Murmuration - Page 73
Mike thinks, Anything for you. And he says, “Sure. That sounds good to me.”
They walk on.
XV
HE TELLS himself it’ll get better.
Because it has to. There’s really no other choice.
It’ll get better.
It will.
It will.
It will.
And he believes it. Believes it when he opens his eyes in the morning. Believes it when Sean smiles at him from across the booth at breakfast. Believes it when the little bell rings over the door in the bookstore. Believes it when they walk home at night and Sean presses daring little kisses against Mike’s lips. Believes it when he lies in bed in the dark, watching the moonlight create shadows like birds on his walls and ceilings.
He believes it.
The problem is that it doesn’t get better.
It gets worse.
HE WAKES up one morning a week later and he’s thinking, Oscar, Oscar, Oscar, and he knows that name, knows it as well as he knows his own. It’s just that he can’t remember how he knows it, sure that he’s never met anyone named Oscar in his entire life.
Which leads to another train of thought that explodes even before it can leave the station. His breath is quickening in his chest and his hands are fisted in the comforter and he thinks, I’ve never met anyone named Oscar in my entire life, but what is my entire life?
There are truths he holds to be self-evident.
His name is Mike Frazier.
He is thirty-six years old.
He lives in Amorea.
He owns the bookstore Bookworm.
He loves Sean Mellgard more than anything else in the world.
He has friends. They are like his family.
He owns his own—
And he stops.
They are like his family.
Like his family.
He thinks, Who is my family?
And there’s that pressure again, right behind his eyes, and it’s sinking its claws into his skull. It’s not as bad as it’s been in the past, and he’s almost able to ignore it, because now that he’s thought it, he doesn’t know what else to think.
His alarm goes off and he thinks, Who is my family?
He’s brushing his teeth and he thinks, Where did I come from?
Source: readsnovelonline.net