Mikey and the Chickadee

Chapter 13 - Part 1

While lurching through my routine the next morning, I tossed around the memory of the kiss with a kind of detached amusement, as if it had been a dream, even laughing it off as I took stock of my sleepy appearance in the mirror. It really did feel like a dream, and that tiny beach was now a world apart from here. I had been exhausted at the time, without fully realizing it, and remembered very little of preparing for bed once Mikey dropped me off at home.

I thought about work while in the shower, then of my mom, imagining what kind of new occupation she'd be willing to take on, after having toiled for decades in the same place, much longer than I had been alive. She sewed like mad in her free time, read on it and watched videos about it. She had crafted many of her own dresses. I made my way down off the hill to catch the bus (it was a clear, sunny day, and also cold), considering that she must have deliberately avoided paid work as a seamstress for one reason or another.

It took Mikey's absence on the second bus to force me into acceptance. It wasn't that I didn't want to remember. I think it was the smell of him, his quick, hot breaths and the light sweetness in the taste of his mouth, most of all, that pulled acutely at me. Thinking of these things made me ache with compulsion to feel it all over again, the roughness of his face, his tongue testing mine, his dark features closer to me than they had ever been. There was also the way he stood barely over me, so that I had to angle my head back just slightly to meet him.

But I was easily aware that in remembering so much, in wanting it to happen again, my actions and desires did not line up correctly with the path I had chosen. The circumstances were not convoluted. The factor of risk, to my mind, lay in the potential for one or both of us to be hurt when I left. It struck me as vital at this time to affix my longing to the kiss itself, to his physical body, and not to the boy—in general, to an intimacy that was only sexually charged.

It helped that Mikey wasn't on the bus. I thought back to the nature of his appearances before we had ever spoken; he had always been either present or not, without explanation other than having simply left at a different time than I had and catching a separate bus, or driving. Maybe I could now seek relief in the fact that this aspect seemed not to have changed at all. Even after sharing our first embrace only several hours earlier, he'd made no effort to be here now, to discuss himself or his actions. And he didn't need to be. It worked to preserve whatever small but important dissociation we still shared. I felt that holding on to that would facilitate our parting considerably.

Work that day was consuming and ordinary. I had packed lunch in an effort to save money and stood from my desk only a couple of times as the hours droned on.

"Chickadee," Mikey texted as I departed from the first bus home, "I am so sick. I think it's the flu or something. I hope I didn't give anything to you last night. I'm sorry. We should hang out when I'm better."

"Maybe I was carrying it from my sister," I replied. "She said she had been sick. I'll never forgive myself. Do you need anything? I'm nearby."

After walking a half-block my phone buzzed again. "Don't worry. I just need to sleep right now. We'll catch up soon."

As I passed his street I peered down a crowded wall of ancient buildings, making out the white metal railing of his tiny balcony and also the window next to his bed. If he looked out now it would be possible for him to spot me. I hurried on to catch the 40B.

It occurred to me that I would have gladly visited him, completely unconcerned about catching whatever he had. Absurdly, being sick alongside him seemed entirely pleasant; how fortunate would it be for us to quarantine ourselves from the world as we recovered? How much closer would we become? With my selfishness in check, I quickly acknowledged that Mikey should never have been sick in the first place, and I should be happy to give him the solitude he desired to ride it out.