A Bad Bit Nice

by Josie Kerr

  Mick took another pull on the bottle, his fingers now stroking the snippet of soft hair that she’d so carefully tied up for a keepsake. He took another deep breath and let it out, chased it with another swallow of whiskey.

  Rory would kick my arse if he saw me sitting here sooking.

  No, Rory would look at the books with him, and then give him a proper ass-kicking.

  Mick huffed a small laugh. Maybe he should have let his best friend come over.

  No, it was better that he didn’t. Things felt a bit different this year, more settled, less sharp. Maybe work was finally filling the empty spots in his life. Mick glanced through the open door of his home office at the piles of plans and specs and contracts that littered his desk.

  He shook his head. No matter how organized and systematic the other areas of his life were, his office was always a complete and total disaster.

  Mick pushed himself off the couch and was surprised when he wobbled a bit. He frowned at the bottle in his hand, as if it were the bottle’s fault that it was already mostly empty. Mick drained the rest of the bottle and went to the kitchen to fetch another and his cigarettes.

  His eye caught Em’s note, that first note warning of the movers. After all these months, he had held onto it. He wasn’t going to examine why right now, not today.

  Em.

  Maybe that’s what was different this year. She was so different from Grace, at least physically, but her personality was similar: fiery and passionate, yet sweet.

  Mick thought back a few nights to their make-out session on Em’s prissy divan. How many years had it been since he had come with another person? Too damn long, he knew. He had briefly considered calling her and taking her up on the movies or a show that she mentioned last night, but he had ultimately decided that it wasn’t a good idea. The last thing he would want was to upset her, and with the volatility of today, he probably would.

  Mick sat heavily on a wrought-iron chair and lit a cigarette.

  Inhale, exhale.

  Yeah, that’s all he was good for today.

  He held the cigarette in his mouth while he broke the seal on a new bottle.

  Inhale, exhale, drink.

  He repeated the pattern until he was down to his last cigarette and the second bottle was empty. He debated getting another bottle, but no, that was too much. He really needed to get something in his belly or he’d really be hurting tomorrow, but the kitchen seemed so far away. He sat debating dinner for so long that the cigarette burned down to his fingers.

  “Fuck!” Mick hissed, shaking his hand and leaping up when the final ashes fell into his lap and burned a hole through his jeans. “Goddammit.”

  He took a few unsteady steps back into the house, retrieved another pack of cigarettes, and went back to his porch. God, he already had the beginnings of a headache, though whether it resulted from too much drink or not enough food, he didn’t know.

  “Mickey, you’re an asshole,” he said to himself as he leaned against the wall. He lit a cigarette and promised himself that when he finished this pack, he would quit. He took another drag and started to sit down, but the chair wasn’t quite where he thought it was. His normally quick reflexes dulled from the whiskey, Mick lost his balance and went crashing to the concrete slab.

  Chapter 21

  Em made it to the store and got the cake in the oven in record time. She called Rory’s office, but he didn’t answer; she tried his cell phone, which went straight to voicemail. He was probably still screaming at whoever that unfortunate vendor was. Em shuddered. She wouldn’t want to be on the other side of Rory’s fury, that’s for sure.

  Em put the final touches on the cake, decorating the top with a swirl of pecans. It looked good, if she did say so herself. Hopefully Mick would like it. She transferred the cake to a covered cake plate and took it downstairs. She heard music through the door, which told her he was home. She rapped loudly at the door. After two further attempts, she thought he might be on the porch with a celebratory cigar and a whiskey, so she headed out the front door and around the house to check things out.

  “Mick? Mick, are you here?” This was weird. The open door and the unattended burning cigarette weren’t like Mick. Em leaned over the railing, and then she saw him.

  The cake forgotten, Em scrambled over the rail when she saw Mick’s prone body on the patio. Broken glass and cigarette butts were scattered around and underneath him, making it apparent that he had fallen into one of the glass tables on his porch. He stirred a bit, raising his hand to his forehead. He opened his eyes to see Em’s concerned face hovering over him.

