Micah Johnson Goes West (Get Out, #2)
Sean Kennedy
For Perth. You’re no Melbourne, but you’re okay.
Prologue
MICAH JOHNSON hadn’t wanted anybody to come and see him off at the airport. It would have been too much. It probably would have ended with him crying and telling his parents not to let him go as if he was eight years old, not eighteen.
But it was too late for that. There was nothing his parents could have done about it, anyway.
It’s not like Micah couldn’t have refused the draft, but everybody—his parents, Joanne and Rick; his little brother, Alex; his mentor, Declan Tyler—knew he would be stupid to do it as he had been working towards this his whole life. His dream had been made a reality, and he was now dreading it.
Micah sat, all alone, despite being surrounded by people. The plane to Perth was fully booked out, and everybody else looked happy to be going there. They were going home, or on holiday, or maybe just going for a short business trip knowing they would be going back to Melbourne soon.
For Micah, it wasn’t so simple.
Perth, a place he had never been to, had been little more to him than the home of the West Coast Eagles and the Fremantle Dockers, and vaguely remembered as somewhere that was blisteringly hot in the summer and always about fifteen degrees hotter than Melbourne—even in winter—whenever he watched the weather report.
Now it was his home. Micah had been drafted by the Fremantle Dockers. He had been given one day between getting drafted and having to move to Perth in order to start training with his new team. He had even used his new Dockers bag as his hand luggage because he didn’t have any of his own. He had never allowed himself to think he was going to have to move to the opposite side of the country; he’d been so positive he would be drafted by a Victorian team.
But despite that belief, he was now going to be meeting his new “foster family” at the other end of his plane ride. It was policy now with most teams that interstate recruits had to live with a family associated with their club in some way to try and help them adjust to their new city, and their new life as an official Australian Football League player.
For Micah, it wasn’t just any family. He was actually going to live with another Dockers player. Sam Mitchell was often talked up as being future captain material. He still lived with his parents, although in a house he himself had bought. Sam and his girlfriend, Maia, had their own “granny flat” out in the backyard, while his parents and his younger brother lived in the main house, where a room was waiting for Micah. Apparently they had been ready to take on any rookie, but were “thrilled” to be getting Micah. Whatever that meant.
Micah had been told all of this in a series of rushed phone calls on Saturday night, when he was still moping around the house trying not to breathe too heavy in case it started his mother crying again. All of his family were upset, and little was said when they picked over their final dinner together.
“Are you going to see Kyle again?” his mother asked.
He lied and said he wasn’t. But he had already made plans to sneak out and see his boyfriend one last time. Micah knew he didn’t need to lie, but he didn’t want his family to think Kyle was more important than them when it came to his final hours in Melbourne. Better to let them sleep thinking he was still in his bed, envisioning what his new life was going to be like.
But he couldn’t have let things go with Kyle, not after the brief time they had together when his draft details had been announced. They hadn’t even known what to say to each other, although they knew what was going to happen. They had skirted around the issue before. This was it. They were history already. A long-distance relationship was not in the cards at this point in their lives, and they both knew it.
Micah’s parents had lingered in the doorway when they said good night to him, not wanting to break the connection. When he was sure everybody was asleep Micah opened his window and jumped out, grabbed his bike, and rode the eight kilometres to Kyle’s house.
It was in darkness, which meant the formidable Coach Marks, Kyle’s father and a sometimes nemesis of Micah’s at various training camps, had to be asleep.
Micah texted Kyle that he was outside, and a moment later the window to his room slid open.
Once Micah was inside, breathless, facing Kyle, there wasn’t much more to be said.
Afterwards Micah lay in Kyle’s bed, wrapped up in the other boy. They were so close it was like they had fused together.
“Was this a mistake?” Micah tried to keep the fear out of his voice. He was used to making mistakes. He didn’t want to add Kyle to that very long list.
“Not a mistake,” Kyle concurred. “But it makes me even sadder.”
“Me too. Maybe we shouldn’t have met tonight.”
“You mean early morning.” Kyle kissed him. “But then we wouldn’t have had this.”
Even though he knew it was impossible, Micah wanted to extract every promise he could out of Kyle: that they could still be together somehow, that they would wait for one another, that they could still make it work. He had to actually bite down on his tongue to stop it from blurting out.
“I have a present for you,” Kyle said, stopping him without even knowing it. Kyle rummaged under his bed and presented something small and flat, amateurishly wrapped.
“What is it?”