Mikey and the Chickadee Ch. 12

"Then what is the right word?"

"I don't know," I said quietly. "But it's like, you didn't even know what the fuck you were hiding. You didn't understand it. Until recently, I don't think you really even believed it was true."

Mikey did not respond to this.

"It's so obvious how much respect she has for you," I said. "She told me you're the best guy she knows. You might think she's passing some kind of judgement on you, but that's just not true."

"I know it doesn't make sense. It's just, if she's felt this way about me for so long, I wish she had brought it up a long time ago."

"Maybe she didn't feel like it was the right time. Maybe she thought it would be too soon."

Mikey sighed. "Fuck. I guess it would have been. I don't know."

We didn't talk for a couple of minutes. Eventually I said, "What do you think you'll do?"

"I have to tell her what's going on with you and me. I owe it to her. And I am so disappointed with how I reacted. I need to apologize for that."

"The way you reacted," I said. "Mikey, don't beat yourself up too much over that. She must know how difficult this is for you. Just cut yourself some slack, okay?"

After a pause he said, "I pride myself in having my shit together. At this point, I don't feel like I do."

"It's okay. I promise you'll feel better soon. You're dealing with this. You've worked so hard to understand it." I took a breath and was met with that yet untouched, synthetic scent of his car's interior. "My god, Mikey, you've come so far in the last few weeks, and your support group isn't exactly-well, it's just not what I had. You have your shit together more than I ever could hope to."

"Yeah," he said, mustering a laugh. "You're not going to convince me of that."

I shrugged. "Fine, don't believe me, then."

"Fuck all of this," he said. A soft peak of mitigation had arisen in this voice. He turned up the stereo and then wiggled the shifter back and forth before selecting a lower gear. The car accelerated firmly and we roared west through the night, toward water.

"This song," I said. "Have you listened to it a much?"

"All the time, Chickadee. I wouldn't miss this one."

In the next moment we belted out the lyrics together: "Life is a secret, death is a myth, love is a fraud, it's misunderstood, work is a sentence, family's a drag, this house is a trap."

I glanced over to see that Mikey drove just over one hundred miles per hour. "You maniac," I said.

"Sorry." The car slowed. "It just happened."

"Where are you taking us, anyway?"

"I'm not sure," he said. "The levee, I guess, if we don't change direction now. This is Paradise Highway, right? Doesn't it dead-end there?"

"It does."

"Is there any parking?"

"There is." Still occupied by what we'd discussed, I thought a moment, touched his arm and said, "Just so you know, she and I talked about it. About you maybe being attracted to me and all that. It felt weird not to tell you. I'm sorry I didn't say anything sooner."

He glanced at me and smiled a little crookedly. "It's okay." He cleared his throat. "I could have guessed. I did guess, I mean."

"She was so respectful of you. I promise she was."

"I know that."

Minutes later we landed by default along the western levee, farther south than we'd previously journeyed, left the car behind and climbed a flight of concrete steps to the top. We still wore our coats, but the air flowing gradually in from sea lacked the biting chill that persisted inland. The ocean, past a ribbon of tall foliage and marshland, slept still tonight beneath cargo handlers and fishing workers, whose vessels emitted faint, scattered dots of light far across the water. Somehow they seemed more distant now than the stars, which shone overhead through a vacant atmosphere.

"There's a beach out there, at the water." I said. "I remember, from when I was a kid. It's just a small patch of sand, after you walk between the bushes."

He followed me down an unofficial trail. The plants grew taller until soon we were deep among them. A pulsating breeze murmured between the branches and vines.

"Are you sure this is okay?" came his low, hushed voice.

"Why wouldn't it be?"

"No reason. Just a little creepy here. If you think it's okay, though..."

Without thinking I reached back for his hand. He offered it to me without pause. As I led him down the rest of the trail I considered that he had never divulged to me this hint of fear or apprehension toward something so concrete, and that it made me want to pull him close, to squeeze him tight at his waist and to protect him from everything by which he had ever felt threatened.

The trail opened up suddenly onto the sand and Mikey appeared immediately back at ease. "Fuck. This is beautiful." His shoes and socks leapt from his feet. "The sand's still wet from the rain earlier. But it feels so nice."

So that I could feel what he felt, I joined him, and we stepped barefoot together over to where silty saltwater lapped at the tiny beach's edge.

"It's been forever since I've been in a place as peaceful as this," he told me.

"Me too."

"I said something awhile ago, about kissing. Do you remember that?"

"Yes," I said. "You won't kiss a guy. I know."

"I can't stand for you to think that somehow-" He caught himself for a moment, then continued. "I never want you to think you're not worth it to me. To try something new, I mean, even though it's somewhere I never thought I'd go."

I guessed what he was indicating by this remark, but did not act. I waited instead for him to make the next move in case he had (unthinkably) meant something different. I didn't wait long.

He stepped toward me in the sand. Never before had he looked so tall. "If I'm reading this wrong," he said, "I mean, reading us wrong, what this is-you should tell me now."

Somewhere far away, my feet froze in the wet grit, but I could not feel that now. With great effort I cobbled together a response. "There's nothing to say, Mikey."

"Then I'm going to kiss you, Chickadee."

I stepped into him and felt his arms surround me. His lips fell with immediacy against mine, and were much softer than I had expected. As the fine stubble of our upper-lips interlocked I shuddered slightly, releasing some small knot of doubt, discovering only in its parting that it had ever been there at all. Mikey cared for me in the same way I cared for him; whatever fixation was shared between us fell cleanly outside the realm of casual play.

I ran my fingers down his cheek, feeling at first the course black whiskers below his sideburns, then a smoothness in the center where they did not grow, and then their return near his chin. Neither of us found cause to shave during the weekend and I did not resent the rawness it lent now to our embrace.

Mikey moved his hand against my cheek as well, felt, evidently, at my similar roughness and broke just barely away from me. Tender and feverishly warm, his lips still brushed agonizingly against mine as he said softly, "The facial hair thing. For some reason I wasn't expecting that."

"Haven't ever kissed someone like me, huh?"

"Not that I can recall."

"Are you okay with it?" I asked.

The earthen dark of his eyes, never before so close to mine-as if our lashes would soon intermingle-reflected perfectly the half-pearl of a moon. I felt a tiny rush of his breath against my lips. "You don't need to wonder about that."

He kissed me again, openhandedly feeling my neck and cheek with redoubled ardor and after a few seconds, our tongues met. I let his slip cautiously over mine and then, for a moment longer, we moved our hands over one another with passion, opening our mouths slightly, moaning softly in turn.

He broke away and held my hands. The moonlight lit a gap between us. He cleared his throat and said, "I want to save something for another time."

I did not know exactly what he meant by this, but didn't dwell on it.

During the car ride back to my apartment I mentioned that my feet were still ice-cold inside of my shoes.

He sent the heat to the floor and said, "Just so you know, I didn't plan to kiss you tonight. I only meant to tell you about Sophie."

"I didn't think you did."

"Okay," he said. "Cool."

I smiled to myself, listening to his music as it trickled through the speakers, and to a dull roar of wind blasting over the slick metal shell of the car as we hurried through the black.