Short Stories - Chapter 5: Chapter 5

It was one thing to know that you couldn't hide forever. Michael had long since come to terms with that, and he'd figured that if he couldn't leave Ethan—which he knew he couldn't—he would just have to tell him eventually and deal with the consequences.
It was another thing altogether to realize that the whole reason you'd been hiding was a sham.
When he got back to his room, he opened up his bag and did a bit of digging until he found his photo album. Michael was a sentimental guy, and it was small enough to not take up much space, so he brought it whenever he traveled.
In it were pictures of his favorite memories. Picnics with his parents. The time they took him to Disneyland while they were in California, before the cancer had gotten too bad. The time he won a state-wide speech competition when he was sixteen. And a few pictures of him at the hospital, with Ethan there grinning at his side.
He pulled out his favorite one. A polaroid taken when they were twelve. Michael was sticking out his tongue and holding up a peace sign, Ethan was making as many double-chins as he could.
Michael needed to tell him the truth.
It was scary, because he didn't know how Ethan would react. He should've told him before. But he hadn't, because he'd thought that it would ruin everything, and now he was facing the possibility of ruining everything for an entirely different reason.
Still. It was only right. Ethan had poured his heart out tonight.
The question was, when? Michael couldn't tell him now. It could go either really poorly or really well; if it didn't go well, and Ethan got mad, Michael would ruin his trip.
So he would tell him as soon as they got back.
With that terrifying thought in mind, Michael put the album back in his bag and set the polaroid down on the bedside table. He didn't sleep a wink that night, but he shut off the lights so the others would think he did, and instead spent the night staring at the walls, trying not to let his thoughts fuel his anxiety.
Everyone was gathered in the cabin's main room the next morning, eating cereal and chatting aimlessly.
Ethan came up behind Michael, who was sat on a stool by the counter. "Hey, what's up?"
Michael jumped, startled, and tried to force down the bile that rose in his throat at Ethan's voice. "I'm sorry about last night," he said.
"Don't be," Ethan smiled reassuringly. "I just hope you're okay."
"Yeah, I'm fine."
Ethan struck up a conversation about something or another, and everything went sort of back to normal. Michael was still reeling, but he tried his best to hide it, and if Ethan noticed anything was off, he didn't point it out.
The group headed to the pool out back after breakfast. Which led to a whole new kind of awkwardness, because it was the first time the boys had seen each other shirtless, and they were both too smitten to not get flustered.
"You ever coming in?" Michael asked Ethan, who had chosen a lounge chair as soon as they got out onto the pool deck and hadn't stepped into the water since. He kept having to force his eyes to stay on Ethan's face, which was pretty damn difficult since his torso, seasoned from years of baseball, was right there. Ethan was just one of those guys who was physically perfect. And he was laying down on his chair, with the sun hitting him in all the right places, and Michael felt like a teenage boy watching a high school soccer game all over again.
"Nah," Ethan said, shrugging. "I'm gonna tan." He wasn't even trying to keep his eyes on Michael's face, but he could get away with it thanks to his dark sunglasses. Michael was dripping wet, which was always a plus, and he had a slender, toned kind of body, which was exactly Ethan's type—but then again, everything about Michael seemed to fall under Ethan's type, so maybe he was just so into him that his type kept adjusting to include his characteristics. "I still haven't put on my summer skin."
Michael smirked. "I don't know, I think you look pretty great." Then he turned and left before he could turn red, silently asking himself where the hell that had come from, because he wasn't usually the one to be so forward. Maybe flirting was his brain's weird way of compensating for all the turmoil going on in there—a product of him forcing himself to act normal when just thinking about Ethan made him want to punch himself.
Ethan was grinning as he watched Michael jump into the pool. That boy was going to be the death of him.
The whole day went kind of like that. With Michael accidentally flirting more than usual and Ethan absolutely loving it, because he took it as a sign that Michael really was interested. So Ethan was going to make a move. Tonight. He didn't know how, or where, but he couldn't stand waiting any longer, and even his fears from the night before wouldn't be enough to stop him. Not when he wanted it so bad.
