“I’m fine, really.” Micah attempted to get past him. “I need a proper shower.”
In fact, he dreaded just how much information Sam might be able to drag out of him. He was an expert conversationalist, and over many a late-night beer, he had managed to coax personal details out of Micah that had taken others years to learn, and often with force. Or maybe Micah had never been plied with alcohol before. Hang on, that surely wasn’t in the dealing with your AFL foster brother handbook! Not with the AFL’s crackdown on any kind of illicit substance.
“You’re not fine.” Sam gently placed a hand on his chest to stop him disappearing.
Oh, God. What if he had been following him? No, surely he wouldn’t go that far.
“I told you, I am.” Micah was sure there was a fine sheen of sweat on his brow, an inescapable sign of obfuscation.
“Are you homesick?”
That was why he thought Micah was acting strangely? Come to think of it, maybe he was partly right. He sure wasn’t acting normal. Or, at least, even normal for Micah Johnson, former tearaway, runaway, and fucker-upper.
Former? That was a laugh.
“Of course I am.”
Sam seemed to visibly relax—as if he thought that was the solution to all of Micah’s problems. “Of course you are. It’s expected. But cutting yourself off from the rest of us isn’t the way to handle it, kid.”
Micah wanted to bristle at the use of the word “kid,” but honestly it coincided with the feeling that Sam was like an older brother so he kind of liked it. It also reminded him of Declan Tyler, and made Micah miss him even more. Sam had to have big shoes to try and fill in for Dec.
“I’m not cutting myself off,” Micah said. “Really. It’s just, sometimes, I need to be by myself. It’s how I deal.”
“Well, maybe you need to change that.”
“But it works for me.”
Sam shook his head. “It’s not. Because you’re still miserable, and nothing’s changing. It’s not just us, here at home, who think it. The chiefs think so as well.”
“The chiefs” was the nickname given to the coach of the Dockers and the other bigwigs who controlled their destinies as if they were some amorphous blob with one distinct personality.
“They have nothing to worry about.”
“They do, actually. It’s not like they haven’t seen this before. And get nervous about what could happen next.”
Micah began to feel irritated. “What do you want me to do?”
“You’ve got to want to do it as well, or else it will never work. You need to engage more. Bond with the team. Bond with my family. Maybe then you won’t feel so alone.”
“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.