Milo #2
“It really is,” I agreed, reaching up to tug at a lock of my blond, pink-tipped hair and hold it out. “You know, from how hard Mom tried to keep me from knowing about you, it had to suck to see your clone walking around sometimes. I wonder if that ever bothered her.”
An uncomfortable expression crossed his face, and he lightly flicked at the bottom of his glass. “Ah...well. I don’t... know enough about your mom to say.”
“Wow,” I said with a laugh. “She said it was a pump n’ dump, but I didn’t know if she was underplaying it.”
His eyes widened. “She said that?”
“Well, no. She said it was one night of fun that she didn’t regret, especially because she got me out of the deal,” I said with a snort. “That was my phrasing, not hers.”
“You...have a way with words.”
“Thanks, you should hear Mason, he’s even worse.”
“I remember him,” Marshall said, surprising me.
“He would have been...eleven? Twelve? Same as his sister, I suppose. That kid couldn’t sit still, and he was always up to something, funny as hell though.
The sister, though, she’d look at you with those dark eyes and you started thinking about all the shit you did recently and wonder if she was about to give you hell about it. ”
“Literally nothing has changed, except they’re older and Moira is now the mother she always acted like with us kids,” I said with a laugh, cocking my head. “When did you meet them? I thought it was just a one-night thing.”
He shifted uncomfortably in the seat. “We can talk about your mom and me, but...it’s not exactly a good story.”
“I mean, I figured that out when she wouldn’t talk about you,” I said, mentally weighing which direction to go.
My mother wasn’t unreasonable, and she wasn’t exactly dramatic beyond what all mothers were when it came to their kids; she had to have a good reason for not wanting me to know about Marshall.
At the same time, she was still human, and it had been what, a year or two after the loss of her husband?
I could see someone still being emotionally raw and sensitive, and who knew how things had gone down between her and Marshall.
Maybe all it had taken was him to say or do the wrong thing, and she was bitter and angry.
But even then...I was still mad at her for keeping his existence from me for so long, even when I was twenty-four goddamn years old.
That might still be a child in her mind, but I was an adult.
I didn’t need to be protected like that anymore, and I definitely didn’t need to be held back from meeting my biological father just because she held a grudge, whatever the reason.
“I’m not happy she decided to keep you a secret for so long,” I admitted with a grumble. “So maybe we shouldn’t talk about her right now.”
“Your mom was...and probably is, a very passionate woman,” he said, and when I raised my brow, giving a little smirk, his face flushed. “I meant...you know what I meant.”
“It’s nice to know that foot-in-mouth disease is hereditary,” I chuckled.
“But she’s not crazy or unreasonable. She has her reasons for doing stuff. Plus, she had her hands full with three kids, one of ’em was a baby, and a toddler. Then she found love again, had a new kid to deal with, and?—”
“Three more.”
“What?”
“Yeah, she adopted Dom after his parents, one of whom was Mom’s best friend, died when he was little.
Then, after Mom and Marcus got together, they adopted Arlo.
They said they had room in the family for more kids to love, but I think adopting Arlo together was the way to cement their relationship more than the wedding was. ”
“I...” his face screwed up for a moment, eyes going to the corner as he thought. “That’s...six kids?”
“Yeah, seven now if you include Micah.”
“She had another one?”
“No, that’s Moira’s kid. She had him with Jace when they dated like...a decade ago or whatever. Didn’t tell him about that until recently, which was a big blow for him, I’m sure, finding out you’ve got a kid you never knew about. You kinda know what that’s like, I guess.”
“Some of it, but not...anyway, go ahead.”
“Anyway, so Jace popped back up last year, madder than hell at Mason?—”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, those two have had a hate boner for each other since school, and I guess something made Jace wanna start it up all over again. Well, the joke was on him because now he’s trying to be a good dad, and he’s currently shacked up with Mason.”
Marshall took a moment with that one. “Okay, so...Jace was with Moira, but hated Mason.”
“Yes.”
“Showed back up last year to find out he had a kid with Moira...and is now hooking up with her twin brother?”
“Dating, not hooking up.”
“Right. Dating...his son’s uncle...who he used to hate.”
“Yep and yep!”
“How does that work?”
“A lot of bickering, arguing, and making up in supply closets.”
