His cheeks flushed with remembered embarrassment as he thought back to his first efforts at learning to interpret people’s faces. He’d been so enthralled with the visual world—so determined to figure out what everything he could see was—that he’d barely been able to blink for fear of missing something. Everywhere he’d gone, he’d flat-out stared.
That hadn’t always gone over so well.
“That man is taking pictures, Bess, don’t block his shot,” the woman he’d zoomed in on said, pulling the little girl she was with out of the way.
“It’s okay,” Micah said. They’d already moved on, though.
At first, the camera had just been a prop. It had let Micah look at people’s faces for as long as he’d needed to—without, as Sam had only half-joked, being at risk of getting punched for gawking. But then, when Micah had actually started snapping pictures instead of just looking through the viewfinder, it had also become more than a prop. It had given him a way to slow the visual world down and capture little pieces of it, frame by frame, so that he could try to figure them out later.
And the fact that it had also become a passion and a hobby and a way to make art out of all the beauty that his new eyes revealed to him? Well, that was just a happy accident… although, really, wasn’t that always the way of things?
Micah had always believed in luck; had always felt like his life was a bit blessed with the kind of serendipitous good fortune that his mother scoffed at and his sisters insisted he couldn’t rely on, but that, by his reasoning, had never once let him down. He wasn’t sure whether to call it fate or destiny or just the basic, intrinsic goodness of the world, but whatever it was, the one thing he knew for sure was that things always had a way of working out.
Even when, at first, it sometimes seemed like they didn’t.
The accident that had blinded him as a child was no exception. There were dozens of wonderful experiences he would have missed out on if he’d grown up with sight, and, even now, he was still benefiting from all the years he’d been blind. After all, would he have appreciated the wonders of the visual world quite as much if it had been something he’d taken for granted all his life?
Micah grinned, looking around him. When he stopped trying to make the effort to understand it all and just let the color and movement surround him in a happy swirl, it was all kinds of wonderful.
Sam liked to say he had a hopeless case of glass-half-full-ism, but really, it was just the way things were. As far as Micah was concerned, there was always something pretty great to be found in any situation, if you just looked for it.
And today? Today was definitely going to be a good day, he could feel it.
He took a step forward, determined to get close enough to the water to take some good face pictures… and immediately tripped over a curb that his unreliable vision had interpreted as just another shadow.
“Are you okay, honey?” a well-meaning woman asked, reaching a hand down to help him up and compounding his embarrassment.
Micah nodded, mumbling his thanks as an all-too-familiar heat flooded his cheeks for the millionth time that day. Honestly, seeing was amazing, but it also kind of made every single day feel like the real life version of one of those showing-up-at-school-naked dreams. Before he’d been able to see again, Micah hadn’t quite realized just how visible he was to other people… especially when he got embarrassed.
Red was a really, really bright color.
He sighed as the woman walked away, almost giving in to a brief moment of the kind of self-pity he’d never once let himself indulge in back when he’d been blind. Then he laughed at himself, straightening his shoulders and shaking it off. Because… really? This was what he was going to do with the gift he’d been given? Whine about the fact that after living for the majority of his life without the joy of color and the visual wonders of motion and shape and texture, there were still a few kinks to work out in the way his brain interpreted it all?
No.
He was Micah Finn Rawlings, and he could finally see again, and he wasn’t going to let a few bumps and bruises stop him from enjoying every minute of it.
A thrumming excitement flooded Micah’s veins as he watched the current group of jet-pack riders finish up out on the water. Riding jet packs looked awesome… even if he had a bit of trouble following all the action. In theory, he knew what he’d been looking at, but for the most part what he’d actually seen was glittering, colorless rainbows trailing behind dark, incomprehensible blobs that appeared and disappeared in his field of vision, depending on whether he focused on sea or sky or the distraction of the motion itself.
No matter, it still looked amazing.
Besides, he had a ton of pictures, he was having fun, and someday, if he practiced enough, he’d be able to see things the way everyone else did, too.
