That Summertime Feeling

By the time I’d gotten back to my aunt’s house, my eyes were dried but still a little red. I didn’t know if she’d be able to tell that I was crying, or if she’d ask why. I wasn’t really in the mood to open old wounds by talking about my father, especially to my aunt on his side of the family. Hopefully, she and uncle Vin wouldn’t be so observant.

When I got in the door, aunt Terry was already home and had guests. Uncle Vin was nowhere to be found, but Terry sat at the kitchen table with a woman about my mom’s age and a teenage boy who looked vaguely familiar. He was sitting down, but I could tell he was tall. He had mousy brown hair that covered his eyes just slightly, his thick glasses assisting in hiding them. From what I could tell, his eyes were more on the brown side of hazel, and though they were slightly obscured by the strength of his lenses, they were gorgeous.

He had strong yet boyish features; he looked older than he probably was. I couldn’t tell where I’d known him from, or if I’d ever even known him at all. He looked familiar but I didn’t know how.

I had played with the kids in my aunt's neighborhood growing up, but I didn’t really remember any of them. I never had any girls to play with, so all of my playmates had been boys. They were rough with me even though I was a girl, but I played along with just as my rouse and violence. I didn’t mess around.

When I was a kid, I didn’t have that many playmates, maybe four or five. The boy sitting in front of me now didn’t really ring any bells and just as I was starting to wonder if I'd even known him at all, it hit me. I knew those glasses anywhere.

I had seen him before.I guess I had always assumed that all of those kids I used to play with were older and in college by now, but now it seemed as though I was false.

“Erin,” my aunt started off, disrupting my thoughts. “You remember Mikey, right?”

I nodded my head. I did remember Mikey, but he wasn’t anything like the teenaged boy I saw now.

As a kid, I remembered a boy named Mikey. He was short and skinny and kind of squirrely. He always hid behind his brother –what was his name? Gerard? – and he barely talked to anyone. If he wasn’t with Gerard he was with this one other kid. I couldn’t remember his name, but he was small too, yet not nearly as timid as Mikey. In fact, he was kind of a spitfire, and I remember him getting in trouble a lot.

There was this one time when he filled the sandbox with water and tried to build sandcastles. He sat in the pit with just his boxer shorts on, no shirt, no shoes. He tried to form the dirty sand into little buildings that turned out to be just big blobs of nothing, and his mom got pissed. She dragged him out of the park and back home to ‘get that filthy sand off of you.’

“What possessed you to do this, and why did you have to take your clothes off?” his mom had asked him. Despite his being in trouble, his smile was wider than that of the Cheshire Cat.

I wonder what happened to him? The times we’d all spent together when we were kids had been some of the best times of my childhood, but now here I was, standing with a boy I’d grown up with yet he was a total stranger. I wondered where the rest of them were and how it would be seeing them all again, because now, with just Mikey, it wasn’t very comfortable.

"Yeah, sort of," I answered my aunt, genuinely trying to remember him more. All I got was images of him as a kid. It was almost astounding, the difference between then and now. I guess seven years changes a person more than you think.

"It's nice to see you again," he said suddenly. His deep voice almost didn’t match his physique, but somehow it seemed to suit him perfectly. "It's been, what? Six years?"

"Seven, I think," my aunt corrected him. He nodded his head and my aunt went on to introduce the woman who had been quietly sitting at the table the whole time. She had shoulder length hair that was frizzy and obviously bleached blonde. She had stunning green eyes and wore bright red lipstick. She looked to be about my mother's age, but one-hundred times more tired and one-hundred times more friendly.

"Do you remember Mrs. Way; Mikey's mom?"

"Oh, Mrs. Way is so formal; it's Donna," she said standing up and coming over to me. "It's so lovely to see you again. You got so big; I remember when you were this tall." She held out her hand, just up to her waist to demonstrate how little I once was. I laughed a little considering I never thought about when I was that young. It was almost mind blowing.

"It's been a while, huh?" I said nervously, not really knowing how else to react. Donna just smiled in return and reached out to tuck some of my hair behind my ear. I'd worn it tied up that day, but my bangs always fell into my face anyway.

"It has," she confirmed before letting her hand drop to my shoulder. I wasn’t normally a fan of touching, but I didn’t complain.

