Page 19 of A Sea of Unspoken Things

Olivia’s eyes widened, her cheeks flushing. “No!”

I stared at her, holding back a smile.

“No,” she said again. “Are you kidding? I mean, Johnny? Interested in someone like me?” She looked genuinely embarrassed.

I was sure Johnny had relationships, but it was one of many territories that we didn’t venture into when we talked. He’d never been good with women. He tended to get involved with women who fell hard and fast, but Johnny didn’t getcloseto people. Sadie had been a good example of that. She’d spent our high school years at the mercy of his fickle attentions. And just like him, they were always shifting.

Back then, I didn’t have any friends who weren’t infatuated with my brother, and I’d decided a long time ago that it was because people were intensely drawn to the mercurial parts of him. As if the very things that made him so different were also the things that made him captivating. You never knew when Johnny was going to show up or disappear, what he was going to do or say. It had been an exhausting atmosphere to exist within and, at the same time, always made me feel singular. Like being one of the only people allowed in my brother’s inner world meant that I was special.

I spent several seconds debating whether or not I wanted to ask the bigger question that had been eating away at me since that morning. About Sadie’s son, Ben, and whether Olivia had any idea if he could be Johnny’s.

Before I could make up my mind, Olivia turned on her stool to get a better view of the band and the drums picked back up, the music blaring through the speakers. I let the thought go and did the same, watching as the front man strummed his guitar and Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel” filled the place.

I had to willfully let myself sink into it. Nights like this one were rare for me, aside from the occasional drink with Rhia or the string of onetime dates with guys I met on dating apps. The Penny was nothing like the little neighborhood bar down the street from my apartment in San Francisco. The last time Johnny visited, I’d taken him there and he’d been personally offended by the fact that there was a lavender cocktail on the menu.

A smile stretched on my lips, remembering the way his face had looked.

“I know I already said it, but it’s good to see you, James,” Olivia said, suddenly.

I turned to look at her. “It’s good to see you, too. Really.”

The door to the street opened, making the heat of the room contract, and when my eyes flicked up, I felt my entire body still. Micah Rhodes shouldered past a few people in the doorway, tugging the beanie from his head. His hair fell into his face before he raked it back and made his way toward the other side of the bar. His gaze didn’t land on me as he cast a few polite smiles to the people he passed, and when I felt Olivia watching me, I dropped my eyes.

“Have you seen him since you’ve been back?” she asked.

“Not really. He came by to drop off Smoke when I got in yesterday.”

She drained her glass, lifting a hand to signal the bartender again, and then she leaned forward just a little to see Micah shrugging his jacket off.

I could admit to myself now that I’d underestimated what it would be like to see him again. To stand in the same room and chart the changes in his face since the last time I looked at him. It gave me a panicked feeling, like I needed to get into my car and drive back to San Francisco before it could wrap its hungry tendrils around me. Those memories were still floating just beneath the surface of my skin. His hands sliding up my back beneath my shirt, the humid air, the sound of breath against my ear.

I’d hoped that it was just yesterday, that after so long, it was bound to stir things up that I thought were long dead. But as I sat there in the red and orange lights of the bar, my eyes tracing his sharp angles in the dim light, I had that frantic itch again. Like being pulled and pushed at the same time. It almost made me consider getting up and leaving.

He took a seat with two other men, and as if he could feel my gaze on him, he suddenly looked up, meeting my eyes. I swallowed, fixing my stare back to the bar top, but now a slow, burning heat wasmoving over the side of my face, down my throat, and over my shoulder. Everywhere I imagined his eyes would land.

“How’s he been?” I asked Olivia, keeping my voice low.

“Before all this? He’s been good. He works as a fly-fishing guide on the rivers and stays busy during the season. One of the only guys we grew up with who isn’t working as a logger, so that’s something.” Olivia paused. “But since Johnny? Honestly, I don’t know.”

“Sadie said he’s not himself.”

“That’s putting it lightly.” She leaned closer. “He took it hard. Of course he did.”

I could hardly hear the words anymore, drowned out by the beat of the music. I resisted the urge to look back at Micah for all of five seconds before I finally gave in. He wasn’t watching me anymore, but I could see his awareness of me in the stiff set of his shoulders.

“But he definitely isn’t himself,” Olivia continued. “Doesn’t come around a lot. He and Johnny were on the outs for a while there, too, so I figured maybe that has something to do with it. Like he feels guilty maybe.”

“On the outs how?”

“I don’t know what it was about, but with Johnny? Could have been a million things. Those two were like family and family’s like that. Just as likely to kill them as you are to kill for them.”

The words made me suppress a shudder. She had no idea just how true that was. But she and Amelia both were right about Micah being family. It wasn’t just the teenage angst and first love that had made him so hard to shake. It was everything else. Long before I was in love with him, we’d been threaded together in that permanent way that happened when your childhoods were interwoven. When yougrewwith someone. When they knew versions of you that no one else did. There was no erasing memories like that. There was no way to pretend that they didn’t go right on living beneath your skin for your entire life.

I watched the way the amber light moved across his cheek, themuscle in his jaw ticking as he stared into his glass. Micah was the only person who knew my brother like I did. How to see his storms coming. How to weather them. How to protect him from himself. And that had been the biggest problem between us—Johnny.

I spent years after I left unraveling that thread, trying to follow it to its end. But the answer wasn’t singular or simple. With Micah, nothing was.

Seven