Well, maybe.
No guarantees, as Dr. Schuster said.
But if it was going to happen? Micah needed to practice. And for that, he needed to get some faces to study later.
He zoomed in on the boat carrying the jet-pack riders back to shore. It skimmed over the waves, coming closer, and Micah adjusted the focus.
One of these days, he was going to be confident enough to go out on a jet pack himself—
He sucked in a sharp breath, completely losing his train of thought as one of the passenger’s faces suddenly came into sharp relief, the zoom lens making it feel like the man was standing right in front of him. Micah could tell that the man was in motion—walking across the boat’s deck and talking to someone, maybe even laughing—but watching him through the camera’s lens sort of gave Micah the impression that the man was holding still, too.
Or, maybe, like the world was simply moving around him; as if the man was the center of everything.
Was it just another trick of Micah’s unreliable eyes?
His chest started to hurt, and he laughed, lowering the camera as he let his breath out in a gusty whoosh. So maybe that was it. He’d just forgotten to breathe. He raised the camera again and hurried to adjust the lens, looking for the man again. There he was. He had light-colored hair and was wearing something dark—probably a wetsuit—and with as fast as the boat was moving toward shore, he was closer now than the first time Micah’s camera had found him.
Close enough for Micah to tell that, yes, the man was definitely laughing.
It was kind of beautiful.
Something hot and unfamiliar and altogether lovely bloomed inside him as he watched. The man’s mouth moved, light and shadow playing over his face in the most interesting ways. No matter how much Micah adjusted his lens, though, he was just far enough away that the darker spots of his eyes wouldn’t quite come into focus. Micah squinted, trying to guess their color.
It could be anything.
The man’s chin lifted and his head turned and the white, flashing crescent of his smile appeared, and even though Micah knew he wasn’t, for a moment, it really and truly looked like the man was staring right at him.
Micah’s heart started to pound.
He felt a little dizzy.
He started to shake.
Then he realized the shaking part was just his phone vibrating in his pocket, and he had to laugh at himself again. There had to be a million men in San Diego. Did he really think that this one, a total stranger who he’d probably never meet, was somehow special?
That just the sight of him could make Micah feel like his whole world had just shifted?
And yes, okay, so he did kind of feel like that… but it probably just meant that he’d had too much sun.
Micah scrambled to pull his buzzing phone out with one hand, attempting to hold the camera steady with his other—because, fine, even if all these lovely feelings were just an effect of getting too much sun, he didn’t want to lose sight of Wetsuit Man quite yet—but someone bumped into his elbow, mumbling an apology, and he lost his grip on both phone and camera.
“Dang it,” Micah said, thankful he kept the camera on a n
eck strap as he stooped down and picked his phone up off the ground. It was a good thing Rachel-Lyn had pushed him to get the indestructible phone case.
Speaking of which, he’d assumed the buzzing was the alarm Sam had set to remind Micah to meet him in the parking lot, but nope. It was a call from his sister.
“Hey, Rachel-Lyn,” Micah said in a distracted greeting after he swiped to answer.
He scanned the busy shoreline with his naked eyes, trying to figure out where the man in the wetsuit was.
Was that dark blob him?
Had the boat docked already?
Had Micah lost him forever?
“Micah,” Rachel-Lyn said, her voice rushed and affectionate and a little bit pushy, just like always. “Where are you? Are you okay? I went by your place and you weren’t there. I could hear Pippin barking inside, so I know you left her at home. Is Sam with you? Are you okay?”
“You asked that twice,” Micah said, rolling his eyes. It was an expression he’d picked up from Sam after regaining his sight, and one he found eminently useful when it came to dealing with the three M’s.
“Micah,” Rachel-Lyn said, drawing out the second syllable in classic big-sister style.
