The drive was about forty minutes since we had to go over the river to a hospital where we weren't at risk of bumping into Peter. The ER wasn't packed, but Zsa Zsa was still fast-tracked through for x-rays. The medical receptionist took one look at him and grabbed the phone, and a doctor was out in minutes to usher him into the back rooms for examination. Aaron rested his head against my shoulder as I flipped my phone in my hands, too on-edge to think about how tired I was.

The hospital setting didn't help. The harsh fluorescent lights and the concentrated smell of cleaning chemicals bought back difficult memories, the kinds that made my chest feel tight. Hospitals had such an anonymous smell. Nothing recognisable to hold onto; the people were displaced, the lights were severe and the smell was stripped of any familiarities, any depth. I remembered sitting in the corridors outside my mum's room, bending my legs for doctors to dash past, plagued by a perpetual beeping.

The ER was a far cry from the wards; classic music played over the speakers, there was a kids' play area populated by a sole young girl ramming truck together incessantly, and a sad stack of ten-year-old magazines to keep older brains occupied. The receptionist had a jar of boiled sweets on his desk. The faces that passed did not wear the forlorn expressions I'd seen on families of semi-permanent in-patients; exhaustion and boredom hung lightly in the air. The layout and atmosphere reminded me more of an airport terminal.

Aaron placed a hand on my jigging knee, bringing it to stillness. "Breathe. Everything's going to be okay."

I sighed, resting my head against the back wall. Aaron sat upright and yawned, stretching his legs out in front of him. He rubbed his eyes, drawing my attention to how exhausted he looked.

"I'm sorry," I murmured. "I really wanted you to have a good time tonight."

"I did have a good time," he argued. "I didn't expect the night to pan out the way it did, sure, but I'm glad we were there to help. Besides, it's not even my birthday anymore. This is just a normal, shitty Sunday dealing with the shitty world."

I dropped my chin to my shoulder. "I don't deserve you, Aaron Sanchez, and I never will."

"Well, that's a given," he gave me a dry glare to match his sardonic statement. "Seriously. Stop beating yourself with a stick. We were lucky to have been there, and I'm glad you let me help."

"Let you help?" I echoed. "I had no idea what I was doing. You were amazing."

He shrugged. "I just asked him what he wanted to do."

If Aaron was any indication of the cool-headedness that came with adulthood, I could add another perk to turning eighteen. But who was I kidding, Aaron being the more emotionally intelligent out of us wasn't new.

"Isn't there anything we can do?" I asked softly. "I don't want to force Zsa Zsa to make decisions right now but... just the idea of him being at work, in a hospital of all places, after what he did... it makes me sick."

Aaron chewed on his bottom lip and shrugged. "We could find out where he lives. Maya keeps paint thinner under the sink. We could set his front door on fire."

"Jesus," I choked. "Here I was thinking you were the rational type."

"Wherever did you get that idea?" his mouth was a hard line. His glare would have frightened me, if his leg wasn't shaking, indicating he was more upset than homicidal. "I've never met the guy, and I'm ready to hunt him down and cut off him..."

"Woah, Double-A, we have an audience," I pointed out the young girl, who was staring at us with her mouth hanging open, unabashed as toddlers generally were. "Did you talk to him at all, about what he wanted to do?"

"I told him he should get his lock changed as soon as possible, and made sure he had a place to stay until then," he rubbed his eyes. "I get not wanting to involve the police, I mean, he's not wrong about cops historically failing the black community. Not to mention the queer community. But I told him he didn't need to make his decision right away, but that if he needed some moral support to report him, well, I'm already a glorified chauffeur. So, I'd be happy to give him a ride to the station whenever and make a statement. And that you would too."

"Of course," but my stomach flipped at the thought of talking to the police. Cops, whose job was to pick apart lies and get to the truth, asking what I was doing at a club if I was under eighteen. How I'd gotten in. Why I was in heels, who let me perform, and where were my parents anyway? I wanted justice for Grayson, and I wanted Peter rotting in a cell where he belonged, but the revelation of my double life would have a ripple effect out from me. Jamie and all the other club managers who trusted and adored me would be questioned on how a minor had managed to get a weekly set. There was no telling how Reece would react, but I doubted it would be pretty. The best I could hope for would be a one-way ticket to my Uncle Thomas in England. Which meant a new school almost halfway into my final year, half a world away from Aaron and Max and everything I knew. Including Caleb.

And if there was an investigation into the places which had hosted me, if my lies bought down lgbt+ clubs and bars all around the city, Caleb wouldn't be the only person losing safe spaces.

