Chapter 19
Before
I almost didn’t come.
I’ve spent the last two weeks ignoring his texts, telling myself I was done with him, that what he said under the bleachers was the last straw and I deserve better. Screw Jason Barnett.
You think I actually want this? You?
But then he sent please, and I need you, and a string of texts that I read and reread until I couldn’t justify not responding anymore. That’s the whole problem with Jason. He can be so sweet when he wants to be, and I don’t know which version of him is real.
He’s already there when I reach our spot in the woods, leaning against his truck. “Hey,” he says, and then he does something he almost never does.
His hand finds my jaw, tilting my face up to meet his surprisingly warm eyes. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean it.”
I know I should tell him that it doesn’t matter. What’s done is done and I’m going home and he can deal with the consequences of his actions—
But his thumb is moving along my cheekbone and I don’t want him to stop.
“I forgive you.”
We end up in the truck bed, but something is different tonight. He’s slow. Almost patient, in a way he’s never been. His rough hands are gentle as he fingers me open and even more so when he holds my hips to sink into me.
Tonight, it doesn’t hurt.
That’s new.
When it’s over, instead of leaving, he pulls a blanket over us and lies beside me in the truck bed. When his arm wraps around me, I jump at the contact. Jason doesn’t hold me after. He’s usually pulling his jeans up before I even catch my breath.
I’m scared to move. That if I do, the dream will end.
“I love you,” he says, into the dark. I wait for the insult to follow. The laugh, the cruel teasing I’ve come to expect from him.
“I love you too,” I whisper when nothing happens, fully aware that this is the moment I scare him off.
But he pulls me closer.
I stare up at the stars with his arms around me, and I think this might be what I’ve been waiting for. The version of Jason underneath football and expectations.
The version of Jason that loves me.
The real him.
Now
The house is quiet in a way it never is.
There’s no music blaring through the walls. The TV is turned off. Mike isn’t playing his guitar on the couch. I texted him when I left Nate’s even though at this point, after days of nothing, I shouldn’t have expected a response.
Or for him to be here waiting for me.
I look around the living room. The guitar leaning against the wall. The Xbox controllers on the floor. A bag of chips sitting open on the coffee table. Everything exactly where it should be. So I grab the blanket off the couch and I lie down.
I don’t mean to cry.
I’m not even sure what I’m crying about, or maybe there are too many things to name. Losing my childhood home and hurting Iris and the way Nate looked at me. The baby.
Christmas without Mike.
I must have fallen asleep, because sometime later, I wake up to noise at the front door.
The door opens too hard, slamming against the wall, followed by a thud of someone running into the side table in the entryway, and a muffled curse that is unmistakably Mike.
I pull myself up, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.
The lights are still off, but the sunlight coming in through the window tells me it’s still mid day.
Mike doesn’t see me at first, moving toward the stairs with the grace of someone who’s had way too much to drink. His hair looks like it lost a fight with a brush, and his jacket is half on, covering a rumpled shirt. “Mike,” I say, getting his attention.
He turns around too fast, grabbing the railing to steady himself. “Alex.” He blinks at me on the couch. “You’re back.”
“I texted you.”
“You did? I didn’t see.”
I sit up fully, reaching for the lamp on the side table and clicking it on. The light makes him squint. “Where were you?” I ask, and I don’t mean it to sound accusing, but it does.
“Out.” He straightens up, running a hand through his hair, making it worse.
“Mike—”
“I’m gonna go shower,” he says, already turning toward the stairs.
I stand up and make my way over to him. “Can you stop for a second? I’ve been trying to reach you for days. You’ve barely texted me back, and now you’re…” I gesture at him. “What’s going on?”
He looks at me from one step up, putting us at almost the same height for once. His eyes find mine and hold them, and it doesn’t feel right. “I’m fine,” he says. “I need a shower, okay? Good talk.”
He turns and goes up the stairs, holding the railing the entire time.
When I came home three days ago, I figured Mike was still feeling sad over Christmas. That he would be fine now that I’m back.
I was wrong.
He comes downstairs in the morning and makes coffee and if I’m in the kitchen he says hey and that’s it. That’s the whole conversation. He takes his coffee and he disappears into his room or leaves the house, gone before I can get to him.
That doesn’t mean I don’t try anyway.
