Chapter 10 #2
I shake my head, looking at the candy he was trying to decide on. “Get the good bag, we don’t want to be known as the house with shitty candy.” I try to sound okay, but I know he sees right through me.
Thankfully, he doesn’t call me out on it.
I can’t come out of it this time. I try, I really do, but I can’t. I’ve been lying down for hours, my body shivering even though I’m sweating. I’m not even crying this time. I can’t.
Mike comes to my room at what I’m assuming is the usual time, but I have no idea. He doesn’t announce himself this time, just barges in, his shirt already half off by the time I look up.
He stops when he sees me.
“Hey,” he says carefully, his eyebrows furrowed in concern. “Are you feeling okay?”
Even though that’s the opposite of the truth, I nod. “I’m having a—” I clear my throat when my voice comes out scratchy. “It’s an anxiety thing. I don’t think I can do anything tonight.”
“Oh.” There’s a pause, and I’m sure he’s pouting, since things aren’t going his way. “Yeah, no. That’s totally fine.”
I pull the blanket higher and stare at the ceiling, trying to do the exercise my therapist recommended for grounding myself.
Five things you can see: the ceiling, the fan, my side table…
Mike.
He’s still standing there, looking anywhere but directly at me, the opposite of his usual confidence. “So this is going to sound weird,” he starts when I meet his eyes, shuffling his feet. “But would it be okay if I slept in here?”
“You want to—”
“Don’t make it weird,” he cuts me off, narrowing his eyes.
I scoot over without saying anything, and he climbs in. And in true Mike fashion, he’s immediately everywhere. His cold feet tangling with mine, his arm sliding around my waist, his face pressing into my chest.
“I’ll be quiet,” he mumbles into my shirt. “Won’t even know I’m here.”
I look down at the arm wrapped around my waist.
“Might make me feel better if you’re not,” I admit, resting my hand on his forearm, my thumb moving back and forth.
“You wanna talk about it?” I shake my head, hoping he accepts that.
I really don’t want to talk about it.
“Okay.”
We lay in silence for a long moment, Mike hugging me tight while my hand finds its way into his hair. It makes me feel a little bit better having him here, I can’t help but notice. It gives me something real to focus on.
“I have an anxiety thing too,” he says into the quiet.
“You do?”
He nods against my chest. “I hate sleeping alone.”
“You hate—”
“I’m not scared of the dark,” he interrupts, even though I wasn’t going there. “I’m scared of…”
“What?”
I can feel him shrug. “Being alone, I guess? I know it’s stupid.”
“It’s not stupid.”
“Yes it is, everyone is alone if you think about it.”
“Well, that’s depressing.”
He sighs deeply, sliding his hand down until he reaches the hem of my shirt, twisting it between his fingers. “My parents died when I was ten.”
“Oh,” I say, because what else is there to say. But I don’t stop running my fingers through his hair, and I hold him a little bit tighter than before.
“It was a car accident,” he says, the words catching in his throat. “I was in the backseat, asleep. I don’t even remember it happening. Woke up in the hospital with minor injuries. But when I asked about my parents…”
I think about my own mom. Nate and Ben and Liz, even Dad, waiting for Mom. People have babies all the time. It was supposed to be okay.
“They were the best,” Mike continues, softer, their memory bringing that out of him even after all these years. “My dad is the one who got me into music. He taught me how to play guitar when I was like, five, and he used to call me his little rock star because I would never shut up about it.”
And my mom—” He stops, sniffling. “She was the first person I ever came out to. I was in second grade, and I didn’t even have the words for it, I told her I thought boys were pretty too, and she said that’s okay, so do I.”
I close my eyes.
“And then they were gone.” His fingers twist tighter in my shirt. “And I didn’t have anybody else. So they put me in the system.”
“Jesus, Mike—”
“It’s fine,” he says. “It’s just that I was— I’ve always been a lot, you know? Too loud, too much, too—” he gestures at himself. “Too everything. Not exactly the kind of kid people want to take in long term.”
What can I even say to that? Mike doesn’t have a family. I didn’t even know.
“I aged out at eighteen, and my parents had left me some money, so it all worked out.” He says practically. “Enough for school, enough for this place. So everything is all good.”
I recognize a lot of myself in him. He says everything is good the way I do. But I know the difference.
“It’s not.”
He’s quiet for a long moment. “No,” he admits.
“Not really.” His cold hand slides under my shirt to rest on my stomach.
“I’ve never liked to sleep alone. I don’t know if it was the darkness, or the quiet, or being alone with my thoughts.
But most nights, I would get into my parents’ bed at some point. ” He exhales.
“It got so much worse after they were gone, but they weren’t there to comfort me anymore.” I tighten my arm around him, everything clicking into place.
The parties.
The sex with strangers.
“That’s why you have so many people over.” There’s a pause before he nods slowly, like that’s something he might not want to admit, but he does anyway.
“You don’t have to ask,” I say without thinking, and when he looks up, his eyes rimmed red, I don’t even want to take it back. “We don’t have to sleep together first, and you don’t have to get up early, so you’re not here when I wake up. Sleep here. I don’t mind.”
His mouth hangs open in shock.
And then his eyes fill with fresh tears that he quickly hides by taking his place, using me as an oversized pillow. “You okay?” I ask, my smile clear in my voice.
“Shut up.”
His breathing evens out before mine does. I lay there with his weight against my chest and his hand still resting beneath my shirt, thinking about a younger Mike who was too much for everyone. Who came out the other side still nothing but himself.
By the time I fall asleep, I’ve forgotten about why I was lying here in the first place.