Chapter Twenty-Two
Micah felt hungover, and she hadn’t even had a drop of alcohol on this cruise so far.
For one thing, the sun was so bright. She’d woken up later than she’d planned but still way earlier than she would’ve liked, and she’d made her way down to the cruise company’s private island.
It was a gorgeous, perfect beach day—warm wherever you were in the sun, just chilly enough in the shade to feel like a relief.
The sky was clear and blue, and the water literally sparkled like something out of a tourism commercial.
And the sun was way too fucking bright, giving Micah a headache even though she’d put her sunglasses on.
Frankie and Steve must’ve gotten there early enough to claim a couple chairs, because they were already lying out, looking lazy and comfortable. She didn’t see John anywhere, but she assumed he must be around, since he was the one who’d brought up the beach last night.
She knew she shouldn’t have said what she did. The minute it left her mouth, she’d known it was wrong. But she’d been angry and blindsided and ready to lash out, and so that was what she’d done. Self-sabotage had always been a specialty of hers.
She was already halfway to feeling completely sorry for herself, debating whether she should just go back to her room and take a nap, when she heard someone call her name.
“Micah!”
It was Frankie, bracing against the back of the chair with one hand, the other hand curled around some kind of tropical cocktail. “Come over here!” Frankie yelled. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
Had they? Micah took off her sneakers to make her way toward the chairs, the white sand burning the bottoms of her bare feet a little.
Frankie tried to shoo Steve off his lounger, telling him he needed to be a gentleman about it, but he looked so comfortable lying there with his eyes closed that Micah hated to be the one to disturb him.
She perched on the edge of Frankie’s lounger instead.
Frankie gave Micah a look over their sunglasses. “Jeans and sneakers?” they said. “At the beach?”
Micah glanced down at herself. It was about as beachy as she got—she was wearing a bathing suit, at least, a one-piece that was plain and lifeguard-y except in dark purple instead of red.
But over that, she’d layered a loose pair of ripped jeans, her knee and a glimpse of her thigh tattoo peeking out from the shredded places.
Frankie, on the other hand, looked like they were born to be in a tropical paradise, with their silver-and-teal bikini and gauzy sarong cover-up.
“Watch John be in a full-out T-shirt and jeans,” Frankie said. “He’ll be wearing the exact same thing he wore for the show last night. Where is John?”
They asked like Micah would be the one to know, and she cleared her throat. “No idea,” she said. “Maybe he slept in.”
“Maybe he went snorkeling,” Steve put in. “I want to go snorkeling. You think it’s too late to sign up?”
“You should go check,” Frankie said.
Steve drummed his hands on the sides of the chair, taking a second for some internal debate before he finally sprang up as though he’d been given a timer to complete his task. “I’ll be right back,” he said. “Micah, save my seat.”
“You’re delusional if you think I’ll give it up,” Micah said, settling onto the now-vacant lounger. “Move your, lose your.”
The words had flown out of her mouth before she’d had time to think about them, but man, did they bring her back.
It’s what they always used to say when they were kids—it had started out as Move your feet, lose your seat and had morphed over the years to the simplified Move your, lose your .
Once they’d had a whole library of sayings and phrases and jokes like that, a lexicon that was all their own.
Micah scanned the people on the beach. Everyone was in their little groups, having a good time—splashing in the water, spread out on towels to catch some sun, and there was even a game of volleyball that had broken out.
It occurred to her that this cruise was maybe a little stressful, and not just for the people working it like ElectricOh!
and the cast of Nightshifters and everyone else.
Although it was a vacation, it also had an intense itinerary, featuring nonstop opportunities to see panels and music and play trivia and attend group activities.
This was the first time she’d seen people just seeming to relax .
She still didn’t see John anywhere, and she was starting to wonder if he was going to come down to the beach at all.
“You really don’t know where he is?” Frankie asked, seeming to clock Micah’s search and understanding the reason for it.
“Why would I?” Micah asked.
Frankie glanced over with an Are you kidding me? expression. “You two have always had vibes, but ever since we got on that boat you have had vibes . I just assumed you’d spent the night together.”