“I’m down at Mission Bay, Rachel-Lyn,” he said, not bothering to answer all the other questions. She’d only tell him that it had been a mistake to come to the busy marina by himself… or that he probably wasn’t up to it quite yet… or that it was too dangerous until his sight stabilized, if that ever happened… or, basically, that he shouldn’t try to navigate the world all on his own until some mythical future date when she finally stopped seeing him as her overeager, eternally clumsy, bumbling baby brother who needed constant protection from the big, bad world.
In other words, never.
Rachel-Lyn sucked in a deep breath, filling her lungs for the lecture to follow, and Micah laughed, knowing that even though he hadn’t admitted to being alone, she was going to launch into a version of all of that anyway.
And… yep.
He tuned her out; pretty sure he could guess the gist of it. What a bad idea it was for him to rely on just his sight to get around when it really didn’t work all that well yet. How he should have brought his cane or his dog or Sam or someone, because God only knew what horrors might happen to him if he—gasp!—ventured out all by himself.
The twins were ten years older than him, and even though, normally, he had no trouble at all telling them apart, whenever Rachel-Lyn or Amanda used that tone of voice—the lecturing one that both his sisters had inherited from their mother—they sounded so much alike that Micah sometimes forgot which of his “three mothers,” as Sam had long ago dubbed them, was actually reprimanding him.
He rolled his eyes again. Each of the three M’s was equally sure that Micah would never survive without her guidance, help, and general interference in his life. He used to think it was a blind thing… but now he was convinced it was just a them thing.
“Mm-hmm,” Micah mumbled absently as Rachel-Lyn kept going on and on and on. He wasn’t exactly ignoring her… well, okay. Yes, he was. But hopefully she’d feel better if she had the chance to say her piece.
He wedged the phone between his ear and shoulder and lifted his camera, using the zoom lens to search in vain for the man who’d made his heart race a few minutes ago. He knew his sister meant well—the three M’s all did, and he loved them for it—but he also knew that if he ever gave them the slightest hint that he couldn’t handle himself, all three of them would swoop in and try to convince him to run straight back to the warm, loving, and utterly smothering bosom of his family so that they could do exactly what they’d done for his entire life—try to protect him from every single thing in existence, and, along the way, do their very best to keep him from ever doing anything interesting whatsoever.
Like, someday, riding one of those jet packs himself.
Or finally kissing a guy.
Or petting a whale.
Micah grinned. He wasn’t completely sure about that last one, actually. Could whales be petted? Did they bite? Did they even have teeth?
He had no clue, and he laughed, refusing as always to take himself too seriously.
“Micah, this is not a laughing matter,” Rachel-Lyn said in her best bossy, serious, older-sister voice. “You could get hurt down there all by yourself, musje. Do you want me to come pick you up? Did you remember to eat breakfast this morning? Did you…”
Micah squinted as he peered through his camera’s lens, his pulse picking up again, but… no. That wasn’t his man. Dark wetsuit, yes, but the face was all wrong. Not nearly as interesting.
“Did you call just to check up on me, Rachel-Lyn?” he asked absently, interrupting her monologue. He let his thoughts wander back to the whale thing while he searched the crowded marina for any sight of Wetsuit Man. He was pretty sure that September was the wrong season for whales, but when they swam past San Diego again—in the winter, he thought?—Micah wanted to find out about the petting thing for sure.
He wanted to do all of it. Every single thing he’d ever wondered about, and then even more.
He wanted to figure out why people referred to so many uniquely different colors as “blue;” and he wanted to go somewhere with snow and find out if it could possibly be as magical as it sounded, and what that kind of magic would look like; and he wanted to stay up all night long, outdoors, just so he could see for himself what people meant by stars “wheeling” across the sky. He wanted to see if a sunrise was as breathtaking as he’d heard, and find out what was different about a bonfire than any other form of fire… and why people always made them on the beach… and what they actually did around them.
And, someday, he wanted to fall in love, which had nothing whatsoever to do with seeing and everything to do with getting out there and living—something that his youth and his overprotective family and, in different ways, both his blindness and this new, imperfect version of sight he’d been blessed with, meant he hadn’t done nearly enough of yet.
