Falling From the Sky (22 page)

He nods, like he’s heard this before. “Nanna pretty much lived here to make sure I was okay. She made sure Mom took her meds, and she made sure I had three meals a day. After she died, Poppa B offered to move in, but it was just easier for Mom to move out.”

“So really, Poppa B takes care of your mom more than she takes care of him,” I say.

He nods again. “I just tell people the other because it’s easier. I mean, who wants to admit that their mom is so messed up, she can’t even live with you? Poppa B checks in regularly, and Zoey comes by nearly every day. I’m not completely alone.”

“Tell you what,” I say, hoping to get the words out quickly enough so I don’t change my mind. “We have Mohawk Horse tomorrow, right?”

He nods in agreement.

“Tomorrow, I’m yours. Only yours,” I insist.

Micah bends his eyebrows like he doesn’t believe me. “You don’t even know where we’re going,” he reminds me.

“I know,” I say. “But it doesn’t matter. I don’t care where we are or who is there. I’m yours, and if anyone asks, then yeah, tell them I’m your boyfriend. I figure I’ll have to get used to it eventually anyway, right?”

My face flushes when I say the word ‘boyfriend.’ My heart thumps, and I hear it against my eardrum. He makes me more nervous than when I played in the state playoff games.

Micah throws both of his arms around my body and hugs me tightly. He squeezes me for what feels like two solid minutes before he pushes me back onto his bed and climbs on top of me to kiss me. Micah presses his lips against mine, and in this moment, I know my “one night boyfriend” deal was the right thing to do.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Micah bounces on his heels under the glowing blue sign. For a night club named Toxic, you’d think the sign would be green, but the blue looks better. We’ve waited outside for nearly fifteen minutes, slowing drudging through the never-ending line of people trying to get inside. Zoey texted Micah too many times to count today, and Micah swears she’s taken care of everything. I hope he’s right because I don’t want to have to explain why I’m barely seventeen and trying to get into an eighteen-plus-only night club. The girl checking IDs at the door has turned away half of the people ahead of us. She doesn’t even look eighteen herself – even in her five-inch stripper heels and zebra print mini skirt.

I grab Micah’s arm. “Dude, calm down,” I say.

He remains still for a brief moment before jittering around again. “I
am
calm. You’re the one who’s sweating bullets.”

I start to fire back at him with a sarcastic remark, but his phone lights up in his hand. Zoey is calling. Micah answers and turns his back to me and everyone else, plugging his open ear with his finger to hear Zoey better. The guy behind us nudges me forward.

“ID please.” I look up to see the door girl staring at me, smacking her gum loudly, as if on purpose just to annoy everyone.

“Uh, yeah, hang on.” I stammer like a ten-year-old trying to come up with an elaborate story as to how breaking the living room window with a baseball was a total accident.

I fish through my back pocket and thumb through my nearly empty wallet. It’s not hard to find my driver’s license. It’s tucked in between my debit card and the unwrapped condom Aaron gave me weeks ago when he thought I was sneaking off to see Zoey.

“Micah,” I say between my teeth.

He looks up and realizes my predicament. He closes his phone and tucks it into his pocket, more relaxed than he’s been all night. I stare at him, waiting for him to do whatever magic trick he’s been trained for so I won’t be humiliated by the bright yellow strip on my driver’s license that says I’m under the age of eighteen until this time next year.

“He’s with me, Brittany,” Micah says, stepping around me and tugging on my arm as he moves toward the door.

With another smack of her gum, she says, “Cool. Go on in.”

I follow Micah through an even larger crowd inside. He reaches back and grabs for my hand in the sea of people, and I latch on to him. My comfort level has skyrocketed after Zach Perry’s DUI incident. With him gone, I almost feel invincible. Almost.

“Brittany’s a friend of Zoey’s!” he screams over the music. “Zoey only comes when Britt’s working so she can sneak me in!”

Zoey sits at a table above the dance floor. I try to read Micah’s lips while he glances back hollering at me again. He leads me up the stairs, but this stupid excuse for music that they call techno reverberates throughout my body. I can’t hear a word Micah says. Zoey waves us over to her, and I glance around. No sign of Kyle the Ripper.

“You alone?” I ask her when I sit down.

She shakes her head. “No, you and little brother are here now.”

