Micah said nothing. He drifted closer to the poster and stared at it. I wondered who had been his first man-crush and then felt like shit. I’d lived the perfect gay life in my teens. Coming out to my parents had been easy, hilarious, even, and they’d had my back ever since. The poster had been a gift from my mum when she’d caught me with a dodgy magazine and a sock. Micah’s parents hadn’t spoken to him since the tabloids had yanked him out of the closet, and however indifferent he acted about it, I knew it hurt. Still. Always.
I poked my head into the room that would be his for however long he was here—somehow, we hadn’t discussed it. Just thrown his clothes in a bag and jumped on a train. And now here we were in my mum’s house.How is this even my life?
Downstairs, the front door opened and closed.
Micah flinched and sucked in a breath.
I found his hand again and gave it a brief squeeze. “It’s okay. They don’t bite. You can hang out up here if you want, though. I’ll tell them you’re asleep.”
“Right. Cos I’m not enough of a wet blanket already.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
He shrugged. “Nothing. Just bitching.”
“So... you’re coming downstairs?”
“Of course.”
Bemused, I led him downstairs to my parents’ cosy kitchen. It had terracotta tiles, an AGA, and an ancient chip pan that my dear old dad was already cranking up.
My mum—Loraine—greeted me with a hug that squashed my bones. “You’re too skinny,” she chided. “And you.” She gave Micah the same treatment. “You kids can’t survive on avocados, you know.”
“I literally can’t remember the last time I ate one, Mum, and Micah hates them.”
“It’s true,” Micah said. “I’d rather have bacon.”
“You’ll like your tea then. Bob’s doing gammon and chips.”
Micah’s face brightened. “With the crispy eggs that Sam makes?”
“Of course. Flaming Nora, you two are so domesticated it makes my heart bleed.”
I opened my mouth to correct her, but the words died in my throat. What was the point? My mum, never one to pick holes in me about how my life was going, had already moved on to the fridge to retrieve a jumbo pack of gammon steaks from the butcher up the road and heave a sack of potatoes from the cupboard under the stairs. I hadn’t been joking when I’d warned Micah about his carb intake over the next few days.
Could he handle it?
Time would tell.
* * *
“Your parents put me in a coma.” Micah flopped on the bed and rubbed his stomach. “Do they always eat like that?”
“Yup. I’m surprised my dad hasn’t had a heart attack.”
“Maybe it’s the Northern blood.”
“I don’t think cholesterol is that discerning.” I ventured further into the room and hovered like an awkward bee, unwilling to leave him alone but unsure of my place in my parents’ spare room. “What do you want to do tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow?”
“Yeah, unless you wanted to go home?”
Micah sat up on his elbows. “I don’t want to go home, but I gotta ask, how long were you planning on staying? You know, before I gate-crashed your great escape.”
I mourned the lightness we’d once enjoyed, when nothing except what we were having for dinner had mattered.How did we fuck this up so royally in such a short space of time?I wished I knew. Giving in to the urge to be closer to him, I sat on the edge of the bed. “I took a week off work.”
“A week?”
