ll drive you,” I offered, but she shook her head.

“If you don’t mind, I think I’d rather walk. After that dinner,” she qualified with a sickly smile, “I need the exercise.”

She stood up. We all copied. “Thanks for fixing my computer,” she said to Jules, who stepped to embrace her.

“It’s what friends are for,” Jules replied with a soft smile.

Dana immediately tried to step away, but Jules held onto her for a moment. It was difficult to say if it was the right choice; not even Dana really knew. After she was released, she maintained her distance from the rest of us, scared that we might try to hug her too.

“Thanks for dinner,” she said, making her way to the door. “It was lovely.”

“Any time,” I said. “Maybe next time you’ll get a chance to use the hot tub.”

She nodded uncertainly, and then she was gone.

“Well, that got weird quick,” said Josh. “What was that all about?”

Louise looked at me, then said, “Dana just outed herself by mistake. Poor thing must have been terrified.”

“Outed herself?” asked Josh. “What do you mean?”

“Dana is trans,” I explained. “Her father wouldn’t accept her transition, and so she only managed to start to live her own life when she came to PSU. Since her application had to be in her biological name, she was issued a campus ID in that name. She accidentally opened it on her laptop just now. Now she knows that we know, and she is terrified of the fallout.”

“But we don’t care about...” began Josh.

“We know that,” said Jules, “but she doesn’t. Expect that she will avoid you like the plague. If she sees you coming, the likelihood is that she will turn around and walk in the opposite direction.”

“So, what do we do?” asked Louise.

“Nothing,” said Jules. “Just wait her out. If you try and approach her, she will probably bolt. Let her see that nothing has changed. If you do interact with her, then do nothing different than you would have done before you found out. She needs to know, from us, that her being trans has not made the slightest difference to the way we feel about her - that we are still her friends. Don’t talk to her about it unless she broaches the subject.”

I stood up.

“Where are you going?” asked Jules.

“I think I need to take a walk,” I said. “I’ll be about an hour.”

It was only just after nine, but it was dark out, and I wasn’t comfortable with the thought of Dana walking back to the campus on her own. Ours wasn’t a particularly rough neighbourhood, but the closer you got to campus, the worse it got, with a lot of low-rent housing nearby.

I scanned ahead and located Dana about three blocks ahead of me, and I contented myself with hanging back. I couldn’t see her, and therefore she wouldn’t be able to see me. I could keep an ‘eye’ on her though, and, if there was any trouble, be with her in less than a couple of minutes.

I needn’t have worried. She made it back to her dorm with no issues, and I turned around and started back to the house as soon as she entered.

“No trouble?” asked Mary when I returned.

I shook my head. “No, she got back to the dorm no issues.”

“Did you speak to her?” asked Jules.

“No,” I said. “She didn’t even know I was there.”

“Good,” said Jules. “Give her time. She’ll come around.”

“Are you sure?” I asked. “She’s not likely to do anything drastic, is she?”

Jules thought about that for a moment. “I don’t think so,” she said, “but now you have me worried.”

I picked up my phone and sent her a text.

That worried me. I showed it to Jules.

“Oh no,” she said. “We need to call 911.”

“That will cause her even more problems,” I said. “Let’s go.”

Jules and I piled into my truck. We made it back to the dorms in less than five minutes. Fortunately, there were no traffic cops to catch me speeding. When we got there, I used TK to open the main door. Jules and I entered the dorm block.

“What room is she in?” I asked. Jules shrugged. I scanned the building and found her on the third floor. We took the elevator, and once again I scanned the floor and found her in a room at the end

Jules went and knocked on the door. There was no answer. She knocked again, louder.

Losing patience, I once again used TK to open the door, adding another count of breaking and entering to my ever-growing list of crimes and indiscretions. I didn’t much care.

Dana was laying on her bed, a bottle of tablets open on the bedside cabinet beside her. It still had a large number of tablets in it; After a little digging, I found out that she had taken two sleeping tablets. Technically it was an overdose, since she should only have taken one, but it wasn’t a real attempt at anything. She just wanted to sleep.

Unfortunately, despite the sleeping tablets, us breaking into her room had woken her up. She looked up at us, confused and a little afraid.

“What’s going on?” she asked. “What are you doing here? How did you get in?”

Jules smiled at her ruefully. “I was worried about you,” she said. “I know how I felt when I first got outed, and I thought you might do something drastic. Caleb agreed to come with me to check on you.”

“When you got outed?” Dana asked thickly. Although we had woken her up, her sleeping tablets were still doing their best to do their job.