The only problem: he didn't know how to get Michael alone. It seemed that they were only together when they were around other people, and Ethan was classy enough to want their moment to be private. It almost seemed like Michael was avoiding situations where the two of them could end up alone, which made Ethan hesitate, but he figured that was just the nerves getting to him.
That night, Gabby proposed that they all play Truth or Dare. Again.
"Jesus," Ethan groaned. "I swear, I've played these dumb games more in the last month than I did during my entire teenage career. Since when are you all so obsessed? Like, are you twelve?"
"Oh hush," Gabby said, rolling her eyes. "It's fun. And it was Bobbie's idea, so don't come for me."
"Hey," Bobbie grumbled. "You don't gotta expose like that."
"Don't be a buzzkill, Eth," Katie said, and Ethan huffed.
"You're all lame," he said.
"Does that mean you're not playing?" Donny asked.
"Of course I'm playing," Ethan said grudgingly, because he had nothing better to do.
Except for maybe kiss Michael. But Michael seemed interested in playing, so that option was gone.
Truth or Dare was mediocre as usual, and Ethan was sufficiently bored until Laeli's turn came and she, with a big smirk on her face, chose Katie. "I dare you," she said slowly, that smirk of hers—which never meant anything good—growing. "To pick any person in this circle and be the Allie Hamilton to his or her Noah Calhoun. I wanna see sparks. This is kind of an indirect dare," she said, looking around the group and pausing for a moment when her eyes landed on me, "for whoever she picks, too, because you have to kiss her back."
Ethan could just about kill her. It was no secret that his friends all thought that he and Katie should get back together. And Laeli knew Katie would pick him. It was no surprise when she began walking towards him.
Then she sat down if front of Michael, and Ethan's jaw fell.
Poor Michael didn't even have time to react before she pulled him in by the shoulders and kissed him. His eyes were wide and he sat frozen, until someone—Ethan was too stunned  to notice who—yelled "Kiss her back!" Then his eyes squeezed shut and he, to Ethan's horror, followed instructions.
It was one of those things that was so awful to watch, you couldn't look away. So Ethan sat, feeling sicker and sicker with every passing second, watching as his ex sucked face with his . . . whatever he and Michael were.
She didn't half-ass it, either. She kissed him the way she used to kiss Ethan. God, he felt jealous. Insanely jealous. And he wasn't jealous of Michael. Not in the slightest.
What came over him then felt a whole lot like clarity. And, in a weird way, closure. At least he knew now what he really felt for Katie—nothing. He had, thanks to the spectacular person that had so suddenly entered his life, moved on.
It was a wonderful realization, served in the cruelest possible form.
For twenty whole seconds, they went at it. Though Ethan missed those last few seconds, because he got to a point where he couldn't watch anymore and stood up, wordlessly leaving to his room.
As soon as Katie pulled away, Michael wiped his mouth. There was a reason he didn't kiss girls.
Katie looked around for Ethan. "Where'd he go?" She frowned. Nobody was even looking at her anymore; they were all staring in the direction in which Ethan had disappeared.
"He left," Donny said, exhaling through his nose. "Katie, I don't think that was a good idea."
"Actually," a smile made its way onto her mouth. "I think it worked perfectly."
"Trying to make him jealous?" Michael guessed, failing to keep the disdain from his voice.
"Trying and succeeding," Katie said smugly, standing up. "I hope you don't mind."
Michael smiled tightly. "I kind of do, actually."
"Well, sorry," she said without the slightest sincerity. "I'm gonna go talk to him. Wish me luck, guys!" She chirped, crossing her fingers, before hurrying out of the main room.
She came back just a minute later, though, and for once she wasn't smiling. "Michael," she said, a scowl on her face. "He wants to talk to you. He said he'll be in your room."
