“You too, Jim.”
Jim walks away into the crowd.
I stand there. Dante’s bag in one hand. The rock candy softening in the other.
Mickey’s neighbor was here for three minutes. He talked about his wife, the yard, casseroles, Mickey’s house, the steps. He stood two feet from me and glanced at me. And at no point, not once, did Mickey turn his head and say this is Benji.
Not boyfriend. Not friend. Not anything.
I pay for the candy and we leave the store. I push him along the sidewalk because I need to move. My body needs to move while my brain processes. I take him across the street to a railing with a view of the pier and we look at the water.
“Hey, are you okay?” he asks.
“I’m fine,” I say. And the word comes out the way Mickey’s “fine” comes out, flat and smooth and containing nothing of what’s underneath. I learned that from him.
Maybe it was an oversight. Maybe the conversation moved fast and the moment passed. Bumping into someone you haven’t seen in months doesn’t always leave room for introductions.
Maybe.
Or maybe two hours ago he said boyfriend in his mother’s kitchen because his mother already knew. The kitchen was private. And out here, on his old patrol route, in front of the man who lives two doors down from his house, the word isn’t safe anymore.
My father left us when I was seven. He didn’t say goodbye. He walked out the front door with a suitcase. My mother and I stood at the window and watched him go. What I remember most is not the leaving. What I remember most is that he didn’t turn around. He didn’t look back. He didn’t acknowledge that we were standing there. We were right there, in the window, watching him, and he walked to the car like we weren’t people he was leaving.
Mickey didn’t leave me. He’s right here beside me. But the not-turning, the not-acknowledging, the standing right there and being unseen — that part feels the same. I’ve been here before. In the window, watching someone choose not to see me.
I don’t say any of this.
“The water is nice from out here,” Mickey says.
“Yeah,” I say. “It’s nice but we should get you back in the air-conditioning. We should probably go.”
We drive back to the Roadhouse and go upstairs. Later that night, he falls asleep with his hand on my chest while I stare at the ceiling and think about his mother’s kitchen. The pride in his voice when he said boyfriend.
Then I think about the candy store and the absence of any word at all for me.
His mother hugged me. She told me to call her Mama Weaver and invited me back. And two hours later, a man Mickey has known for years looked at me and Mickey said nothing. I stood behind his chair and I was no one.
He didn’t forget. Mickey doesn’t forget anything. He chose not to say it and I felt the choice happen in real time and I smiled through it because that’s what I do.
But this one I can’t smile through.
Chapter 36: Mickey
This is our last day. We both know it and neither of us says it until the afternoon.
Benji’s flight is tomorrow at noon. He’ll drive the rental to the airport, drop it at the counter, and be back in Miami by two.
We spend the morning in the loft. Coffee at the counter, side by side. Benji on the stool, me in the chair, our elbows close enough to touch. He’s scrolling his phone and I’m reading the news. The silence between us is the comfortable kind. Except today the comfort has a weight underneath it because today it has a clock on it.
He’s been quieter since the candy store. Since he said fine when I asked if he was okay. He said fine the way I say fine.
Benji’s been different since yesterday and I don’t know why. The visit with Mama was good. Mama liked Benji a lot. I could tell. Benji seemed comfortable with her too. Daddy was okay. Then Pier Park, the candy store. He said he was fine.
I push the thought away. The morning is good, he’s here, and the flight isn’t until tomorrow.
After lunch we go to the deck. Benji kicks off his shoes and puts his bare feet on the planking and tips his head back against the chair.
“I don’t want to leave tomorrow,” he says.
