“It’s the only head I got,” Mike said, trying for some levity but failing miserably.
“You think you’re funny, but you’re not.”
“Okay,” Mike said.
“I know what you’re trying to do.”
Mike didn’t believe that. He hadn’t said a damn thing to Sean, instead going with the time-honored tradition of taking the coward’s way out. It was better, he thought, to appear aloof than not. Granted, Mike didn’t always have the best plans, or even think things through. He knew this about himself.
“I’m not trying to do anything,” he said.
But Sean wasn’t having it and proved, not for the first time, just how well he knew Mike Frazier. “You’re not too old for me, Mike. I’m not some kid, and you’re not some old man.”
Mike should have known. He really should have. He sighed and stood, turning to look at Sean for the first time since he’d burst through the doorway. “Sean,” he started. “I just—”
“If the next words out of your mouth aren’t ‘Yes, Sean, you’re absolutely right,’ then I don’t want to hear it.”
Stubborn git. Mike could play stubborn too. “You know that’s how it is.”
“No,” Sean said, “I don’t know how it is.”
“Well, you should. I’m too old for you to do whatever it is we’re doing.”
“We’re friends,” Sean said, voice breaking.
That caused Mike to pause, because—had he misread everything? Did Sean want nothing more from him than friendship? That hurt more than he thought it would, a bone-weary ache that made him want to curl in on himself, even though he was trying to argue against such a thing.
“Friends,” he echoed dully.
And that caused Sean’s face to soften. “Yes,” he said. “And we were getting somewhere with it, somewhere more, when you decided to act like an ass.”
That shouldn’t have made him feel as good as it did. He was barely able to keep it from his face as it was. It was relief, really, to hear it finally voiced out loud, even if it was veiled as something more.
And somehow, it strengthened his resolve to keep it from ever happening.
They argued for a while longer, Mike stumbling over his words, Sean growling out his retorts, saying things like It doesn’t matter to anyone in Amorea except for you and Don’t you think I’m smart enough to make my own decisions?
But it was the last thing he said that snapped Mike clean in half. Sean was standing near the door, hands fisted at his sides, mouth set in a thin line. He was angry, angrier than Mike had ever seen him before. His face was splotchy and he was practically vibrating out of his skin.
And then he said, “I took you for many things, Mike Frazier. But I never took you to be a coward.”
And then he was out the door, the little bell ringing overhead in the empty shop.
Mike stood there staring after him for a very long time.
It’d been a week later, at one of the many town picnics put on by the Amorea Women’s Club (also known as the book club, the garden club, and the Keep Amorea Clean Committee—Mrs. Richardson was nothing if not tenacious, and had her finger in many, many pies) that he saw Sean again. Only this time, he was on the arm of a young man by the name of James Cooper, who worked at the cinema as the ticket taker and projectionist. He was blandly handsome and didn’t have a mean bone in his body.
Of course, Mike disliked him immediately on that day, but kept such thoughts to himself. He hadn’t even planned on going to the picnic, but Mrs. Richardson had sniffed at him in that way that she did that relayed how disappointed she would be in him, and how she would be sure to make his life a living hell for at least three days following if he didn’t at least put in an appearance. “After all,” she’d said, “you wouldn’t want to be the only one in Amorea not in attendance, would you? Why, the thought alone is enough to make me think you’re of a miserly sort. Don’t make me think that about you.”
So he’d gone, and Walter was there with Donald and Calvin, and he clapped Mike on the back, giving him a sympathetic smile even as Mike wondered if James Cooper had ever made Sean laugh like Mike could. Mike thought not.
Walter wandered off with his camera, a large clunky thing that made too much noise but that Walter adored for reasons beyond Mike. Donald and Calvin were with their lady friends and Mike had been contemplating finding some way to sneak off back home when he found himself sitting at the edge of the dock, toes trailing in warm water.
He was there for only a few minutes, listening to the hustle and bustle of the townsfolk behind him, when he heard the dock creak with footsteps.
Mike was not a stupid man, no matter what anyone could have said.
He knew who it was.