Falling From the Sky (26 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

It’s a lot easier to sleep on these stone mattresses when you’re stressed, upset, and mad at the world. I don’t remember much after coming in last night. I slept to escape reality. Aaron hasn’t come back from Katelyn’s house, and Terrence spent the last few nights with his cousin.

Therefore, I’ve slept all day. I reach under my pillow for my cell phone. No missed calls. No unread text messages. No hope of this ending well.

A knock on the door interrupts my thoughts of Micah. Terrence pokes his head inside and waits for me to motion him in, which is weird anyway since this is his room too. But he doesn’t come inside. He pushes the door open all the way.

“Found someone waiting around outside for you,” he says.

He reaches over and pulls Micah into the doorway. I jump up from my bed. I think this is what it’s like to be in shock – seeing Micah standing in the doorway of my dorm room.

“Micah.” I can’t say anything more than his name.

Micah keeps his eyes on the floor. “I was working up the nerve to call you and ask you to come outside,” he says.

“I think you two need to talk,” Terrence says. He nudges Micah into the room and reaches for the door to close it and leave us alone.

“I’m really sorry,” Micah says, almost panicked. He doesn’t move. “I don’t like being mad at you. I should’ve called. I’m sorry.”

I take a deep breath and sit on my bed. “Come here,” I say. I pat the spot on the bed next to me, and Micah crosses the room and sits.

“I’m sorry I lied to you about the horses…and that I came out here. After that close call with Zach Perry, I knew better. I don’t know why I did. I can leave,” he offers.

His whole demeanor has changed since he blasted me at the mall with his horse lie last night. This is the Micah I know. He’s talking too quickly to really make any sense, but I catch a few words, something about sitting in his truck for nearly an hour and then pacing the sidewalk for thirty minutes before Terrence brought him inside.

“You’re not leaving,” I tell him.

There’s no way in hell I’d let him walk away right now. Not while he’s himself again.

I wait to see if he is going to say anything since he apparently came out here with something to say, but after three minutes of silence, I decide to go for it.

“We need to talk,” I say. Then I correct myself. “Actually, I need to talk. I just need you to listen.” He nods his head but still avoids really looking at me.

“I’m sorry,” I begin. “About everything. It just started with something Brittany said and escalated into this. I’m sorry I got drunk. I’m sorry about Samantha. I don’t want to leave with you hating me.”

He looks at me now and grabs my arm to stop me. “I don’t hate you. I couldn’t hate you, even if I wanted to,” he says. “And this is kind of my fault too. I lied from the very first day, and telling Samantha that her boyfriend sucks was a bit much.”

I stretch my legs out and shrug as a somewhat acceptance of his somewhat apology. “It’s okay. You were pretty accurate with that last part. I suck.”

We repeat the same things back and forth for a while – how it’s my fault, how it’s his fault, how we don’t know how we let things get to this point – but there is no definite conclusion other than it’s our faults, and we fail at life.

“You were right about one thing,” Micah says. “This mattress sucks.”

This is the first time I remember laughing since I laughed at Micah wearing three dozen glow sticks at once.

“Damn it,” Micah says in a quiet voice. He slides his phone back into his pocket. “I have to go. The lady who was working tonight has a sick kid, and I agreed to fill in.”

I nod my head while he stands and digs into his pocket for his keys. I don’t really know what to say.

“Call me tomorrow?” he suggests.

I nod and walk to him the door of my dorm room, which is lame anyway because it’s only six feet from where we sat. I watch him disappear down the hallway and out into the parking lot.

I feel slightly better, but there’s too much still left unsaid. There’s too much he needs to know, too much I need to know, and not enough time to squeeze it into. His extra carousel shift just took away hours I could’ve spent working this out with him, and due to the massive amount of time I slept to avoid thinking of him, I’ll be up all night. But there is one thing I have to do, and there’s no better time than now.

I scroll through the contacts in my phone and select Samantha’s name. It rings twice before she answers. She sounds surprised, which is expected as this is one of the few times I’ve called her all summer. I decide not to waste any time.

“Hey, we really need to talk.”

