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After a few quiet seconds he said, “I have no clue what runs in the family. I assume I got this from my dad.” He tugged on a curl, pulling it straight. When he let go, it sprang immediately back into shape.

“You don’t know anything about him?” I asked, digging my knuckle into his heel.

Mikey shook his head. “Mom met him at a party, and he charmed the pants off her—literally. The next morning, he was gone. He’d told her that he’d just moved back from Italy, but who even knows if that was the truth. She spent months trying to track him down, but no one knew his name. The best anyone can figure, he was a party crasher.”

Mikey didn’t often talk about his family, but ever since Seattle he’d been opening up to me more and more about them. I sometimes felt guilty because I knew he was only doing it because I’d confided in him about Devin, but since I found his life endlessly fascinating, I wasn’t complaining.

“What about Haley’s dad?” I asked. “I assume you know him at least.”

“Another real stand-up guy,” he sneered.

“How so?”

He grabbed one of the throw pillows at his hip and leaned forward, settling it behind his back. “He’s this famous astrologist or something. Something to do with planets—or maybe it’s comets. I’m not really sure. She only talks to him two or three times a year, and only if she contacts him. She actually ran into him six months or so ago, and he didn’t even recognize her.”

I’d talked to Haley a few times since Mikey always put their conversations on speaker phone, so I felt like I knew her—at least a little bit—and if Mikey was the chillest person I’d ever met, Haley was the exact opposite. I couldn’t imagine how that would have gone over.

“Oh my god. What did she do?”

“What do you think she did?” He moaned. “Oh, right there.”

“Here?” I asked, kneading hard just below his big toe.

“Fuck. Ow.” He dragged his foot off my lap, sitting up to grab hold of it and massage it himself.

“What did the trainers say?”

“There’s nothing actually wrong with it; it just hurts. We’re hoping it goes away. If not, I’ll tape it up and hope for the best.”

Toes were the fucking worst. At least with other body parts you could do rehab, but toes were little fuckers. You just had to immobilize them and wait for them to get better.

He laid back down, his feet finding their way into my lap again. I resumed my foot massage, focusing on the other one this time.

“Hey, Cal?” he asked thirty or so seconds later.

“Hmm?”

“Since we’re doing the whole ‘you tell me yours, I’ll tell you mine’ thing, is there anything else I should know?” he asked, chewing on his bottom lip.

Much to my relief, Mikey hadn’t been too pissed off when I’d come clean about owning this place. I’d laid out my reasoning, he’d called me a devious, sneaky bastard, I’d told him he could call me all the names he wanted, but I would always look out for him, and then he’d fucked my brains out. All in all, I wasn’t sure the conversation could have gone any better.

Since then, I’d tried my best to be as honest as possible, though there was still one small lie I was holding onto.

“I hate your hair,” I blurted, relieved to finally get it out.

His chin cocked back, his brow furrowing. “You hate my hair?” he repeated slowly, like he’d heard the words but they didn’t quite compute.

I nodded. “I miss your curls.”

His frown deepened. “That’s it—that’s your big lie?”

“The last one I can think of,” I assured him.

His face morphed from confused to gleeful in an instant. “You are so fucking weird.”

“And?”

I’d been telling him what a weirdo I was since we met. This was not news to either of us.