9. Ethan

CHAPTER 9

ETHAN

Ethan put his guitar down on its stand in the corner of the living room. It wasn't anything fancy. An old yellow Yamaha acoustic he'd picked up for peanuts what felt like a billion years ago. It had been battered and battle-scarred when he bought it, but it sounded good even all these years later. He'd been a teenager and had bought it with money he earned bussing tables at the diner.

When Colby had burst out the back door with it earlier, Ethan had been reminded of him doing that same thing when he was just a kid. His sons had all tried in various stages of their lives to learn to play, but none of them stuck with it. They all claimed it sounded better when he played.

"I'm sorry about my song choice earlier." Ethan watched Mickey from the corner of his eye. He'd been watching him all night. When he'd started to play

"Champagne Supernova," he'd noticed the change in Mickey's demeanor. He was still silent, but his body had gone rigid and his knuckles twisted into white knots on his lap.

"You didn't know," Mickey said simply as he plopped himself down in front of the fireplace. He held his hands out toward the glass and warmed them. "Lance liked Oasis. He— never mind." Mickey snapped his mouth shut.

"If you need someone to talk to about that, or anything, I'm here to listen."

Mickey lifted a shoulder and dropped it in a half-hearted shrug. "You're not my therapist. It hardly seems fair to unload all my crap on you."

Ethan grabbed his guitar and took a seat. He strummed a slowed-down version of "House of The Rising Sun."

"I'm not a therapist, but I'm your friend, aren't I? I'd like to think we are, anyway."

Ethan cut his gaze over to Mickey and found the man looking at him with a wide-eyed sort of desperate hope. Whatever emotion had filled his eyes, Mickey shuttered it and looked back at the fire.

"Did my mom tell you why I didn't go back there?"

"She wasn't especially forthcoming, no. To be fair, I didn't ask. It seemed like the kind of thing that people would tell you if they wanted you to know."

"Well, it's not because I'm gay, but Lance, he convinced me to do a lot of things that I wouldn't normally do. I wasn't the same person when I was with him. I don't know who I was—who I am, really. But Lance… he had this way of leading you where he wanted you to be and by the time you thought better of things, it was too late."

Ethan kept strumming, changing songs after a while to another one he could play upside down and backwards he knew it so well. He stayed clear of Oasis, though.

"I'd planned to come home for a visit because I hadn't been back since I left and I think Lance knew that if I got away from him, I wouldn't come back. He'd—we'd been making adult content together." Mickey glanced at Ethan, embarrassment darkening his cheeks and Ethan nodded, indicating that he could draw some pretty accurate conclusions about what those words meant. He wasn't that old.

"Dad found out. Lance made sure of it. I don't even want to know how he did it, to be honest, and he never admitted it, but I know he was behind it. Anyway, I was preparing to go home and shit, and the phone rings, and it's Dad." Mickey stared into the fire. "He found out what I'd been doing with Lance, and he let me have it. There wasn't a name left that he hadn't called me by the time I hung up. He told me not to bother coming home. I thought Mom might talk him around, so I waited a couple of weeks."

"I'm guessing that didn't happen." Ethan put his hand over the strings to silence them.

"You've met her," was all Mickey said. "To make a long story short, eventually I left Lance. But he'd pretty much isolated me from everyone. So I had nowhere to go. All our friends were his friends. All our money was his money." Mickey leaned back, bracing himself on his arms. "I don't think Dad would've welcomed me home even without the whole "you're a dirty sinner" shtick. I think that was just an excuse."

"Parents aren't always who we want them to be."

Mickey made a sound in the back of his throat. "Ain't that the fucking truth."

He turned his head and looked at Ethan. "You ever teach anyone how to play that thing?"

"My boys all attempted to learn. None of them really fell in love with it, though. Did you want to learn?"

"Is it hard?" Mickey furrowed his brow and looked at the instrument.

"It's not the easiest thing. The worst part is how much it hurts your fingers until you build up good callouses." Ethan handed his guitar over to Mickey, who rearranged himself into a crisscross position on the floor. It would be hard to teach him while towering over him, so Ethan slid to the floor too.

"You'll want to position your fingers close to the frets. It's easiest to get the right sound that way. And you have to press firm." Ethan took hold of Mickey's fingers and placed them. "This is a C chord. It's one of the most common ones."

Mickey strummed the strings with his thumb, wincing at the weird twang the guitar made. He tried to hand it back to Ethan, but he pressed it into Mickey's lap.

"You won't always strum all the strings. The C chord doesn't use that top one." Ethan helped Mickey position his fingers again. He slid his fingers into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out a guitar pick. "Here, use this."

Mickey took the pick and softly strummed the guitar. The chord was still a bit rough around the edges, but Ethan grinned at him like he'd just played the best song he'd ever heard.

"That's it. You're getting it."

"Now I just have to learn about fifteen thousand more of those and I'll be set." Mickey pulled his hand off the strings and shook it in the air. "That hurts."

"The more you do it, the less it'll hurt."

"How do you remember all these chords?" Mickey put his fingers back on the fretboard and Ethan helped him make a few small adjustments.

"Lots of practice. Mostly it's muscle memory. But you'll be happy to know there's not nearly fifteen thousand chords. There's only about four hundred."

Mickey rolled his eyes. "Gee, that makes me feel so much better."

