"Shit," Michael mumbled under his breath, ceasing his kisses. He stayed there with his arms wrapped around me for a few seconds more before letting out a deep sigh. Michael gently lifted me off his lap and pulled himself into a full sitting position, with his legs crisscrossed and facing me. "I wanted to tell you," he ran his hands through his mussed up hair. "I just wanted to find the right time."
"Any time before the last twenty-four hours would have been great," I muttered, giving off more of an edge than I had intended. Michael winced.
"I know," he hid his face in one hand. His eyebrows pulled together, a small line forming betweem them. I reached over with an open hand, which he accepted gratefully. "I just..." Michael screwed his mouth to the side. "I wish I didn't have to. I wish there wasn't a reason to have to tell you."
I shook my head feverishly, grasping what he meant. "No. Michael, no," I said firmly as he opened his mouth to protest. "You guys need LA. It's your chance to make it big."
"There could be another way, there always is," Michael insisted. "One that doesn't involve me moving miles away."
"No," my voice came out surprisingly strong, although it felt like my throat was embedded with glass. "Not always. You need to take the opportunity while you have it."
Michael stared at me wordlessly. I guess I would have done the same. The words I was saying hardly sounded like mine. Michael moving away was the one of the worse things that I could imagine happening. But something in me recognized something worse. Michael and the boys staying here and never making it. Whether it was fortunate for me or unfortunate, that was the part of me that spoke up now. The part that was shattering the rest of me and would tear down the boy I loved most any minute now.
"I don't want to leave you."
Then don't! a voice screamed in my head, but whatever part of me that controlled what I said silenced it quickly. "I know."
You know the squirrel in Ice Age that's always trying to get the acorn? Scrat or something? Well, when he finally got it, he plunged it into the ice and the whole thing cracked and broke apart. That was what closest resembled what I saw in front of me. Michael's light, wide green eyes, shattered like ice or glass into billions and billions of tiny pieces. Shards so sharp I could feel the pain of them in my chest. But maybe that was just how it felt to have your heart break from hurting with the people you loved most.
This type of pain was different from any pain you felt on your own or for yourself. That type of pain you were meant to survive. It was for yourself. But this new, different type of pain was for someone else. It belonged to someone else. Watching the people you love hurt was unbearable. You feel their hurt. You try to lessen it for them but you can't. You don't know pain until you've experienced someone else's. It's terrible. It blocks out your own, as terrible as it might be. But muffling your own pain is not a favor. It's just pushing it aside for later so the real suffering could begin.
It didn't make matters any better to think that Michael must have been enduring the same thing for me.
"Don't you wan't me to stay?" he asked desperately, hoping-praying-for the words he needed to keep him here.
"Of course!" The words poured from my mouth, full of emotion. "God, Michael, I want you to stay with me for years, and that might be a little crazy to say, being young but it's true."
"If you want me to stay, then I will." Michael's voice lifted with the slightess glimmer of hope.
"No," I held fast to my decision. "You can't."
"But you just said-"
"We can't always have what we want." I said softly. "What we want isn't always what's best. And staying here isn't what's best. You have a place to be, and it's not here."