"Why don’t you and Mikey go out on the porch for a while? I'm sure you two have a lot to catch up on, and it would be nice to have a partner this summer, don’t you think?" I looked to my aunt as she said this, then averted my gaze to Mikey. He looked back at me and based on the non-verbal exchange between us, it seemed as though neither of us had anythingbetter to do. "Okay."

Mikey stood and Donna released me to go outside with him. I slid open the glass door and walked out onto the porch, Mikey following behind me. I took a seat on the porch swing, pulling my knees up under my chin. Mikey took the space next to me and things were immediately awkward.

Just because I hadn't seen him in seven years, didn’t mean we had anything to catch up on. We had barely just gotten into elementary school when we last saw each other and all we probably talked about then was how hard long dividing was and the best ways to catch a frog. That is, if we'd ever even talked at all.

From what I remembered of Mikey, he was the quiet one. He barely ever talked and he was shier than a ghost. He always kept to himself and now it was hard to imagine how we were as kids. I really only remembered playing with the other kid, not so much Mikey.

"So you're stuck here all summer?" he finally spoke up. He seemed to have gained, if anything besides height, more confidence since our playground days. Based on our childhood, he didn’t seem like the type to start a conversation.

"Yeah," I answered then figured I could at least try to talk to him. I went on to explain how, "My mom is in Ireland for a business trip, but she didn’t want to leave me all alone at home."

"Where did you move to?" he asked, confusing me slightly.

"Nowhere."

"No," he said with a smile and slight chuckle. "I meant; where did you move to when we were kids. All I remember was that you were here one day and gone the next."

He remembered me too? I wasn’t sure if Mikey knew who I was or if his mom had just told him. "My mom moved us to Wisconsin. Her parents live there and she wanted to be with them after, you know . . ."

Mikey gave me a quizzical look that quickly turned into one of knowing. "Oh," he said solemnly though not yet making an attempt at voicing his thoughts. I confirmed what he was likely thinking. "After my dad died."

"I remember now. I'm sorry."

"No, don’t be; it wasn’t anyone's fault. I mean I miss him, but I can still talk about him.
Mikey just nodded his head at this, which I respected. Just because I could talk about my dad, didn’t mean I necessarily wanted to. I could normally make it through a few minutes of dad-based conversation before I felt the first pin-pricks of grief coming to me and after a while, I'd be a sobbing mess.

"Hey, I'm sorry," I heard Mikey say with notable sadness in his voice. I didn’t really know why he seemed so apologetic until I felt the tear roll down my cheek. I reached up quickly to wipe it away. I hadn't even realized my eyes start to water and now I knew why Mikey had apologized.

"Oh, no it's okay," I said smiling. "I didn’t even realize."

"We'll change the subject," Mikey said, trying to recover me, my small breakdown causing him to take care in his words. "Okay, what do you want to talk about?"

"I don’t know," he said, his eyes nervously moving around to look at anything but me. "Anything planned for the summer?"

"Well, I wanted to be back in Wisconsin where I actually know people, but I was forced into this arrangement by my lovely mother."

Mikey smiled at this and let out a chuckle. He finally moved his eyes to meet mine, pushing up his glasses and making my view on them even clearer. "What about me?"

"What about you?"

"You know me."

"Well," I started. "Sort of, I guess. Not really at all, actually. Just, like, your name."

It was true. Aside from his name and the things my aunt had told me about my childhood friends, I didn’t know Mikey at all, and he didn't know me. "Well then," he said with a devious smile creeping up on his face. "We'll have to fix that, won't we?"

Notes

I obviously suck as a person...

I want to say sorry for not updating in a while, if anyone was even that invested in my story to notice the gap.

It turned out that I had far less time than I originally though I would this summer. I worked three jobs, though one was an internship, and had about three free days to myself over the course of the last eight or so weeks, and it's not that I don't love writing, it's just that it can sometimes take as much out of a person as can a retail job, or working alongside physicians in a health center, or staying up 'till the cows come home to photograph some couple's wedding (i.e. all of my summer jobs)

Now that I am going to ACTUALLY have a lot more time, I plan to first get my writing life in order by updating the stories I've - basically - neglected, and continue my work on the one's I originally had such high aspirations about.
Hope you enjoy this update, and look forward to many more!!!