“Go back to sleep,” said Jules. “We’ll talk tomorrow. We just wanted to know that you were safe.”

Dana looked sleepily between us, and then, to my surprise, nodded. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow, at breakfast.” She rested her head back on her pillow and was soon asleep again. We locked the door after ourselves and went home.

The next morning, I made breakfast for everyone bar Jules and me. We went into PSU early and were in the cafeteria waiting when Dana came in. I saw her look around; her eyes widened when she saw us. She came over and sat down, not even bothering to collect breakfast on the way.

“So, it wasn’t a dream,” she said. “You two really were in my room last night?”

“‘Fraid so,” said Jules. “After your texts to Caleb, we were worried. I wanted to check on you, so Caleb and I came over.”

“How did you even get in?” she said. “The door was locked.”

“Misspent youth,” I said. “Picking locks is easy for me. Look, here is not really private enough to talk. Can we go somewhere and have a conversation?”

Dana nodded. After grabbing some food from the counter, we went to my ‘office’ near the library. Dana looked around as we sat down. “What is this place?” she asked.

“It’s an office I rent from the university,” I replied. “Nobody will disturb us.”

Jules sat forward on her chair. “Do you remember when we first met,” she said, “and I said that we all had secrets?”

Dana nodded.

“I guessed, from what you said, that you were carrying a heavy secret,” began Jules. “I didn’t know what it was, but it didn’t matter. I - we - liked you. As I said then: we all have secrets. I’m sorry that we had to discover yours in such a way. I want you to know that it makes absolutely no difference to us. We still like you, and still want to be friends.”

Dana looked at me. “But I’m a...”

“You’re a very interesting person,” I said. “Jules told you that everyone had secrets. One of mine, although it’s not too much of a secret anymore, is that I’m pansexual. My struggle with it was nothing like yours, and I don’t mean to compare the two. Still, though, it’s something about myself that’s outside the norm, and there were definitely times in my life when I wouldn’t have wanted anybody finding it out without my consent. I can imagine how bad I might’ve felt – how scared.”

She looked back to Jules.

“I’m ace,” said Jules.

Dana’s eyes widened. “But you and the girls ... and Caleb...” she stuttered.

“Caleb’s attraction to me wasn’t sexual,” Jules said. “We met on the top of the science building, where I was just about to step off the ledge. He and the girls talked me down, and showed me that my sexuality didn’t matter. They saved me. We got to know each other, and we fell in love. I don’t think that is what you are looking for, but I think that having some friends would be an improvement on your current situation, right?

“The other thing is that, now that we know, you can be yourself around us. There’s no need to hide any more. We have your back. Maybe being allowed to be yourself with us will help you learn how to be yourself at other times too. I see you, Dana Reed. I know who you are, and I like what I see. Will you be my friend?”

“I...” began Dana. “I don’t understand.”

“What is there to understand?” I asked.

“Why?” she said. “Why would you want to be friends with me?”

“Why wouldn’t we?” countered Jules. I could tell immediately she was more comfortable with the tough-love approach. “That’s not really a rhetorical question, Dana. You’re a person, just like everyone else. You’re not a puppy-murderer, as far as we know. We go to the same school. We’re roughly the same age. You and Caleb share a class. You don’t need to be a rock star or a saint to somehow ‘make up’ for your secret. That’s the whole point. Also, like we already said, this isn’t a marriage proposal.”

Dana was a little taken aback by the shift. I couldn’t resist adding my two cents. “If somebody in class were trying to construct an argument for why nobody would or should ever want to be friends with Hypothetical-Dana,” I offered, “do you really think it’d hold up? It’s an extreme position to take. Would you just roll over and concede?”

I thought I saw a few gears start turn behind her worried eyes. Unfortunately, her phone beeped, and she jumped.

“I have to go,” she said. “I have an appointment with the student counsellor.”

“Okay,” I said. “We’re going to do something tomorrow night. I don’t know what yet, but we had so much fun bowling that we decided we were going to make Friday night a night out. None of us is really into the bar scene, so when we decide, I’m going to text you. Will you come too?”

“Maybe,” she said.

We all stood up, and before Dana realized what was happening, Jules had enveloped her in a hug.

Dana stood stiffly for a second, and then softened and returned the hug. “Thank you,” she said to Jules.

She released Jules and faced me. I cocked my head to the side and opened my arms. Dana hugged me briefly, and a little bit stiffly, but I returned a warm hug. When I felt her pull away, I didn’t resist. I had a feeling the sentiment wouldn’t be nearly as well-received from a man with a considerable height and weight advantage.

