Mike clenched his fingers around the phone and let himself slide down the wall to a sitting position on the floor. The sound of a busy line ringed in his ear, a sound he’d grown familiar to over the past few weeks.
He wasn’t surprised, but that didn’t take any of the disappointment away. Hope was a rare thing for kids like Mike in towns like Hawkins, and his was wearing thin and weak with each call that didn’t reach Will.
Mike had thought something like this could happen. The distance was imposing, after all, and not just in the physical sense. He and Will… they’d been drawing apart since before the Byers packed their lives and moved to the other side of the country. There was a fracture between them, burned bridges Mike now so desperately wanted to build back up, even when he’d started the fire in the first place.
It was just hard to accept that Will was… gone. And this time, there was no looking for him in the woods and no staying next to him in a hospital bed. This time, Will wasn’t in danger, he was just… away, out of Mike’s reach. And he had done that.
The line remained busy, but Mike didn’t hang up. Instead, he spoke.
“Hey, Will. Uhm… it’s Mike. I–" Mike paused to nibble on his lip. He felt so stupid talking into an empty phone, his own voice crackling back to his ear. But Mike had always been a person of words, the Dungeon Master and the writer. They lived inside of him, burning and tickling, filling him up. The problem had always been, he was never good at letting them out. But here, in his basement when no one else was awake and when the line kept buzzing busy in his ear… it seemed like a good place to start.
“I tried to catch you on the phone again today, but… you didn’t pick up. The line was busy. Again. I’m guessing it’s because of Joyce’s new job. El told me about it in her last letter. That’s great! That… that she got a job there, I mean. Sounds like you are building a good life in Lenora. I’m… I’m glad, really.”
Mike breathed in through his mouth and closed his eyes. His fingers twisted on the cord and he pulled a little. There was an uncomfortable tug in his stomach, small but painful. There was a lot more Mike wanted to say, a lot more he needed to say. But where to even start? The words were there, pooling in his throat, but there were so many of them that they tangled together, so when Mike try to pull on one a bunch of them appeared and there was no making sense of them.
Opening his eyes, Mike started again.
“There’s… there’s a lot of things I wanna ask you, Will. I wanna know if you like Lenora, how school is going, if you have any new friends. I…” His eyes pricked and Mike blinked away the tears. God, he was so stupid. “I wanna ask you why you don’t want to talk to me anymore,” Mike huffed in a broken gasp. “I mean, you are my best friend, Will. But right now… right now it feels like I lost you, or something. And maybe… I did? I don’t know. But I miss you. I miss having you here with me and it sucks, okay? Everything sucks. I suck and the fucking Upside Down sucks and this stupid town sucks and you suck too for not picking up the phone.” Mike was out of breath. He wasn’t sure when the tears began to fall, but they were there and now Mike didn’t think he could stop. Mike let his head hang, tears dropping to the carpet with muffled sounds.
“I… I fucked it up, didn’t I, Will?” Mike asked to the empty line. A sob climbed up his throat and got trapped in Mike’s lips. Mike gritted his teeth and pushed a hand to his mouth.
“I don’t know why I do that. I… I don’t want to but I keep breaking things and breaking people and it sucks. I’m sorry I broke us, Will.” The phone kept quiet and Mike inhale deeply, filling his lungs until he felt dizzy. “I’m sorry for calling. I… Yeah. I’m just sorry.”
Mike didn’t hang up. He didn’t trust his body to climb up and put the phone in its place. Instead, he let it hang by the cord, bumping on his shoulder.
He didn’t try calling Will again after that night.