Michael had hardly moved, however, before Ethan appeared at the end of the hall. His eyes found Michael's, flashing with hurt, but then he looked away and started walking.
"Ethan, are you—"
But Ethan continued straight passed him to the sliding glass doors that led outside, and left.
Michael looked around at the others helplessly. "Should I . . ."
"Give him a minute," Bobbie told him. "I think he just needs to be alone for a bit."
So Michael waited. And waited and waited and waited. Everyone in the living room was silent with apprehension, until Katie stood from the couch and said, "I can't take it. I'm going after him."
"No, you're not," Michael said, taking just about everyone by surprise. Katie blinked at him.
"Excuse me?"
"Just let me handle this, okay?" Michael said, and Katie's eyebrows shot up incredulously.
"You're joking, right?" She scoffed. "Dude, learn your place. I've known Ethan for years."
"So have I," Michael said, and he didn't wait for a response. He jogged outside, and when he didn't find Ethan on the pool deck, he kept walking straight back, like they had the night before. The longer he walked, the more worried he got, but he finally found Ethan in the same spot where they'd spun and danced and talked last night. The flower meadow.
He was sitting on the floor cross-legged, staring at something in his hands. Michael opened his mouth to say something, but Ethan spoke first without ever looking up.
"You should've told me."
Before Michael could even fully comprehended what he'd said, Ethan lifted what he was looking at for Michael to see. It was small, held with only his thumb and index finger. It was the polaroid of them in the hospital.
And Michael could tell, just from Ethan's tone of voice, that he was upset. . "I . . ." he began, but he didn't know what to say. He wasn't prepared for this yet.
"You knew, didn't you?" He asked, finally turning to look at Michael. "You knew the whole time. You recognized me at the park."
Michael sat tentatively next to Ethan on the ground, hugging his knees. "Yes," he admitted coarsely. "I knew."
"And you didn't tell me." Ethan shook his head in frustration.
"I didn't want . . ."
"You didn't want what, Michael?" Ethan snapped, turning to look at him. "I get it, I'm not entitled to anything, but I think I had a right to know. Those were my five years, too. Those were my laughs and my tears; that was my friendship as much as yours. But for the last—what's it been, a month?—that I've known you, you kept all of that to yourself. I mean, who does that?"
When Ethan had first found the picture on Michael's bedside table, he'd initially just felt shock. So much of it that he'd needed to come out here to clear his head. But then that shock gave way to the one emotion that was always easiest to access: a whole lot of anger.
"What's crazy to me is that last night, you sat and listened while I poured my damn heart out to you about—about yourself. About how much I'd loved you. About how much I missed you. About how much you reminded me of you. And you just sat there and said nothing. How long were you going to keep it from me? I deserved to know."
Michael just stared down at the floor, and that only served to make Ethan angrier. "That's not the worst part, though. Keeping the truth from me is one thing. But you straight up lied to me. You told me you were from Indiana. That your last name was 'Dylans'. I gave you my trust and you completely abused it! You sat there and let me fall in love with you all over again without even knowing who you really were! I don't care if you're you, or the president, or Katy fucking Perry! You lied and lied and lied about who you were, and you did it shamelessly!"
"I did not," Michael said quietly, staring at the ground and trying not to projectile vomit after that fall in love all over again bit. "Do it shamelessly."
Ethan laughed incredulously. "But you did it. And it was really, really fucked up. These last few weeks of knowing you could've been the best damn weeks of my life. God, if you'd told me when we first met at the park, I would've burst into tears right then. But you took that away from me. And for what reason? I just . . . I just really want to know why," his voice was softer now, and tired-sounding. "Why did you do that to me?"
Michael took a shaky breath. If Ethan wanted the truth, he'd give it to him. The whole truth. "On the day after my surgery," he said, his voice barely surpassing a whisper. "Your mom came to my room. And when I asked for you, she told me . . . she told me that you—that you hated me. And that you never wanted to see me again. You weren't the only one who was hurt, okay? I've been blaming myself—hating myself—for that damned kiss ever since. So when I met you, I was scared that you," he cleared his throat, "that you would hate me all over again if I told you who I was. And I don't think I could've handled you hating me again.
