21. Micah
MICAH
The moment Robin pushed through the dining room doors, I knew I had about thirty seconds before everything fell apart completely.
For one frozen moment after she stood up, I remained in my chair, staring at the doorway she'd disappeared through while the rest of the table sat in stunned silence. My mother looked confused. My father looked concerned. Someone asked if everything was alright.
The question was almost laughable. Nothing was alright, but I had the tiniest thread of hope I could fix it.
In the end I was alone as I stood in the parking lot and watched the woman I'd spent weeks falling in love with walk out of the parking lot.
I remained there long after she was gone, staring at the empty space she'd left behind and wishing I'd found the courage to tell her the truth before all of this.
The rational part of my brain understood that chasing after her would have been a terrible idea.
She’d been blindsided. She was hurt and angry and had every right to feel that way.
Nothing I said in a restaurant parking lot was going to untangle weeks of omission or convince her that I wasn't the person she currently believed me to be.
Unfortunately, the rational part of my brain was losing badly to the part that wanted to get in my car and follow her anyway. I kept replaying the look on her face. The betrayal I saw that gutted me and was also entirely my fault.
That was when I noticed someone standing in the doorway.
My younger brother leaned against the brick wall beside the entrance with his hands shoved into his pockets.
He must have come outside at some point during the argument, though I'd been too distracted to notice.
The restaurant's lights spilled out around him, turning him into a dark silhouette against the glass.
“What do you want?”
"That looked bad."
“Yeah… It wasn’t great.”
Growing up, my younger brother and I had occupied similar roles within the family hierarchy.
Neither of us had been the chosen successor.
That honor belonged to our older brother, who had embraced church leadership with the enthusiasm of someone who genuinely enjoyed meetings.
The two of us had always been the disappointments. I'd simply been better at hiding it.
"Is that why you've been missing family stuff?"
Eventually I sighed. "Partly."
He nodded slowly. The answer clearly wasn't surprising.
"Partly?"
I looked back toward the empty parking lot.
The cold had settled deeper now, carrying the sharp bite that always arrived in late November. Families moved in and out of the restaurant behind us, laughing and carrying leftovers, completely unaware that my life had imploded fifteen minutes earlier.
"I've been seeing her for a while."
His eyebrows rose.
"A while?"
"Almost two months."
The whistle he let out was low and impressed. "Damn. And she had no clue who your family was?"
"You’re not helping.”
He looked genuinely concerned.
"She's the derby girl, isn't she?"
I stared at him.
"How do you know that?"
His expression suggested I was an idiot. "Because Mom’s been having us followed."
For a second, I thought I'd misheard him. Then I remembered who my mother was. The horrifying thing was that the statement was just plausible enough.
My eyes narrowed. "Please tell me you're joking."
"Well, she’s having me followed, she’s just gathered information on you. You can’t just pull away from the family without consequences."
“This family is so dysfunctional."
Caleb just took out a cigarette and lit it before asking, "You really like her, don’t you?"
"Yeah, I do." The simple answer seemed to surprise him. Honesty wasn't exactly a family tradition. For a moment he looked down at the pavement.
When he finally spoke again, his voice was quieter. "So, what about everything else?"
“What are you talking about?”
“Before at the house. All that stuff about leaving the church and not believing it anymore. Did you mean it?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I did. We talk about love while making people feel unworthy. We talk about grace while deciding who deserves it. We talk about truth while ignoring the damage right in front of us. Everybody knows it. Nobody says it. Don’t you ever get sick of it? Of having to be perfect?” I asked.
He gave a rough chuckle. “I think we both know I’m no angel.”
I cocked my head at him. That was the closest he’d ever come to admitting the drug problem we all knew he hid, because we were right there with him hiding it.
"I can't do it anymore."
He took another drag from the cigarette, watching me.
"I spent years convincing myself there was some version of faith that still fit. Because I don’t know how to be in the church and be true to myself. Which then means I have no valuable place in the family."
As I said it out loud it was like I realized it for the first time. That was the problem. It seems so simple now that I’ve seen it, but when you’re in the middle of it the picture is a mess. I’ve been able to step back and see it fully. Robin helped me do that.
He just took another drag of the cigarette, still watching.
I shook my head. “Never mind. I don’t even know why I’m talking about this to you.”
“You’re right,” he said as stamped the cigarette out on the side of the wall before dropping it into the butt can. “What would I possibly be able to understand about unrealistic expectations? I don’t know anything about letting this family down.”
A look of recognition passed between us as I went over and sat on the bench next to him. “Today fucking sucks.”
He nodded and patted me on the back. “I bet the foods there. You know if we go back in, they will all act like nothing happened and you can just go home and keep ignoring us after.”
It was supposed to be encouraging, but it wasn’t. “I’m not going back in there.”
Then he shoved his hands deeper into his pockets and tilted his head toward the restaurant. "I'll cover for you."
I blinked. "What?"
The offer caught me completely off guard.
My brother shrugged. “If you just want to leave. I’ll cover for you.”
I nodded. "Thanks."
For all his flaws, and there were many, he'd always been the family member most willing to acknowledge reality when it was standing directly in front of him. And the reality standing in front of him was a man who had just lost the best thing in his life.
