Page 37 of She Likes It, Hey Micah
I can’t believe I forgot about her mom. Now I really want to take her hand, but it’s still tucked away. “Is that when she died?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you miss her?”
“I didn’t really know her.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
She smiles, even though she has a great reason to frown right now. “Yeah, I miss her. But I feel like she’s always around. In the sunshine. A voice in my head. In the people I meet.”
She sighs, fiddling with a thread on her dress. “My half siblings and I used to go to her grave every year and have a whole party. We’d bring food and cake and celebrate her life, and even the field behind the cemetery would be full of sunflowers like it wanted to celebrate with us. We don’t get to do that very often anymore, at least not together, but we all try to visit her as much as we can. Sometimes I think she even talks back when I talk to her headstone.”
“I haven’t talked to my mom in months.” I don’t know why I say that. It makes me sound like a terrible son—I probably am—and ungrateful that my parents are still alive. Crazy thing is, they live only a couple hours away from Sun City. It wouldn’t be hard to go visit them, but I can’t even manage a phone call now and then? I think the last time I actually saw my parents in person was a couple of years ago.
Micah reaches over and settles her hand on my arm again. “I know it’s not my place to say anything, but if you want my advice? Don’t waste the relationships you have with people. You never know how long you’re going to get them.”
“Yeah.” I really should try harder with my family than I have the last few years.
“Are you close with your brother?”
But not that hard. I clear my throat, suddenly uncomfortable in my seat. “Closer than I want to be sometimes,” I mutter, even though I know she won’t like that answer. Probably a good idea to change the subject. “What’s your favorite color?”
With a healthy measure of skepticism on her face, she settles deeper into her seat. “It depends on the day, and I like them all.”
“You like chartreuse? Puce? School bus yellow?”
She giggles. “Sometimes, yes.”
“Favorite flavor of gum?”
“They’re all good.”
“If you had to choose.”
“Spearmint.”
I’m not going to think about the pack of spearmint gum I keep in my car at all times. Or the reason I started keeping it in my car. It’s not like Miranda and I ever kissed, but…
I grip the steering wheel tighter. Now I’m thinking about it.
“Favorite holiday?” I ask, cursing the strain in my voice.
Micah curls her legs underneath her, reminding me just how small she is. “Why the sudden interest, Fischer?”
There’s nothing sudden about this, though I can’t tell her I’ve wanted to know everything about her since the day I met her a week and a half ago. She might drive me crazy with her unfounded optimistic approach to life, but I have felt so much lighter since she started texting me. She literally makes it easier to breathe, which is something I will never tell Kale unless I want him to gloat for a month. He’s convinced Micah is my soulmate, which is not only ridiculous but laughably incorrect.
Why would she ever want to be with someone like me?
“Is it so weird that I would want to know you?” I ask instead of answering her question directly.
She shrugs.
When she’s always been so good about being open with her answers, this lack of real response bothers me. Yet again, I wish I wasn’t driving so I could really focus on her. “One bad date doesn’t encompass your entire worth. You know that, right?”
Though she smiles, it’s a fake smile. It’s so different from her normal, happy grin that it almost hurts to see it. “It’s more than one bad date,” she mutters. “It’s all the dates. They never…” She shakes her head. “We don’t have to talk about this.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
