The journey home was something I couldn’t describe. Familiar city sights blurred, and I felt like I was flying, but at the same time, dragging through tar. My heart cried out for Sam, to touch him, kiss him, breathe him in, all the while my conscience knew I had a lot of explaining to do. Sam was the best dude I’d ever known. He wouldn’t drag me for my medication fuck-ups or having a legit mental health crisis, but he’d be pissed at me for running. For going dark and putting him through another level of bullshit.
I deserved his anger, and I’d take anything he threw at me.
I’d take him any way he’d have me.
The cab was on Dom’s account. I scrambled out of the car and ducked inside. Upstairs, I realised I didn’t have my keys, but Sam’s grandfather had always left a spare hidden behind the ancient architrave.
It was still there.
I let myself in. The flat was quiet and dark; Sam wasn’t home. My heart sank, but I moved through the hallway anyway in the hope that perhaps he’d dozed off on the couch.
He hadn’t.
I went back to the hallway and stuck my head around his bedroom door. His drawers were hanging open and half-empty, charger cables and his laptop nowhere to be seen. With building dread, I checked his wardrobe. His overnight bag was MIA too.
He was gone.
21
Sam
Whitby wasn’t the same without Micah. The precious few days we’d spent here together had erased my entire childhood, and I was adrift without him by my side.
It didn’t help that my parents were shadows of their usual selves too. “Dad’s all right, Mum,” I said. “They said he can come home tomorrow.”
My mum sighed. “Oh, I know, sweetie. I just can’t help thinking about what could’ve happened if we hadn’t been so close to the ambulance station.”
I didn’t want to think about it either. If there was one thing worse than worrying about Micah, it was imagining a world without my larger-than-life father filling it up. Lucky for him, medical technology was advanced enough that he could have decades more if he laid off the chips and booze.
Back at the house, I threw the chip pan away and ordered an air fryer off Amazon. Then I kissed my mum goodbye and left for the train station. I’d been gone three days. Now I knew my dad would be okay, I had to get home.
I caught a late train and sat in an empty carriage, staring out of the window. It was Sunday night, not that the day meant anything. I usually worked until it was time to go home and eat supper with Micah, but somehow we’d lost touch with our normal, and I had no fucking clue where he was. If he was okay. I’d stopped calling when I’d made the mad dash for Whitby. Then my phone service had gone down for maintenance, so I didn’t know if he’d tried to call me. My phone was dead now, and the masochist in me left it that way. Not knowing seemed better than knowing, until I was stuck on a train for four hours. Then it was absolute torture. The chances of Micah calling me were slim to none, butwhat if, what if, what if?
What if he needed me?
Cynically, I had to argue that if he needed me, he’d never have left, but if I was right about his medication, then he probably had no idea what he needed. But what if I was wrong? What if he’d come off his medication under medical guidance and all that had happened was he’d realised he didn’t love me after all.
Yeah. Way to make it all about you.
Selfish prick.
My maudlin thoughts kept me company all the way back to London, and I felt weighted to the grimy seat. Too tired to be awake, and yet too wired to sleep.Micah, Micah, Micah. I didn’t know how I was going to face my empty flat. Being away had gifted me the perspective I’d needed to contemplate the possibility that Micah really might’ve walked away forever, but I was no closer to accepting it. How could I when I didn’t truly know why he’d left?
I’d come full circle on it a dozen times and considered calling Céleste, but if she wasn’t bored of my Micah angst by now, she was superhuman. I was a book that deserved a one-star DNF.
The train pulled into King’s Cross. I was still the only soul in the carriage, and I stepped off in a daze. I was fifteen minutes from home, but it still seemed as if I had a lifetime to live before I got there. And it wasn’t a journey I wanted to make. I didn’t want to go home. The flat was barren and cruel without Micah, and after three days of angsting over my dad, I couldn’t face it.I need to get drunk.
King’s Cross was awash with shifty boozers. I found the nearest one and took a lonely pint to a quiet corner.
It didn’t touch the sides. I ordered a double whisky and Coke and forced myself to sip it while I plugged my phone into a nearby socket. The phone booted up, then settled itself into a software update I’d been dodging for months.
With a heavy sigh, I picked up my drink and glanced around the bar. Was it my imagination, or were people staring at me? Not openly, of course. This was London, not Whitby where Yorkshire folk had outright asked me if I was “shagging that bender Man City player” despite the fact that it had been two years since Micah had left Manchester, and he’d been playing in London when he’d been outed.
Still, I had eyes on me nonetheless and buried myself in my phone as soon as it flashed to life, not that there was much to see. My emails were dull as mince, and I was too scared of social media to deal with Facebook for long. My usual go-to for killing time on my phone was the app forThe Guardian. It gave me sanctuary until I came to a think piece on celebrity privacy. Sighing again, I tossed my phone on the table and downed my drink.
I got up and ordered another, leaving my phone on the table, fresh out of fucks if someone stole it or my bag with my whole life—minus Micah—stuffed inside.
No one stole anything, and the phone flashed as I returned to my table.