  “Hey beautiful,” he slurred, pawing at her hair and blouse. “How’d you get so tall? Are you wearing those sexy, sexy shoes again? I really like those. Maybe you can wear just those sometime. I am so glad to see you.” He grinned widely and sighed.

  Oh, boy.

  “Hey, Mick. What have you gotten yourself into? I think you’ve had an accident.” She lightly touched his head, brushing bits of safety glass from his hair. “Do you think you can stand up? You’re too big of a boy for me to haul your butt inside.”

  Mick rolled over, unfortunately in more glass, and tried to push himself to his feet. He was obviously very, very drunk. When he couldn’t stand, he curled back up, mumbling that he was going to rest his eyes for just a bit.

  Em tugged on his arm, whispering words of encouragement to get him into the house. Finally, with Em’s help, he was able to crawl through the door into the living room. There was no way that she was going to get him into the bedroom, so she pulled some cushions off the couch and covered him with a blanket.

  She sat by him, stroking his handsome face and rubbing his chest. She softly kissed his forehead. “What happened to you today, Mick?” she murmured.

  He opened his eyes and brought a big hand to her cheek. “Everything that’s precious to me gets taken away,” he mumbled. He looked so sad. He stroked her cheek a few times before closing his eyes.

  Em sat with him, running her eyes over his stilled form and holding his hand. When she was sure that he would stay asleep, she got up to sit in the chair and figure out what she was going to do. Should she call Rory?

  Em rubbed her face. She noticed several scrapbooks on the coffee table that she hadn’t seen on previous visits. The top one, white with satin and ribbons, was opened to a portrait.

  As Em looked more closely, she recognized a much younger, clean-shaven Mick, with a willowy woman who had a shock of curly copper hair. Mick was wearing a suit and she had on a white empire waist dress and carried a bouquet of flowers. They were looking at each other as if no one else in the world existed.

  There was a printed card glued to the picture. Michael and Grace, October 18, 1990. Em’s eyes welled. Well, shit. This was their anniversary, too?

  Curiosity got the best of Em. She looked through the scrapbook, seeing an also-young Rory and people who were undoubtedly Rory and Grace’s parents. She saw two rough-looking men that looked a lot like Mick, older but not old enough to be his father. The brothers that he mentioned, maybe?

  As she looked through the pictures, it became obvious that Grace had been pregnant when they got married, but this was hardly a shotgun wedding: everyone looked thrilled. Em smiled sadly. They were both so young.

  Since she was being nosy, she picked up the other scrapbook. Opening it up, she saw another picture of Grace and Mick, this time with two sturdy babies with red topknots. Em paged through the book, tears streaming down her face. The two tiny curls of hair, bound up in small blue bows, did her in.

  God, he had two boys. TWO. She shut the book and crawled over to Mick’s side. She clasped his hand tightly, then pressed her lips against his jaw and settled down beside him.

  *****

  Mick woke up in his living room floor, fully dressed except for his shoes and belt, and wanted to die but was afraid he wouldn’t. He had cotton-mouth and a splitting headache.

  His headache wasn’t improved by the chainsaw n
oise that seemed to be coming from his kitchen. He sat up slowly so that his brain wouldn’t rattle around in his head, his eyes closed to keep the nausea at bay. When he opened his eyes, Em was crouched in front of him, a glass of vile-looking liquid in her hand. She smiled at him, and he couldn’t help but return her smile.

  “Okay, big guy,” Em said, not unkindly. “You need to go into the bathroom, turn on the shower and drink that concoction. After you’re done puking—because you will definitely puke—clean yourself up, and come back in and I’ll make you breakfast.”

  Her tone brooked no argument and Mick did as she said. A minute after he drank the contents of the glass, he was violently ill, just as she’d promised, but afterward, sure enough, he felt a lot better.

  When he emerged from the bathroom, freshly showered, clothes changed, and somewhat refreshed, Em presented him with a hot plate of scrambled eggs, along with peanut butter toast and another glass of the nasty-looking liquid. He eyed it and Em said, “No coffee until you drink that down. Go on.”

