“One second, Micah!” I called, scrambling to get up while Julian located his shirt, and we did the entire frantic whispered ballet of two adults who’d been caught.
I opened my door to Micah standing there in his pajamas looking up at me. “I had a bad dream,” he said. “There was a—a thing, in the closet.” He scrubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand.
“There’s nothing in your closet, Micah, it was just a dream.”
“Can you check?”
“Yes, I’ll check.”
“Can Mr.Julian check it?” he added looking past me with hope, even though he could not see Julian was there. He knew.
“Um… well…” then I felt Julian behind me, and Micah looked up with relief and a smile.
“Mr. Julian! There’s something in my room. It’s stupid. I know I’m too big to be scared… but… can you check?”
I stepped back. Julian crouched to Micah’s level. “First thing.” His voice serious, like they were the only two people in the house. “You’re not too big, and it’s not stupid. Everybody gets scared at night sometimes. The darkness makes the brain invent things. That’s normal.”
Micah’s shoulders relaxed a bit. “Do you get scared?”
“Of course. I just learned what to do with it. What you did was right. You went and got backup. That’s the smart play, not a baby play. You understand?”
“…Yeah.”
“Ok let’s go check it out.”
Micah took his hand and they walked to his room with me following behind. Julian opened his closet slowly and let Micah be the one to look to see there was nothing there, and Micah laughed, relieved. Then Julian said something too low for me to hear and Micah laughed again.
I leaned in the doorway and watched, all of it coming up in me at once. I’d come in here to do this. The reassuring,the talking him down, that was my job and I’d just handed it to Julian and stepped back. And Micah took his hand without a hesitation, like the answer to a bad dream was obviously this man.
Something was happening in my home that I had no word ready for. I stood there and watched the two of them at that closet and let myself feel it come all the way up.
He got Micah tucked back in and checked the closet one more time on request. When he stepped back into the hall and found me watching him with whatever was on my face, he stopped.
“What?”
“Nothing. You just— you’re really good with him. You didn’t make him feel small about it.”
“He wasn’t being small. He was being eight.” He said it like it was obvious. “He’s a good kid, Lyss.”
What got me wasn’t that he’d done it. It was how easy it had beenfor him. No hesitation, or performance. He’d just stepped in and been exactly what Micah needed and thought nothing of it.
I didn’t tell him any of that. I took his hand and led him back to my room. I didn’t tell him he should go before morning. I turned the movie off and pulled him down with me, and he gathered me in against him, and for the first time since I’d made the rules I let it stay broken and lay there in Julian’s arms, letting myself feel, without flinching and without guilt, exactly how much further in I was.
26/
i don’t want to be handled
julian
I had been planningthe logistics for days, discarding a dozen approaches before settling on this one. A bow on the hood in a public parking garage was too performative, the kind of flashy display Alyssa would read as too much attention. Telling her in advance also wouldn't work; she'd refuse it before she ever laid eyes on it, the way she refused everything that cost more than she could pay back. So I took the refusing off the table. No decision to talk herself out of, nothing left for her to do but get in a safer car already sitting in her spot. I'd routed around the only objection I saw coming.
But I was done waiting for the day her crumbling Honda Accord left her and Micah stranded on the side of a dark highway. It had already broken down twice since I’d known her. It wasn’t safe.
The first time her Honda broke down and I had it fixed, I'd told her that what I’d really wanted to do was get her a new car. I didn’t, because we were friends and she’d made it clear she didn’t want that level of help from a friend. She wasn't just my friend anymore. The way I saw it, that objection had expired with the title.
I snuck her car keys off her ring. I slipped down to the resident parking garage and I moved her Honda over to one of my assigned spaces on the penthouse level, parked it deep in the corner where the flatbed from the dealership could pick it up for the trade-in. Then I backed the brand-new, deep-black Genesis GV90 Prestige smoothly into her designated spot.
I put the new key fob on her keyring on her kitchen counter. Then I sat down at her island, opened my tablet, and waited.
