ISN'T SHE LOVELY | hs

5 | LEARNED WORDS

| HARRY |
Friday 15th July, 2022

"Aht, aht. Eyes closed, sunshine boy. Don't make me blindfold you, 'cause I'll do it."

I'm in a taxi being driven to god knows where along with Ariza, Pauli, Elin and Mickayla; the latter threatening me. Little does she know that it's with a good time, but I'll keep that thought to myself. It definitely isn't friendship appropriate, especially in the company of our other friends, even though I know Micki would laugh her head off hearing it.

I'm also not really in a jokey mood, and I haven't been for the last two days. I've been living with a dark cloud looming over my head since Wednesday morning, no matter how hard I've tried to will it away.

Mickayla got her period. The IUI wasn't successful.

She FaceTimed me with the news, news I knew the second I saw her face. I've seen Mickayla frown only once before in the two months that I've known her: when I teased before the meal that my Mum and sister would be disappointed that she wasn't covered in dried paint like she always is.

I hated seeing it then, and I hated seeing it on Wednesday, too. I knew it pained her to tell me. It pained me to hear.

Immediately, she dove into apologising, first for breaking the news over the phone, and then secondly for the news she was delivering. Mickayla explained to me that she couldn't get away from working on this new commission that she's taken on because of the tight turnaround time it has to tell me this in person, and then she went straight into a string of sorry's that she wasn't yet my surrogate.

Despite my devastation, I cut her off fast. Micki had nothing to apologise for, not the news given over the phone or the news itself. Her work is important, and her not falling pregnant straight away couldn't be helped, either. The statistics were just against us on that part. We both knew it could take three to four rounds for IUI to work, that only few people get lucky after one go.

I wanted us to be one of the lucky ones, though, and I said so to her. Mickayla followed my comment up by saying that we make our own luck, and we'd experience the effects of it soon. It just wasn't meant to be this month, she said, but magic was coming.

Magic was already here, I thought.

Much like the time between the meal and before the IUI, Mickayla and I haven't seen each other much these last two weeks. I've been inundated with editing the band's album as well as running studio sessions for other clients, and she's now out of her creative block and painting more than ever.

We stayed in touch through calls and messages every other day, and we did go for our usual swim one Sunday and chill under the wonky willow tree the next, but they were the only two times that we've been in one another's company since the night the pair of us, plus some of our friends, went to the bowling alley and burlesque club.

Whenever I've forced myself to smile for work-related purposes these last two days, I've cast my memory back to Mickayla belly flopping into the pond, her tongue poking out the corner of her mouth in cute concentration as she focused on the leafy crown she was trying to make for me (one that she gave up on after two minutes) while we lounged beneath the trees, her smiley and sleepy paint-smudged face when she FaceTimed me on Monday at midnight to say she'd finished the lame landscape commission while I was eating a bowl of oats and honey, and the events of that night out. It's hard to pinpoint one stand out moment from that evening, but Mickayla accidentally launching herself down the bowling alley as she took her shot has to be the funniest.

Riot girl still got a strike, and me, Ariza, Elin and Pauli all got to laugh so hard that we cried. I helped her to her feet immediately, tears of laughter down my face while I simultaneously fussed over and assessed her body for injuries. Micki was all good thankfully, and simply laughed as hard as we did.