Page 123 of The Fix-Up

Iris snorted. “Suuure, boss.”

“Look, right now?—”

Gil burst into the café. Water dripped down from his hair and it looked like it might still have shampoo in it. He wore a t-shirt, a ratty pair of shorts, flip-flops, and a frantic expression.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I was in the shower and my phone kept ringing and ringing and ringing…” He waved his phone around. “The group home called, and…and the police.”

I went to him, pulse racing. “Why? What’s happened?”

“Mikey is gone.”

“Gone? What do you mean?”

Gil stared at his phone. “He escaped…ran away. They had some surveillance footage of him leaving but it was the middle of the night. It’s been hours. Hours.”

“He can’t just be gone.” My heart lurched at the thought of Mikey out in the world somewhere all alone. He looked like an adult but acted like a child, and we lived in an “act first, ask questions later” kind of world.

He shoved a shaky hand through his hair. “I need to go find him.”

“Of course you do.” I wanted to wrap my arms around him and tell him it would be okay, to calm some of the panic in his eyes. But I was aware of the other people watching us, and maybe it wasn’t my job to soothe him. We weren’t a couple exactly; we weren’t anything permanent. “Take a deep breath. Get yourself together. You’ll go to Austin, and you will find him.”

“Yes, I will. I’ll find him.” His chest expanded. He closed his eyes and when they opened, they were a little less frantic, a little calmer.

He shot to the door but hesitated with his hand on the handle. With a suddenness I didn’t expect, he turned and strode back with purpose. Without hesitation, he pulled me into his arms and kissed me with an emotion that bordered on desperation.

“Would you look at that,” someone said.

“Told you,” another replied. The gossip train was about to pick up a lot of speed and I didn’t even care.

He pulled back and rested his forehead on mine. “Thank you.”

“You’re going to find him and he’s going to be fine. I know it,” I said fiercely. I put a hand on his cheek. He turned his head and kissed my palm.

And then he was gone.

Iris walked by me. “I guess that answers my question.”

Oliver was beside himself when he understood what had happened. At bedtime that night, he asked five hundred questions I couldn’t answer. “Nothing can happen to Mikey. He’s my new friend.”

“Mr. Gil is going to find him,” I said. I thought if I kept saying it, it would be true. “He’s going to be fine.”

Still Oliver asked me to lie with him until he fell asleep. There was no real sleep for me that night, so after he fell asleep I did what I usually did in times of stress; I baked—brownies, cookies, and a huge mound of waffles to freeze.

I checked my phone constantly for updates from Gil so when he called at 4a.m., I answered immediately.

“We found him,” he said, the relief in his voice a tangible thing.

“Is he okay?”

“He’s okay. Actually, he’s great. If you ask him, he went on a big adventure.”

“Do you know what happened?’

“Yeah. He thought he could remember how to get to Two Harts all on his own, so he started walking. Then he came across a twenty-four-hour McDonald’s and decided he was hungry. I always keep twenty dollars in his wallet as spending money. He ordered an ice cream cone and while he was sitting at a table eating it, he noticed a bus at a stop on the corner.”

“And then?” I asked.

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