Page 100 of The Wrong Game
Micah shook his head, a shiver running over him as he recalled her. “Don’t get me wrong, she was hot, but man, she was a bitch.”
“That’s some mouth you’ve got on you.”
He shrugged. “I like to curse. I stopped apologizing for it and started embracing it at the age of fourteen. Something I learned maybe well before I was supposed to is that trying to be what other people think you should be is a waste of time. Life is too short to be or do or say anything other than exactly what you want. And in the end, no one’s judgment matters, because it’syourlife you’re living.” Micah’s shoulders lifted again. “Not theirs.”
Something about his words hit me square in the gut, like a punch I didn’t see coming. The words he said were something evenIwas still trying to believe — that I should live my own life, stop apologizing, do whatever made me happy. For most of my friends, that revelation came around thirty or maybe a few years after.
But this kid was sixteen, and he somehow already understood it.
“I can respect that,” I said, turning toward him.
I still couldn’t get over how much he looked like his brother, how much their features favored each other. Maybe it was because I didn’t have a brother or sister to look like, to share those characteristics with. It was such a fascinating thing to me.
“So, was this prom date the same girl he dated in college?”
“For the brief time he was there? Yeah.”
“How do you even remember her?” I asked. “You couldn’t have been more than what… five, then?”
“Four,” he corrected, and something passed over his eyes then, like a shadow or a ghost. “And I remember a lot from when I was younger.”
“She sucked that bad, huh?” I asked with a chuckle.
“Something like that.” Micah watched me for a moment, all humor gone from his eyes now. “But seriously, what are your intentions with Zach?”
I smiled again, but it faltered when Micah’s expression stayed level. “Wait, are you serious?”
“Kind of.” He shrugged. “Look, I know we joke around a lot, Zach and I, it’s kind of in our blood. But if I’m being honest, my brother is about as tough as a bunny rabbit. He’s a romantic at heart, always has been, and I just… I haven’t seen him like this with anyone in a really, really long time.”
I swallowed, wrapping my arms around my middle and tucking me feet up onto my chair. “Really?”
Micah nodded. “Really. I think he knew when he met you that you were different. You grabbed his attention like no girl I’ve seen him talk about before. And now that you two are dating, or whatever it is you’re doing,” he said with a wave of his hand. “I don’t know, I’m just worried. I don’t know much about you, but I know everything about my brother. And I can tell you right now that he cares about you. A lot.”
I swallowed, anxiety creeping in again. “We just started dating,” I pointed out. “It’s not that serious.”
“I know,” Micah said, but he shrugged again. “Doesn’t mean it couldn’t become that way.”
My heart squeezed at that, once again warring with my brain. Part of me was still floating, maybe even higher than before knowing that Zach wasn’t like this with every woman he met. But the other half of me was dropping a leg down, trying to reach the ground again and come back to Earth. It wanted to feel that dirt and grass, to get back to center, to remember why floating is dangerous.
Zach could feel this way now, but it didn’t mean he had to feel this way forever.
I knew that, but it wasn’t something I could say to his little brother. He was too young, perhaps too inexperienced to understand how love could change, how it could fade over time. I didn’t want to be the one to break that to him, so I just nodded and smiled, letting the conversation die.
“I’m just saying, I know you’re the chick, and it’s his job to protect you and all that,” Micah said. “But, he’s been hurt, too. Just remember that.”
I didn’t have a chance to respond before Zach appeared behind me, squeezing between my knees and the seat as he sat back down between me and Micah. Micah gave me one last small smile before he took one of the hot dogs from Zach, and I took the other.
Zach made fun of Micah while he ate the hot dog with a grimace of pain on his face, and I ate mine in silence, digesting it along with everything Micah had said.
All this time, I’d been so focused on me, on not gettingmyheart broken again.
I hadn’t even considered that I could do the same to Zach.
The past two weeks had been blissful, living inside a world where we didn’t ask questions, didn’t think of consequences. The game we’d been playing was over, and we’d let ourselves just have fun, just enjoy being together.
But how long could that last?
If we didn’t talk about what we wanted, about what each of us expected, one of us was guaranteed to get hurt. That was just easy science. Micah asked me what my intentions were with Zach as a joke, but the truth was, he’d lifted a curtain I didn’t even know I was hiding behind and revealed the truth.