Chapter Nine Milo
Nine
Milo
I find Prue on the floor, with music playing so loudly the windows of the A-frame rattle with it.
Face down, her forehead is resting on the edge of some dusty old rug, and her arms are tucked neatly against her sides, twisted so her palms lay flat on the ground. She looks fucking insane. I can’t help but laugh in the split second before my hand moves on its own accord, knocking twice.
She reaches out to pause the music, but keeps her face buried. “What?” I hear shouted from behind the door.
I knock again, another laugh spilling past my lips as I watch her flop around like a spoiled toddler, glare in my direction, and then appear shocked and horrified to see me, undoubtedly the last person she’d expected, standing at her door.
I remove my other hand from my pocket and wave with them both.
Her face turns my new favorite shade of pink. Without thought I visualize measuring out red and white paint onto the back of my hand. I’d go slow, mixing them together until I had the exact color to match her blush.
Prue ungracefully stands, then stomps over to the door, unlocks it, then nearly rips it off the hinges as she continues to glare in my direction. “ What? ”
“Good evening, Killer. That looked nice…. Having a meltdown, are we?”
She doesn’t even humor me with a response before walking back into the studio. She leaves the door open, at least, which I take as an invitation. “What do you want?” she asks as I kick my shoes off by the door.
“I’m here for the drill,” I explain. “Your dad’s sign is going to decapitate someone, and I refuse to have that on my conscience.”
“It’s over there.” She points toward the bathroom door, lowering herself back onto the floor, face up this time. “And since when are you my dad’s errand boy?”
I ignore her question, walk over to grab the drill and its box of attachments, and then look back over at her. “Seriously, what are you doing?”
“Grounding myself.”
“Is that supposed to…help?”
“I don’t know.” She taps the phone next to her hand three times before Neil Young starts playing, loudly, from the loft above.
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard ‘Harvest Moon’ at max volume before.” I project my voice over the folksy tune.
“Do you need something else ?” It’s then I notice the red-rimmed eyes. The swollen, puffy circles underneath them. I subconsciously check her over for more scrapes and bruises, somehow wishing I could see the ones inside too.
“Are you, uh, good?” I ask, sort of.
“No, obviously.” She lifts her head, turning to face me with a squiggly line between her brows and her lips pouting. “Is that all?”
“It can’t be all that bad, Killer.” I move to the rug and lower myself next to her. “There, there.” I lay a flat palm on her shoulder, patting twice.
She looks up at me with quizzical amusement. “Did you just actually say the words there, there ?”
“I’m not good at whatever this is!” I say defensively, holding up my hands. “No one in my family did feelings like… this. ” I gesture toward her.
“You?” She scoffs. “ You didn’t do feelings?” She says it as if it’s absurd. As if she’s got my number and that number is one that spells out d-r-a-m-a-t-i-c when typed out into a phone.
“Well, I was born with them, sure, but that was soon cured.”
“How?” she asks, lifting onto her elbows.
“Music.” I admit a partial truth. “Not music like this, though,” I tell her.
“Hey! I like Neil Young!”
“Yeah, Killer, you and everyone else. He’s a goddamn treasure. Still, music like this—the slow, sentimental stuff—will only take you deeper into that mind of yours. The trick is just that, you’ve got to trick your mind into thinking nothing is wrong.”
“Sounds healthy.” She almost laughs.
“You can’t spell repressed emotions without do, re, mi. ”
That earns it. A small, half-hearted chuckle.
“Want to give it a go?” I ask.
“Why not…” She slides her phone over. “The passcode is 2332.”
“It is way too early in our relationship for that information,” I tease, unlocking it just the same. “What if I snuck in here and sent myself all of your nudes?”
“Good luck finding them.”
“Never taken any?” I text myself so I have her number, moving quickly so she doesn’t notice.
“They’re behind a password.”
Oh.
“And that password…” I clear my throat. “Is that also one you’re willing to share, or?”
“Shut up and trick my brain.”
“I could do that a different way, you know,” I say, opening her music library.
