Better than Sex (San Francisco Sex Gods #1)

Chapter 33

THIRTY-THREE

Mickey

When Mickey and Keith got back to the shelter after lunch, Sophie looked up from her phone and pointed to the packet in Mickey’s hand. “Is it official? Are you a proud papa?”

Mickey smiled and held the grey folder of adoption paperwork against his chest. “Yup. Pepper is now Pepper Briggs.”

“Awesome! She deserves a good home.” Sophie turned her attention to Keith. “Ben called while you were at lunch. He asked that you call him back.”

“Is it urgent?”

Sophie shrugged and went back to scrolling on her phone.

“Okay.” Keith rested his hand on Mickey’s shoulder. His palm was warm, his touch reassuring. “Why don’t you have a seat in one of the meeting rooms? I’ll take care of this real quick and then I’ll bring in Pepper.”

While Keith disappeared into the back office to make a call, Mickey made his way to the meeting room closest to the kennels – his favorite of the shelter’s three meeting rooms. It was the room where he first met Pepper.

He took the crocheted afghan off the back of the ugly floral armchair and spread it out on the floor. Sitting with his back against the chair, he closed his eyes and listened to the barks and whines coming from the kennels.

Lunch with Keith had been nice. They met at a diner near the shelter that Keith recommended because of their burgers. Filling out the adoption paperwork hadn’t taken long, so for most of the meal they chatted about other things.

Keith shared his fries with Mickey while he caught him up on all the new dogs at the shelter, and more than once their fingers had brushed when they both reached for a fry at the same time – probably more often than could be explained by chance.

On the way back to the shelter, Keith put his arms around Mickey’s shoulders, pulled him into his side, and expressed how happy and relieved he was that Pepper was going to the best home possible for her.

If Mickey had to guess, he would say Keith had been flirting with him.

He’d always liked Keith’s hair, with its rich auburn undertone. What it would feel like to run his fingers through his lush hair, stiff with product and hairspray, while Keith trailed kisses down his neck…

The vibration of his phone interrupted his daydreaming. He checked the notification, and his stomach dropped when he saw it was a text from Spencer.

SPENCER

Can we talk

Mickey stared at his phone. That’s it? After a week of radio silence that’s all he gets? No apology. No groveling.

He hated that part of him was ready to fire off an immediate yes .

He couldn’t listen to that part of his heart, though, because Spencer had broken it. As much as he wanted to smooth things over with Spencer and salvage his friendship with the other guys, the cut was too fresh. He wasn’t ready to let it all go.

Wanting some space was a perfectly logical response to being hurt. Completely understandable, given the circumstances.

So why are my thumbs hovering over the keyboard, ready to ask when’s the soonest we can meet?

It took all the willpower he had to lock his screen and slip his phone back into his pocket.

Moments later, Pepper yipped in excitement as Keith led her down the hall, saying “Guess who’s here” in a high-pitched voice. When she peeked around the doorframe, she let out a happy bark and bounded over to where he sat on the floor. She put her front paws on his shoulders and licked his face while he scratched behind her ears.

Keith held up a canvas tote sporting the Underdogs logo. “I put together a care package for you. It’s her favorite toy, some of the snacks she’s used to, and some biodegradable poop bags. There’s a dog park a few blocks away where I walk her every day. It’s a familiar place for her, so you might want to swing through there on your way home.”

“Oh, right,” Mickey said, snapping his fingers. “I remembered.” He unzipped the thigh pocket on his cargo shorts and pulled out a pink nylon leash. At the sight of the leash, Pepper looked to Keith, then back to Mickey. Her tail wagged in anticipation of a walk.

As Mickey clicked the leash to her collar, Keith squatted until he was eye level with Pepper. He patted her head and rubbed his nose against hers. “I’ll miss you. Be good for Mickey, alright?” Perhaps understanding that this was a goodbye, Pepper licked his cheek and whined.

Keith stood and used his thumbs to swipe moisture from his eyes. “She might have a little trouble adjusting to a new environment. She trusts you, so I don’t imagine it will be too difficult a transition, but call me if you need anything.”

