The Roman Senior change rooms were beige like their uniforms, though I suspected the match wasn't intentional. The team had scattered, the parents had demanded assurances that their children's records wouldn't be blemished by the incident and the referee had finally told everyone to get off his field. Max was having his nose reset by a random father who swore he had a first-aid certificate. Aaron was pacing the communal space, on the phone to Maya.

I was washing Max's blood off my elbow.

"That should do you until you can get to the ER," the father informed him, covering the bridge of Max's nose with tape. "You're going to have some swelling."

Max ran his finger down the length of his nose self-consciously. I could tell he was more worried about the long-term damage. Aaron's ear piercing or a haircut was one thing. Permanent facial, however slight, disfigurement? Based on how Max saw the importance of being identical, it was sure to throw him through a loop.

The door swung open, and I turned to see Caleb feeling his way through the door, with a hand against his face.

He paused to take in the scene, lingering on me with my sleeve rolled up, and my forearms splattered in blood. "Sorry... ice pack?"

"Sure," I turned off the tap and moved to the medkit. There was a small fridge unit below it, and I grappled around until I found a frozen Ziplock bag. I tossed it lazily across the room to him, and he had to dive a little to catch it, taking his hand off his face in the process. I winched at the mess of purple and yellow swirling below his eye.

He slapped the pack against it with a tiny grumble of pain. The random father left unceremoniously, and Aaron followed when Maya started yelling; giving me the universal hand gesture for this will be messy before exiting through the swinging door.

Max stood, approaching Caleb in a slow stagger. I tensed up automatically, but Max just offered him a hand and they bumped shoulders.

"Thanks, man," he said, voice slightly nasal from his injury. "Trout would have let it slide again if you didn't say what you did."

Caleb frowned. "Don't thank me. He's been getting away with shit like that on my watch for years. I'm sorry."

Max waved his apology off. "You spoke up when it mattered, dude. We're cool. Captain."

"Don't," Caleb warned him. "You'll make it sound pre-meditated."

Max snorted and instantly grunted in pain. He touched a thumb to his nose again and wandered off in the direction of the mirrors. Leaving me and Caleb and the ice pack on Caleb's cheek alone in the communal area. I shuffled my way over to the bench across from him, sitting down tentatively.

Caleb leaned back, pressing the pack flush against his skin. "This is where lying to my mother gets me."

I grinned at the tiles. "Is she pissed?"

"Her anger's been temporarily transferred to Aidan," he said quietly. "I'm sure it'll come back to me, but for now I'm in the clear."

"That kind of makes it sound pre-meditated too," I advised him.

Caleb's hair was still plastered to his forehead, and his eyelashes were dashed with rain. Behind the intoxicating blue of his eyes was something extremely sad. It sobered me up in an instant.

He dropped the ice pack into his lap. The bruise was swelling already, pushing his eye closed ever so slightly. It looked like the kind of thing you would sustain in a car crash; Aidan hadn't pulled any punches for his best friend, literally.

"We match," I hummed. When Caleb tilted his head, I tapped the side of my face and the faded remnants of my own bruise.

He shook his head. "Yours is healed."

"Well, I could go out in the parking lot and see if Aidan's in the mood for topping it up."

He laughed lightly, giving me another flash of teeth. He raised the ice pack to his face again.

The door swung open, and Aaron poked his head in the door, phone pressed to his chest.

"Where's Max?" he asked, and I gestured to the walled-off shower block. "We're going to meet Maya at the ER. I'll give you a lift home first."

My house was not on the way to the hospital; it was in the opposite direction. And Aaron was pale, as tense as a chord. I was tempted to tell him I would find a bus stop, when Caleb cut in. "You should go straight there. I'll drop you home, Miles."

Max returned from examining himself in the mirror, grabbing his sports bag from beside the door. He'd changed his soccer jersey into a sweater with a distinctly less bloody collar.

"Maya's on the warpath," Aaron advised him.

"McCaffrey and Trout can suck it," Max spat. "Especially if this is permanent."

Aaron gave his brother a sympathetic shoulder-pat, and caught my eye. "Are you okay? I can drop you home, it's no problem."

I shook my head carefully. "It's out of your way. Get Max to the hospital. I'll text you?"

Aaron nodded, eyes shifting between Caleb and I. Caleb dropped the ice pack again, standing up so our knees weren't quite so close together. "Yeah, you live in Mandurey, right? I remember when I dropped you off. With Lauren. After tutoring. For your date."

