You're a Hot Mess (Peterick)

Chapter Fifteen - Compare and Contrast

I feel the words, the confession, the truth, bubbling in my chest, screaming through my lungs, coming up quick and fast in my throat like vomit. 

But I press pause on it, because this time isn't right. The mood isn't the way it has to be. I'll let fate take this one, and I'll just go along with it. Because there's no right way to do this, not from where I'm standing. 

So I'll leave it to something with a better view. 

"I've got cereal." I answer after what feels like a lifetime. Mikey smiles fondly like he didn't expect me to answer at all. He clicks his tongue and shakes his head at me. "Do you ever eat anything proper?" He pulls the sheets off of him, stepping out of bed in an oversized shirt we bought from a small souvenir shop the time we went to Boston together last summer.

And this summer I went again, with Patrick telling me all about the city as he kissed my neck in a hotel's lobby. 

"I'll have to make you dinner sometime." He decides, stretching again, the outside light illuminating his figure to seem brighter, more alive. I swallow the knot in my throat, thinking about how he'll take that back as soon as he finds out. 

I wonder what else he'll take back. 

Whatever it is, it's his. I won't stop him, not after what I've done. 

"That'd be nice." I say absentmindedly, and he notices the distance in my voice and takes my hands in his, pulling me out of bed, mistaking it for tiredness. "Come on, idiot. Let's go get some cereal." Mikey teases, dragging out the last word in an exaggerated accent, smiling blindingly as he does. 

We laugh, as he pulls me onto my feet, but I can't help but notice that if it was Patrick, I'd be pulling him back to me. 

It's funny how you only start to notice things when someone else points them out. 

He walks backwards, holding both of my hands, down the few carpeted steps, across the bedroom to the door, out into the hall. He goes through my apartment without looking back, and when I tell him he's going to trip over something, and that he better not pull me down too, he yanks at my hands so I stumble forward, bumping into him. Then he just laughs, like nothing matters. 

Mikey wants love and laughter, and I want adventure and heat. We could've found it together, compromised, if we tried. After all, they say that's what relationships are about: compromising things for each other. 

But Patrick and I, we've fallen under the radar, we're ripping up the rule books. There's no rules against doing that. And if there are, they're shredded. At least for us. 

"You don't have a lot of cereal." I blink and we're standing at my kitchen cupboard, Mikey still latching onto one of my hands, his other sifting through my apparent barren cereal selection.

"I did say I had cereal."

"I didn't think that meant one."  He takes out the box anyway, and drops my hand, launching himself up onto the countertop, elbow deep in the cereal box. 

"So," He begins, chewing happily on the food, "What's your plans for today?" He sounds so honest, so naive, and that figures because how could he know? I've only got one thing to do today, and he'll be the first to find that out.