Terrence is shooting free throws when I walk into the gym. He notices me and bounces the ball against the floor instead of taking another shot.

“You okay?” he hollers out. He holds the ball under his arm and studies me, like he’s trying to read my thoughts.

I nod, although I’m not really sure if I’m okay. I walk over to the bench and sit. Terrence leaves the basketball on the floor and joins me.

“I broke up with Samantha,” I say. “I just got off the phone with her.”

His eyes widen, but he looks impressed. “How’d that go?”

I shrug. “She called me a few names, told me I was ungrateful for all that she did for me, and she said I needed to get over myself and all of my issues because no one was ever going to love me as long as I was fucked up.”

“Damn,” Terrence says. “Those white girls are drama.”

“Yeah, just like Native American boys,” I say. “It gets better, though. After she blasted me and said I was fucked up, she gave the phone to some guy she’s been fucking all summer. So now she doesn’t have to be the bad guy who dumped the kid whose dad died.”

And for some godforsaken reason, I laugh. It’s not even funny. Micah lied to me just because of physical attraction. Samantha has been screwing another guy behind my back. And I’m no better because I lied to her and I hooked up with a guy. If this summer could’ve been any more fucked up, I don’t see how.

“So you and the boy are good, then?” Terrence assumes.

“No,” I admit. “Anything but.”

I push myself off of the bench and pace the baseline on the floor. It sounds like someone else’s voice as I spit out the million things that are wrong about Micah and me – how we’re both guys, how I’m not gay, how I live an hour and a half away, how I’ll never be able to explain to anyone how I feel about him and them be okay with it.

Terrence never moves. He stays planted on the bench and watches me pace back and forth, and I wonder if he can even keep up with the outpour of words from my mouth.

“McCoy, who gives a fuck?” Terrence finally says. “Honestly, does it even matter if anyone understands? He makes you happy, and you love him, and don’t you dare say you don’t because you know damn well that you do. So what if the world doesn’t understand?”

He’s right. I’m leaving in a week no matter what, and I can leave with or without a future with Micah. I know how to walk through things lifelessly and hope everything gets better, even when I know it won’t. It’s predictable, but with Micah, nothing is predictable. Being the “suddenly-gay guy” isn’t something I want to be senior year. The thought of everyone finding out about Micah and me scares me.

But the thought of losing Micah forever scares me more.

“When are you going to see him again?” Terrence asks.

“We’re going to talk tomorrow,” I say.

“But you want answers now, right?” Terrence asks. He knows me all too well.

I nod, and he shakes his head. Then he asks one question. “Then why the hell are you still here?”

Bugs suicide bomb my windshield the entire drive to the mall. I wonder if they realize they’re falling from the sky and meeting doom as they crash and spill their tiny guts all over the glass in front of me. I doubt they think about it. They’re just bugs.

It’s just before eight. Micah still has an hour left before he can start shutting down. I hurry through the mall, doing a better job not running into people than last night. He’s pulling back on the lever when I see him. He turns to sit but sees me and remains standing.

“Hey,” I say to him when I get to the token booth. I don’t wait for him to reply. I hop over the side railing and into the booth with him.

“Hey?” He’s confused, but he doesn’t make an effort to run me off. He just stares.

“I couldn’t wait until tomorrow to talk things out,” I explain. I run my hand through my hair and lean back on the rail, trying to find a comfortable position inside this tiny box.

“I needed this summer,” I tell him. “Not just for basketball. I needed out. I needed something, anything, that could bring me back to life in some way. Nothing’s been right since my dad died.”

He smiles. “I know,” he says. “But if I hadn’t known about your dad and everything, I wouldn’t have guessed how much you were bottling up inside. You played it off well.”

That actually makes me happy. I know I bring it on myself, but sometimes I do get tired of being the kid whose dad died. For once, I’m known for something other than airplane prayers.

“My point is, I can’t just walk away,” I say.

Micah pulls back on the lever, and the horses slow down behind him. He leans over to open the exit gate, but his eyes stay on me. A kid could stay on the carousel for a free ride, and Micah wouldn’t even know it. I have his full attention. A few kids run through the exit while two more enter on the other side of the token booth. Simple Gray Horse is directly behind Micah.