“Thank you,” I said to her. She gave the merest of nods – still scared, but a little less so – and hurried away.

I was just coming out of my first class when I heard my name being called. I turned and saw Jamie, the student counsellor, walking up to me. “Do you have a minute?” she asked.

Since I was free until after lunch, I nodded. “Sure.”

We walked in silence to her office, then sat down on either side of her desk. She looked at me through narrowed eyes.

“Why is it,” she asked, “that you are in the middle of everything? First Jules, then Rachel, now Dana. Why does your name keep popping up all over the place?”

“Just lucky I guess,” I said.

“Dana said you broke into her room last night,” she said sternly. “You could be arrested.”

“I was concerned for her welfare,” I said. “She had just outed herself, inadvertently, and then run away. When I checked up on her by text afterward, this is what I got.” I showed her the texts. “Tell me that doesn’t concern you?”

Jamie read the texts and grimaced. “I guess I would have been concerned on reading that,” she admitted. “But why didn’t you call 911?”

“Because what if we’d been wrong?” I asked. “How traumatic would it have been for EMT and police to go barging into her dorm? It took us less than ten minutes to get there. If she had been in trouble we could and would have called then, but I didn’t want to cause her any more upset.”

“Dana is conflicted about you,” she said. “Not just you - all of you. She is not clear what you want from her, but she likes being around you. What she doesn’t understand - and I have the same question is what do you want from her?”

I sighed. “Why do we have to want anything from her?” I asked. “I seem to remember you asking me the same about Rachel. I met Dana in my ethics class. She is an intelligent and interesting girl. I didn’t know anything more than that about her. When she met up with the girls, they also liked her.”

“So, you weren’t trying to get her into bed?” asked Jamie.

“You know,” I said, my temper starting to rise, “for someone who is supposed to be non-judgemental, you seem awfully ready to jump to conclusions. You did the same with Jules, and with Rachel. What was it you said at my house? ‘You’re a very healthy college-aged boy that’s already having sex with multiple partners on a regular basis.’ You still seem to be of the opinion that I - we - only have one thing on our minds any and every time we meet up with someone new.

“I can understand why Dana is nervous. I don’t take that personally; she has a lot going on right now. You? I’m starting to take it personally. Why don’t you go ask her who started flirting with whom first? Then you can go and accuse her of being a predator and a pervert too – except you won’t, because you know that that bullshit might actually get you in real trouble.

“I have literally anywhere else to be,” I finished curtly. “Good day.”

“Caleb,” she called as I exited her office, but I ignored her, closing the door behind me.

I mentally pulled up my schedule for the day. I was due at the range in about an hour for a hypnotherapy session. I decided to go there early and see if there was a lane free. I briefly thought of myself as an old man retreating to a golf course so that nobody would bother me. In that moment, I understood the impulse completely.

“Nope,” said Hoss when I entered the range.

“What?” I said.

“Something’s got your ire up,” he said. “You’re not going on my range while you are all riled up like that. It’s no good for your shooting, and it’s no good for range safety. Come and sit and have a coffee with Clive and me and cool down.”

I went and sat in the office with Clive and Hoss. They left the door open so Hoss would be able to see the reception and go out if he was needed. Clive made coffee, and we sat in an uncomfortable silence for a few minutes. I looked at Hoss, disinclined to start a conversation.

“Well?” he said.

“Well, what?” I asked.

“You going to tell us what got you all riled up?”

“No.”

“Thank heavens for that,” he said with a grin. “I have enough problems without taking on yours.”

I laughed and took a sip of the coffee. It was awful. I winced.

“It’s terrible, isn’t it?” said Hoss, indicating the cup.

I looked at Clive; he seemed totally unconcerned. “It’s fine,” I lied, trying unsuccessfully to take another sip without wincing again.

“He does it deliberately,” Hoss said, “so I won’t ask him to make the coffee again.”

“And yet...” I said, raising the cup.

“I thought you needed something to take your mind off whatever got your dander up,” he said with a grin. “Round about now, people realize that we don’t actually expect them to drink it. The relief at that usually puts them in a better mood.”

“You deliberately give people bad coffee to cheer them up?” I asked, incredulous.

“Seems to work,” said Hoss.

I chuckled, noting that the pantomime, if nothing else, had distracted me from my sour temper.

“Leave your cup on the table,” said Hoss. “Lane seven is free if you want to shoot. How much ammo?”

