“I won’t,” Mike said, standing. “Thanks, dad.”
He headed for the stairs before his dad could change his mind about wanting to poke at him some more, heading straight for the bathroom to pour the rest of the bottle down the sink. If he left it until morning, there was a better than even chance it’d attract ants.
In the mirror above the vanity, he looked drawn. Twice his age, almost, with dark circles under his eyes.
When he left the sanctuary, he was sure he looked better. Happy, even.
His dad had a way of sucking the energy right out of him. Mike was fairly sure he didn’t even do it onpurpose.
The sight of his old bed at least filled him with joy as he thought about sinking into the ancient mattress, breathing in the clean scent of freshly-laundered sheets, and falling into a deep, hopefully peaceful sleep.
He slept better in Florida than he ever had when he’d moved to Virginia with Rachel. The air was different here.
Without his dad around to constantly make him miserable, Mike would even have been glad to be back. He’d missed his home.
The thought of not having defended Ezra—and Oscar, and Finn, and their partners, too—lingered in Mike’s mind as he undressed for bed. He should have said something. Even if he knew it was going to end in an argument.
Sure, they were never going tohearit, but he liked to think of himself as an ally. If not as an ally—maybe that required more work than Mike tended to put in—then at least as theirfriend. That was what friends were for, right?
It wasn’t fair on them that he hadn’t said something, especially to his own father. It wasn’t too much to ask that he have a sensible conversation with his family about not being assholes to his friends.
Not that he could have had a sensible conversation about it. It would have been more like banging his head against a brick wall. Hell, banging his head against a brick wall would eventually have yielded aresult.
Talking to his dad would have gone nowhere.
All Mike could really do was promise himself he’d do better. For Ezra, for Oscar, for Finn. For everyone.
