Chapter Eleven #2
“Yeah, I also tried. I sent congratulations when her record came out, which in retrospect she probably thought was sarcastic, but I really meant it. And of course I texted her when she did Playboy , just to tell her the spread was hot and check to see how she was doing. She did say thank you to that one, but not much else.”
John felt his face heat, and he turned back toward the water, letting his hood block Frankie from view.
Micah had done an interview with Playboy only a few months after the band’s breakup.
It had been the first official announcement that the band was done, which had caused quite the stir—along with the photos.
He’d never seen them. He’d gone out of his way to never see them, although he’d found a text-only version of the interview on a fan page for the band, the one and only time he’d ever visited that kind of site.
The tone had been…defiant. There was a very fuck it quality to Micah’s answers that had seemed at the time to back up the idea that she was done with her old life, was ready to start completely over.
There had been one answer that had gotten to him. He could still remember the exact phrasing. ElectricOh! gave me a lot of firsts. Those will always mean something to me—some of them more than others.
Some of them more than others? What was that about?
“I always thought the timing of that interview was odd,” Frankie said.
“How so?”
Frankie pursed their lips, tilting their head.
“It was what, a year before her solo album came out? Maybe more? There was nothing for her to promote. It would’ve made more sense to do a big feature like that closer to the release date, to build buzz.
She got to announce the band breakup, but to what end?
We could’ve done that with a press release. ”
“Well.” John placed his hands on the railing of the ship, letting the cold metal sting his palms until he withdrew and put his hands back in his hoodie pockets. “Micah always did whatever she wanted.”
There was no bite to his words, and he hoped Frankie knew how he meant it. That had always been one of Micah’s best qualities, to him. He could admire it even when he’d been hurt by it.
But Frankie had a point. The timing of doing such a big, splashy interview, the photos that seemed designed to be incendiary, that defiant tone…yeah, it did seem strange.
He tried to remember when exactly she and Ryder had broken up.
If the start of their relationship had always been shrouded in a bit of secrecy, the end had its own mystery surrounding it.
In his mind, it had happened almost simultaneously with the breakup of the band, but it must’ve happened either before or after .
And suddenly it seemed like the answer to that question could unlock all of it.
“Who ended things?” he asked. “Her, or Ryder?”
“To hear Ryder tell it, he did,” Frankie said. “But you know that doesn’t mean much.”
It didn’t mean shit. But then, maybe none of it did. It had all happened so long ago.
The lighting changed, going dark before a cheer went up from the crowd on the deck below, a burst of colored lights sweeping over the ship that indicated the Silver Cuties were about to take the stage.
There were people lined up against the railing that looked over the stage below, so John and Frankie had no chance of getting any closer, but they at least turned around so they could face the show.
The air was still bitingly cold against John’s cheeks, making the tip of his nose feel numb, but at least the ship wasn’t moving as much as it had been earlier.
He wished suddenly that Micah would come out to see the show.
She’d always loved watching live music. It had been one of their most formative bonding experiences.
“Do you remember that pit at the Warped Tour?” John said to Frankie.
“Oh my god,” Frankie said. “I thought we were going to die. Like, were all the steel-toed boots and spiked bracelets necessary ? Didn’t you get a black eye?”
“No, but Micah—” John started, then remembered. That’s right. He had blamed the black eye on the show. “That was the most scared I’ve ever been in a pit.”
“She put us in so many situations that looking back now, I’m like uh-uh. No way would I try even half that shit. Hell, these days my ideal show involves assigned seating and a preposted schedule of the exact time each band will go on.”
“Ha,” John said. “Seriously.”
But he was thinking about how he didn’t know that he even had an ideal show anymore, couldn’t remember the last time he’d gone to a concert where he hadn’t been playing.
Back then, his ideal show had always been getting as close to the stage as possible, less because he cared about that and more because Micah did, and he loved standing next to her and watching the lights play over her face while she sang along to all the lyrics at the top of her lungs.
He stayed for the Silver Cuties’ entire set, and they put on a great show. But there was something missing from the entire experience, and the more time John spent on this ship, the less he felt like he was going to be able to pretend he didn’t feel it anymore.
—
It was past midnight by the time John quietly let himself back into his room.
The darkness was unrelenting the minute the door shut behind him, and so he switched on the bathroom light and cracked the door, hoping it wouldn’t wake Micah up.
He could see the shadowy outline of her under the covers, but she hadn’t stirred, which led him to believe she was still asleep.
As much as he’d genuinely wanted her to get rest, he hadn’t really thought all of this through.
There was a chair shoved into one corner, barely enough to toss some clothes on, much less for all six feet of John to curl up on to sleep .