In a far better mood than when I’d first entered the range, I collected my Glock and went onto the lane. I spent thirty minutes practicing, then stripped and cleaned the weapon before returning it to our locker. I paid Hoss his fee, and was just in time to wash up and then meet my hypnotherapy client.

After the session was over, Mary contacted me.

“Are you finished with your hypnotherapy appointment?” she asked.

“Yes,” I replied.

“The student counsellor is looking for you.” she sent.

“Tell her to fuck off!” I responded, the remnants of my temper rearing up again.

I felt a surprised query from her, so I sent her the memory of my interaction with Jamie.

“She’s only concerned for Dana,” sent Mary.

“She’s immediately assuming the worst of me,” I responded. “Of us. She did exactly the same with Jules, and with Rachel. I’m sick of her. She can go fuck herself.”

The stray thought popped into my head that she could only go fuck herself because I’d helped her.

I matched actions to words – unspoken though they’d been - and headed home.

I’d been home about thirty minutes when there was a knock on the front door. I opened it to find Jamie standing on the porch.

“Caleb,” she said before I’d even opened it all the way. My first instinct was to slam it in her face, but even I recognized how childish that would have been. I just stood and waited for her to say something more.

“May I come in?” she asked.

Several responses sprang to mind, but, once again, I knew how childish they all were. I stepped back and indicated for her to enter, which she did. I closed the door and walked into the kitchen. She followed me.

“I wanted to apologize,” she said. “You were right in what you said - both to me and to Mary. She told me about your conversation earlier.”

I made coffee. I knew how she liked hers, although I couldn’t remember how I knew. I placed her cup in front of her.

“There’s something about you,” she said. “It screams a warning to me, although you have never done anything to deserve my suspicion. Even when I know you could have taken advantage of situations, you acted honorably.” She was blushing a little. From her reaction, I knew which particular situation she was thinking of.

“I said before that I don’t understand your arrangement with your girlfriends, and I still don’t, but it’s no less an alternative lifestyle than any other. I am supposed to be able to interact with students without my own values prejudicing me against them.

“Not only that, but you have helped me both personally and professionally, and yet I still treated you like some kind of sexual predator. I’m sorry.”

“You confuse liking sex and having multiple sexual partners with being a sexual predator,” I said in a low voice. “Maybe it’s so deeply ingrained that ‘get over it’ isn’t useful advice, but it really hurts when somebody I thought I had an actual relationship with can’t treat me as an individual. It’s even worse when I start getting whiffs of hypocrisy on top of that.”

She bristled at that, but I stared her down. I gave her a nudge: remember that time you suggested maybe Caleb should sleep with Rachel?

As far as she knew, she was simply remembering something relevant to the conversation at hand. She backed down.

“I’m not running a cult, here, Jamie,” I continued. “We are just seven people who have enough love for each other, and enough security in our relationships, that we can allow ourselves to play with others sometimes.”

“Seven?” asked Jamie. “Josh and Louise are part of your...”

“Not a part of our family,” I answered. “But they live here. They have their own relationship, and they love each other. But they also love us, and we them.”

“And you want Dana to be a part of that?”

I sighed heavily. “Asked and answered, Jamie,” I replied. “Do we really have to go through this again? You’ve said the words and changed your tone, but you’re interrogating me – and worse, on matters we’ve already discussed. That’s a cop move. That’s what they do to suspects when they don’t believe them and think they’re guilty.”

“There’s an argument to be made that you are guilty of something,” she replied, “but I can see your side of it too.”

“I suppose we’ll see what the jury thinks, then,” I said.

Jamie grimaced. “I don’t think it needs to come to that,” she said. “Dana wasn’t going to report the incident, and neither was I.”

“And yet you threatened me with arrest.”

“I didn’t mean ... wasn’t ... oh hell, I don’t know what I was thinking!” she said finally. “For some reason being around you makes me nervous. I don’t know what it is. But...”

“But you do know,” I responded.

She looked at me wide-eyed. “I don’t,” she maintained.

“Really?” I asked. “You have no idea? You have no idea why you feel guilty every time we are alone in the same room? Come on Jamie, be honest - at least with yourself.”

Her aura and her thoughts screamed the reason, but she refused to put the pieces together. It was taking quite a bit of effort on her part not to.

“You feel guilty,” I went on, “because you, a married woman and a student counsellor at the university, have urges toward one of the students under your care. You feel the urges, and blame me for them.

“There is absolutely nothing wrong with having such urges. Neither of us is going to act on them. You would lose your job, and probably your marriage as well, and I would not put you in such a position. But you cannot keep shifting the blame for this onto me. I have done nothing wrong. We have done nothing wrong. What happened in your office was a side effect of a sudden removal of a mental block. Nobody knows about it except you and I, and nobody ever will.”

