Rowan #2
Seriously, though, where was he? No call or even a text? Was it possible something had happened to him? There was no way his unflappable, larger than life brother had gotten into some kind of accident…right?
Gods, Rowan was going to feel like an asshole if he’d just spent thirty minutes cursing Ruben’s name only for him to be in the back of an ambulance on the way to a hospital somewhere.
His omega mom would be so mad at him, and even his alpha ma would shake her head the way she did sometimes.
Usually, it was reserved for Ruben. Only on very rare occasions had Rowan done something egregious enough to earn the dreaded headshake.
This would probably warrant it, though. He hadn’t even tried calling Ruben; he’d just glared at his phone a few times. He wasn’t usually one to catastrophize, but…okay, maybe sometimes he did, but it was only because Ruben was unpredictable at the best of times. Maybe he should—
“You’re going along with it because you love your brother?” Milo asked, pulling Rowan from his thoughts.
“I mean,” Milo continued, tapping a long finger against their plush bottom lip. “I’m just assuming that’s the case, based on the face you’re making. It’s the same way I feel anytime I talk about Ray: fond exasperation.”
“I…don’t know who that is,” Rowan said, resisting the urge to check his phone for the tenth time. Ruben was fine. If anyone had a right to complain, it was Rowan, stuck here chatting with a stranger.
“Oh, he’s my ex-boyfriend’s boyfriend, who my ex was cheating on with me, but I didn’t know it at the time. It was fortunate that instead of hating each other, we just hated Andrew, the piece of—” Milo whipped their head towards the door, which was still firmly shut.
Milo’s hair was a platinum blonde so light it was almost white, but right at the base of their skull, there was a small patch of slightly darker gray.
Rowan’s own hair, which was currently in a messy, end-of-the-day top knot, was red, just like his hawk’s tail feathers.
He wondered if Milo’s shifter beast was multicolored.
Milo whipped back around, leaned across the table, and lowered their voice. “Ethel doesn’t approve of me cursing, but Andrew was a mean, cheating, sorry excuse for a lawyer. In other words, a lousy son of a bitch, so I think I should be free to say as much.”
Rowan choked on a laugh. It wasn’t something he did very often, and his vocal cords seemed to need some warming up to get there.
“Anyways, since then, I don’t really believe in love, especially not with the way Ray keeps running through one crappy guy after another. Ethel does, though. I have a sneaking suspicion she and my aunt were, you know, ‘roommates,’” Milo said, reaching their elbow across the table to nudge Rowan.
Thankfully, Rowan saw the move coming a mile away and was able to lean far enough away that Milo couldn’t reach him.
Milo seemed completely unphased by this as they pulled their arm back across the table.
“That’s why when she said she wanted to go see a romance, I said, ‘sure, Ethel, I’ll totally take you.
It’s not like my heart's been broken or anything.’” Milo’s brows scrunched together.
“Although, I guess if she was in love with my aunt, her heart would probably be broken, too. Maybe we should have gone to see something with guns and explosions.”
How were they able to say the most out-of-pocket, gut-wrenching things like it was no big deal?
Rowan was pretty sure he, Ruben, and their other sister, Riley, would rather gnaw off their own talons than admit to being heartbroken.
Even if, typically, Ruben and Riley were the ones doing the heartbreaking, the fact of the matter was that none of them were great at talking about their feelings.
Raina was a bit softer than the rest of them, but even she would never admit such a thing to a stranger.
“Anyways, wow, I’m hungry. This drink is going straight to my head. Do you want a snack?” Milo asked.
Rowan was prepared to be offered yet another apple, but instead Milo pulled out a large bag of muffins. The bag had condensation on the inside, like they’d been shoved into it right out of the oven.
“Yeah, I know, they look so good, right? Ethel wanted to get popcorn and hot dogs, but I said there’s no way she should be eating that at her age, so I offered to make bran muffins.
She sent me this recipe, with some sneaky chocolate chips in it, but I figured that was an okay compromise.
It’s not like I want her to only eat boring food for the rest of her life, but I also can’t have her dying of congestive heart failure or anything either, ya know?
Then I’d really be all alone in the world. ”
What the heck was Rowan supposed to say to that? Platitudes and pleasantries were the currency he dealt in, since the majority of his socializing was with his coworkers.
Rowan was going to have a word with his mother about this. Not only was it Ruben’s fault, he blamed her, too.
“It makes sense you would be protective of Ethel,” Rowan said as carefully as he could. “Especially after losing your great-aunt.”
Milo’s eyes flashed, as if their shifter beast was lurking just below the surface.
For a moment, all their eccentric, frenetic energy stilled, and it was like Rowan was seeing Milo for the first time.
There were shadows under their eyes that looked like they’d been there for quite a while.
Without the sparkle of a smile, their irises were a dark, almost stormy, gray.
The kind of gray that would send Rowan and his bird careening out of the sky to find shelter.
Why, then, was he leaning against the edge of the table, like maybe he could see a little more of Milo if only he got closer?
What had really led them here to this movie theater on this exact Tuesday night?
Milo broke the spell by thrusting the bag of muffins in Rowan’s face, their too-wide grin back in place.
While Rowan’s moms hadn’t always been around when he’d been growing up, they had at least taught him not to take food from strangers.
The problem was that he hadn’t eaten since lunch.
He, like Ethel, had been counting on getting something at the concessions, but then he’d been beaten half to death by a backpack.
Or that was what he was going to tell his mother and Ruben, at least.
“I know you want some,” Milo said, shaking the bag roughly.
The muffins glanced off each other, one of the perfectly baked tops breaking away to reveal a soft, steaming inside.
“Okay, if you insist,” Rowan said, reaching into the bag and pulling out one of the least broken muffins.
He grabbed a napkin from the dispenser and waited for Milo to retrieve their own before taking a huge bite—
And promptly spitting it back out into the napkin.
There was something very wrong with the muffin, as if Milo had substituted salt for sugar or something.
“Well, that was quite rude,” Milo said before taking an equally large bite.
Their eyes widened, and their long, thin face contorted into a horrified grimace.
They grabbed the bag, spat their muffin into it, and promptly threw it in the trash can.
Like, actually threw it at the trash can, which was several seats away from them.
Miraculously, the bag went in, and the bartender didn’t even look upset about it. If anything, she looked impressed.
“That sneaky sneak!” Milo hissed. They somehow managed to fit half their torso inside their backpack, rummaging around until they pulled out a phone in a beaten-up phone case. “I followed the recipe exactly! Did she send me a doctored recipe?”
They swiped at their phone a few times and then let out a scandalized gasp, looking up at Rowan with those huge, pretty eyes. “Do you think she did this so she could eat the popcorn and hot dogs? She’s an omega crow shifter. Crows are known for being crafty, aren’t they?”
Rowan’s hawk shook out his wings in protest. While many shifters’ inner beasts led them around and sometimes got them into trouble, that wasn’t really his hawk’s style.
Ruben’s inner beta hawk was a huge troublemaker.
Ruben always said his hawk would prance and preen for any pretty face he saw, especially in the orchestra he played in.
No doubt that was why he was late tonight, probably flirting too long with a clarinetist or something.