“I’m sure,” she says sardonically. “We’re all one night with Milo Kablukov away from ending the mental health crisis. Alert the doctors! Tell the newspapers! We’ve got a cure!”
I can’t help but smile, rolling my eyes. “Don’t knock it till you try it.”
“I’ll pass, thanks.”
“Fine,” I grumble, hitting play on the sound of my childhood—the song Nik would play me after every big blowup, after every internal or external wound levied by my parents, or any time my feelings got a little too big for our far too tight house.
“?‘Super Trouper.’?” Prue sits up eagerly, but raises a brow that really ought to be accompanied by a different tone. “ABBA? Really?”
“What? Do I not strike you as an ABBA fan?”
She looks me up and down. “No.”
I scoff, feigning offense. “Why do you think Swedish people are always smiling? This shit works every time,” I tell her, rising to stand.
“C’mon.” I hold out my hand until she begrudgingly takes it, and I pull her up.
“You’ll feel better,” I tell her, “like this…” I swivel my neck as I throw my arms out to the side and begin rolling my hips.
Nadia once said my dance moves were, and I quote, “mesmerizing…in a bad way, like a dog walking on hind legs.” Still, it’s never stopped me.
“Trust me!” I shout over the music when she remains still, watching me. “It’ll help!”
She looks at me with every bit of skepticism available on earth but begins dancing, copying my moves as if she’s had years of practice.
A verse and a chorus later, she’s smiling and twirling and recklessly singing off-key.
And the second she does, I do too, keeping time with her as she marches in her bare feet across the rug.
Eventually, the song ends, and I pretend to collapse to the floor, wiping the imaginary sweat off my brow as she giggles for the very first time in my presence. I’m glad I was already on the floor when I heard it. That shit would’ve brought me to my knees.
“You never asked me what was wrong…” Prue says, slightly out of breath, cheeks still red from dancing, as she stands over me, her hands on her hips.
“I thought asking would make it sound like you needed a reason,” I tell her.
Her eyebrows jump up. “Don’t I?”
I shake my head, my eyes locking with hers. I find myself wondering how many angles of her I’d be able to see without getting her into bed, because I’m enjoying mentally collecting them so far. “I don’t think so, no. Life’s hard enough as it is without having to justify it.”
“My dad gave me an ultimatum,” she says, chewing at her bottom lip.
“Not sweet, darling Tom, surely?”
“Mm-hmm…” She nods slowly, lowering to sit cross-legged on the floor next to me.
Her willing proximity momentarily throws me off my game and six stupid words slip out. “Do you want to tell me?”
“Maybe…I don’t really have anyone else to tell.”
“Prudence Welch, am I your only friend?”
She glares at me, far less convincingly than in her previous attempts. “I wouldn’t really call you that.”
Good, I wouldn’t either. I do not fuck friends. I did that once and it ended in disaster. His name was Derek and we met hiking in Panama. I thought he was straight, being that he was your classic southern boy-next-door type, so I didn’t think there’d be any harm in becoming his friend.
A month into traveling together, Derek got handsy.
I liked him, he was hot and funny—but less funny than me, which is important—and he knew things about my past that I’d yet to tell anyone else and somehow still wanted me anyways.
So, I gave it a shot. A few weeks, and long nights later, Derek admitted he’d caught feelings.
Naturally, I, in return, caught the earliest morning bus.
It sucked. I felt anxious and guilty and when I finally made my way back to Bertha two days later, I realized he’d left half of his baggage with her. I tried calling him, to figure out a way to get him back his things, but he never picked up.
I have zero interest in repeating that mistake. So, no, we can’t be friends. Because I really want to fuck this woman. It’s becoming an issue, actually, how badly I want to. “All right, well, do you want to tell me anyways?”
“Long story short, I have to get a life or fly the nest. And, if I’m out, Mom’s out too. Dad’s already made a plan for her, if so. She’ll be in some care home outside of Huntsville because I am, apparently, throwing my life away.” She falls back onto the floor, looking up to the ceiling.
“Is that what this is, then?” I look around the partially cleared-out space. “Are you getting ready to leave?”