Micah grinned.
He could hardly wait.
He wasn’t waiting.
He was doing it.
It was why he pushed himself to go out into the world on his own even when he tripped over curbs that he hadn’t realized were there, and misjudged depth and distance, and embarrassed himself on an hourly basis… and occasionally had other minor mishaps that may or may not have required him to get stitches.
Still worth it, though.
“Micah, are you even listening?” Rachel-Lyn asked, sounding exasperated. “Gary can’t make it next week, and this is important. Can I count on you to come with me?”
“Uh,” Micah said, blinking and lowering his camera. What?
“Great,” Rachel-Lyn said, acting like Micah’s “uh” had been a yes. Typical Rachel-Lyn.
Micah closed his eyes to minimize distractions, trying to sift backward through the one-sided conversation that he hadn’t been paying attention to so he could figure out what she was asking him to do. He wasn’t at all sure how they’d gone from her lecturing him to her asking him to… to do what, exactly? But Rachel-Lyn had mentioned her fiancé, so whatever she was talking about probably had something to do with her upcoming wedding.
“The caterers agreed to meet me after hours, since I have to work during the day, so I can pick you up at six, yes?”
“Um, tomorrow?” Micah asked, figuring it was easier to play along than to clue her in to the fact that he’d been ignoring her. “Actually, I can’t tomorrow, Rachel-Lyn, I’ve got—”
“No, musje, of course not tomorrow,” she interrupted. “I already told you, I’ve got my final wedding gown fitting tomorrow. I’m talking about Friday. You weren’t listening, were you?”
“Yes?” Micah said, accidentally making the word sound like a question, just like he always did when he got nervous. And as much as he loved his sister—and he did, despite her tendency to steam-roll him into doing whatever she wanted—getting roped into her we
dding plans definitely made him nervous. Rachel-Lyn was intense at the best of times. But once she started taste-testing wedding cake or fingering samples of lace? Things had a tendency to escalate quickly.
“Oh, perfect,” she said, apparently deciding his “yes” was an agreement to go along with her plans, rather than his confession that he hadn’t, in fact, been listening. “And please bring your camera, because I’ve asked them to show me exactly how each dish will be plated, and I want some high-resolution pictures so we can—”
Micah caught sight of Wetsuit Man again.
“Rachel-Lyn, I’ve got to go. Sorry.”
“But Micah, I—”
“Go ahead and pick me up on Friday. I’ll be ready by six. I’ll bring my camera,” he babbled, knowing he was being a little rude but kind of not caring. “Bye, Rachel-Lyn.”
Wetsuit Man was off the boat now, moving purposefully through the crowded marina with a group of other people. Why on earth Micah had ever worried about not finding him again was a mystery, because the man drew Micah’s eyes like a magnet. Micah felt like he couldn’t not see him, and even though he wasn’t using his camera, it sort of felt like his own eyes had special lenses on them.
Like they were doing the freeze frame, zoom-in, scene-stopping thing all on their own.
Like the rest of the world had fallen away, and Wetsuit Man was all he could see.
Micah tucked his phone back in his pocket, forgetting all about whatever he’d just promised his sister, and moved forward without thinking.
It wasn’t like he’d know what to say if he actually got close enough to talk to the guy, of course. It wasn’t like he’d say anything, most likely, given that he’d never in his life managed to talk to an interesting man without utterly embarrassing himself.
Micah swallowed. His tongue already felt tied up in a tangled knot and his palms had started sweating and he couldn’t hear a single thing over the pounding of his own heart. Yes, he’d been around hot guys before… but he’d never felt this way. And he wasn’t sure why he did now or what to do about it or if the entire breath-stealing, skin-tingling, stomach-fluttering overreaction he was having was just due to the fact that, as Rachel-Lyn had accurately guessed, he had forgotten to eat breakfast that morning and was feeling distinctly lightheaded.
Looking For Love (Semper Fi, The Forever Faithful Series Book 2) Page 3