He looked toward the restaurant before looking back at me one last time.
“You sure?” he asked.
"Nobody in there wants to hear what I actually think either."
“Okay, take care of yourself.”
The earnest expression on his face almost brought the tears back to my eyes, but I took a breath and pushed them back.
“Thanks.”
I headed to my car. Once I was in, I let my forehead hit the steering wheel and those tears I’d been fighting came freely. For a while, I let myself be angry. This was entirely my fault. The worst part was if I wasn’t such a coward, it would have been preventable.
I thought back through the last several weeks and found enough opportunities to tell her the truth that it was almost embarrassing.
The first dinner date. The pumpkin patch.
The telescope date. The dozens of phone calls that stretched late into the evening.
Hell, even the first morning after we hooked up, I could have brought it up, but I’d been too scared she would take it badly.
I had always found a reason to wait. Looking back, every excuse sounded exactly like what it was. Fear. Because I was so afraid of losing her, I'd created the exact circumstances that guaranteed it. And in that silence, everything I'd been too busy to process finally caught up with me.
I thought about the first time I'd seen her sitting at Trixie's in that ridiculous nun costume.
The way she'd looked completely unimpressed by me despite the fact that most people found musicians at least mildly interesting.
But instead, she took every opportunity to laugh at me, from the Tattoos to my terrible axe throwing skills.
Most of all, I thought about the quiet moments.
The moments that never made good stories but made a good relationship.
Robin half asleep on my couch while a movie played in the background.
Or stealing food directly off my plate after claiming she wasn't hungry.
Those were the moments that hurt, because that kind of ordinary only becomes extraordinary after it's gone.
At some point I'd stopped thinking about Robin as a person I was dating and started thinking about her as part of my life.
She had slipped into the spaces between everything else so naturally that I hadn't noticed it happening until it already had.
Every future plan automatically included her.
Every story I wanted to tell had her as the audience.
Every good day felt a little better because I knew I'd get to talk to her about it later.
I loved her. I’d been carrying those words around for weeks too scared to tell her, and this was why.
My phone buzzed against the center console. I glanced down. Mom. Of course. The call rang until voicemail picked up.
A moment later, a text appeared.
Mom: Please come back inside.
I stared at the message. Another followed almost immediately.
Mom: Everyone is asking where you are.
My phone began ringing again. I silenced it and set the device face down on the passenger seat.
Outside, the sun had begun to disappear below the horizon, painting the sky in shades of orange and purple.
Thanksgiving dinner was continuing without me.
My family was probably explaining away my absence.
My mother was almost certainly composing another text.
I couldn’t find it in me to care. They could handle it however they saw fit. I was done.
I started the engine. The familiar rumble filled the car. Then I pulled out of the parking lot and headed home as one thought solidified in my head, I wasn’t going to give up.
By the time I got home, my phone had become an instrument of psychological warfare. I tossed my keys onto the kitchen counter and watched the screen light up for what felt like the hundredth time that evening.
Mom.
Ignored.
Thirty seconds later:
Dad.
Ignored.
Then my older brother.
Then my mother again.
Then a group text.
Then another call.
The thing about growing up in a family like mine was that conflict was never allowed to fester. Every disagreement had to be managed and curated. We needed to get on the same page to save face. I had no interest in participating in that anymore.
I did however open the last message Robin sent me.
Robin: Six o'clock. Pie.
Right now, I was supposed to be decompressing and telling Robin about my day. I was going to come clean with her and tell her the truth, which could have ended this way too, but it would have been better than this. Anything would have been better than this.
Back when we'd both thought we knew what the day was going to look like. My chest tightened. I scrolled upward. Reading through all our old messages. A thousand tiny moments stacked on top of one another until they became something impossible to ignore.
Before I could stop myself, I typed.
Robin, please talk to me.
I stared at the message for a second before hitting send.
No response arrived.
A few minutes later I tried again.
I know you're angry. You have every right to be.
The silence that followed felt enormous.
I set the phone down. Only to just about jump out of my skin when there were three sharp raps on my front door.
I froze.
Was it Robin?
Then I heard my father's voice carried through the door.
"Micah."
I closed my eyes. Why was I surprised? I shouldn’t be. This was on brand for my father. If something threatens to tarnish his curated image he shuts it down, even if that something is his son.
Another knock.
"Micah."
I was not going to do this. I’d said all I needed to say. I didn’t need another guilt trip. I’d had enough today.
Eventually the knocking stopped. He lingered outside for another minute before returning to his car. Only after the engine faded into the distance did I finally breathe.
I picked up my phone again. I knew Robin wouldn’t text me. I knew she would be mad; I’d expected her to rage. I would gladly take it because I know I deserved it, but the silence was worse. Much worse.
Robin wasn't the kind of person who disappeared. If she was furious, she'd tell you. If she hated something, you'd know. The silence made it feel more permanent.
But it wasn’t permanent. It couldn’t be. I would give her time to cool down and then try one last time to explain myself. Then I would stay gone if that was what she wanted.
I couldn’t stop replaying the parking lot conversation again, searching for some version where I said the right thing. Maybe then there could be a version where she stopped walking away.
Sitting back on my couch, I covered my face with my hands. I had really made a mess of everything.