Prue laughs dryly. “No, this is me trying to stay.” She pauses, biting that full lip of hers.
“If I can get Mom out here more, doing what she loves, I think it’ll help.
If she sleeps better, I can go out…. Go into town and meet people or, I don’t know, take up a hobby or something.
I really haven’t thought it through just yet.
” She turns her head to look at me. “That’s what I was doing when you showed up. ”
I nod, hypnotized, my eyes tracing the curl of her hair in sequence as I follow one strand through each loop, from the top of her head to the end of the coil that touches the floor. “Maybe I could help,” I suggest—as I seem to keep doing in the Welches’ presence.
“Again, I’ll pass.”
“No, not with that.” Then we catch each other’s eyes as she levels me with a healthy dose of skepticism, and I mischievousness. “Though, if you’re willing to discuss that…” I mumble out the corner of my mouth.
She rolls her eyes, but smiles this time.
“I mean help more with this,” I gesture around the room. “With Mrs. Welch.”
“You know, you can probably call her Julia now. It’s been, what, ten years since you were in her class?”
“Never.” I dismiss the suggestion quickly. “But, really, I could help. I could paint with her, hang out with her…I miss it. You know, I spent most of my lunch periods in her classroom.”
“Are you a painter too?” she asks me, in what may be an attempt to change topics or refuse my help. I’ll get us back there, eventually.
“Not really.” It’s odd, because we’ve only just met, but some part of me is surprised she doesn’t know the answer.
Surprised that she, this near-perfect stranger, doesn’t already know everything there is to know about me.
What’s scarier is that some part of me wants her to.
“I like it, your mom saw to that. But I’m a pencil-sketch type of guy. More portable that way.”
“Mmm, portable.” She nods, a few times too many as if she’s logging that information away somewhere important. “Got any I could see?”
Oh, just three of you so far and about four hundred more of all of the other people I’ve ever wanted to kiss before. “Maybe if you’re lucky, someday, yeah.”
She smirks, like she’ll have her way much sooner than that someday suggests. I unfortunately agree.
“Consider it?” I say, moving to stand and reaching down to pick up the drill. “We could say…two hours per day? I’m just next door working, and Nik can spare me. You could squeeze an awful lot of Tom-approved life into two hours a day.”
“One hour,” she returns.
“You’re terrible at negotiating,” I tease. “You’re supposed to ask for more. ”
She stands, then leans her head toward me. “Fine. One hour with her, and I get that other hour with you to myself.”
I steal a breath, my eyes widening in surprise. “Oh?” I fumble and nearly drop the drill, but she helps me recover, placing her hand on my forearm for balance. I’m never this uncoordinated. I hate it. “Wait, so you do…Is that…what you want?”
“I didn’t mean an hour for that. ”
“No?” I ask, pouting. “Really? You sure?”
She shakes her head, smiling. “Friends?” she asks, simply. Like two kids on the schoolyard agreeing to trade lunches.
By saying yes, I’d be giving up on the hope of figuring out if those lips taste as good as they look. By saying no, I’d be going to bed tonight with two guilt-ridden scenarios to play back keeping me awake. Neither option feels right.
“What about lovers?” I ask, not so subtly. “Paramours? I could be your boy-toy? Your little bit on the side? Your hot piece of—”
She giggles again, and I swear it nearly stops my heart from beating. “Good night, Milo.”
“I’ll be out front with Tom if you need me,” I tell her, walking backward toward the door.
“I’ll put in a good word for you.” For some reason, I don’t turn around.
I think tripping and falling on my ass would be less painful than turning away from that gleeful expression she’s wearing.
The one that replaced the heavy storm cloud she’d had when I’d arrived.
I did that.
I cannot be her friend, probably, but maybe I’d be good at it, if I tried. “Kiss me good-night?”
She rolls her eyes again , grinning this time. “We could actually be pretty good friends, I think…. You’re surprisingly sweet.”
I hate that I agree, even as I shake my head just as she had. “We’ll see about that.”
“If you change your mind,” she says playfully as I reach the door, mimicking my words from earlier today, “you know where to find me.”