They said it so casually, like it wouldn’t be the kind of event that would completely explode everything. Then again…would it? What was there now to explode?
“We didn’t always have vibes,” Micah protested. It sounded weak, even to her ears. “We were friends.”
Frankie pressed their lips together and pushed them out. “What’s that saying? Love is friendship caught fire? I’ve been waiting about a billion years for this one to catch.”
“I already made the mistake of dating someone in the band,” Micah said. “I wasn’t about to make that mistake again.”
“Your mistake was dating Ryder in the first place,” Frankie said.
“Fuck whether he was in the band or not. I mean, objectively I see it, in the way that people keep telling me Captain America is hot and I have to nod and pretend I see anything other than a red-white-beige-and-blue blur. But I never did understand why you went for him at all, if I’m being honest.”
Ryder had had that kind of charisma you could have in high school just by virtue of being a couple years older and being reasonably attractive.
He’d pursued her , which had felt so flattering at the time.
They’d played a late-night show, and afterward he and Micah had both gotten drunk, John having already gone back to his own hotel room sober as a judge like he always was.
She’d wanted to join him, had known that if she knocked on his door he’d let her slide under the covers like she had so many times before.
But she’d also felt reckless and out of control and she hadn’t wanted John to see her that way, hadn’t wanted to risk somehow tainting him by even letting him around it.
When Ryder had kissed her, she remembered feeling a drop in her stomach, less a swoop of anticipation and more one of dread, like she knew what she was doing was wrong and yet she was going to do it anyway.
She barely remembered that first night they’d been together, but after that they were suddenly a couple, and she’d figured it was best to keep everything going as best as she could.
First, by not letting the rest of the band find out.
Then, by trying not to let any of the cracks show.
And finally, by cutting the band off when she cut Ryder off, to try to make it as clean a break as possible.
Which was a laugh, of course. These past couple days, she’d been confronted over and over with all the jagged edges of that break.
“Capricious youth,” Micah said.
“Sounds like a band name,” Frankie said, then smiled as their eyes caught on something behind Micah. “Hey! There you are.”
Micah knew without turning around that it would be John.
She really did feel hungover—tired, clammy, a little sick to her stomach.
She ached everywhere, including a throbbing between her legs that she knew was as much anticipation as it was a reminder of what they’d gotten up to yesterday.
She already missed the way they’d been then for a few precious hours, the way she could touch John any way she wanted, the way she’d begged him to touch her.
She missed the way they’d been before that, all those years ago when there were most definitely always vibes , when she could tell him to lay his head in her lap so she could play with his hair.
Frankie had been wrong about John at the beach.
He hadn’t come in his usual jeans and black T-shirt—instead, he was wearing proper swimming trunks, showing off his legs dusted with dark hair, his bare chest, the flat brown circles of his nipples, and another trail of dark hair from his belly button disappearing into his waistband.
Even after all they’d done together, she realized this was the most naked she’d ever seen him, and it felt suddenly wildly intimate, like she couldn’t believe she was seeing him now , in public, like this .
Luckily, Frankie spoke, because Micah didn’t know that she could. “You own a bathing suit!” they said.
He gave them an odd look. “I live in Florida,” he said. “I go to the beach all the time?”
“Of course, of course, that makes sense. I keep forgetting that you live in that hellhole.”
John rubbed the back of his neck, the action causing his biceps muscle to flex.
“I guess I can tell how much it feels like home to me now by how annoyed I get when other people call it a hellhole . It’s hot, the politics suck, but there are a lot of good people there and a lot of things to fight for and to love about it. ”
He glanced at Micah before glancing away, like he was embarrassed to have said so much.
“There are legit alligators, though,” he said. “That’s not only in memes. I saw one in a retention pond just outside my neighborhood.”
“Stop it,” Frankie said. “You were almost selling me and now I’m all the way out again.”
John was also holding a book in his other hand, like he’d planned to go off and read by himself instead of hanging out with them, and Micah wished she could ask him about it. John felt as inaccessible to her now as if he was miles away in the middle of the ocean.