“Okay, Mickey,” I agreed but only because he was being so strange and it was scaring me.
“And not tough. Kids love this place. It’s nice. It’s big. You love it. And the tub doesn’t suck.”
That sounded more like Mickey so I again settled in and replied, “All that’s true.”
“Yeah,” he muttered.
I fell silent and in doing so, listened to Mickey fall asleep. No brush of the lips. No goodnight.
Nothing.
It took me longer but I fell asleep with him.
Mickey woke me with his mouth on mine, his hands pushing my nightie up my back and his lips saying, “Did a walkthrough. They’re all out.”
Then he kissed me.
Even half asleep, it was a kiss from Mickey so I kissed him back.
And thus commenced Mickey making love to me.
This was a surprise. We had not had any kind of intimacy that wasn’t shared through cell towers for weeks. I thought it would be intense and fast and astounding.
It wasn’t. It was slow and reverent and sweet.
We’d taken our time before. We’d enjoyed each other lengthily and thoroughly. I loved it when Mickey guided it to that, just as much as I loved it when we went at each other like teenagers.
But when he finally let me finish and then I took him there, he tangled us together, murmured “’Night, Amy,” and I again listened to my guy drift off to sleep.
I didn’t sleep myself.
Not a wink.
Because I’d been made love to like that before. Not as good, but Mickey was better with everything.
It had been the night before Conrad left me.
So no, I didn’t sleep.
Not a wink.
*
“Okay, what is your problem?”
I jerked out of my reverie at Alyssa’s question.
She, Josie and me were sitting together having lunch at Weatherby’s. It was two days after Christmas. Mickey and his kids were returning the next day. My kids had ended their rift with their father and went to him the afternoon of Christmas day (as was his turn) and with my blessing had been staying with him since.
So I had been suddenly and unusually alone.
Alone enough to finally come to terms with what was happening.
The last real conversation I’d had with my guy, he’d shared that if what we “went the distance” he was moving his family into Cliff Blue with me.
But it bore repeating, that was the last real conversation I’d had with my guy.
He’d been gone for a week in Phoenix with his kids but even before he left, he had removed himself from me.
And after he left, I heard more from Cillian and Ash than I did from Mickey, not only through their constant communications with my kids via texts and calls, but directly to me (via mostly texts).
All I got from Mickey was such as, “Phoenix is great,” and “Cill kicked it in the flight simulator,” and “Yeah, I know we need to plan our Christmas thing. We’ll talk about it when we get back.”
There were no, “You’d love it here,” or “You should have seen Cill in that flight simulator,” or “Can’t wait to have our thing, baby, love you.”
In fact, there were no “love yous” at all.
I said it when we were disconnecting and his reply would be, “Yeah. Same.”
Yeah. Same.
He was pulling away and I had no idea why.
I focused on Alyssa. “I think Mickey’s gonna break up with me.”
“What?” she shrieked and I saw heads turn and this was probably because Josie added her own unusually loud, “Pardon me?”
“Shh,” I hissed, leaning into the table to do it.
Alyssa, across from Josie and me, leaned back and Josie leaned toward me.
“What?” she repeated.
“He’s pulling away from me,” I told them.
“As it might feel, Amelia,” Josie stated. “He’s an entire continent away.”
“He hasn’t said ‘I love you’ in nearly two weeks.”
“Fuck,” Alyssa muttered.
She got it.
Josie didn’t.
“He may be in company and not desirous of sharing this depth of emotion in front of his friends. You did say they were staying with someone he grew up with, a man who’s a fighter pilot in the armed services, thus a man’s man and with both, his friend might tease him about such things. Perhaps he feels private sentiments should remain private and he hasn’t had a chance to gain that privacy.”
“That would include before he was with his friend Chopper and his family,” I told her.
Her eyes slid to Alyssa, which meant she had no reply to that.
“We talk…about everything,” I shared. “We call each other all the time. We touch base. We keep in the know. He’s hardly calling me at all.”
Josie looked back to me. “He is on vacation, honey.”
“That isn’t Mickey,” I whispered.
She sat back and her pretty blue eyes turned worried.
I pressed my lips together to stop myself from crying.
When I succeeded in this endeavor, I told them, “No matter what, for months, we talk before we go to sleep. We haven’t done that since he left. I asked him about it, him being away, and he says it’s the time difference.”
“They are hours behind us,” Josie said gently. “They could be busy.”
“You love a bitch, you find the time,” Alyssa snapped.
I looked at her.
Oh yes. She got it.