She stirs a thin black straw in her martini glass before taking a sip. She looks so different without Abby and Jade huddling around her legs. She’s in a low cut tank top showing more cleavage than I ever thought she had. If Micah was a girl, he’d be hot because he’d look just like Zoey.

She orders another martini from a waiter passing by, and being the underage kid who doesn’t drink anyway, I follow Micah’s lead and order a Dr. Pepper.

“Zoey’s favorite band is playing tonight,” Micah tells me. “They’re called Mutilated Arteries. The rhythm guitarist is her favorite, and he’s currently sporting a red mohawk.”

I lean back in my chair and shake my head. “You never cease to amaze me,” I say to Micah.

“They’re the band I told you about whose bus broke down at the mall that time,” he says. “They played some local stuff, and Zoey was instantly in love, even if the guy has a girlfriend. Oh, and they all have weird names. Her favorite dude goes by Corpse.”

Zoey giggles like a little girl. “And he’s obsessed with zombies, so Micah approves.”

I look to Micah who isn’t laughing or smiling anymore. He stares intensely at the dance floor with widening eyes.

“I’ll be back,” he says. He jumps up and literally runs down the stairs before we can ask what’s up.

Micah walks back toward our table with more glow sticks than one person could ever need in a lifetime.

“She gave them to me,” he says, before Zoey and I have a chance to scold him for wasting money.

“You ran off like the building was on fire for glow sticks?” Zoey sounds unimpressed.

“I know the girl. She’s Emilia’s friend, and she thinks I’m sweet,” he says.

He drops the sticks on the table, and Zoey snags a pink one for herself and clasps it around her neck.

“She just wants you to be her gay best friend,” Zoey tells Micah. “You know fashion magazines are starting to refer to the gay best friend as a fashion accessory, kind of like the Chihuahua fad a few  years ago.”

Micah sticks out his tongue. “Thanks for comparing me to a Chihuahua, Zo.”

He then proceeds in wrapping three green glowing bands around each of my forearms.

“What are you doing?” I ask him.

“So you don’t get lost,” he says, smiling that silly Abby smile at me.

I give him a once-over with my eyes. “I’d be able to find my way back to you, I promise.”

His arms glow with purple bracelets, and the pink and orange ones around his neck are equally as bright. He laughs and throws his arms around my neck, clasping two blue glow sticks together behind me. That must have been his suave attempt to get close to me because somewhere between leaning over me and clasping the blue sticks behind my neck, he’s managed to place himself on my lap, arms still locked around me.

Micah stares at me with those sad, questioning eyes, the kind that say he already knows what I’m thinking. “You want me to get up?” he asks.

It wouldn’t matter now anyway. The people at the surrounding tables have already seen him fall into my arms and onto my lap and wrap himself around me. He is actually getting good at that – drawing attention to us as a couple before I can object.

“No, you’re fine,” I say. I wrap my arms around his waist in defeat.

He leans closer so he can kiss my cheek. “I just wanted to be close to you.”

Zoey pushes herself away from the railing and dives across the table to tell us that Mutilated Arteries just came through the front entrance. She talks ninety miles an hour, and her voice is more high-pitched and girly than usual. I’ve never seen her like this, and she hasn’t had enough alcohol to make a Chihuahua tipsy. Her excitement is genuine and almost identical to how her brother acts when he’s on top of the world with emotion.

“They’re about to set up downstairs,” she informs me. “And their new bassist is totally growing on me. He’s adorable.”

“I thought you liked Corpse more than Sketch,” Micah says.

“Oh, I totally do, but the blonde kid is cute. Corpse is outright hot. There’s a difference,” she explains in a way that only girls can pull off. And maybe Micah.

Now I understand why Kyle the Ripper isn’t here. There’s no way Zoey could fall to pieces over the guys of Mutilated Arteries if her boyfriend was here. And no boyfriend wants to hear about his girlfriend’s obsession because he will spend hours comparing himself to the object of her obsession trying to figure out what he can do to make her fall apart like that over him. I’m surprised Kyle the Ripper isn’t growing his hair out to attempt a mohawk yet.

“I need to get down there,” Zoey says. “Like right now, before all the other girls get really close to the stage.”