  “God, you’re bossy in the morning.”

  Em eyeballed him as he drank it, then quirked an eyebrow at him when the glass was empty.

  “Fine. I feel better. Whatever was in that vile concoction was magic.”

  Mick ate his breakfast in silence as Em cleaned up the dishes.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  Em’s face softened. “Will you tell me about her?”

  Mick took a deep breath and started talking.

  Chapter 22

  “Grace was my first everything,” Mick said. “My first female friend, my first girlfriend, my first kiss, my first...you know.”

  Em placed a mug of coffee in his hands as she sat down beside him and waited for him to continue.

  “We all ended up in an ESL class together, because we were foreign,” Mick laughed at the memory. “That’s where we first met. Once they figured out that we didn’t need to learn how to speak English, we ended up in the same classes anyway, which was nice. Rory, of course, quickly made friends, because that’s how he is. Grace, not so much. She got a lot of attention from the other boys, which made the other girls mad, yeah? And Rory didn’t appreciate the boys’ attention either; he had lots of fights defending her honor.” Mick chuckled at the memory.

  “Rory never worried about me doing anything, which is funny. Maybe because he knew I wouldn’t. I just tried to keep my head down and fade into the background, hoping that people wouldn’t pay attention to me. But unfortunately, when you’re 12 years old and six foot two, that doesn’t really work.” Em nodded in understanding. She knew all about the unwanted attention that resulted from developing early.

  “So how old were you when the two of you started dating?” she asked.

  “Dating? Oh, we really didn’t really date, per se. For one thing, the Doyles were very strict as far as dating went—she just wasn’t allowed. If Rory went out or attended a function, she could go, but otherwise, no. Another thing, I...wasn’t in the position to go to dances or anything of the sort. I didn’t have money or appropriate clothes, and I had responsibilities at home that were more important than dances or movies or anything. Grace didn’t care. She worked at the deli and when her Da gave me a job cleaning up the gym in exchange for lessons and a bit of cash, she hung out with me after, or I with her.

  “She found me once when I’d had had an epically bad day, an epically bad day. I was in the gym, bawling, beating up a heavy bag so hard and long that my hands were bloody. I’d been harshly punished at home for something trivial, so my body was already black and blue. She was the first person to be really kind to me. She patched me up, took care of me. And then Rory found us. Who knows what was going through his head? All he saw was his best friend, in his underwear, trying to hide a huge hard-on, and his sister, obviously upset. But then Rory saw how beat up I was and figured out that there wasn’t any hanky panky going on, not with the shape I was in.”

  “So they both were always there for you,” Em said, thankful that Mick had had at least someone in his life that cared for him.

  “Yeah, they were. Really, Grace and Rory and their parents were the only stable people in my life after about age 14. That’s when everything really went into the shitter.”

  “So you were friends first, and then lovers,” Em said. “That’s very sweet.”

  Mick huffed a laugh. “Rory didn’t think it was very sweet when it happened. No brother wants to know that his best friend took his sister’s virginity and knocked her up. His Da was the only reason that Rory didn’t beat me to a pulp, and I would’ve let him. I thought I deserved it.”

  “Why on Earth, Mick? How old were you?”

  “We were 19, both out of school.”

  Em shrugged. “Not terribly young, then. I mean, yes, young, but it’s not like you were 15 or something.”

  “No, that’s true. I’d gotten a scholarship to M.I.T. and had just started there. All tuition and books paid for, but no living allowance, so I lived in an apartment above the fight club and continued to do janitorial work and the like. It worked out.”

  “What about Grace?”

  “Grace never wanted go to college; she just wanted babies, to stay home and take care of a family,” Mick said with a soft, sad laugh. “She got her wish. When the boys were born, she took care of them and worked in the deli a bit to get out of the house. Her Mam watched them when she worked. It was all good.”

