“That is a crime,” Mom says. “Sweet tea should be sweet enough to stand a spoon in, and I’ll send some with Benji when he comes to visit.”
Mickey smiles at her. I’m sitting across the table watching it happen on my phone screen and I have to press my tongue against the roof of my mouth to keep it together.
Why does he make me so damn emotional?
“Benji, don’t you think Mickey is handsome?” Mom says, still looking at the screen.
“Mom, please.”
“I know you do and so do I. I’m telling him to his face. Mickey, you’re very handsome. Has anyone told you that today?”
“No, ma’am. Not today.”
“Well, now someone has.” She turns the phone back to me. “I like him,” she tells me, not even trying to be discreet.
I take the phone back. Mickey’s face fills the screen again.
“Sorry about her,” I say.
“Don’t be sorry. She’s great. I can see where you get it.”
“Get what?”
“The way you just say whatever you’re thinking,” he says.
Mom and I both laugh and he joins in.
“I’ll let you go,” I say.
“It was nice to meet you, Elena.”
“Hope you can come to dinner soon,” Mom calls out. “When you can travel. I’ll make Benji’s favorite casserole for you.”
I hear Mickey say “I’d like that” before I end the call.
“I hope you can find a way to bring him to dinner,” Mom says. “I like him already.”
“I will, Mom. He needs to finish rehab first.”
“Well, I’ll be waiting to meet that young man. But I have a feeling he’ll be around a long time. Now have some pudding before Lori comes back inside and eats it all. That woman has no self-control around banana pudding. She gets it from your grandmother.”
I eat the pudding, hug Mom twice, and drive home with Mickey’s voice on the speaker. We say goodnight at eleven and I fall asleep thinking about the way he said “I’d like that” to my mother.
I wake up the next morning to a text from Mickey that was sent before seven a.m., which means he sent it right after his early morning session with Jason. He was thinking about me while sweating, which is information I will store permanently.
Mickey:Arms day.
There’s a photo attached.
I open it and sit up in bed so fast I knock my phone off my face and have to catch it midair. Mickey is shirtless in a gym bathroom mirror. The overhead fluorescents are cuttingshadows under his shoulders and across his chest like every muscle was carved specifically to end me. His hair is pushed to the side and damp. There’s a towel over one shoulder. His skin is flushed from the session and there’s a sheen of sweat across his chest and his arms — his arms, God, his arms — are twice the size they were in Tallahassee. The triceps are visible. The shoulders are round and full. The chest fills the frame and makes my mouth go dry.
Two words and a photo and I’m destroyed.
I type a text. Delete. Type. Delete. Type.
Benji:MICKEY WEAVER.
Benji:EXCUSE ME.
