Chapter 10 #3
“No.” I sniffed. “That would be impossible.”
“I called them Huey, Dewey, and Louie.”
At my watery laugh, he looked indignant.
“Don’t yank me, I was seven?—”
“At least it’s more original than Mini Mike.”
“Watch yourself.” He pointed a fry at me, with mock sternness. “Mini Mike is my son. No one gives a shit when guys name their human babies after themselves.”
He had a point.
“I had those ducklings until they died of old age. I was allowed to bring them to school sometimes, and I loved showing them to the other kids. They only shat in my classroom once, and I cleaned it before Mrs. Morrison even knew it happened.”
“You’re a good animal dad.”
“I know.”
“Do you want to be a human dad?”
He thought about it. “Maybe. Baz will need a lot of time to adjust to the idea. He thinks he’s an only child.”
“Same for Mini M?”
Mike popped another fry in his mouth and said around it, “Mini M doesn’t give a fuck. He won’t even notice.”
“I like that about him.”
“Same.” He swallowed. “What about you? Do you want kids?”
“I don’t know. I thought I’d get to where I wanted to be in my career, then decide.” I frowned. “My five-year plan needs to be reevaluated now that things…?.” I didn’t want to say imploded but I couldn’t think of anything else.
Mike swiped another fry in sauce.
The thought of having sex for procreation was unfathomable until I’d had sex for pleasure, true, actual pleasure. I couldn’t contemplate it as a function until I got to know what all the fuss was about doing it for fun.
But that sounded silly, even inside my head.
“Maybe one day you’ll revisit your timeline,” Mike said. “You and an equally fashionable man will pop out tiny fashion sprogs who will know how to hail cabs before they know how to walk.”
“Maybe.”
“Your sprogs will have Gucci loafers and talk about—what was it?—print mixing at the dinner table.”
“Gucci loafers? So tacky! You take that back.”
He said it again and I threw a fry.
He put his palms in the air. “Don’t blame the weatherman for the forecast. I know how these things go. People pair off with their opposite shoe.”
“What?”
“Someone opposite, but not foundationally different. Caroline and Chase are opposites. He’s got a silver spoon stuck up his ass?—”
“I think you’re mixing metaphors.”
He shrugged this off. “—and she’s a messy flirt.
But they’re not different . They both love when Caroline is the center of attention, they like the energy of a big city, and they love their jobs, and bossing other people around.
They’re opposite, but they’re still the same. A right shoe and a left shoe.”
“That’s… actually quite profound.”
“On the other hand, you and me”—he swung his index finger between us—“are not that. We’re two left shoes.
We’re too similar in the wrong ways. Both loud and intense and reckless.
But different in the important ways. You like fashionable people, cities with rats the size of dogs, and sharing every detail of your life with strangers—which I think is fucking bananas, by the way.
I like my small town, and my animals, and being here for my dad.
And getting laid. I love getting laid. So, if I have an opposite shoe—and I’m not sure I do—but if ; then she’s probably a children’s party princess.
And I’ll have to make my peace with that. ”
I didn’t know what to say. The passion simmering behind his words was unexpected. I had no idea that he’d given so much thought to the relationships around him or his hypothetical compatibility with other people. I thought he was just a good-time guy. He said he was a good-time guy.
And just like that, I viscerally hated Elsa. This wasn’t very girl’s girl of me, but I couldn’t help it. I hated all party princesses now, and probably would for life.
“Anyway,” he shrugged, unaware of the lifelong grudge he’d just awoken in me. “It’s getting dark.”
Mike crumpled up the fish and chip paper and tucked it under his arm, brushing loose grass off his knees as he stood. He said nothing more about his shoe theory.
Inside, Mike rinsed the plates that were left in the sink—I realized they were mine from this morning, and I probably should have done that. Guiltily, I cast my mind around for something to do, to show I was trying to help and that maybe we weren’t bad-same after all.
My eyes landed on a mug on the windowsill, and I remembered there was another on the coffee table in the lounge…
and one from this morning that he’d left in the bathroom.
I made him wait as I went around the house and collected every mug, jostling them until they fit in the already full dishwasher.
He smiled in thanks, and as the dishwasher gurgled in the background, he boiled the kettle to make another cup of lemon tea—in a mug that would no doubt spend days sitting where it was discarded.
I resolved that mug-watch would be my responsibility while I was here.
It was something he clearly sucked at which wasn’t hard for me, so I would fill the gap.
It was unusual for Mike to be silent for so long. Unusual for me too. The weight of every half-formed thought I had was like a marching beat on the inside walls of my brain.
Eventually, I screwed my courage to the sticking place.
“Mike, about what happened in the car?—”
“Let’s not, Lyssa.”
I was going to press, but his expression was closed, and he wasn’t meeting my eyes. He finished making us tea and wished me a good night. He smiled as he said it, but he couldn’t hide the subdued air that had settled over him.
Alone in his turquoise kitchen, I slumped down at the table and laid my head in my arms, blinking at the dark sky visible through his curtainless sliding door.
The space really needed some nice floor-to-ceiling drapes—maybe in a nice butter yellow.
I shook my head, trying not to let the decor distract me.
Getting physical with Mike had been my plan to unlock my sexuality and reinvent my public persona. It couldn’t have gone worse—instead of Mike fixing me, I felt like I’d broken him.