Chapter 2 #2
“No, I did my best not to talk to anyone,” Elio confirmed and shrugged. “I was preparing for a lecture on the Hubble tension crisis and the mood was too bubbly at that party. But that tends to offend people almost as much as if I’d opened my mouth.”
“Right! But your explanation and theory about present-day expansion rate and recession speed was so…perfect.” Milo forgot about Starlight and the party for a moment, excited and slightly starstruck by Elio’s brilliance.
“I thought it made so much sense and I had to question my own understanding of the Hubble Constant.” Milo clutched his forehead, laughing as he recalled reading the corresponding paper. “I think I literally kicked myself.”
Elio bowed his head, grinning. There was a ding! when the elevator stopped and Elio grabbed the door so it would stay open but didn’t move out of the way. “Thank you. I thought your paper on the interplay of metallicity in galaxy evolution was fascinating.”
“You read that?” Milo shielded his face as it grew warm. “I didn’t think anyone would and it wasn’t that good. I’m not a gaseous astrophysicist.”
“I’m relieved to hear it but I found the paper insightful.”
It took Milo a moment to realize that Elio had made a fart joke and an awkward giggle burst from him. “I worked with a gassy gaseous astrophysicist once. He was both noxious and obnoxious,” Milo said, making Elio snort.
“Most of them are old windbags in my experience. You’re sure you haven’t been avoiding me? I’ve been at Starlight for a week and I went in…almost every day and you were nowhere to be found. I moved here and was sure we would cross paths but we never seem to.”
Milo shook his head, pretending to be baffled. “Isn’t that strange…?”
“I was afraid I’d have to go in on Monday and attend the mandatory meeting to see you,” Elio said with a grimace. “I don’t like Mondays or mandatory meetings.”
“Right. Me neither.” Milo had nothing against Mondays but he was glad Elio wasn’t at the meetings and hoped he never changed his mind. It would be extra mortifying to be the butt of another Mean Guy joke with Elio in the room. “I’d skip them if I could get away with it.”
“I’m sure you could,” Elio said but Milo waved it off.
“Was there a particular reason you were looking for me?”
“A few. What are you working on at the moment?”
“Me?” Milo blinked back at Elio, not sure why he would care. “Nothing special. I’m pretty sure Hector’s about to put me on Tyler’s team again and I think I might quit,” he said, even though he’d never have the nerve.
“We’ll see,” Elio replied, then stepped aside so Milo could pass. “Until later,” he said and pressed the 6 before giving Milo a jaunty salute.
“Later.”
Milo waved back as the doors closed and remained, staring at the metal panels and wondering what that was about.
Why did Elio want to know what he was working on?
Milo didn’t think he’d made much of an impression before and while he hadn’t humiliated himself this time, his performance in the elevator wasn’t exactly stellar.
All was quiet when Milo let himself into 8B, thankfully.
Everyone was downstairs, at 6C, for pizza and movies.
Milo had the option of joining them but he’d had enough peopling for one day and needed to decompress.
He headed back to his bedroom, dropping his backpack on his desk before falling face first onto his bed.
A long row on the machine in his parents’ suite and a hot shower would settle Milo’s frazzled nerves, but he screamed into the mattress, purging the day’s frustrations.
Feeling slightly better, Milo flopped onto his back and pulled one of the pillows over his face.
His brain sufficiently muffled, Milo pondered his next course of action, now that the plan to avoid Elio had been discovered and foiled.
His conscience twinged because despite Elio’s temperament, he had always behaved reasonably well at family gatherings and respected his brothers’ spouses and their families.
Leo and Theo went to great lengths and often issued dire threats to ensure his cooperation, but it seemed to have worked and Elio was still behaving around Milo.
And Milo should have been more welcoming as a fellow physicist. Elio might have been counting on a familiar face at Starlight as well.
It was Elio’s brashness and chaos that made Milo wary and had him gravitating to the opposite side of the room.
Even with Elio on his best behavior, being close to him was extra unsettling for Milo.
While he had been fascinated by the idea of another physicist in the family, Elio’s personality was the exact opposite of Milo’s and so much bigger and more combustible.
Most personalities were the opposite of Milo’s because he didn’t really have one, other than: loves physics and is obsessed with snacks.
Deep down, Milo was still a shy middle schooler and Elio was the bad boy of the scientific community.
There were lots of edgy professors and charismatic scientists on TV, but Elio was as intellectually gifted as he was a menace and he was a prince.
The House of Hessen was more of a ceremonial entity and was controlled by a foundation, but Leopold was the last in a long line of Austrian margraves and Elio and his brothers were the last of the von Hessens.
None of the brothers seemed to care about the title itself, only about each other and their parents’ legacies.
Elio, Milo had learned, wanted nothing to do with the foundation and had spent most of his life in England.
Now, Elio was in Manhattan at Starlight and the Olympia, and he would probably be at most family events.
Everyone, including Milo’s parents, had promised to look out for Elio and make him feel at home in the city.
Except for Milo, he had planned to shirk that duty and preserve his peace but Elio had sought him out and seemed to be interested in his work at Starlight.
With any luck, Elio would get bored at Starlight and fed up with life in New York City. That was the most likely outcome, given Elio’s short temper and his history. Milo just hoped it wouldn’t take too long and that his nerves would survive the siege.