“I will.” Mickey stood and accepted the canvas tote, hoisting it over his left shoulder. “It’s probably best if I take some time off from volunteering so I can spend as much time as possible with Pepper and get her settled.”

“Understood. Take the time you need and give us a heads up when you’re ready to come back.” Keith shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “So…I get together with a group of friends for movie nights a couple times a month. I can give you a call next time if you’d like to meet them?”

After all the flirting at lunch, Mickey wondered if there was more to Keith’s offer than an invitation to a friendly movie night. Although he wasn’t ready to pursue anything romantic – not while he was still processing all his feelings about Spencer – he couldn’t deny the spark of curiosity about Keith’s life outside of Underdogs. Having another group of friends would be nice.

“Yeah,” Mickey said, with a happy flutter in his chest. “Sounds like fun.”

“Cool. Come here.” With a wobbly smile, Keith opened his arms for a hug, and Mickey happily hugged him back. “We’ll miss you.”

Keith walked them to the door. He and Sophie waved as Mickey led his new pet out of Underdogs for the last time. Before the door closed all the way, Sophie called out, “Bring her by for a visit someday!”

Thankfully the walk to the dog park was largely uneventful. Pepper stayed close by his side, and although she whined a little at some of the other dogs and people in the park, overall, she didn’t seem particularly agitated or fearful.

While they strolled down the park’s winding central path, Mickey’s phone rang. At first, he thought it could be Spencer calling since he’d ignored the earlier text, but it was his younger brother Dashiell. Nowadays he mostly talked with his siblings on holidays and anniversaries – it was rare to get a phone call out of the blue. Concerned something was wrong, he led Pepper to a nearby bench and took a seat before answering the call.

“Dash, hi. How are you?”

“Not great.” His brother’s voice was odd. Subdued.

“What’s the matter?”

“It’s Ronnie’s birthday. Did you forget?”

Mickey winced from shame. With everything that had been going on, his sister Veronica’s birthday had slipped his mind. It had been eleven years since the car accident that claimed her life and forever altered his father. He did a quick calculation in his head.

“She would have been twenty-six. Sorry, Dash, I’ve had a lot going on. I’m glad you called.” He and his brother chatted for twenty minutes, sharing beloved memories of their sister and checking in about each other’s lives. After promising to attend Dash’s annual Thanksgiving weekend celebration (which he always planned months in advance), Mickey hung up and pocketed his phone.

He got down and lay on his back in the grass behind the bench. Pepper cuddled into his side, and as he stroked her fur, he watched the fluffy cotton-ball clouds drift lazily across the sky.

The accident had changed so much about his life; it was hard to remember that there was a time before . That at one time they’d been a normal family.

He wiggled a hand underneath himself and slipped his wallet out of his pocket. From behind his driver’s license, he retrieved the photograph he kept tucked there for safe keeping – the last family portrait before the accident. His family looked so happy, dressed up and sporting artificial smiles for the camera.

Less than a year after the picture was taken his sister would be gone.

As horrible as his sister’s death had been, it was overshadowed by the tragedies that followed – his father’s brain injury and his mother’s descent into drug addiction. He’d barely had a chance to grieve his sister’s passing when it became clear that his father would never be the same.

He remembered a late summer day from the last year he lived at home. He’d been hunkered down in the living room with craft supplies covering the coffee table, making silly sock puppets for the kids at the daycare center where he worked.

He bristled at the bang, bang, bang of his father’s cane as it struck the hardwood floor in the hallway. His father was practically bedridden by this time, but he still made a point to hobble throughout the house at least once a day to abuse whoever was unlucky enough to cross his path.

He appeared in the doorway to the living room, his face slack from the painkillers he ate like candy. “What the hell are you up to, boy,” he growled.

“Work stuff,” Mickey said, as he surreptitiously slid some of the finished puppets under the couch.

