To Build a Home

Finding A Home

Mike knew it was a bad idea to go to Harvey's.

But for whatever reason, that was where his traitorous hands steered his bike to after he fled from Pearson Hardman. He spent the first few moments of the aftershock pedaling furiously, blindly traveling no direction in particular, hoping he could ride fast enough for all the bitter thoughts chasing after him to fall behind and disappear, like vapor floating off and away from a steaming drink and disappearing into the atmosphere forever. It helped a little to give in to the frenzy of his emotions; it dulled the pain of his heart to focus purely on physical sensations—the only sound the sound of blood pumping furiously through his ears, the only sensation the sensation of his legs pumping and his lungs burning, the only thought in mind the thought pedal harder, pedal harder, pedal harder. It drowned out the little voice in his head that was screaming not good enough for Harvey, not good enough, not good enough...

But after awhile, the anger and adrenaline subsided, and with it, his raging energy abruptly disappeared. He staggered off his bike, his legs suddenly shaky and weak, and curled up on a park bench, regretting his Tour de France-like biking pace. He spent a few minutes blinking fiercely at the stars and bravely pretending that he was fine, but after awhile he could no longer deny that that his lips were trembling because he was upset and not just because he was cold, and that his eyes were watering not because of the sudden wind blowing clouds overhead, but rather because of excess emotion. It was then that he finally fully gave in to the tears that he had been fighting back since Harvey had rejected him. He found himself unable to care anymore that he was fourteen and that he wasn't supposed to be crying as he allowed tears to stream down his face unchecked, his breath coming in harsh gasps. He wrapped his arms around his torso in a protective self-embrace because he felt like he was falling apart inside and that if he just sat there without trying to hold himself together, he'd simply disintegrate into tiny, broken pieces that would scatter and drift away like the snowflakes that were beginning to fall all around him, lost forever in a vicious and unyielding swirl of piercingly cold and lonely wind.

When his weeping finally subsided, he came to realize that the temperature was rapidly dropping as his sobs dissolved into shivers. He knew that he should get inside somewhere warm, but the grief coursing through him made him strangely numb to the sensation of the cold and he found that he didn't really mind it all that much. He was oddly tempted to just lie back in the snow and soak in the soothing weight of the silence that had fallen over the world as the snowflakes fluttered around overhead; to allow its heaviness to pour over him and anchor him to the ground and keep him from coming apart at the seams. But Grammy probably wouldn't be too pleased with him if he got hypothermia or frostbite, so he forced his protesting muscles to move into a standing position and he clambered wearily onto his bike and began to ride.

God, he couldn't believe how stupid and naïve he'd been to think that there was a real chance of Harvey actually wanting to take him back in. It had clearly been a lot of wishful thinking on his part over the past few months. He had obviously misinterpreted all of the signals he thought he'd been getting from the Harvey and had subconsciously projected his aching desire to have a parent onto the closest person available. He hadn't taken into account the fact that Harvey probably didn't feel that same gaping hole inside his chest that Mike did; that Harvey probably had no desire to have a son the way that Mike wanted a father-figure...and really, why would he? Harvey was just some 30-year-old guy who was really focused on his career. He didn't even have a wife, so why would he ever feel the need to have a kid—much less a fourteen-year-old kid? He was at a completely different point in his life than Mike and he had completely different priorities.

So he couldn't blame Harvey for choosing his work over Mike—after all, why wouldn't someone as legally gifted as Harvey want to put his work before anything else? Mike knew that he had taken up a lot of Harvey's time and energy during the three months he'd lived with him—he'd needed rides to school; medical care when he was sick; comforting in the middle of the night...the list went on and on. Mike was probably holding Harvey back by distracting him and forcing him to waste his rare spare moments doing menial domestic labor.