Micah Johnson Goes West (Get Out, #2)(31)

Sam stared at him quizzically. “Really?”

“Yep. I’m cultured, me.”

Sam remained loitering in the doorway.

“Did you, uh, want to come in?”

Sam nodded, closed the door behind him, and sat on the end of Micah’s bed. “I should let you know. I invited Dane to come out with us on the weekend.”

“Let me guess, he was chuffed by the invite?”

Sam let out a deep breath. “No. He was not.”

Micah shrugged. “I didn’t think he would be.”

Sam didn’t say anything.

Although he really didn’t want to get caught up in their drama, Micah couldn’t help but feel somewhat responsible. “Why don’t you arrange to do something one day, just the two of you?”

“You heard?” Sam’s tone was one of weary resignation.

Micah didn’t want to admit he had basically been spying on them. “You were pretty loud. Even over Beethoven’s Sixth.” Did Beethoven even have a sixth symphony? He knew the Bittersweet Symphony was by The Verve, but that was pretty much the limit of his symphonic trivia.

Luckily Sam didn’t appear to have much knowledge of Beethoven’s back catalogue either. “Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. But maybe you two need some alone time. You and I, we’re practically in each other’s pockets because of training and games and travel. And although that’s part of our job….”

“Dane probably doesn’t see it that way,” Sam said.

“Nope. He just sees us spending a lot of time together.” Although they were roughly the same age, Micah felt years older than Dane. Maybe it was because he was expected to be—a professional team player, with the pay cheque to prove it—and for a moment he wondered what it might have been like to be a normal teenager. Going to uni, staying at home with his parents, shirking having to mature or take on any real adult responsibilities for a while. Arrested development. That was a luxury denied him.

But it didn’t make him resentful of Dane. It just made him think he was acting like a child. Sam was a pretty cool mate, and by what Micah had personally witnessed, seemed to be a pretty cool brother too. And Dane was risking alienating himself from all of that, just because of a grudge against his brother’s “work colleague.”

“I guess I should do something he likes to do.” Sam was practically scratching his chin, in deep thought.

“Probably.”

“So, I could hang out in his room and listen to crap music with him?”

Micah grinned. “I would think of something else.”

Sam nodded. “Thanks, Micah.” Getting to his feet, he slapped him on the shoulder. “You know, you’re pretty cluey when you want to be.”

“Believe me, I’ve been the bad brother. I can give you plenty of tips.”

“I need tips on how to help the bad brother, not be him.”

“Touché.”

Sam winced. “Oh, god, I just called him ‘the bad brother.’ He’s not.”

“Your secret’s safe with me.” It was on the tip of his tongue to ask about the dig Sam had given Dane about secrets, but it would only give away he had been eavesdropping. Micah did not want to be seen in that light.

“Cool. So let’s see if I can get through this attempt, first. Anyway, you ready to shake your booty later? You been preparing some hot moves?” Sam did some incredibly bad moves of his own, which had Micah in tears. “Okay, maybe I won’t be winning the dance comp.”

“No.” Micah rolled his eyes. “But me? Believe me, Perth isn’t ready for this jelly.”




THERE WAS still a home game to get through, however, and after a couple of weeks of losses they were finally granted a victory. It meant that the boys were in even more of a party mood than they were already, and Micah wondered if Perth should batten down its hatches. Maia was angling for an invite, desperately wanting to get her groove thang on in a venue where the clientele wouldn’t be trying to bed her (and she wouldn’t have a protective athletic boyfriend trying to defend her honour but would ultimately end up suspended from play if he fought) but had been sternly told by Sam that this was a boy’s night out. Institutional sexism aside, she had actually taken it pretty well although she begged Micah for photographic evidence should Sam find himself the object of another man’s attention.

“Not in a make fun of the gays way,” she said quickly at Micah’s look of consternation. “Just, can you imagine Sam in that situation? He would be trying so hard to let the poor guy down gently he’d probably end up married by the end of the night.” At Micah’s next look, she tried to recover quickly. “If that were legal. Oh, okay! I’m sounding terrible. I’m going to stop right now.”

It reminded him of Simon, and how he would innocently put his foot in his mouth at every turn. Maia wasn’t usually like that, so he quite enjoyed seeing her flustered.

Showered and primped for the evening, Micah surveyed himself in the mirror. The very model of a Respectable Young Gay stared back at him. He looked a bit like a wide-eyed na?f, so he decided to mess up his hair a little and undo the first two buttons of his shirt. His smooth chest gave a hint of developing hair—was it actually growing thicker?—and Micah undid another button to show he wasn’t just some other twink.