It had sucked for Callie, sitting next to Cole on the couch after she'd walked in on him binding in the bathroom, and the fact that the other girls were all present when Rita questioned them about the incident only made it worse. She'd covered for Cole out of a sense of self preservation, the need to stick it out at this place for more than a couple of days before getting kicked out, and the desperate wish that if she didn't rat on him, he wouldn't rat on her. That said, she hadn't expected it to actually work.
In the grand scheme of things, Rita making her switch rooms wasn't as bad as kicking her out of the house altogether (as long as she wasn't moving in with Daphne). Callie figured at this point, she should take what she could get - and in this case, that was apparently a transgender roommate.
xXx
"By the way..." Cole says after what feels like an hour of silence but was probably only ten minutes, if that. "Thanks."
"For what?" Callie responds with as much disinterest as she can muster, her gaze never wavering from the bedroom wall in front of her. The wallpaper is the same as it was in Kiara's room. She's not sure why she expected anything else.
"You know, having my back."
"Oh, like they wouldn't have blamed me?" She loses her fight not to look at Cole, eyeing him in disbelief. "I just got here. And you're the one who fell through the shower door."
Cole shrugs. "Yeah, but I pushed you first."
"Like I was gonna get anyone to believe that."
Cole offers no answer, and it's almost enough to make Callie miss Kiara's constant chatter.
"I'm, uh..." he begins after a beat. "I'm sorry I did that, by the way."
"Pushed me?"
"Yeah." He shifts uncomfortably on his bed. "I don't like it when people see me bind."
Callie's not quite sure what to say to that. She's never met someone who's transgender before, but she at least knows how it feels to be uncomfortable in her own skin, to want to be someone different, a better version of herself.
"I can respect that," she says finally, and he looks up from staring at his bedspread to meet her eyes.
"Thanks," he says flatly, but it sounds like he's trying a little too hard to maintain the expressionlessness in his voice. Callie can relate to that, too. "You're not even supposed to do it with Ace bandages because they, like, constrict your chest, but it's not as if I can exactly buy a binder at the mall." He pauses for a moment, then says quietly, "I just want them to go away."
Callie thinks he's referring to the other girls at first, but after a couple of seconds, she realizes he's talking about his boobs. The dichotomy of the phrase strikes her: his boobs. No wonder he wants to bind them.
"That sucks," she responds, careful to keep her tone devoid of emotion.
"Thanks."
"It's cool that Rita's trying to get you into an LGBT home, at least."
"Yeah." He nods a little. "Rita's OK. She's gay, so she kinda gets it."
"Oh."
He glances across at her. "What, no snide comment about how you could tell by her shoes?"
She nearly smiles. "No. My -" She's about to say foster moms, but her throat closes up around the words, so she tucks her legs in front of herself and hugs her knees. "The couple at my last foster home were lesbians."
"That's cool," Cole says measuredly. "A lotta people think I'm a lesbian."
"Becca?" Callie guesses. In the short time she's been at Girls United, it's become patently obvious that Becca doesn't have any respect for Cole at all, calling him she and her and Nicole, and then there was that time in group therapy when she accused him of having an addiction to being a boy.
"Not just her, but yeah. You know what she told me?" He poses the question but continues without waiting for an answer. "That I'm really a lesbian but I can't deal with being gay, so I'm pretending I'm a boy."
Callie raises an eyebrow.
"It's bullshit," Cole mutters, tugging at a loose thread on the bedspread.
"Do you like guys or girls?" Callie inquires, unsure why she feels the need to ask. "Um, or both?"
"Girls." His reply is a little defensive, as if he's worried admitting his sexual preference will somehow prove Becca's point in Callie's eyes. "I'm not a lesbian, though. I wouldn't care if I was, but I'm not."
"I know," Callie says simply, and they leave it at that.
xXx
So the group home isn't, like, awful. Callie's lived in worse places - not that she thinks she belongs here, with drug dealers and gang bangers and a girl who punched a cop and another girl who punched Callie the last time she was in juvie. The food kind of sucks, although she supposes it was her own fault for letting herself get used to Lena's cooking, but at least there aren't bars on the windows or locks on the doors because Girls United has an honor system or whatever. She wonders if anyone's ever run away, then she wonders if she should, and then she remembers she has nowhere to go.
xXx
Callie ends up kind of liking that Cole's quiet. Some of the other girls seem fond of Kiara in a sisterly way, and her former roommate isn't mean-spirited by any means, but Callie just really appreciates silence sometimes, even if it does seem a little weird after all the chaos at Stef and Lena's. Maybe she just misses having Mariana as a roommate, but she won't let herself think about that.
Point being, Cole's OK. Callie had no real issues with him until she walked in on him binding and he flipped out, so it's not like rooming with him feels like a punishment. He keeps to himself and doesn't care that she spends most of her time staring out of the window, waiting for… honestly, she doesn't even know anymore. For Stef and Lena to drive up and welcome her back home after everything she's put them through? For Jude to come to Family Day tomorrow even though her privileges got revoked? For Brandon?
She turns away from the window with a sigh. It's dark outside now, anyway. No one would show up this late, if they even wanted to at all. She glances at Cole.
"What are you reading?"
He flips over the book to show her the cover. "Next week's Bio assignment. There's not a lot to do here at night - might as well get ahead on school stuff. I know that's lame, but."
Callie sinks onto the bed she was assigned - her bed, as she should probably begin thinking of it, because who knows how long she'll be here? She hasn't even had a chance to think about school. She assumes Rita will take care of it, get her registered and whatever. The thought of starting over again makes her feel unbearably tired, but it's her own fault for getting used to Anchor Beach.
"So that's what you do for fun? Homework?"
Cole shrugs. "I guess."
"Nothing else?" she asks disbelievingly.
"I like to draw." He stretches lithely across the width of the bed, his forearm disappearing beneath the mattress. Callie stares at his tattooed bicep, averting her eyes as he emerges with a battered sketchbook that he holds aloft.
She tilts her head. "Can I see?"
"It's personal."
"Then why did you show me where you keep it?"
Cole, shrugging again, turns off the lamp sitting on the bedside table between them before Callie has a chance to respond.
End of conversation, Callie thinks to herself, listening to Cole's sheets rustle. Message received.
She closes her eyes, waiting for sleep to come, and it doesn't.
"Where'd you buy that sketchbook?" she asks a few minutes later, in spite of herself.
There's a long pause, and she figures Cole's either already asleep or ignoring her - probably the latter.
"There's an AC Moore at the mall Rita takes us to sometimes," he responds, just as she's about to give up on him. "I usually head straight there after I check to make sure a Binder Palace hasn't opened up next to Hollister."
Callie lets out a laugh before she can stop it, then grins to herself in the dark.
xXx