Micah Johnson Goes West (Get Out, #2)(6)

“Bond with Dane?” Micah asked, pointedly.

Sam sighed. “Okay, that’s a bit of a problem. My brother… well, he’s got his own issues.”

“Yeah, he hates me for a start.”

“No, he doesn’t hate you—” Despite Micah giving him a very sarcastic eye roll Sam pressed on. “Just, he has a lot of stuff going on, and he, well—”

“Hates me.”

“Sees you as something completely different. You’re another me. Dane and I aren’t alike. But now you’re here, you play footy, I am ‘mentoring’ you, for lack of a better word, and he sees you as—”

“A cuckoo?” Micah suggested.

“Huh?”

“Some cuckoos lay their eggs in other nests, and let them be raised there. I’m a cuckoo in another bird’s nest.”

Sam grinned. “That’s an interesting way to look at it.”

“I’m nothing if not interesting.”

“I actually think Dane has more in common with you than he thinks, but it may take him some time to realise it.”

Micah inwardly scoffed at this, but didn’t say anything. His scepticism was probably openly broadcast on his face.

If so, Sam ignored it. “So, we’ll all try a little harder, okay?”

“Deal,” Micah said.

“Shall we shake on it?”

Micah stuck out his hand, and Sam used it to pull him in for a hug and a manly back clap. “Good man.”

“Sure.”

His work done, Sam walked off, grinning, to his flat.

Micah stood in the carport for a while, wondering if he would ever stop lying to people.




LUCKILY SAM’S parents Rhonda and Pete weren’t home, so Micah could escape upstairs without having to endure yet another conversation about what he had been doing with himself that day and how he was finding Perth and did he need anything, etc., etc. Micah knew he most likely sounded ungrateful and brattish when he resented people trying to be genuinely nice to him, but sometimes nice was too much.

He liked being left alone sometimes. Okay, a lot of the time. It was how he felt most comfortable.

He wasn’t lucky enough to escape Dane, though. There must have been a blue moon preparing to rise in the sky tonight, as Dane was actually in the lounge. Sullenly absorbed in his Xbox, he didn’t even look up when Micah entered.

“Hey,” Micah said, at least trying to look sociable and friendly.

Dane grunted in reply.

Micah really wasn’t expecting anything more. In fact, he was expecting a lot less. At least this had been an acknowledgement of sorts.

He stood there for a moment, wondering what to do. Dane was in some sort of shoot ’em up game, and a controller was lying free beside him. Micah didn’t really want company, but Sam had pled for him to be more open with the Mitchell clan. He stepped over Dane’s outstretched legs and picked up the controller.

“Mind if I jump in?” he asked.

“Free country,” Dane mumbled.

It wasn’t exactly streamers and a parade, but it would do.

Micah jumped into the game, his avatar materialising beside Dane’s on the television screen.

“Try not to get me killed,” Dane said.

He had said more to him in these last three minutes than he had in the past week.

“I’ll try my best,” Micah told him.

He also made sure to keep as much room as possible between them. Although he had never said so, Micah could tell Dane wasn’t entirely happy about a known homosexualist invading his living space. Dane was in his last year of high school, and probably still felt the pressure of being a normal heterosexual boy—and as every paper had trumpeted that new Dockers recruit Micah Johnson was living with Sam Mitchell and his family, it was probably all around Dane’s school. Micah could only imagine what was being said to Dane. So he cut the guy some slack, even if it usually exploded in his face.

Dane was so different to Sam—Sam was tactile with everybody, very comfortable with dispensing hugs and casual touches. Dane was in dire need of a stress ball, all tight and with a flashing sign above his head that growled stay away. He didn’t seem to have many friends either—maybe that was a consequence of having a famous brother: you didn’t know who your true friends were.

So all in all, Micah felt a bit sorry for him, even if it wasn’t reciprocated.

“Aww,” said Sam, from where he had suddenly appeared in the doorway. “Look at you two, getting along.”

Dane didn’t look up. He casually blew away an enemy soldier, and his gun’s sight tracked briefly over Micah’s avatar. “Just playing a game.”

“Cool,” Sam said, blatantly ignoring Dane’s not-so-subtle rebuke of any friendliness between him and Micah. “We’re having a barbie for dinner.”

“Surprise,” Dane mumbled.

“Sounds good,” Micah said, to make up for Dane’s prickliness.

“You’re going to join us, Micah?” Sam asked.

It was rare that Micah didn’t join them for dinner, but he guessed that Sam meant he would be there in spirit as well, actively socialising and trying to come across like a normal human being.

“Sure thing,” Micah said, gunning down another enemy.