Two sides of the same coin//Gallavich

33: Reminiscing

IAN
Sitting on the porch and looking up at the moon had become something I did every night. Sometimes I'd light the fire pit near the shed, and sometimes I'd just sit on the porch in the darkness and stare up at the night sky. This activity seemed to calm me down.

"Hey, what happened to Svetlana?" I asked as a Mickey joined me on the porch.

"I may or may not have let the police know about her and her situation..." Mickey smiled as he sat down.

"Jesus Christ, Mick. Don't you think that's a little harsh, even for your standards?" I asked, sighing.

"Bitch had it comin'. If she really thought that I'd help her after everything she did to me, to you, to us, she's fuckin' stupid." Mickey smirked as we looked up at the moon.

"After everything that's happened, how the fuck did we end up here? I'm able to walk again after being paralysed. You got married and divorced. We are truely fucked." I laughed.

"That's not even the worst of it. But I guess we are. We are in some ways, the Walmart version of Romeo and Juliet." Mickey explained.

"Did you, Mickey Milkovich, just compare you and me to Shakespeare's most infamous couple?" I looked at Mickey, who rolled his eyes.

"Excuse me, I may not have graduated from High School, but I do know a thing or two about English." Mickey smiled.

"What? How?" I asked, confused.

"There was a time before you came along that I was forced to study with Mandy." Mickey reminded me.

As we sat on the porch, a song popped into my head. I don't know where it came from, or where I had heard it, but it came out of nowhere.

"We get high in backseats of cars. We break into mobile homes." I sang, watching as a Mickey looked at me with confusion, then with a smile on his face.

"You fuckin' kidding me?" He laughed as he rolled his eyes. I looked at him, waiting for him to continue.

"We go to sleep to shake appeal. Never wake up on our own." Mickey gave in and started singing, a smile still plastered on his face.

"That's the way we get by, to the way we get by. All that's the way we get by, to the way we get by." Mickey and I sang, our hands intertwining as he put his head on my shoulder.

"We go out in stormy weather. We rarely practice discern." Mandy sang as she opened the back door, a beer in her hands. She sat down next to me, looking up at the moon. She handed me a beer.

"We make love to some weird sin. We seek out the taciturn." We watched as Carl exited the house, a bunch of sticks and other nature shit. He walked over to the fire pit and chucked it in, lighting it using a match.

"And that's the way we get by, to the way we get by. All that's the way we get by, to the way we get by. That's the way we get by." Carl kept singing as he looked at the fire, seemingly hypnotised by the light.

"To the way we get by, to the way. That's the way we get by. That's the way we get by." Fiona laughed as she opened the door, a few newspapers in her hand, ready to help Carl keep the fire going.

"We found a new kind of dance in a magazine. Tried it out, it's like nothing you ever seen." Debbie sung, coming outside.

"You sweet talk like a cop and you know it. You bought a new bag of pot, said let's make a new start. And that's the way to my heart, to the way to my heart." Liam followed her as he sang along.

"That's the way we get by, to the way we get by. All that's the way we get by, to the way we get by. That's the way we get by, to the way we get by, to the way. That's the way we get by. That's the way we get by." Lip was the last Gallagher child to exit the house. By now, everyone had sung part of the song.

Mickey's head was still on my shoulder and our hands were still intertwined. Mandy had lit a cigarette. Fiona was keeping Liam a safe distance from the fire. Lip was on the bottom step of the stairs leading to the back porch. Debbie and Carl were sitting on the garden chairs.

"I love you, Ian." Mickey whispered to me as he smiled.

"I love you too, Mickey." I places a kiss on Mickey's lips, feeling him kiss me back.