I dropped my head into my hands. Max let out a surprised guffaw, rocking back on his heels. Aaron caught my eye between my spread fingers, expression unreadable. He dropped his phone by one side, dropping his head to one shoulder. "Huh."

I opened my mouth, to pry my way out of the chasm Caleb had unknowingly dropped us into, but a voice hollered from the speaker on Aaron's phone and he answered it, not even sparing me a second glance out the door.

"Chill out, Maya. I'm driving now, I've got to go..."

Max looked me up and down, nodding once in a state of apparent shock, before following his brother out. The door squealed closed behind them, masking my defeated groan. Caleb looked down at me, visibly confused.

"What's wrong?"

"It doesn't matter," I sighed. If Caleb knew I'd told Aaron I was gay, and his excuses had raised more questions than it had answered them, he would surely freak out. "So, Aidan's off the team?"

"Indefinitely benched. Trout would never kick him off permanently," Caleb swallowed. "I didn't think he'd actually hit me."

My irritation at his slip-up melted, and I patted the bench beside me. Caleb sat next to me with a surprising lack of protest.

"He's a dick," I said, in all my infinite wisdom.

"He is," Caleb agreed, soft-spoken as ever. "I don't know what happened to him. He was this... over-sensitive dork in primary school. A bee stung him in year five and he cried so hard he threw up. He used to be in a tap-dancing ensemble. Then he came to high school and it was like he changed overnight. He probably didn't, I was just too caught up in having a best friend that I never called him out on it.

"He's just... angry, all the time now. But we've always been so close, I thought it was my responsibility to stick by him. But I've just been enabling him. Fuck."

I resisted the urge to touch his shoulder, to reassure him. "Don't be so hard on yourself."

Our situations weren't comparable, but I'd been a bad friend to Aaron. For a full year. He'd stuck by me in ways I couldn't imagine anyone else doing; probably waiting for his best friend to come back to him. Just like Caleb. "But I do think you need friends who don't hate gay people and punch you for calling them out."

"Aidan doesn't..." Caleb paused, and blew out a sigh through his nose. "See, I just want to defend him, immediately. I think he hates everyone. He's got issues, and I wish he'd just talked to someone about them before it got this bad."

I turned on the bench, hitching my leg up so I could look at him dead on. "The more you put into his mental health, the less conscious you become of your own, and how he might be affecting it."

Caleb turned his eye, fixing me with a classic crystalline stare. I wanted to push the hair back off his face, just so I could marvel at his skincare routine. And touch him.

"My therapist told me that," I felt it was important to cite my sources. Lauren had taught me the importance of proper referencing.

The corners of his lips tipped upwards, and his eyes trailed down my jaw, my collar, landing on my clinging wet shirt. I might as well have been naked for all it was covering up. The rain worked on him, running off his figure as if he was painted in some golden sealant, while it sunk into my skin and made me look like a drowned, wrinkled rat. I was sure my hair looked unsightly, but Caleb's expressive eyes didn't give anything away.

He dropped the ice pack again. The bruise was going to be there to stay for an unfair amount of time, marring his perfect features. It didn't make his gaze any less intense when it snapped back to my eyes. My lips parted a little, maybe to let out some of the heat building inside me.

It was lucky the Roman Senior changerooms had such poor door hinge maintenance because we were given ample time to dart to opposite sides of the bench before Lauren poked her head in. "Caleb? Jake's game has been cancelled. Blood on the pitch and all."

He nodded sombrely. "I'm sorry you guys came out for nothing."

"Nothing? You haven't scored like that all season," Lauren protested. "Who were you trying to impress?"

Caleb cleared his throat before the silence could turn from smug to uncomfortable. "I'm driving Miles home. You want in?"

Lauren's face balled up. "Why would I want in?"

He nodded his head to me and understanding dawned in her eyes.

"Right. Obviously," her nostrils flared, and she glared between us. "I'll let Mum know. Meet you by the car."

She let the door fall closed behind her. Caleb let out a shaky breath.

I felt like it would be kindest to tell him that his sister knew. Because obviously, at least to me, she knew. But Caleb had freaked before in the face of being outed; freaked out to the point of blatant cruelty; invoking the name of Reece and threatening my professional reputation. When he was at his safest, with the back wall of the closet against his perfectly sculpted shoulder blades, he was kind. More than that, he was downright sweet.

I didn't want that to change. Caleb turned into a different person when he felt things were out of his control. I didn't love the spiral my life had turned into lately either, but I'd learned to deal with curveballs in my life. Caleb – big Greek family, house in the suburbs, vice-now-captain of the soccer team – didn't appear have been thrown too many in his life.