"So that's why I did it. By the time I realized that I'd been wrong about you, it seemed too late to fix. I was going to tell you, though. Right after this trip."
Ethan's eyes were wide, trained unmovingly on Michael. He had to repeat his words in his head over and over again just to make sure he'd heard correctly. "My mom," he whispered, "Did that?"
But he didn't need an answer. Suddenly, so many things made sense to him. Why his parents never let him go to Michael's apartment as a kid. Why they never let them exchange numbers, why they never got him a phone until after Michael had "died". Why he'd overheard them talking about separating the two that one night.
His emotions didn't change. He was still feeling nothing but anger. Except now he was a hundred times angrier, and not at all at Michael. He shot to his feet and exclaimed, mostly to himself, "She told me you were dead!"
He couldn't believe it. No, actually, he could believe it, and that's what made him so furious. Those people—his own mother and father—had gone behind his back to manipulate the one thing in his life that he'd truly cared about. Not once had they tried to talk to him about it; they'd just worked in the background, right under Ethan's nose, to pull him away from his best friend.
"They used the fact that I was in a goddamn coma," Ethan seethed, wishing the meadow wasn't just grass and flowers, because he really needed a tree to hit or kick or just lean on. "To do something that they knew would hurt me! They smiled at me when I woke up as if they hadn't just done some terrible thing! And for those months and months when I was crying in my room and not coming downstairs for dinner and acting out at school, they pretended to console me over a lie. How could—"
Ethan broke off, because his voice had started failing and he didn't trust it to keep working for much longer. He felt more overwhelmed than he'd thought possible. What had started as a month of secrets had turned into six years of them, and he didn't know what to feel. He turned his back to Michael as he stared up at the sky and tried his hardest to ignore the stinging behind his eyes.
Michael stood up. "Ethan . . ." he said, and something about the gentle, comforting, familiar tone of his voice made everything just about stop around Ethan.
He turned back around and lowered his gaze to meet Michael's eyes, and it just hit him all of a sudden.
Michael had lied to him, sure. That sucked.
But at least he'd been alive to do it.
The boy standing in front of him now was the same Michael Smith who he'd spent nearly every day with between the ages of nine and thirteen. The same Michael Smith who'd made him feel like the most important person in the world. The same Michael Smith who he'd watched laugh and cry and get really, really sick.
A boy he'd mourned for months. A boy he would've given anything to see again. And there he was. Looking guilty and worried and pretty damn miserable. Ethan remembered how he used to hate whenever he looked miserable like that, how much he'd wished there was something he could do to help.
Ethan had wished upon a thousand stars and birthday candles that Michael would reappear someday by some miracle. And he had. Everything else paled in comparison.
Screw the lies. Screw his parents. Something greater than chance had brought Ethan's best friend back from the "dead". He should be celebrating.
Ethan wiped under his eyes as a smile broke onto his lips. He whispered the name, "Mikey," and was hit by a feeling so intense, it was almost painful. He was surprised by how good it felt. By how good he felt, despite the storm he'd been just a minute before. All of that yelling had made him feel like shit—harsh and angry and fucking sad. But just saying Mikey's goddamn name again made him feel like he had finally won some long, tiresome battle. And if something made him feel so good, that could only mean it was meant to be.
Mikey was back.
In that exact moment, watching as Michael Jamison Smith—Mikey—gave that shy, tentative, absolutely beautiful smile of his, Ethan fell. Harder than before. The world held its breath for a moment and just let them feel, and he felt too many things to even describe.
Then everything just sort of sped up. Suddenly they were moving, rushing toward each other, and when they hugged, everything slowed back down again.
