“Because of the cheap drinks we’re offering specifically to single people. Face it, honey, it’s a singles night.”
“Yeah, but that’s not what I said to him.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Céleste dumped a bucket of sliced lemons on the bar. “That’s what he heard, andthat’swhat’s pissed him off so much.”
“He’s not pissed off. He’s, uh, busy.”
“Too busy to babysit you like he does every weekend? Uh-uh, babes. That boy is as hung up on you as you are on him.”
“He really isn’t. He’s annoyed with me for interfering in his life. Micah hates stuff like that and stuff likethis.” I gestured around the bar that was usually a traditional London boozer and was now decked out in scarlet sugar paper. “I don’t blame him for picking Freddie instead.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“Nothing?”
Céleste’s hard stare told me that was the wrong answer. I thought again but came up none the wiser. She was wrong about Micah having feelings for me beyond friendship—he was so closed off to the world I was lucky he gave me the time of day in the first place—but perhaps she was right that I needed to do something to fix the weird stalemate between us. Micah could be moody, quiet, and withdrawn, but it had been three days since he’d stayed up late enough to say goodnight, and his bedroom door had remained shut every morning.
I miss him.
I left Céleste restocking the mixers and skulked outside under the pretence of emptying the bins, a job I detested more than the gym. Hiding in the shadows, I fished my phone from my apron and opened WhatsApp. My message thread with Micah was brief. He wasn’t much of a communicator beyond asking me to get some milk on the way home or sending me random memes, and I often found he hadn’t been online since our last conversation days ago, but he’d been active all day... not that I’d looked or anything.
He’s going out tonight, remember? With Freddie.
Of course he was. I swallowed my distaste and tried to figure a banal way to get him to talk to me. Sad as it was, I needed to check in with him. To know he was okay,andto soothe my own anxieties. Weird vibes with Micah were bad for my mental health and clear evidence, if I even needed it, that messing with our friendship was a bad idea.
Sam:... did you eat dinner?
Smooth. Real smooth. I waited a moment to see if he’d come online to read it, but the ticks beside it stayed resolutely grey.
Damn it.Maybe he wouldn’t respond. Maybe it would be the first message I ever sent that he ignored. Regardless, I didn’t have time to wait and find out.
I trudged back inside. Céleste sent me a sympathetic smile—how does she know?—but I blanked her and threw myself into serving the weekend crowd that was growing by the second. The district might’ve been a dead zone, but the Fox knew how to smash a Saturday, and for once I was glad of the rising tide. It carried me until I came up for air a few hours later, and by then, Micah had responded.
In the bathroom, I held my breath as I opened the message.
Micah:yes. did u?
Three words, but I’d take them. I tapped out a reply.
Sam:no, too busy. might get a cheeky kebab later
Micah read the message. And then... nothing. He stayed online but didn’t reply.
I squeezed my phone in a death grip. My brain filled with images of him partying in some bullshit club with Freddie, throwing drinks back, snorting coke, surrounded by leeches. And him liking it. It was a thousand moons away from the Micah I knew, but not the Micah that Freddie knew. That was their world. Micah had stepped away from it for a long time, but he’d never said he wouldn’t go back. Until now, I’d never considered that he wanted to. But what the hell did I know? And what right did I have to an opinion on it?
Once more for the back, I was Micah’s roommate, not his mother.
I abandoned the toilet and went back to work. Another hour passed, and as the knot in my chest grew, so did the snarl in my belly that reminded me I hadn’t eaten all day.
It was a rare phenomenon that I didn’t get around to stuffing my face with something. And hunger—when I had no chance of rectifying it any time soon—always put me in a bad mood. Add-in some heavy Micah blues, and I was about ready to deck the next idiot who thought it was okay to tug on my apron strings.
“You look like you’re about to chin someone.”
“I am,” I answered without thinking before the gravelly voice, not raised in the slightest despite the boom of the crowd, hit home.
Micah. I spun around, half-convinced I’d imagined him, but there he was, leaning on the bar, a foil-wrapped parcel clutched in his hand. “What are you doing here?”
He shrugged. “I know how you get when you skip meals, so I brought you something to eat.”