But he also wasn’t about to just climb into bed next to her without asking her first, even if it was his bed.
He took his time brushing his teeth, changing into the cheesy Batman pajama pants Asa had gotten him for Christmas one year—John had no idea why, when he’d never expressed any particular affinity for Batman.
Maybe all his moving around in the bathroom woke Micah up after all, or maybe it was just that she’d already been sleeping for five hours, but by the time he emerged he could see that her eyes were open but still drowsy, staring at him as he stood in the doorway to the bathroom.
“Hey,” he said.
“Johnny,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.
The bass for the concert had been loud, and the stage had transitioned for a DJ set directly after for those who wanted to keep partying on the first night of the cruise. That must be what John felt in his chest, then, the low reverberations still pounding through his skin and muscle and bone.
He cleared his throat. “How are you feeling?”
She licked her lips like they were dry. “Better. I’m sorry I—”
“Don’t worry about it.” He grabbed her bottled water from where she’d left it on the dresser, handing it to her before retreating to a safe distance at the bathroom doorway.
“Thanks,” she said. When she sat up in bed to take a sip, she held the covers to her chest, but he couldn’t help but notice that her back was bare. Christ, was she naked under there?
“They should still be able to get you into your room,” he said. “If you wanted to call down now.”
She looked at him. Her hair was still half in the ponytail she’d lain down with, half pulled out and haloed around her head in wisps that caught the bathroom light. “You want your bed back.”
“I would’ve taken the chair,” he said. “But yeah, now that you’re awake, the bed would be more comfortable.”
“So get in.”
He felt a traitorous twinge in his dick at the very suggestion. If he wasn’t careful, he’d have to get under the covers quickly, if for no other reason than to hide his reaction to her. But that was the very definition of out of the frying pan, into the fire .
“Come on,” he said. “Don’t you have a balcony? Imagine waking up to that view.”
She shifted the covers under her armpits, and he had the sudden thought Imagine waking up to that view . Which immediately made him that much more desperate to get her out of his room. Hell, if she felt so bad that he hadn’t gotten a balcony, maybe she’d be open to switching.
“I’m really tired,” she said. “And tomorrow is a big day. If you wouldn’t mind…I mean, it’s fine with me, if…can I just stay?”
John had an urge to tell her absolutely not , to gather up her clothes and march her out of there like a scene out of a soap opera.
But he could see how much it had cost her to even ask.
And truly it didn’t have to be a big deal, if neither of them made it a big deal.
They’d slept together countless times before.
But that was before , he thought, and then he didn’t know what to make of that. Before what ?
He switched off the bathroom light, climbing into bed next to her.
It was already warm and toasty under the covers from where she’d been wrapped up in them for the past few hours, and her body gave off heat like she’d been charging that whole time.
He was cold from being out above deck for so long, and it was tempting to snuggle closer to her, toward that heat source, but he stayed on his edge of the bed.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said again. At this point, he wondered if he knew how to say anything else. Meanwhile all he was doing was worrying about it .
He tried to put everything from his mind—the nearness of her body, the apparent nakedness of it—and concentrate on getting some sleep. He’d need it. But he was still wide awake when he heard Micah’s voice behind him several minutes later.
“Nice pajama pants,” she said.
He grunted.
“I didn’t know you were a Batman guy.”
“I’m not.”
“But you—”
He punched his pillow, rolling over until he was facing her. It was too dark to make out any details of her expression, but he could hear her breathing.
“My housemates gave them to me,” he said. “One of them, anyway.”
“Your housemate?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I share a house with some other people—Elliot, Kiki, and then Asa and Lauren. Asa gave me these, and knowing him it was some kind of joke, although I have no idea what the punch line was supposed to be. Just that I look goofy in them? No clue.”
“You’re kinda mysterious like Batman,” Micah said. “You have an alter ego. I don’t know. I don’t think you look goofy.”
John didn’t know what to say to that.
“So that’s…who you watch your TV shows with?”
She must still be half-asleep, because she wasn’t making much sense. “My housemates? Yeah, we watch TV together sometimes.”
“Ah,” she said. “That’s nice.”
It was nice, not that John thought about it much.
He supposed it was the kind of thing you took for granted after a while—having people you could hang out with, share things with even if they were as superficial as a dating reality show you were all invested in watching together.
Somehow it didn’t feel superficial, when you had people who looked forward to you coming home and wanted to hear your opinions on whatever had happened.
It was friendship, in a way that John realized he hadn’t had since those days of hanging out with Micah in her room, going to shows together, talking late at night after everyone else had gone to bed just like this.
That had felt so comforting then. It felt dangerous now.
“Let’s get some sleep,” John said. “You said it yourself, tomorrow’s a big day.”