The grip they held communicated everything; they grabbed onto anything they could use to anchor themselves to each other so they wouldn't drift away, fingers curling into clothes and hair. They were, in that moment, completely and totally depending on each other, just as they had when they were younger. Five years of falling in love and six years of failing to move on were thrown into one embrace, all at once.
Holding Mikey again, Ethan felt a happiness he'd forgotten he was capable of feeling, one that had been missing for years. It was as uncontrollable as it was unexplainable, and it finally filled that space in his heart that had been empty since he was thirteen.
Then, too caught up in the moment to do much thinking, he leaned back just enough to grip Mikey's jaw and did what he'd been wishing for six years that he could do just one more time. He kissed Mikey J.
His brain caught up with him half a second later, and he was about to pull away and muster up some pathetic apology when Mikey—his person—kissed him back. And he got that exact feeling he'd had when he was thirteen. The one that he'd assigned to Mikey alone, the one he hadn't felt with anyone else since; the warmth and the fuzziness, amplified to a maximum.
Their hands held each other tight enough to almost hurt, but they were scared to loosen their grip for fear that they'd lose that hold again and never get it back. Between them, they shared air and a heartbeat and hundreds of memories.
Mikey leaned his head against Ethan's shoulder. He was breathless—they both were—and they were hugging again, and that was just as good as kissing.
"Hey, Birdie," Ethan mumbled into the top of Mikey's head.
Said boy laughed, and the sound was more emotional than any words could have been. He kissed Ethan again; it was so damn perfect.
Until he stepped back and his heel caught on a rock, sending him stumbling to the ground and bringing Ethan down with him.
"Jesus," Mikey breathed at Ethan's heavy form on top of him. "Lay off the protein powder."
Ethan laughed, propping himself up so he could look again at the person he felt as though he was seeing for the first time. Mikey looked stunning, laying in the grass surrounded by little flowers, glowing from the moonlight and from excitement. Without really thinking, Ethan pulled a bright yellow daisy from the ground and tucked it behind Mikey's ear. He wished he could paint, or draw, or do anything even mildly artistic, because the boy lying below him was a goddamn masterpiece, and he didn't want to ever forget the image.
Mikey bit his lip, but that did nothing to quench his smile. "I feel like I'm in a movie right now," he thought out loud.
"What's the movie called?" Ethan asked.
He thought for a moment. "Two Boys, Ten Thousand Flowers."
Ethan laughed. "I like it," he said, then gasped when Mikey rolled them over so that he was on top and sat up, looking down at Ethan with those baby-blues of his.
"You have the prettiest smile," he said absentmindedly, the fingers of one hand moving to trace the shape of Ethan's lips.
Ethan's grin turned cheeky, and he said, "You have the prettiest face."
Mikey laughed, the sound fading into a long exhale as his expression turned more serious. "I'm sorry," he said. "For lying. I—I was scared and it was stupid and I really shouldn't have."
Ethan nodded. "You shouldn't have," he agreed. "But it's okay, because you're here and alive and that's something I've dreamed about ever since I thought you were gone. I'm not going to throw away a dream just because you made a dumb mistake out of fear. From here on out I'm looking forward, not back. No more 'should have's and 'could have's."
Mikey smiled and averted his gaze downward. It was too dark to really tell, but Ethan was pretty sure he was blushing. "That," he said, running a finger across Mikey's jaw. "That's the Mikey Thing."
"Come here," Mikey sighed, and Ethan sat up, propped on his elbows. Mikey held the sides of his face and leaned in closer, and Ethan was tempted to just push that extra inch forward and close the gap between them. But he forced himself to wait patiently, and when Mikey's lips did meet his, he felt all that warmth and all that fuzziness all over again.
Except this time, they moved slower. They took their time. Their last kiss may have communicated that initial joy and impatience and excitement, but this one . . . this one was all those months of crying and years of dreaming. It was soft and a little tentative and really, really necessary.
That was hard to maintain, though, because Mikey was a damn good kisser, and he was kind of turning Ethan's brain to mush. Then again, Ethan was having a pretty similar effect on him. And as always happens when two mush-brained boys are put together, things started escalating a bit too soon.