“You didn’t lie about the horses,” I say, interrupting the flow of my own conversation.

Micah turns away from me, pulls the lever again, and then sits on the metal folding chair he keeps in the token booth. His elbows land on his knees, and he hides his face in his hands.

“Yes I did,” he admits again. There’s still hardcore guilt in his voice.

“No,” I argue. “Maybe they weren’t really made for your tribe or this mall or anything else. Maybe they really were just horses. But you found a way to bring me into your world through them, so if they weren’t special before, they are now.”

I sound like a Valentine’s Day card from Hallmark. I don’t like being sappy, at least not out loud anyway.

“I guess.” Micah shrugs and looks back at the horses. “But I don’t know what to do for that last one. He’s just so…simple.”

Simple Gray Horse passes us without a passenger. Every last one of those outer horses has an amazing memory attached to it. Well, maybe not Mohawk Horse. But Simple Gray Horse deserves a chance. I reach behind Micah and pull the lever myself this time. The two kids who were riding jump off and bound out the exit. I flip the switch and kill the lights of the machine.

“What are you doing? The mall’s open for another hour,” Micah says.

“We’re shutting down early,” I tell him. “We have one last horse date, and you’re coming with me.”

He shifts back and forth for a moment, glancing around to see if anyone has taken notice that the carousel is hitting the sack early tonight. I personally think all these little kids at the mall should be asleep anyway, so I don’t feel guilty for closing up shop.

“Where are we going?” he asks. We walk through the food court to the double door exit.

“Your house,” I answer. “I’ll follow you.”

I walk directly to his bookshelf when I get into his bedroom. There’s not a single book on there, unless you count the Xbox game manuals that he has stacked up on the third shelf. His DVD collection is quite impressive, though. He lies back on the bed and watches me.

“So what’s on the agenda for our final boring horse?” he asks.

“We’re going to keep it simple,” I say. I scroll my finger along the DVD cases. “What’s your favorite movie?”

I ask the question but realize I already know the answer. “Never mind. I know.”

I grab
Titanic
from the shelf and insert the first disk into Micah’s DVD player. While the opening credits pop up and I select the first scene, Micah ventures through the house and soon returns with a box of Kleenex.

“I’ll need it,” he says. He makes himself comfortable on his bed. I grab the TV remote as well as the DVD player remote and turn off his bedroom light. I crawl over his legs and position myself behind him.

“Hey,” he says, turning over to face me. “I have a question.”

I nod. “What’s up?”

“You said it all started with something Brittany said,” he says. “I don’t know what she could’ve said to cause all of this. I mean, she barely knows me. She hardly knows Zoey. She spent the night a few times when Zoey was in high school, and she knows I like guys and make the best pancakes ever, but that’s it.”

The pancakes. Those damned pancakes!

“That’s why I believed her,” I say, not making any sense to Micah. “She knew about your pancakes and about Taylor, so I thought she knew what she was talking about.”

I fall back onto the extra pillow. “I believed her because of pancakes. I’m so stupid,” I say, staring at the barely glowing stars on his ceiling.

“What’d she say?” Micah asks, nudging against me.

“That I was your flavor of the season and that you prey on straight guys and try to turn them gay. She basically made me think I was your Taylor for the summer. Your ‘hetero experiment’ is what she called it,” I tell him.

Micah sits up and shakes his head. “That bitch,” he says. He flips on his lamp and grabs my arm, pulling me up to sit next to him.

“You’re not Taylor. You’re better than Taylor. And you’re not some stupid experiment,” he says. “You actually mean something to me, you know that, right?”

Zoey’s voice is in my ear.
Micah loves you.
But he’s not going to say it. Maybe this is his way of saying it without saying those three little words that I just wish he’d say so I’d know for sure that he feels it.

“I know,” I say, nodding my head.

He smiles, leans over, and kisses me. It’s a quick, simple kiss, but it’s the kiss I’ve needed more than any other kiss in my life – the one that lets me know we’re okay, that everything is good again.