I ask how band practice was and he says it was fine. I ask if he wants to watch something and he says maybe later and I don’t see him again for the rest of the day. If I cook, I make him a plate too. He eats it, but he never says anything other than a quiet thanks.
The Mike I know can’t stop talking. He has an opinion on everything and laughs at his own jokes before he finishes them. He falls asleep on me on the couch and steals my hoodies and wakes me up in the middle of the night to tell me about his dreams.
This Mike won’t even look at me.
And he goes out every night.
Sometimes he’s high, the slow sleepy version of him that means he’s been at Zara’s or Damon’s. Sometimes both, that particular combination I recognize from early on, when he seemed a little more out of it than usual.
I wouldn’t say it’s out of character. Mike likes to party and drink and smoke weed and I knew all of that before we ever did a single thing.
But recently there have been so many nights where he came to bed sober, or close enough. So many mornings where he wasn’t at the table drinking a cup of black coffee with a groan, fighting a massive hangover.
I didn’t even notice it happening.
Sure, the parties got fewer and further between because he knew I didn’t like them. And the hooking up with strangers became us fucking non-stop.
But everything else started to go away, too.
I lie in bed at night, staring at his side, trying to figure out what happened. What I missed. Whether it was the Christmas I turned down or if something happened while I was gone that I don’t know about.
Maybe he got tired of me and decided to go back to his actual life.
The thing I don’t understand is that he still comes to bed. I go to bed alone. I fall asleep by myself. But every morning, his side is warm when I reach for it, like he made sure he was gone before I could wake up.
I don’t know what that means and it’s killing me.
This morning, I wake up at seven and reach for him before I’m aware enough to remember he’s mad at me. I can’t help it. I do it every morning and it never gets more depressing.
But this time, something is different.
It’s cold.
Different from how it feels when he got up early. This is the kind of cold that means nobody was there. The pillow where it was last night. My comforter is still covering the other side of the bed.
He wouldn’t.
Would he?
No. Mike cares about me. Maybe even loves me. We’ll work through whatever he’s upset about. He wouldn’t. I don’t even let myself think it.
I stare at the ceiling for a long time before I pick up my phone.
I skip Mike’s name at this point, scrolling straight past it until I get to Zara’s contact. We’ve hung out a few more times since the day they all came over, and she’s actually starting to become a friend. Hopefully, that still stands with whatever is going on between us.
Alex: Hey, is Mike there with you?
I watch the screen until her response comes, five minutes later.
Zara: No, why? Is everything okay?
Alex: He didn’t come home last night.
I sit up, swinging my legs over the side of the bed. This time, she’s typing for a lot longer than necessary for the text that comes.
Zara: Oh
Zara: I think he went home with a girl from the bar last night. I’m sorry sweetie :(
My stomach drops.
I read it twice.
I read it three more times.
Mike went home with a girl from the bar. Of course he did. That’s who Mike is. That’s who Mike has always been. He sleeps with anyone. I knew that. We never said anything different, never made any agreement, never put words to whatever this was.
I can hear a voice in my head that sounds like Mike, from the first time I walked into a party I wasn’t expecting. “Dude, don’t you know who I am?”
I thought I did.
But maybe it was nothing.
Maybe I don’t mean anything to him.
I think about the last time we fucked. Mike riding me, teasing me until I had tears streaming down my face, begging him, pining my hands, his fingers in my mouth, good boy—
That meant nothing to him.
I grab my blanket and wrap it around me, fighting the sudden cold I feel, the chill in my body I can’t seem to shake.
The front door opens around ten.
I’m leaning against the kitchen counter with a cup of coffee I’ve been staring at for twenty minutes, both hands wrapped around it, not drinking it. It’s not even hot anymore.
I hear him in the living room, taking off his winter clothes. His keys landing on the table.
When he comes into the kitchen, he looks the way I knew he would. Last night’s clothes, his hair everywhere, and eyeliner around his eyes. The way he’s looked several times since I got back, and now I know.
It’s the rumpled of someone who spent all night fucking instead of sleeping. There’s a mark on his neck that makes bile come up my throat.
“Hey,” he says, reaching for the cereal on top of the fridge.
This time, I don’t say anything back.
I can feel him behind me, the sounds of him pouring cereal into a bowl, milk, the drawer opening, and the silverware clinking. Sounds I’ve listened to every morning for months and learned to take comfort in.