The Treehouse [BxB]

nineteen

"So, Mickey, what have you been up to this past week?" Dr Carlton asked, her eyes studying him through her little square glasses.

"It was my birthday." He smiled, leaning back in the cushy brown armchair.

"Oh, happy birthday." She smiled, "How did you celebrate?"

"My friend from home came up to visit. We went out drinking. It was fun."

"I'm glad you had a good time." She was clutching a notebook, her fingers wrapped around a pen. She fit the part; she looked exactly how a therapist should look. Slicked back hair, a clean white blouse, and smart glasses. "Your friend left on your last birthday, didn't he?"

He looked down, then nodded, "Yeah. He did."

"How did you feel about that?" She pressed, "A year is a long time."

Mickey shrugged, "I still miss him." He would miss him everyday for the rest of his life. That feeling would never go away. And it tore him to pieces. "I've never spent a birthday without him before. Even last year, before he left, he came by to wish me a happy birthday. This year was...it was hard, I guess."

"Are you still writing to him?"

"Not so much anymore." He sighed, "Sometimes. But...it's not easy, you know?" He scratched the back of his neck, "Whenever I sit down to write, I just feel so overcome with sadness because I know he'll never read the letters I write."

"But you're not writing them for him, Mickey. You're writing for yourself. You've got to keep that in mind."

"I dream about him a lot." He blurted out. He used to dream about girls, skating, failing exams. And now he dreamt about River. Almost every night.

"Describe the dreams to me."

"They're always different." He shrugged, "Sometimes I dream that we're kids again. We're in the treehouse. And we're happy." He bit his lip, "Well, sometimes we're not."

"No?"

He shook his head, "Sometimes I dream that we were never friends at all. He was just a neighbour who I saw walking his dog everyday. And that was it." He tugged at his hair, "I wonder if that would have been better - if I'd never known River at all. It would have saved me a lot of pain, you know?"

"Hindsight serves us no use." Dr Carlton said that a lot. "We can't change the past, we can only learn to come to terms with it, okay?"

Mickey nodded, "I know." He admitted sadly.

"What else do you dream about?"

He smiled to himself, "Sometimes I dream about him coming back. Looking the same as the day he left, still wearing my clothes." He hated those dreams the most, because when he woke up, there was always a crushing feeling of disappointment. "I would hug him, and touch his hair, and he would say sorry for being so stupid. And everything would go back to normal."

"What's normal?"

"That's the thing." He looked at her, "What's normal changes all the time. It used to be school, and skating, and watching movies with my little sister, and smoking in the treehouse with River. And now...well, now, normal is seminars and emails to my lecturers, and buying coffee from the campus cafeteria, and going to the twenty four hour library in the middle of the night because I can't sleep." He rambled, "Nothing will ever be normal again because I'm at uni now, and River...River is gone. And if he ever came back, I don't know what would happen."

"You feel like he's missed out on so much of your life."

"Yeah." He was angry when he said it. "He doesn't even know...he doesn't even know that I'm at uni. Or which uni I'm at. Or what I'm studying. Or who my friends are. Or the fact that I just realised I'm bi."