Chapter 5 #2
“No pressure, though, right?” Mikey said, joking as he always did in order to lighten the mood.
“Some of us take this pretty damn seriously,” Luke said at once. His hackles were already up, and having Mikey make a joke just added insult to injury.
Mikey put his hands up in a defensive posture, and Luke huffed out a sigh.
He opened his mouth to start an argument, but Brenda interrupted.
“Let’s just keep the tour going, shall we?” she said, giving Luke a pointed look which said she knew exactly what he was getting ready to do and was warning him not to do it.
Luke swallowed his anger, and they kept walking through the decrepit halls of the Center.
The further inside they went, however, the more Luke’s sense of disquiet and disgust and disappointment turned into something else: nostalgia.
Every hallway they went down seemed to echo with the sounds of plucked guitar strings and the voices of two seventeen-year-olds finding themselves and exploring their love.
Luke remembered quite well the way the two of them would glance at each other from across a classroom, eyes sparkling with mischief and a shared understanding.
He even remembered stolen makeout sessions in some of the more distant and underused hallways, the fact they might get caught adding a little extra spice to their encounters.
Luke looked over at Mikey, to see if maybe he was feeling nostalgic, too. However, he looked like he was a thousand miles away, like he couldn’t even be bothered to be here and present with the rest of them.
Luke’s resentment boiled up, and he didn’t hold back.
“You know,” he said, “you could at least pretend like you care about NACA. I mean, I get it. You’ve been places and done things.
You’re too big for a small arts center in the middle of nowhere.
But a lot of us still have fond memories of it, and I’d think even someone with his head up his own ass as much as Mikey Smiles could find it in himself to at least pretend to give a shit. ”
For a split second Luke thought Mikey might actually lash out at him in return, and he secretly wished he would, just so the two of them could get some of their complicated feelings out in the air rather than letting them simmer, but then, just as quickly, Mikey was the same grinning idiot he’d always been.
It drove Luke absolutely insane.
“I’m sorry you seem to feel that way about me,” Mikey said. “But, contrary to what you seem to think, I do care about this place. NACA was my home away from home as much as it was yours. Why else would I be here if I wasn’t going to try to save it?”
Luke’s hands tightened into fists at his sides.
It was infuriating that Mikey sounded so reasonable, while Luke sounded like an angry jerk, and it was even more upsetting he looked so damn handsome while he was doing it.
Still, he knew he wasn’t going to gain anything by pursuing an argument–not at the moment, anyway–and so he let it slide.
“Okay, maybe you have a point,” he grunted. “Can we just keep goin’ with the tour?” His old habit of dropping his “g”s had crept up on him, giving him another reason to be annoyed with Mikey.
Fortunately, it wasn’t long before they were outside on the sidewalk again.
The day was starting to heat up, and Luke took a deep breath of the fresh air.
He could do this. His heart and his head were still at loggerheads, but he was starting to see a way through.
He was just going to have to keep it professional and get through the concert.
He wasn’t going to let his feelings get in the way.
NACA and Brenda were counting on him. His heart would just have to be content.
“So,” Brenda said, once again no-nonsense, “that’s what we’re dealing with.
If we get enough money from the concert and from donations, we can not only renovate the building but also update our facilities, revamp the recording studios, make sure we’re competitive and that we offer our students the best training they can get in order to succeed in today’s music industry.
We might even be able to get some influencers interested and spread the word about both the concert and what we do here.
Are you sure the two of you are up for this collaboration?
And do you think you can do it by June?”
Mikey and Luke shared a look, then, and for a split second the years and their broken relationship had never happened. Instead, they were just two West Virginia boys bonded over a shared love of music and a devotion to NACA and its devoted staff.
“Yeah, we’ll do it, and we’ll make sure it’s all together by June,” Mikey said. “I hope you know how much the Center and the concert mean to the two of us.” He scuffed his shoe on the sidewalk. “I kinda wish I could just give you the money, though. Make it some sort of gift.”
Brenda shook her head.
“It would probably be easier, but it wouldn’t give us the momentum we really need.
We need to do something to convince everyone around here we’ve still got what it takes to keep training new talent, which won’t happen if we just get a gift dumped in our lap.
” She shrugged. “You know how people are around here. They don’t like charity, and they don’t like when anyone else takes it, either.
You gotta earn the things you want in this world. ”
She had a point Luke supposed, even if it didn’t feel particularly fair to the staff. They were all doing the best they could, often on a volunteer or poorly-paid basis.
They all stood there for several more minutes, none of them quite sure how, or if, to break the silence.
At last, Brenda clapped her hands together.
“Well, I guess I’ll let you boys get down to it and start talking turkey. I’m sure you have a lot of thoughts you want to share about how to get the concert off the ground. I don’t want to be a distraction. Maybe you can grab a bite at Bob’s Lunch and talk about things there?”
Luke’s heart seized up a bit at the thought of going to Bob’s Lunch with Mikey. It was one of the first places where they’d shared a meal together, and he wasn’t eager to revisit that particular memory. Mikey, unfortunately, had other ideas.
“I’d love to go,” he said. “What do you say, Luke?”
Leave it to Mikey to put him on the spot and make it almost impossible to refuse.
Damn it.
He plastered a smile on his face he was sure looked fake and grated out a simple, “Sounds good to me.”
And then, before he could respond or prevent it, Mikey stepped forward and gave him a big hug.
Just like that, all of Luke’s reservations about Mikey, all of his commitment to listening to his head and not his heart, and even a great deal of his resentment went right out the window.
Before he knew what he was doing, he was hugging Mikey back, relishing the feel of his muscles beneath his shirt and the way his arms had a rough strength despite his polished appearance.
He almost whimpered in pleasure but stopped himself just in time.
All too soon the hug ended, but he could swear Mikey copped just a bit of a feel before he stepped back.
“Great!” Mikey exclaimed. “Can we meet there in, say, an hour? I have to go and get freshened up a bit.”
Once a pretty boy, always a pretty boy, he thought.
“Fine,” he said.
He gave Brenda another hug, and as he did so, she slipped something into his pocket.
“It’s Mikey’s number, just in case you need it,” she whispered. “You can thank me later.”
Luke honestly had no idea how to respond to that and so, rather than saying something stupid, he just got into his truck and drove off. He needed to figure out his thoughts and feelings, if such a thing was even possible.
I don’t know if I can do this, he thought, quickly followed by, but I don’t have any choice. I guess I’m going to have to figure out a way to make spending time with Mikey Smiles a lot less complicated.
He forced himself to think about all of the things about Mikey Smiles he didn’t like and which had already annoyed him today: the way he walked through the world like he owned it; the way he acted like everything was going to turn out okay just because he wanted it to; the way he seemed like nothing at all bothered him, like he hadn’t broken Luke’s heart and ignored him for a decade.
If he kept dwelling on the things he didn’t like, he was pretty sure he could keep his dangerous romantic feelings at bay long enough to get through the concert. Or at the very least their meet-up at Bob’s lunch.
However, in the back of his mind he knew things weren’t going to be so simple.
With Mikey Smiles, they never were.