Page 14 of Hittin' the Right Note
Mikey chuffs a little laugh. “Unfortunately, yeah. I try not to talk like a douche bag when I’m around other people, but sometimes it sneaks out.”
He almost takes it back, but Luke is more intuitive than his good ole boy demeanor suggests and, before Mikey can say or do anything else, he reaches out and takes his hand. His skin is warm, and Mikey can faintly feel his heartbeat.
“It’s okay,” Luke says. “I won’t look at you differently.”
At that moment, Mikey falls head over heels for the rough-edged boy across from him.
He opens his mouth to say something–he isn’t sure what, really–but at just that moment Missy comes back, and Luke withdraws his hand. Mikey wants to pull him back, but he knows it’s better this way.
However, Missy doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even give any indication that she saw anything at all; instead she just leaves them their sandwiches and the bill and swishes away, leaving a trail of her Avon perfume behind.
As they eat, Mikey doesn’t even really taste it. He’s too fixated on Luke.
Luke Carter,he thinks,just what are you doing to me?
A smile creeps across his lips, and when Luke returns it, he knows there’s no turning back.
And he doesn’t want to.
CHAPTER 5
LUKE—2015
“I’m not so sure this is a good idea,” Luke said to himself as he took the winding twists of Fish Creek Road. “Do you really think Mikey’s gonna want to get together with you again?”
While his heart was imagining what it would be like to get with Mikey again, his head reminded him that pursuing something new with Mikey ran the risk of repeating the mistakes of the past.
What if he started to reach out to Mikey and he rejected him again? What if he got his heart shattered, just like he had as a teenager? He’d worked really hard on himself the past year, and he wasn’t willing to sacrifice his progress for anyone, not even for Mikey Smiles.
Why can’t anything with him ever be easy?He thought.
To distract himself from these troubling thoughts Luke turned his attention to the scenery around him. No matter how many years he lived here and no matter how many times he drove these winding roads, the countryside out here on Fish Creek made him feel like he was always at home. The road twisted and turned as it made its way through the hills looming above him, the creek winding right along with it.
Though West Virginia was beautiful at any season, the threshold between spring and summer held a particular magic. Everywhere he looked there were the signs of growth: green leaves shimmered in a cool country breeze; cardinals and red-winged blackbirds trilled as they flitted from one branch to another; cattle grazed on the steep hillsides.
I wouldn’t trade being here for anything in the world,he thought.
Fish Creek Road finally met up with Route 2, and he started on the last leg of his journey to NACA. The Ohio River flowed slowly on the left, the massive smokestacks of the various power plants and other factories thrusting up from the banks alongside it. Luke had always thought they had their own strange sort of industrial beauty, though he tended to see such things a little differently when the road was constantly clogged with gas trucks.
Sometimes I think it wouldn’t be such a bad idea if we had fewer of them taking over the roads,he thought, even though such an idea was practically heresy around here, where the gas company tended to make big payouts to those willing to put up with them.
Luke pushed those thoughts to the back of his mind as he approached the outskirts of Moundsville, driving past the shopping center with the Kroger, the CVS, and the apartment building called Golden Towers, until at last he turned up 10th Street.
The Northern Appalachia Center for the Arts was located just across the street from the giant Grave Creek Mound and the former West Virginia Penitentiary. Luke had always been fascinated by the Mound, ever since his days in grade school when his teachers had taken him and his classmates on tours of both the mound itself and the nearby museum. Even now he could remember what it was like to hike to the top of it, to seeout across the river valley and over Moundsville itself. No matter how many times he climbed it, he always found himself falling in love with his home all over again.
Wow, Brenda wasn’t lying,Luke thought as he pulled into the parking lot of the Center,this place really has fallen from its prime. He was glad he’d avoided it since he’d moved back here a year ago.
The paint was peeling off of its outside, and with his handyman’s eye he could see the way the recent hard winter had left its own fair share of damage. There were patches of moss growing on the roof and in the cracks in the brick.
Yeah, this was definitely a building that had seen better days. He found himself wondering whether it was even worth trying to salvage it at all.
Don’t be so negative.
Unfortunately, negativity seemed to be everywhere, because no sooner did he step out of his car than he was aware of who else was there, too.
Mikey Fucking Smiles.
He arrived, of course, in a Range Rover and, while he wasn’t exactly surrounded by an entourage, there were still quite a few people clustered around him, all of them clearly hanging on his every word. Luke would never have admitted it, but he was a bit jealous, since it reminded him of the days when he’d also had a team, a group of people who were looking out for him and helping him to build up his career into something he could be proud of.