  “A set of twins, right?” Mick nodded but looked surprised. “I looked at the scrapbook while you were sleeping,” she said sheepishly. “I’m sorry.”

  “No, it’s all right, Em. I would’ve looked, too. But yeah, twins.” Mick was quiet a moment. “She was pregnant again when the boys were six months old.” Em unsuccessfully tried to stifle a shocked laugh, and Mick chuckled. “Yeah, breast feeding as birth control didn’t really work for us.”

  “Duly noted,’ Em said with her own sad smile.

  “It was our first anniversary. Grace was pregnant, and like the first one, she was either puking or horny,” Mick laughed, remembering how insatiable she’d been. “She was taking the boys to her parents’ house so we could have some time alone. She never made it there.”

  Em gasped. “What happened, Mick?” she asked, wrapping her hands around his.

  Mick inhaled deeply and chuffed a small, bitter laugh. “She and the boys were hit by a garbage truck on the way.”

  Em sat in silent horror.

  “You lost all of them, your whole family?”

  “Yeah. The boys were killed instantly. Grace survived the trip to the hospital, but died on the operating table. The doctors performed a C-section, but there was too much trauma and the babies were too small.”

  “Michael, that’s too much,” Em cried. “That’s just too much.” She gripped his hand so tightly that that he couldn’t feel his fingers.

  “I know.”

  Tears coursed down Em’s cheeks, but Mick’s eyes were dry, his face a mask of stony grief. They sat side by side on the couch in silence, their hands intertwined.

  “Will you stay with me? At least for a while?” he asked, his voice timid.

  “Of course I will. I’m not going anywhere.”

  Chapter 23

  They sat on the couch for a while longer, Em still clasping his hand tightly. The long fingers of Mick’s free hand drummed on his thigh. He suddenly stood up and offered his hand to Em. She nodded and placed her hand in his, letting him pull her up from the couch, but then switched places with him, guiding him into the bedroom.

  Once in Mick’s room, they both became shy. Mick pulled a shirt and a pair of gym shorts from a drawer and offered them to her.

  Em made a face. “A Rambling Wreck t-shirt? Really?” she said with mock offense.

  Mick grinned at her and shrugged, though there was a tiny bit of him that wouldn’t have minded if she had just rejected the t-shirt altogether. “There’s an extra toothbrush in the cabinet. I always have extras.”

&n
bsp; Em quickly changed and brushed her teeth. When she got back to the bedroom, Mick was already under the covers. He huffed softly when he saw Em in his shirt. It was like a dress on her. She slipped into bed and they lay there, facing each other. She scooted closer to him and put her hand on his face, stroking his beard.

  “Why do you do that?” he asked.

  She was quiet for just a moment, deciding whether to be honest with him or not.

  “I think you hide behind this beard and the long hair. That combined with the smoking and the tattoos, it makes you seem hard, but you’re not. You’re not hard at all.”

  Mick had no response. She could see right into his very soul.

  “And also I really like the feel of it under my hands,” she said with a small smile. “Does it bother you when I touch your face?”

  “No, it feels nice.”

  She moved even closer and pressed her lips to the side of his mouth. Mick placed one of his hands on the back of her neck. He kissed her again and pulled her into his body. Em’s arms went around his neck and shoulders. She deepened the kiss, her tongue dancing around his. Mick slid one hand under her shirt, stroking the soft skin of her back. Em did the same, kneading the strong muscles of his shoulders. They lay there for long moments, sharing kisses and shyly touching each other.

  “Is this okay?” she whispered.

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “You’ll let me know if something doesn’t feel good, right?”

  Mick licked his lips and took a shaky breath. “Yeah.”

  She continued kissing and stroking him. He gripped her upper arms, holding his body rigid.

  “Please relax, sugar. Tell me what you need. Tell me how I can help you feel better.”

  When he didn’t speak, Em looked at Mick’s tense face and made a decision. She stroked his bare skin under his shirt and kissed his neck and face, moving her hands over his chest and abdomen, petting his back, stroking his hips and buttocks.