Micah laughs at her but also scopes out the dance floor and begins giving Zoey directions on the best way to cut through the crowd and stake out a close spot to the stage. It’s obvious that they’ve done this plenty of times before. Micah is routine about it, and Zoey talks about hitting the dance floor for a few minutes to look less like a fangirl or stalker.

“You don’t seem like the dance floor type,” Zoey says from across the table to me.

“I’m not,” I say.

I don’t have an ounce of rhythm in my body, and I hope to God she doesn’t drag me out there with her. I don’t care if I don’t know anyone here or if I’ll never see these people again. I’d rather make out with Micah in front of them than attempt to dance.

“Well, you’re with the wrong guy because my little brother knows what he’s doing on the dance floor,” Zoey says. She reaches across the table and grabs Micah’s wrist. “C’mon.”

Micah shoots me a look, asking for permission, which cracks me up because I have no say in anything he does. I wouldn’t even if I was his boyfriend. I still nod to let him know it’s okay, and he jumps up to accompany his sister under the strobe lights.

“Hey,” Micah’s voice says over my shoulder. I look over at him just in time for him to meet my lips with a kiss.

“You’re not with the wrong guy,” he whispers. He disappears into the swarm of people hurrying down the stairs to catch the next annoying techno song.

Micah and Zoey have been lost in the crowd for nearly half an hour through the mini-set played by Mutilated Arteries. He texted me a few times apologizing for being gone and asking if I wanted him to come back up here with me. I wish he would, but I don’t want to look needy, so I always tell him I’m okay up here and not to leave Zoey alone down there. At least he checks in.

Brittany sits next to me. She’s clearly been living it up between the door and the upstairs of Toxic. What was once a ponytail is now strands of hair falling around her face, like how Samantha’s hair falls after one of her fast-paced dance performances. Brittany spins a thin straw around in her glass Then she picks it up and chugs it before slamming her martini glass down like a grizzly man does with his beer mug.

“I love the way it burns,” she says, shaking her head back and forth.

Her hot pink peace sign earrings jingle while more strands of hair shake loose from her dissolving ponytail. She tucks the strands behind her ear and props an elbow on the table, staring into me. Normally this kind of stare would creep me out, but I’m thankful for the company.

“So you’re dating Micah, huh?” she asks.

I hesitate to answer. I want to explain everything, that he just happened to walk into my life when I really needed him, that I have a girlfriend, and that I’m not gay. But all I hear is Micah’s voice telling me how he wishes I was his for just one night.

“Yeah.” I keep nodding after I’ve already said the word.

“I wouldn’t have guessed you were into guys. You don’t look like the type,” she says.

I wish I could go along with it, but she’s right. “I’m not. Just Micah,” I clarify.

She pulls away from the table, leaning back in her chair and crossing one leg over the other. She’s too tipsy to realize she’s flashing her turquoise panties to the guys at the table behind us, but on second thought, I doubt she’d care if she did know. I bite down on my straw and sip the watered-down Dr. Pepper while I wait for her reaction.

“So you’re not really dating Micah. You’re just another one of his hetero experiments.” The words come out more as a statement than a question.

“What do you mean?” I ask. Now I prop up on the table and stare into her.

“Like Taylor…his ex,” she says. She cracks up at the word ‘ex’ and shakes her head. “Taylor was totally straight. Then Micah came along and decided he wanted him, and he swallowed Taylor’s heterosexuality for breakfast, right along with his chocolate chip pancakes.”

At the mention of the pancakes, my heart drops into my stomach. She knows about his pancakes, which means she knows a little more about Zoey’s kid brother than I originally thought. And she knows about Taylor.

“Taylor was straight?” I ask, although she’s made it pretty clear that he was.

“Completely. Cute little blonde. I guess he just liked the attention. Micah’s good about that,” she says, chewing on the tip of her straw. “I need something stronger than this. I’ll be back.”

She slings her legs to the side of the chair and dances her way over to the bar. The guys at the table behind me whistle at her, and she turns back to blow kisses to them. I want to block Brittany out of my mind, block out all the things she just said, but now I feel like Micah’s playing a broken record, and I’m Taylor’s sequel.

A tray of shot glasses slide across the table in front of me. Brittany throws one back. She purses her lips and squeezes her eyes and then exhales loudly.