I liked to think I would have testified in front of a stadium of people to get Zsa Zsa justice, but the last time he'd needed me, only hours before, I had frozen. I wasn't a fighter. Running from threatening situations was my default.

It wasn't like they were going to let Sephora Utah take the stand.

Fifteen minutes later, the double doors down the hall swung open, and the radiographer who had ushered Zsa Zsa away approached us. He kneeled to our level, in the same way a doctor with round-glasses had once kneeled to tell me that my mum wouldn't be waking up. Thankfully, the radiographer's expression was far less sombre; though his brow was furrowed in concern.

"We've given your friend a bed for the night," he explained. "It's late and we want to keep him for observation anyway. He won't be needing surgery. We thought he might have blood in his lungs because some red was coming up in phlegm, but it appears someone... bit his tongue and he's been swallowing it."

I felt my blood reach a steady boil. Beside me, Aaron's leg had stopped shaking. He glared at the ceiling, nostrils flared in silent fury. "Can we see him?"

"Visiting hours start at ten am," he said, somewhat apologetically. "Although I have no doubt we'll be able to discharge him by then. Will you be picking him up?"

I glanced across at Aaron, whose eyes had drifted closed. "I... don't know. We can?"

"His partner won't be available?"

The question was innocent enough, but the man's tone made it clear that he wasn't asking. He was making sure that said 'partner' wasn't going to be the one picking Zsa Zsa up, with obvious implications as to why. I felt my mouth part in surprise.

"What..." I stammered. "What did he tell you?"

"He didn't need to tell me anything," the man said solemnly. "He's got finger marks on his neck and a bite on his tongue. The trauma to his face and torso isn't consistent with a tumble down the stairs."

I sat as still as I could, looking at him with the same wide-eyed, gaping stare that the toddler had been giving us not long ago.

"We call the police when there are clear signs of domestic violence," he continued. "I asked them to give him some time to settle, but they're going to drop by tomorrow, to ask him a few questions. Your friend doesn't have to press charges, but if you could shed any light on..."

"We'll pick him up," Aaron cut him off. "His partner isn't in the picture anymore."

The man set his jaw, and I understood his frustrations. He wanted the same thing we did. But I wasn't about to give him ammunition to hand off to the police if Zsa Zsa didn't want an investigation. It was Grayson's choice, at the end of the day.

"I'm glad to hear it," the radiographer said shortly and stood. "You two should get home."

Although I wanted desperately to see Zsa Zsa, since our goodbye had been hasty, I wasn't about to argue when my vision was starting to blur around the edges, from fatigue. Aaron and I wandered the carpark aimlessly for a while before we remembered where he had parked, after paying a ludicrously expensive parking fee – which I insisted on shouting because even though his birthday had passed, I felt he deserved that – and fell into the front seats.

We sat there for a while, just breathing, staring out across canopy of the national park across the road. The car radio read '3:34'. I'd been up later, but not for a while, and never with so much happening in the span of a few hours.

"Can we sleep here?" Aaron wondered aloud.

"Whitley Park has free parking after eight," I mumbled, although I couldn't remember, in my exhaustion, where I'd picked up that tidbit.

Aaron sighed and reluctantly started up the engine. "What about we just go back to my place? I'll text Max to kick out the stragglers. Who the hell stays at a house party past two?"

His rhetorical question triggered a minefield of memory explosions in my brain. Caleb. Caleb would. Caleb, who is waiting for me.

I closed my eyes and replayed his plea in my head. That's what it was, under the veil of intoxicated arrogance. A plea from someone who was just as insecure as I was beneath it all, begging me to make him a promise.

Come back to me.

It was sin, temptation in its purest form. Just the thought of Caleb waiting for me. The implication behind what could happen behind closed doors, once we had no time limits restricting us. After all the minute touches, the coy glances, the simmering tension whenever the universe shoved us together in a compact space, who could tell what would happen. The very thought made me hot under the collar, in complete antithesis to the cold fury I'd felt while the radiographer had been running us through Zsa Zsa's injuries.

But Caleb was drunk.

The kind of drunk that couldn't give consent. The only reason I had to go back there would have been to tell him nothing was going to happen while he was in the state he was. Maybe phone him an Uber.

Maybe it was selfish to turn my back on an assurance I'd given him. Or maybe it was the most sensible thing I would have done in regards to Caleb all year.

"Miles?" Aaron asked as the car rumbled around us. "My place?"

Come back to me.

"Just take me home," I managed, voice strangled. "Please."

He nodded and didn't pry further. I rested my head on the window as he drove, and watched the white lines on the road until the combination of the car heater and my spiralling mind worked so I couldn't hold my eyes open any longer.