“Work stuff,” his father sneered. He shuffled to the coffee table, his right foot dragging with every step. “Playing with toys at your age.” With his cane, he swept the supplies off the table, scattering the pipe cleaners and feathers and googly-eyes. An open container of multicolor glitter spilled its sparkling contents across the carpet in a brilliant fan.

His father pressed the tip of his cane against Mickey’s chest and pushed him into the couch cushions. “You’re a pitiful excuse for a man. No one is ever going to love you.” Then with a grunt of disgust, he hobbled back to his bedroom, the bang of his cane the only sound Mickey could hear over the rushing in his ears.

He shook off the memory before the tears collecting in his eyes could fall. He’d cried too many tears over his father’s words. He was done.

“You were wrong, Dad.” He turned his head so he could look into Pepper’s big brown eyes. “You love me, right?”

Over the previous year, so much love had come into his life. He thought about the late-night heart-to-heart conversations with Greg. The happy days spent laughing in the park with Logan, Jazz, and Izzy. Volunteer shifts with Keith at the rescue shelter. Brunches and parties and nights out with Blake, Quinn, and Henry.

And then there was Spencer. He cherished all their time together but lingered on the memory of them lying side by side in Spencer’s bed, their hands intertwined, holding each other in the dark.

“You were wrong, Dad. People love me.”

Perhaps because he’d finally challenged his father’s critical voice, a long-buried memory floated into his consciousness, as if carried aloft on an updraft of air. In his mind’s eye, the park around him morphed into the wide-open field behind his middle school, on a breezy spring day shortly after he’d turned thirteen.

He and his father were spending the afternoon together, just the two of them, which was a rare occurrence in a family of eight. For his birthday, his father had given him a magnificent kite in the shape of a dragon, painted in fiery shades of red and yellow and adorned with a tail of long streamers.

The two of them had been struggling to get the kite airborne for nearly an hour. Almost ready to give up, his father encouraged him to try one more time. He held the kite while Mickey walked backward, unspooling more twine.

The scratchy rustle of leaves shivering in the breeze was their only warning before a sudden gust of wind swept across the field, ruffling Mickey’s hair and chilling his skin. The line lurched in his hand, and his father carefully released his grip on the kite. With a gentle leap, his dragon took flight.

“Run, Mickey! Run! ”

Mickey took off, running as fast as his legs could carry him. Unable to contain his excitement, Mickey glanced over his shoulder while he ran. The dragon soared above them, its tail of streamers whipping behind it, its red wings dancing like tongues of flame in the sky.

His father was running behind him, keeping pace. “You did it! You’re flying !”

It was a moment of perfect joy. The wind whistling in his ears. The tug on the twine, alive in his grip, as the kite climbed higher. The thrill and wonder of watching a paper dragon sail high above his schoolyard.

But nothing perfect lasts forever. As quickly as the breeze had stirred to life, it died down, and the kite took a nosedive and crashed back to earth a few yards away. Before Mickey could worry about whether it survived the fall, his father lifted him up and spun him in a circle, cheering and laughing like a little boy himself.

“Mickey the Dragon Master!” he yelled, and in response Mickey laughed and threw his arms into the air, making a V for victory.

For the next four years, his father would occasionally call him “Dragon Master,” in honor of a favorite memory of a spring day shared only by them.

I remember, Dad.

Before the accident, when you were still you, you loved me too.

Mickey turned over the picture of his family and trailed his thumb along the smudged sentence written in blue ink, a quote from one of his grief counseling courses: Grief is just love with no place to go.

Now his tears fell, not for the way his injured father had treated him, but for the relationship they might have had if the accident had never happened. For a brief instant, he imagined his father, strong and healthy, showing up for a visit on a spring day and surprising Mickey with the dragon kite. ( “I thought maybe we could give him another chance to fly.”)

Pepper placed her paw on Mickey’s chest and licked his cheek.

“Sorry, girl.” He wiped away his tears with his sleeve and slipped the picture back into his wallet. Smiling, he kissed her on the nose. “Let’s go home.”