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“He’s going to fucking kill me,” Mickey groaned. He was lying on his bed, one knee bent and the other leg folded across it, foot bouncing anxiously.
“Or you’re going to fucking kill him,” Sandy answered through the tinny sound of the speakerphone. His phone rested on the pillow beside him and he had a stress ball in his hands, tossing it in the air and catching it, over and over again.
“But either way, someone ends up dead. Damn Shakespearean bullshit.”
“You’re both idiots. One of you could say something. Use your damn words.”
“I get around him and all my words at shit. I’m like a fuckin’ mute sometimes, cause if I open my mouth, it’ll all come rushing out. Gotta keep shit locked down.”
“Can’t you just… I dunno, fuck some other dude? Find someone else to transfer all your weird ass emotions onto?”
She had a point. If Mickey could just focus on someone else for a while, but when had that ever worked?
So he flared at her. “Bitch, you think I haven’t tried? That I haven’t fucked around, sucked around, tucked around, a time or two even? I’ve been in bars and on godless hell sites and apps. Everyone else fuckin’ sucks.”
“Gee, thanks.” The sarcasm didn’t so much drip from her voice as spray through the phone.
“Present company excluded,” Mickey mumbled. “All the gay dudes on earth fuckin’ suck, ok? That better? They’re into astrology and crypto bullshit and they wanna talk about podcasts . They don’t know who Bon Jovi is! Bon Jovi!”
“So Ian is your one true love, the cream to your roll-”
“-Is that a ass-fuckin’ joke? If so, it’s terrible.”
“The meat to your spaghetti, the Clarence to your Springsteen-”
“-Those dudes definitely banged. Kissin’ on stage and shit. You can’t fake that.”
“Whatever. He’s the only one on earth your little dick gets hard for, and now he’s married to some other dude and you kinda want him to fuck around with you, or leave his husband, or tell you to fuck off already, is that?”
“Exactly! It’s romantic chicken.”
He could already hear the incredulity in Sandy’s breathing. “Romantic chicken?”
“Whoever says shit first, loses.”
“I need more, Mick. This is like… driving head on towards a collision?”
“Yup! Yeah, ‘cause if I say it, then I lose it all. Hope and him.”
She paused, clearly expecting more. “What if he says it?”
“If he says it….” Mickey paused. Breathed. Let his foot bounce in the air a few more times. “If he says it we’ll both know.”
Silence from his cousin. She was both used to being his sounding board around this issue and totally exhausted from going in circles for weeks over the same ground with no forward progress at all.
“Can’t you just ask? Just use your big-boy words and say ‘Ian Gallagher, you are married, and I do not care, do you love me, too?’”
“Pff.” Mickey’s sigh said it all, wordlessly and eloquent.
“So you’re gonna wait?”
“I’m gonna wait,” he confirmed. “As long as it takes.”
“What if he never says anything?”
“Then I’m fucked.”