Micah Johnson Goes West (Get Out, #2)(55)

That was old Micah. And yes, he had been old Micah before he had turned over a new leaf. So he was doing it again. This was new new new Micah.

Hopefully new new new Micah was here to stay.




HIS ROUND of pills was almost finished, the Dockers won another game, and Micah was starting to feel a little more grounded now that his parents’ plans to move to Perth were firming up.

But there still hadn’t been a message from Pikachu95. And he had been online, because his status showed he was last on four hours before Micah checked for the thirty-second time.

So he was probably getting a taste of his own medicine. This was what happened when you treated people like shit. Karma, etc., etc. Even if he had told Will he didn’t believe in it.

He kept getting messages from other potential hook-ups, but he ignored them all. He was only on this for one reason at the moment, and seeing as he was still within the testing period, he refused to get naked with anybody else. New new new Micah was responsible, smart and safety-oriented. And much more emotionally open with people.

“Dinner’s at seven,” Sam yelled after him as he ran up the stairs to the floor he shared with Dane.

“Sure thing, Dad!” he yelled back to Sam’s laugh.

He had waited to get a shower back home after training. After a game, you always wanted to be clean straightaway, either to get the stink of failure off you or to look like a righteous avenging—and pristine—angel when you went out to bask in your success after a win. But he just wanted to get home tonight. He had showering down to a fine art; in five minutes he was flinging himself onto his bed, clad only in a t-shirt and boxers. Obviously he would put pants on to go down to dinner. He wasn’t that comfortable with the Mitchells.

Scrolling through playlists on his phone, he selected Sia and swung from a chandelier beside her as he checked his e-mails. Nothing that exciting, except for an e-mail from Emma about possible Halloween costume ideas. At the moment she was leaning towards Batwoman, lesbian superhero with fiery red hair. Nothing at all like me, she had written.

No, not at all, he responded. She has money, charm, and an actual love life.

He wished he could see her expression when she opened that e-mail.

Knowing it was hopeless to do so, he opened the Grindr app to see if Pikachu95 had finally messaged him. Flicking through new messages he had received, none were from the guy he wanted to talk to. He deleted them all and went back to the main screen. The rows of men stared up at him, or at least the ones who had faces because many of them were simply torsos. Just about to hit the home screen to leave the app, his eyes focused on the green dot in the first square—which informed him that the torso in the picture was less than 200 feet away from him.

Intrigued, Micah hit the photo to enlarge it.

The torso was slightly scrawny—but with some definition in the arms, which Micah would later guess was probably from all the slamming of doors he did—judging from the one that held the phone away from his body in order to take the picture. But Micah looked past the body to the room in the background. A room that actually was familiar to him now that he had finally gained entry to the most exclusive bedroom in North Beach. Even if he hadn’t recognised the bedroom itself, the poster to the right of the torso gave the game away. Well, the bottom half did—a pair of legs in footy shorts with the words “Sam Mitchell” emblazoned beneath them.

And just like that, the picture winked out. The torso in question had gone offline.

It was like his brain had turned into white noise. Micah threw open the door to his room and covered the hall between their rooms in two steps and just as many seconds. He didn’t knock or pause for any kind of social niceties but burst through into Dane’s room. Dane was sitting on his bed, not even having enough time to hide his phone and pretend it wasn’t him or come up with some plausible story. He didn’t even berate Micah for invading his privacy. All he did was look up at him.

And it looked like his whole world had come apart.

The anger faded, from blistering rage to a dull throb. “Don’t even try and tell me that wasn’t you I just saw on Grindr.”

Dane sniffed. Oh fuck, he was ready to cry. “It was me.”

“How long?”

“How long what?”

“How long were you spying on me?” At Dane’s look of confusion, Micah huffed. “I heard you tell Sam he had no idea what I was up to on my time off. That’s what you were talking about!”

“I wasn’t spying on you,” Dane said. “I just saw your profile and put two and two together.”

Micah’s profile was the ubiquitous torso pic. How could Dane recognise him from that?

Dane preempted him. “I have seen you in the pool, remember? You and Sam barely wear shirts in the summer. All the better to show off your perfect football bods.” There was a note of bitterness in his voice. “Plus, you took the photo in the bathroom. You can see my toothbrush next to you.”

Wow, now he was busted. “Okay, so neither of us are going to be great undercover agents.”

Dane mumbled something.

“What?”

“Maybe I wanted to get caught. I was sick of it all.”

“Why the fuck are you closeted with your family?” Micah couldn’t understand this guy at all. “They specifically asked me to stay with them! You had to know they weren’t homophobic!”