Now wasn't the time for that though, and they both knew it. Mikey was the first to triumph in the battle for self-control, and he pulled back just enough for their noses to touch, intertwining his hands with Ethan's.
"You know," he said quietly, taking on his shy demeanor again. "I don't think you really realize how much you changed things for me. Those years in the hospital . . . God, they were awful. I don't think anyone can appreciate how terrible it is to live with cancer until they've gone through it themselves. It hurts all over, and you feel so weak, and the chemo just makes you feel weaker, and I just remember sometimes—I sometimes went to bed and hoped that I wouldn't wake up the next morning. But then I would wake up, and you'd come in, and I'd think of how stupid it was to ever want to let the cancer kill me, because if it killed me I wouldn't see you again."
Ethan was silent, but a thousand words pushed at his throat. A thousand declarations and confessions. The part that pulled at his heart the most was the shake he could hear in Mikey's voice, and the glistening of his eyes. "I hate talking about what it was like," Mikey continued, "because I always get emotional and shit, but you need to know that you did a really good thing, talking to me. You changed everything.
"I was in a new state with no friends—and really no chance to make friends because I was in the hospital all the time—and I was sick and my parents were gone a lot. If you hadn't become my friend, it would've been such a lonely experience and . . . thank you."
Ethan reached out and wiped an escaped tear from underneath Mikey's eye. "You thank me," he said slowly. "Everyone always thanked me. But I don't think anyone ever understood how much you changed things for me, too. I learned so much in that hospital. Watching you lose so much and still manage to keep your head up and smile all the time and not give up on yourself . . . even back then I knew that you were exceptional. You were—you are so strong, Mikey."
Mikey leaned his forehead against Ethan's, smiling and crying, as Ethan pushed his hands into Mikey's hair and said, "I admire you so much. And I love you."
Which was way too much for Mikey, forcing him to jump to his feet and turned his back because he knew he was about to lose it.
Ethan stood up and held him close and let him cry into his chest. "Yeah, love," he continued. "Can I just skip the thing people usually do where they don't say it because they're scared it's too early and end up waiting three months? I loved you years ago when we were kids, and I loved you last night when we were dancing, and I love you right now, now that I know who you were and who you are."
Mikey was almost embarrassed for breaking down, but he also really didn't give a damn, because that was everything he'd wished for when he was a kid. Exactly that he'd wanted to hear—and never heard—when he woke up from his surgery.
"I love you too," he whispered. Ethan could have died happy right there.
But thank God he didn't, because he'd never been so excited for the future. "Wanna go inside?" He asked, because he could feel Mikey shivering in the chilly mountain air. "I wanna show you off."
The latter nodded and wiped at his eyes. Tears or not, his smile had never faded, or even faltered. Ethan wasn't sure he'd ever seen him look so happy, and he felt incredible knowing that he was the cause. After everything cancer had thrown at him, he deserved to be really, really happy.
"Hold on" Mikey said. The daisy had long since fallen from his hair onto the floor, and there was no way he was about to leave it. He'd never been one for flowers, but he made a silent vow to himself to always keep this one. So he bent down and gingerly lifted it, holding it up to his lips for a moment before looking again at Ethan and taking his hand. "Okay, let's do it."
Their friends were all still in the main room inside, and it was pretty obvious that they'd been waiting. When the pair walked in holding hands, with Mikey looking like he'd just been crying and both of them looking a whole lot like they'd just been making out, they were met with a lot of silent surprise and wide-eyed looks.
Then Bobbie let go of her tub of ice cream to give a cheer, and like students at a football game, soon the rest of them were cheering and clapping and hooting, too, which made both boys burn red. Everyone except Katie, that is.
"What happened?" Laeli asked eagerly, her hands folded under her chin as she searched for an explanation. "Because this is like, totally unexpected but also kind of not surprising at all, and your girl needs to know how it went down. I want details, boys."