"I can get the bus," I told him carefully, standing up and gathering my wet jacket. Caleb shook his head firmly.

"It's still raining. And you're on my way, anyway."

Ever the romantic. I rolled my eyes ceiling-to-floor and gathered my belongings. When I made it to the door, I reached for the door handle only to find it being opened from behind me, heat cascading from Caleb's arm, inches from my hip.

"And..." he added, holding the door and also giving the effect of caging me against the beige-painted wood, "... you had to speak up for Max before I did, and I'm sorry."

I breathed in, unfortunately inhaling way too much of his scent to be healthy for my heart. "Well, you took the hit."

He shook his head, dropping back a few steps outside the changerooms. He still managed to look suave despite the puffed up, purple blemish on his cheek.

"You're braver than me."

It was an observation that made me laugh out loud. The way Caleb managed to keep a straight face was beyond me.

I folded my arms and pushed off the door, waited for it to stop squealing before I responded.

"I spend every waking hour - that I am not caking in enough makeup to smother a small child - in constant anxiety," I retaliated. "At home, I'm scared of Reece. At school, I'm scared of failure and exposure and getting beaten up. And when I'm lying in bed at the end of every day, I am scared that I will wake up one morning and everyone I care about... a dwindling number at that... will have realised that I've been lying to them for the better part of two years, and will exit stage right out of my life. I'm not brave."

The sun was coming out. Caleb looked up into it, pushing back his hair in the way I had ached to, and smiling ever so slightly at the sky. The light made his skin glow. I couldn't even envy him for looking so consistently and unbearably beautiful, because at least I got to look at him.

"Alright. But I said..." he doubled-down, "... you're braver than me. Take it or leave it."

And then there was that whole thing. When he wasn't threatening my livelihood, Caleb Proust was eloquent as fuck. I internalised my spontaneous swoon, hunching my shoulders and threatening my blush with grievous bodily harm to stay below my collar.

He gestured to the parking lot, and I floated behind him to the car. Lauren was leaning on the hood, holding a beagle.

"I told Mum you'd drop Miles off and come straight home," she informed Caleb. "She wanted to stay behind and say hello, but I don't want to deal with the Spanish inquisition at home because of your inability to keep our story straight," she pointed at me accusingly. "And Acheeles wanted to come with us."

I let the dog lick my palm enthusiastically, "Achilles?"

"No, Ac-heel-es. A-C-H-E-E-L-E-S," Lauren corrected. "Mum and Dad never regretted anything more than letting a ten-year-old named the dog. It would have been a cute idea if that ten-year-old had been anyone other than Seth, who thinks he's hilarious."

"We all voted on the name, Laur," Caleb reminded her, giving her braid a hearty tug. "Least I remind you of your contribution to the pet naming ritual."

"Ebenezer is a powerful name," she protested and circled to the passenger seat. I slid into the back; hands clasped in my lap. For the first time since he'd driven me home that night, Caleb actually looked at ease behind the wheel. Despite his swollen eye, I had fewer nerves about him crashing the car in a hormonal panic.

He scratched the dog's ear and caught my eye in the rear-view mirror. I let my lips part again, sitting forward slightly to attention.

"Seatbelt, Miles."

Oh.

I slouched down and buckled in for the ride.

"By the way," Lauren turned her head. "You're coming to my house for tutoring on Tuesday, and you're staying for dinner afterward. It's lasagne night."

My heart hitched in my throat. "Lauren, I don't think that's a good idea."

"Neither do I," she agreed. "But you've met my mother. I had a hard enough time convincing her not to invite Reece."

I paled at the mere thought. "Am I allowed to have a prior engagement?"

"No," Lauren said firmly.

"Why not?"

"Because that would be rude, and my one stipulation about pretending to date me is you are not allowed to be rude to my mother," she told me. "You'll be fine."

I deflated into the seat. "I better be top of Modern History by the time this is over."

"One step at a time," she grinned broadly. "Consider it your taste of dating in the Proust family. You can see why Jake keeps his revolving door of girls spinning perpetually and the rest of us... don't."

I stuck her with a glare, but Caleb didn't seem to notice her extremely blatant subtext. His closet was apparently soundproof as well, at least, to the suggestion that his straight act hadn't worked with everyone. She gave me a chaste wink and slouched against the door with Acheeles panting in her face.

Caleb turned on the heater and the radio and drove me home. The backseats were peeling, and there was a sticker from Reece's garage in the corner of his front windshield. The car smelt like wet dog and wet jacket and the deep musky boy scent built up from a solid hour of brawling in wet grass.

Soccer was okay.