Marshall thought about that for a moment before letting out a sigh, chuckling as he shook his head. “So what you’re telling me is Marty managed to produce one straight child?”
“Nah, Moira and Mason are both bi; I’m the only one who ended up on this side of the fence,” I said with a snort. “Not that Mom cares about that sort of thing. I think she’s a little confused by Mason and Jace, but she’s been confused by my bullshit for years, so she’s had plenty of practice.”
“I wouldn’t expect her to care,” he said with a small smile. “I only knew her for a few days, but she wasn’t one to get hung up on that sort of thing.”
I cocked my head. “Few days? I thought it was a one-night thing.”
“Uhh...extended weekend?”
“Wow, alright. Considering I was the result of that, I have a good idea what happened, a lot, during that extended weekend.”
“Sorry for that mental image.”
I grinned. “Nah, I don’t get hung up on that kind of shit. I mean, obviously my mom’s had sex; I’m here, aren’t I? Moira and Mason too. I never want to know details, but I’m glad my mom has had her fun, and I hope she and Marcus are still having fun.”
“That’s...quite open-minded for what...a twenty-four-year-old?”
I grinned. “I’m the baby of the family, and Mom was never one for shielding her kids from the world. So I got used to that sort of thing.”
He blinked. “Used to how?”
“Oh,” I said, the implications only then striking me, and I winced. “I didn’t like...see stuff I shouldn’t or whatever, and there was zero bad touching, no bad touching.”
“Right, no bad touching,” he said, the corner of his mouth twitching.
“But you know, when you’ve got several siblings old enough to be interested in.
..well, Mason was interested in girls initially, not quite sure when he figured out the boy thing.
Moira never really came out; she had a girlfriend after her and Jace broke up.
Dom has only dated girls, but man, he gives off a vibe that makes me wonder if there’s a potential for the love of dick somewhere in there, don’t ask me how I know.
And Arlo? Arlo is...well, he’s Arlo. Mom says he’ll find someone when he’s ready, but he doesn’t seem interested.
Man’s older than me and doesn’t show any interest in dating.
But I mean, considering the track record of the rest of us, maybe he’s ahead of the curve and we just haven’t figured it out yet. ”
“Eli.”
“Huh?”
“You didn’t mention Eli at all.”
“Oh,” I flushed. “Well, I guess it’s because...I kind of just assumed he made sense.”
“Why?”
“Probably because he and I have been close since kindergarten...or somewhere around then. People are just used to the two of us, so I’ve got used to people knowing about him like they know about me.
Like I said before, you aren’t the first person to assume we’re a couple, but no, he’s straight, and always has been.
I think people assume we’re together because they know I’m gay, which honestly is annoying. ”
I noticed he smiled at that, rather than wincing like before when I’d said something that could be seen as a criticism. “That’s probably part of why I did it, I should know better than to assume someone who has a friend of the sex they’re attracted to can only have real friends of the other sex.”
“Does make you wonder how bi people get along with that kind of assumption floating around.”
“They just assume you can’t have friends of any sort, that you’ll sleep with anyone, and that you’re always going to end up cheating.”
“Oh. So that tells me you’re bi.”
Marshall smiled at that one. “Spot on, what gave me away?”
“That sounded way too personal, and spoken too quickly to come from anything but experience,” I said with a shrug, draining the rest of my beer.
I felt much better since I'd entered the bar, and I didn’t think it was the beer.
One beer wasn’t enough to get that fuzzy feeling in my limbs, but it was helping calm the inner turmoil that had been frothing inside me since I’d first seen Marshall standing outside the apartment door.
“So I guess it’s only fair to ask if the friend you mentioned before was actually a friend. ”
“Erik? We were just friends. We’d tried something more serious when we first met, years before he died, but we were a lot better as friends.
So, by the time he passed, there was nothing between us besides that special kind of love that doesn’t involve romance or sex. Kind of like you and Eli, I imagine.”
I imagined differently, but yeah, I was not going to mention that to the man who barely knew anything about me.
I was getting through our conversation without causing trouble.
I didn’t want to point out that he was assuming the nature of Eli and my relationship incorrectly, but the opposite way around.
Oh, sure, Eli and I were intensely close with nothing romantic or sexual between us, so that was a truth I could ride on, while ignoring my desire for something I definitely should not want.
So, probably a safe bet to leave that little detail right where it belonged.