"Long story," Ethan laughed. "Maybe I'll tell you later. But right now, my focus is elsewhere."
Mikey leaned his head onto Ethan's shoulder, and Ethan could feel him smiling.
They joined their friends in the living room, taking a loveseat to themselves and stealing the tub of ice cream from Bobbie. She would've reamed them for that any other day, but she let them get away with it this time because "Us gays must honor each other after such a victory."
Though they were with the entire group, their attention never strayed far from each other. They would whisper between themselves with their heads bent together, sometimes leaning in to kiss and laughing every time their friends caught them.
Mikey chuckled to himself. "You know, I thought you were straight."
Ethan scrunched up his nose. "I'm sorry, are you blind? And deaf?" he said incredulously. "I've been flirting with you nonstop since my dog jumped you at the park."
Which reminded him, he owed Yoshi a doggy cupcake. Or maybe a full on doggy cake. Three tier.
"I kind of forced myself to see all of that as friendly gestures," Mikey admitted.
Ethan scoffed. "Okay. Well, for the record, I'm bi. Which I've never actually told anyone—not really because I was hiding it, but more because it never came up and I didn't feel like telling the world yet. And it's kinda hitting me now that I totally just came out to all of my friends, didn't I?"
Mikey toyed with the hairs at the nape of Ethan's neck. "Yeah," he grinned. "I think you sort of did. Sorry if you—"
"I'm ready," Ethan assured. "I think I have been for a while. I knew they'd all accept me for it."
"What about your parents?"
Ethan rolled his eyes. "I always thought they were pretty open-minded, but clearly they were just hiding their bullshit. But you know what, I'm not even gonna think about them. I'm gonna change the subject, because they don't deserve to get me all worked up, and I'm focusing on you and only you right now. Back to your 'friendly gestures' thing; just know that if anyone else tries to make those friendly gestures on you, I'll throw hands."
"I never took you as the jealous type," Mikey teased.
Ethan grinned. "Only with certain things," he said. "So tell me, how are you now—health-wise?"
"Well, I'm still cancer-free," Mikey said. "And I'm doing pretty well overall. Still have all my hair."
Ethan ran a hand through it, smiling. "I love your hair," he said. "It's darker than I remember."
Mikey blushed. "I still have some issues, and I've got to get a lot of blood work done to make sure I'm okay. But nothing big has happened. I just have to be careful, because I'm at a higher risk for heart problems and such, but I eat healthy and stay away from stress and keep myself fit to avoid that as much as I can. Staying fit is tough, though, because I also still get tired pretty easily, so I've gotta stay in this weird gray area between too much and not enough, and I'm still working on figuring out what exactly that gray area is. But I'm . . . I'm okay."
They were kind of detached from the group, like they were in their own little world. Of course, there were still things that needed to be addressed. Like how their lives would match up after this, or how Ethan would to have some strong words for his parents when he went to pick up Yoshi, or what to do about Katie, who was still silently seething and obviously wasn't done with him yet.
But in that moment, the only thing that mattered was that little world of theirs, where Ethan and Mikey were finally together again, and that was the only thing worth focusing on.
Ethan wasn't one to believe in fate, but it seemed to him that event after event had been pointing him towards Mikey. He had sat close enough to hear Mikey crying in the playroom for a reason. They'd been at the same park, on the same day, at the same time, for a reason. Out of every person at that park, Yoshi had happened to crash into Mikey on his quest for the ball for a reason. Ethan had been on shift when Mikey came in for a tire replacement for a reason. Even Katie's cheating had happened for a reason, because she'd left Ethan free to discover something new. Mikey had kept his secret for a reason—giving Ethan just enough time to realize that he was over her.
Even after everything his parents had done to pull them apart, the world was pushing them together. And who were they to argue with the world?
"You know, I still have your sister's horoscope book."
Ethan pressed a soft, sweet kiss against Mikey's neck. "Keep it."