Jamie was staring at the floor by her feet.

“I think I’d better go,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

I stood up as she did. She walked to the door and opened it. “Thanks for talking to me at least,” she said. “I half expected you to close the door in my face.”

“I nearly did,” I said, “but that would have solved nothing. Hopefully we can put this behind us?”

She nodded. We walked out onto the porch, and then suddenly she turned, pulled me into a hug, and kissed me. I was stunned into immobility for a second; by the time I had decided what to do, she’d broken off and was backing away.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. She walked to her car, got in, and left.

As she drove away, I looked across the road and saw our HOA Nazi neighbour. He was standing in his window with a camera in his hand and a look of satisfaction on his face.

I went back into the house. A couple of hours later everyone arrived home, and I shared the memory of my ‘encounter’ with Jamie with the girls.

“It seems that some people are more susceptible to your influence than others,” Jules observed.

“I think you should probably avoid her whenever possible,” said Mary. “For her sake.”

“Makes sense,” I said. “I don’t know what possessed her to kiss me like that. If that got back to the university, she could lose her job. Her husband didn’t seem like they type that would take it in stride either.”

There was a knock at the door. I went to answer it. It was Tom Pritchard, of course.

“Hi,” he said cheerily. “I thought I would come over and see if you had changed your mind about joining the HOA.” He had a folder of papers in his hand.

“No thank you,” I said. I waited for the utterly predictable escalation: blackmail.

He smiled a little evilly at me and then opened the folder he was holding. “Are you sure?” he asked, showing me the picture of Jamie and I on the porch. I had to admit it was a good picture - very clear. It looked far more incriminating than the actual event.

I looked him in the eye. “What do you intend to do with that?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said. “If you sign up to the HOA, you can have the picture, and we’ll say no more about it.”

“And if I don’t?” I asked.

“Then I would be honor bound to show it to your fiancée,” he said, “and let her know what you get up to when you are home alone.”

“Blackmail?” I asked, pretending to be surprised. “To join the HOA? A little extreme, don’t you think?”

“Blackmail is such an ugly word,” he said, smiling maliciously. “I prefer to look on it as ‘encouragement.’”

“Blackmail is the legal term, however,” I said, pulling out my FBI ID, “and it’s a crime. So go back home and await a visit from law enforcement.”

His eyes widened. “What?” he said. “I think you misunderstood.”

“Misunderstood?” I scoffed. “You threatened to show that picture to my fiancée unless I signed up to the HOA.”

“I didn’t mean...” he said.

“Amanda,” I shouted through the door. She joined us on the porch.

I took the picture from him and showed it to her.

“That’s a great shot,” she said. “We should frame that and put it up in the living room. Can we keep it?”

Prichard nodded dumbly.

“Go away!” I growled. He fled.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“I’m going to report it,” I said. “At some point I feel we are going to need to get a restraining order against that dick, and I want all the evidence I can get to support the application.”

I asked Jules to download and save the security camera footage from the event and we looked at it. It was amazingly clear and came with full sound. We could hear everything perfectly. I was surprised at the quality of the recording.

I sent that and an email to Dianna, outlining what had happened, and asking her what I should do about it.

I was making dinner when my phone rang. “Hey Dianna,” I said. “How you doing?”

“I’m good,” she said. “What do you hope to achieve with this blackmail charge?”

“Just evidence to take to a judge if he continues to harass us,” I said. “I didn’t expect anything more.”

“Okay then,” she said. “I’ll get one of the interns to write it up so there’s a record of it. That’s really all I can do. The DA would laugh me out of his office if I took that to him.”

“Maybe I should go and speak to the rest of the residents, and find out what made them join the HOA. If he tried this with me...”

“With what goal in mind?” she asked.

“Getting rid of the HOA,” I said, “and pissing him off. He literally stood toe to toe with Amanda, yelling into her face. He’s lucky I didn’t punch him.”

She sighed. “Quiet life, Caleb,” she said. “Keep your head down and don’t draw attention. That’s the best plan.”

“If you say so,” I said. “Fine. I’ll behave.”

“Why does that worry me more than you arguing with me?” she asked wearily.

I laughed. “Why don’t you come over for dinner at the weekend?” I asked. “The girls would be happy to see you.”

“That would be nice,” she said. “What day and time?”

“Actually, how does Sunday lunch sound?” I said. “Say, one o’clock?”

“Perfect,” she said. “See you then.”