Elijah #6
That was the thing about Milo, he was unflappable.
Sure, something could come along and bring him down or bring his temper to the surface, but it didn’t stick.
His moods left as quickly as they arrived, and Milo could always be counted on to shake things off with a speed that some might worry about, but I knew was just how he functioned.
He didn’t need to process things because he wasn’t hanging on to them, simple as that.
I envied it sometimes, but I knew it would never work for me, so there was no point in sitting around upset.
“Right, right,” he said with a grin. “I’ll leave that in the hands of those far more capable than I. Me? I am a simple creature, and simple I will stay.”
That from the guy who almost always carried a cumulative GPA between 3.
5 and 4.0, and while he had to work at some of his classes, he had taught himself so many ins and outs of coding that he was ahead of even his advanced coding classes and breezed through them. He was simple, but he wasn’t stupid.
“Anything you wanna talk about?” he asked as we approached our apartment building.
“Don’t worry about me,” I snorted as I opened the outer doors to let us into the entryway. “Was just thinking my thinks.”
“Mmm, is that a sign that I should pretend you’re okay? Or am I supposed to persist?”
“There’s nothing to persist about.”
“Uh-huh. Fine, fine, I’ll take the hint.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“Sure am!”
Right there was why I was okay with whatever weirdness had cropped up between us.
No matter how awkward things were, he was him, I was me, and we were who we were together.
I could rely on him to drag me into ridiculous shenanigans that made me laugh, and he could rely on the fact that I would make sure he didn’t end up banged up.
..too much. I could bring him back to reality when he decided to go out of bounds, and I could always rely on his naturally laid-back demeanor to lift me whenever I naturally wanted to sink.
It was who we were, and had been from almost the start, and deep down, I thought that’s who we always would be.
We stepped off the elevator and came to a slow stop as we turned the corner, seeing someone standing near our apartment door. My brow quirked as I watched the man bend slightly to attach something to our door.
“Can we, uh, help you?” Milo asked in confusion, startling the man and making him swing around to face us.
“Oh,” the guy said, blinking.
“Oh shit ,” I hissed as I looked him in the face.
Milo looked back at me. “What? What’s wrong? Do you know him?”
“Well...in a way,” I said as I stared at the man, who was looking back at me with an expression of puzzlement. I was seeing double.
“You do?” the man asked, and shock ripped through me as I realized he had big blue eyes that made his confusion almost innocent, puppy-like.
He reached up to swipe a clump of blond hair that he clearly struggled to control, his broad shoulders hunched forward as he leaned toward Milo and me expectantly.
He was wearing a thick coat, so I couldn’t be sure, but the double vision made me think that under all that insulation, there was probably a wiry, perpetually thin body even if he managed to put on some muscle.
Milo glanced at the stranger and then back at me. “Well, don’t hold me in suspense here. Who is he?”
I stared at him with wide eyes. “Hey, Milo?”
“Yeah?”
“Look at him.”
“Okay...looking.”
I stared at the older man, who had straightened under Milo’s scrutiny. “Have you ever wondered what you might look like in another decade or two?”
“Um, yeah? I guess, doesn’t everyone?” Milo asked, looking at me with a bewildered expression. The older man shot me a look that I knew well, though it was disturbing to read it so easily on a stranger, but he understood what I was doing.
But God bless Milo; he could be so dumb, even though he was among the smartest people I knew.
“Well, if you ever wanted the opportunity to find out, turning around and looking at him again is the best chance you’re ever going to get,” I said, reaching out as he turned around, sticking my fingers through the loops of the bags in his loose grip.
Still confused, he turned, and his grip flexed, tightening so his knuckles turned white as he stared.
I was justified in reaching out when he didn’t hand over the bags, but simply dropped them into my hand from shock.
I couldn’t see his face, but I could imagine the avalanche of emotions cascading through him.
“Eli?” he asked in a soft voice.
“Yeah?”
“Is that...is that who I think it is?”
“If you mean your biological father? Yeah, I’m pretty sure it is. Either that or you had an older brother out there no one knew about.”
“Umm, hi,” the older man said, and I was relieved to hear that at least his voice wasn’t the same as Milo’s.
Jesus, they resembled each other even more than my dad and I did, which was already at eerie levels.
“So...I was...trying to leave a note so you didn’t.
..we weren’t supposed to, or I guess I wasn’t supposed to. ..um...this is awkward.”
“That’s putting it mildly,” I said. Milo continued to stare, and his goddamn biological father stared back at him. Apparently, they shared the same brain cell at that moment, and I sighed. “Would you like to come in?”
“I don’t...know if that’s a good idea,” he said uncomfortably. “He uh...kind of looks like he’s going to have a stroke.”
I leaned around to see complete shock etched into Milo’s features. “So he does.”
“I, uh,” he gestured over his shoulder toward what I now saw was a piece of paper taped to the door. “Kind of...wrote an explanation. Just a small one but...with my number.”
“Sure,” I said, taking control of the situation because Milo was overwhelmed and locked down completely.
I’d only seen that a couple of times, but I knew it would take him a while before he was back in control.
When he eventually got some function back, it would be the confused, rambling sort that wouldn’t make a lot of sense.
“That’s probably a good idea right now.”
“I wasn’t...” he said after a moment and grimaced. “Anyway, I'm...gonna go. My number’s there and...I’m going to just...take the stairs.”
“Sure,” I repeated because again, what the hell was I supposed to do?
Last I checked, there wasn’t a handbook or a class for what to do when your stepbrother slash best friend’s biological father decided to show up at your shared apartment after two and a half decades of silence.
The best I could do was allow him what little grace he could summon to make his exit, watching us as if at any moment, Milo would snap out of it and go running at him like a madman.
I watched as...Milo’s dad, I guess, stumbled through the stairwell door with a grunt before disappearing.
Clearing my throat, I set the food down in front of our door, taking out my keys to unlock it and take the note off.
I was tempted to read it, but I handed it to Milo, who still wore the shell-shocked expression of someone who had just watched a family get blown up in front of them.
“Come in and eat,” I told him, gesturing toward the apartment, knowing there wasn’t much I could do to drag him out of his zoned-out state. “Don’t think too hard, or you’ll hurt yourself.”
His expression flickered back to life, and he shot me an annoyed look. “Fuck you, that was my dad!”
“I’m aware,” I said dryly. “Why don’t you read the note and figure out what you’re going to do about it?”
“Yeah,” he said, handling the paper carefully as if it were made of glass...or could explode. “I don’t know what the fuck I’m going to do, though.”
Now that...was a very good question.