When One Door Opens by JD Ruskin Page A

impossible goals only a few weeks ago, but a flicker of hope burned in his belly.
    “Caleb.” Dabb said it like it hadn’t been the first time. “Come lock the door after me.”
    Caleb shook off the thoughts and rose. Dabb stood in the threshold with a pained look on his face. “Take care of yourself,” he said, making it sound like an order instead of a request.
    Something in Dabb’s intense gaze made Caleb’s stomach clench. Uncle Harrison looked at my mother that way. He didn’t want to be seen as fragile, breakable.
    Caleb smiled stiffly. “I will. Thank you.” Only after he had secured the door, did he hear Dabb walking away, his feet pounding on the steps.
    Flopping on the leather couch, Caleb covered his face with his arms. His mother would be devastated to know how far he had sunk since her death. When she got upset, her heart would race and she would get dizzy, even faint if she got flustered enough. Caleb tried very hard never to be the cause. When the panic attacks first appeared, he did everything he could to keep her from finding out about them. The campus doctors subjected him to a barrage of tests to see if he had a heart condition like his mother. The tests all said the same thing. His heart was fine. His head was screwed up. He managed to hide it from her until six months into his first job after graduating. He had been pushing hard to meet a deadline for a client, living on caffeine and too little sleep. His meltdown occurred in the middle of a family dinner. His uncle used to say she would worry herself into an early grave if she wasn’t careful. That was exactly what she did. And her son had helped put her there.
     
     
    L OGAN leaned against the front of the apartment building, trying to give Caleb time to get his shit together. On Friday, they’d only made it a block before Caleb needed to turn back. He’d probably spent the weekend berating himself, in spite of Logan’s attempt to reassure him that he’d made it further than he’d been in three years. Logan knew without a doubt that the only reason Caleb was standing here was that he wanted to help Logan and saw this as the only way to do it. I’m helping him too , he told his bristling pride. Squatting, he pressed his shoulder against Caleb. As Caleb tried to stop gasping like a dying goldfish on the exhaust-thickened air, Logan eyed the flow of people shuffling on the sidewalk. The late-morning traffic wasn’t too bad, and the weather had cooled to a balmy 70 degrees. Most of the business commuters were already tucked away in their cubicles, and the teens that seemed to wander the streets endlessly in the summer were still snoring in their beds. Those that remained were an eclectic collection: power-walkers, nannies and their charges, wide-eyed tourists, people trying to walk and text on cell phones and doing a piss poor job of it, real and wannabe homeboys, and the invisible vagrants with their pushcarts and layers of baggy clothing.
    He leaned close to Caleb’s ear to speak over the murmur of voices and the sounds of traffic. “Do you think that guy,” he said, tilting his head toward a middle-aged man with a hideous Hawaiian shirt, “knows the chick he’s hitting on has a dick?”
    That got Caleb’s attention. He stopped hyperventilating long enough to sneak a peek. The tranny had platinum-blond hair down to her pert ass and she was playing with the guy’s copious chest hair with her blood-red nails. She caught them gawking, and her eyes locked with Logan’s for a moment before trailing to Caleb. A wicked smile crossed her lips, and Logan had the irrational urge to haul Caleb upstairs and hide him away. Great, I can add possessive to my list of admirable traits. He pushed off the wall, dragging Caleb with him. It was only two blocks to Meng’s Market, but it seemed to take forever.
    “People are staring at me,” Caleb said, his voice barely audible over his ragged breathing.
    Logan wished he could put his arm around