Mickey tried again and this time the chord sang out, not quite crisp, but it lacked the harsh twang of the previous attempts. Mickey lifted his gaze from the fretboard and looked at Ethan.

Ethan had to struggle to act natural because Mickey looked at him with a smile that could light up the darkest nights. He fucking shone with joy. And it was because of Ethan. Because of this simple thing he shared with Mickey. There hadn't been nearly enough happiness in Mickey's life. Everywhere Ethan looked, there were people who'd let Mickey down.

"Show me another one?" Mickey shook his hand and blew on his fingertips, but didn't complain about the sting.

Ethan sat there and showed him the other three most common chords. Mickey was a dedicated student, asking questions about everything. He didn't let himself get discouraged at how his first attempts sounded. He even managed to laugh at himself a few times when his attempt at playing came out so wrong it made him physically cringe. His transitions were painfully slow, but he seemed to have no problem remembering where his fingers were supposed to go.

It wasn't long though before Mickey passed the guitar over to Ethan. "I can feel my heartbeat in my fingertips."

"It gets easier with practice. You'll build up callouses and then you won't feel anything."

A funny look crossed Mickey's face and he turned his attention to the fire. "I'd like to do that to my heart."

Ethan could've gotten up and put the guitar away and made his excuses to go off to bed. Instead, he put the guitar in his lap and started playing. Not Oasis, though. He'd learned his lesson out by the fire.

He didn't sing this time. It would've felt too intimate, like he was serenading Mickey or something. His kids loved the repertoire of songs that were enmeshed in memories from their childhood. Ethan stared into the fire and changed songs. It was probably a strange choice, but Ethan had always liked the way it sounded on a guitar.

"What is that?" Mickey asked, so captivated by the sound he couldn't take his eyes off the guitar.

Ethan smiled in spite of his attempt not to. "It's the love theme from The Godfather. "

"I've never watched those movies."

"They're practically ancient history now."

"They're not that old." Mickey made a point to look at Ethan when he said that, as if he was also trying to tell Ethan that the sentiment applied to him too.

"I also have never watched them. I was a baby when they were coming out. We should watch them."

Mickey seemed pleased by this and he offered Ethan a shy smile. Mickey had a way of smiling most of the time that was like he was waiting to be scolded for doing it wrong. And now Ethan knew why. Mickey had clearly fallen in with a guy who was no good for him. Someone who'd stripped all the joy out of Mickey's life and the man himself.

But, slowly, Mickey seemed to be finding bits and pieces of himself again. He still looked lost a lot of the time, but the moments when he didn't were starting to come more frequently. Moments like now when he seemed content—happy even.

"You mentioned knowing people who might hire me?"

"I'll talk to Shane. He owns The Anchor."

Mickey looked at him with a perplexed expression.

"It used to be a shit hole named Boozehounds, but when he took over ownership he changed the name. And the decor. And the staff. Pretty much everything."

"I think I know the place you're talking about. I haven't been inside, though."

"Well, before, you'd have been underage and Shane's only owned it for a couple of years and you haven't been here. You weren't missing much before. Watered-down drinks and sticky floors. Shane's turned the place around completely."

"You think Shane needs someone who has no skills?"

"I think Shane believes in giving second chances. And in your case, a first one. No one's given you a fair shake, Mickey."

"I'm the one who?—"

Ethan lifted his hand and cut Mickey off. "With all due respect, Mickey, you were a kid when you left home. I don't know what your home life was like, but I can guess. Where you started has a lot to do with where you ended up."

Mickey scowled at him. "I'm responsible for my own choices."

Ethan nodded. "I know you are. I'm just pointing out that it seems you didn't have people around you invested in making sure you knew how to make good ones."

Mickey opened his mouth—probably to protest—but he quickly snapped it shut again. He went back to frowning at the fire.

"I'll talk to Shane tomorrow. He'll be eyeballs-deep in customers right about now."

Mickey's shoulders dropped a bit, but Ethan could still see how tense he was. How rigid he held himself all the time. It was no wonder why he looked perpetually exhausted. Waiting for the other shoe to drop could wear down even the strongest of people.

"Did you want to watch that movie?" Ethan asked, putting his hand over the strings to mute them.

"I'm pretty tired." Mickey looked down at his hand and then reached over, holding the guitar pick out for him.

"Tomorrow then." Ethan groaned as he got to his feet. "You keep the pick. I have others."

Ethan put his guitar back on the stand in the corner of the room. He turned around to see Mickey sitting by the fire still, staring at the pick he held in his fingers.

"I'm going to turn in then," Ethan said. "Goodnight, Mickey."

"Ethan?"

Ethan looked back at him, but this time Mickey didn't lift his gaze to meet Ethan's. He stared into the flames, and then back down at the pick before it disappeared into his pocket.

"Thanks."

"You're welcome." Ethan waited another moment to see if Mickey had more he wanted to say before he went down the hall and slipped into his room. He got ready for bed and climbed under the covers, and promised himself he wouldn't dream of Mickey. Just because he cared about what happened to him and all the ways he'd been failed, it didn't mean that Ethan cared for him. Not like that. Sure he was attractive, especially with his hair cleaned up and not falling in his face every ten seconds. But Ethan was allowed to find people attractive. Acknowledging Mickey's good looks didn't mean anything. Not really.

Ethan rolled over and abused his pillow, fluffing and pounding it into submission before he settled back down. Letting out a slow breath, Ethan was at least able to acknowledge that it was going to be a long night.