“Give over.” Loraine cuffed me upside the head. “You know what I mean.”
I did, and it was so painfully close to the truth—and yet a lifetime away from it—that I wanted to stick my head in her chip pan. “We’re notdoinganything. We’re friends, like we’ve always been.”
“Doesn’t seem like it the way he stares at you all the time. I wondered if that’s why you’d brought him... to tell us you were together.”
“Nope. Definitely not. He came because he needed a break from the city. You know he’s had a hard time.”
“Does his leg still give him trouble?”
I shrugged. “He doesn’t talk about it much, but he has super bad days sometimes, and I’ve made them worse recently by being a dick about some stuff that isn’t his fault.”
It was as much as I was prepared to admit, but my mum was a mind reader, so they were wasted words anyway. She knew I liked him. Loved him, even. The pity in her eyes as she brewed me hot, sweet tea said it all.
She thunked the mug on the table with a quiet sigh. “Listen, son. I usually keep my mouth shut when it comes to my kids’ lives, but let me say this—”
“Mum, please don’t. Micah’s complicated, okay? He doesn’t—”
“Christ, child. Let me speak.”
I pursed my lips, half-amused by her outrage and half-terrified of her rare wisdom, and nodded for her to continue.
Loraine sucked her teeth and went on. “You’re right. That boy is complicated, so don’t spend however long it takes thinking you know what’s going on in his head. Let him breathe and find himself again so he can find you.”
I’d rolled my eyes so much when I was a kid that my dad had accused me of trying out for the ocular Olympics. As an adult, I’d tried to rein it in, but all that meant right now was that my mum’s words penetrated far deeper than they might’ve if I’d been distracted by being an insolent twat.“...however long it takes...”What did that even mean? That she genuinely saw something between me and Micah that we didn’t? Or that she knew me well enough to guess that I’d screwed things up by putting words in his mouth?
As movement in the den reached me, I realised it didn’t matter. Whatever happened, I was in love with my roommate, and when did that end well for anyone not in a shitty rom-com script?
* * *
I don’t think Micah had ever been hugged so much. For reasons my mum kept to herself, she’d taken to embracing him at every opportunity, often at moments when the rest of the world, including him, least expected it. I also didn’t believe he’d ever eaten or slept so much. For days, it seemed as though he’d no sooner woken up than my parents were feeding him into another carb-induced coma.
When he wasn’t eating or sleeping, I dragged him out to walk in the wind and the rain. Despite him complaining for ninety per cent of the time he was outside, I was pretty confident that he loved it, which was ironic, considering both himandmy know-it-all mother had warned me off making assumptions about how he felt.
With that in mind, on our last day up north, I took him to the pub, hoping a couple of pints of paint-stripping ale would calm the anxious, overthinking monster in my head. “Diet Coke, right? Though I think it’s Pepsi in here.”
Micah cast another wary glance around my parents’ favourite boozer. “Nah. I’ll have what you’re having.”
“You want a pint of Old Peculiar?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“Okay.” I bought two pints and slid one along the bar to him, ignoring the curious gaze of the server. Everyone round these parts knew my parents and likely remembered me, but Micah’s face was probably familiar to them too, and for less pleasant reasons. Unless, of course, they recognised him as the incredible footballer he’d once been. It was goddamn criminal that his ten-year career had been mostly erased by his private life.
Micah ignored the server too. He took a sip of the dark ale in his glass and winced. “Wow. That’s some moody shit.”
I laughed. “This from the man who puts mayonnaise in steak sandwiches? Give me a break.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Everything.”
“Weirdo.”
“Shut up and drink your beer.”
Micah took another braver swallow of his drink, this time without the full-body cringe. Just.
I sighed and led him to a table on the other side of the pub to the one where my parents usually sat. Eyes followed us, and a couple of fellas whispered to each other and tapped at their phones, clearly googling Micah’s face.
