Eli #2
“Then where is your shirt?”
“Uhh...I don’t know. Bathroom? I don’t know, I got hot.”
“Of course you did.”
There looked to be a new bruise forming on the back of his right shoulder, and I wondered what he’d done.
Considering there weren’t any other marks, I assumed it hadn’t been a fight.
Actually, from the state of the cast on his arm, I guessed he had taken a spill at some point.
Whether that was just from walking or because he had got it in his head that he could manage a trick while completely obliterated was anyone’s guess.
“Please tell me that if I get online, I won’t find a new video,” I told him, eyeing the filthy cast on his arm. “Because you look like you’ve been doing something you shouldn’t have tonight.”
“There’s a video,” he said around a mouthful of food, his eyes wide. “But it’s not illegal...or dirty...or weird, or?—”
I held up my hand. “I...you didn’t get the account suspended, right?”
“Pretty sure,” he said, frowning down at his plate and then nodding. “Yeah, no, it’s okay. Yeah.”
Inspired by his confidence, I went to my room and plucked my phone off the charger to open one of our accounts.
It seemed he only remembered the Instagram account, which might be okay since they tended to be more forgiving of missteps with their terms of service.
All I could see from the still marked as the cover photo was him cheesing at the camera like he was having the greatest night of his life.
Praying for the best, I sat on the edge of my bed and tapped the video.
“HEYOOOOO,” Milo bellowed loudly into the microphone, the camera bobbing enough to make the sensitive feel a little seasick.
For a second, all I could hear was him laughing and the blurred sight of the club he was in, smears of bright colors and flashing lights.
Eventually, it righted, and his double was staring back at me.
Marshall and Milo were grinning sloppily at the camera. “It’s ya boy!”
“Good lord,” I muttered at the phrase that was cliché as all hell, and one he had only used ironically in the past. It was supposed to be just for the joke, but I had to be honest, it seemed he wasn’t being ironic as he grinned at the camera.
“Well, everybody,” he said, losing some of the consonants in his slur. “Ya know how I told ya I was adopted? Well, this guy right here is my dad! Yeah, that’s right. My long-lost dad went and showed up, and now he’s out here, partying with me right now!”
“Christ,” I said with a snort as Marshall sagged onto Milo, which was a bad idea since it looked like Milo was also relying on him to stand up.
“So, everybody say hi!” he called into the camera as the lens went wild again, and I heard more laughter and the sound of something hitting something else hard near the microphone.
There was giggling as the camera stared up at the ceiling, and Milo’s drunken face appeared in shot once more to grin before flipping the camera off.
Alright, he hadn’t been lying; that wouldn’t get the account flagged, but I decided to unpublish it for the moment anyway, before more people saw it when morning rolled around.
I wasn’t worried about him getting into trouble, but something about putting his dad out there while both were wasted felt like a bad idea.
For all I knew, Marshall did not want his face out there or to be associated with Milo.
Maybe that wasn’t the nicest thought, but there were plenty of reasons not to want your face all over social media, and not just because you didn’t want people knowing you were related to someone.
“See?” Milo asked, and I picked my head up to see he was in the doorway, hanging onto it like it was the only thing between him and the floor, which it probably was. “Not bad.”
“Not bad,” I agreed, knowing it was probably better not to mention that I’d taken it down temporarily until he was sober enough to call or text Marshall and ask if he wanted his face on the net.
Of course, it was a little late for that, and there were already comments on the video, so there were bound to be questions we’d have to figure out how to answer in the future if Marshall did, in fact, not want the video to go up. “Going to bed?”
“Yeah.”
“Finish your food?”
“Most of it.”
“Okay.”
I watched as he stumbled into my room and flopped onto the bed hard. I looked down as he buried his face into my pillow, taking a deep breath before relaxing. “Hey, uh, Milo?”
“Mhmm?”
“That’s my bed.”
“Mhmm.”
“Your bed is across the hall.”
“Mhmm.”
“You’re not going to move, are you?”
“Uh-uh.”
“I figured.”
It wasn’t the first time we’d shared a bed, though it had been a couple of years. The memory made me chuckle. “Remember when Reese found us sleeping together and gave you all sorts of shit? Thought you were cheating on him with me?”
There was a long enough silence that I thought he’d passed out.
I lay back on the bed, knowing I needed to claim my space if he was out cold.
He might sleep through an entire apocalypse while drunk, but he was restless .
He was also a world-class bed hog and a massive cuddler.
That last thing had landed him in hot water with his boyfriend.
To be fair to Reese, he had walked in on Milo in only a pair of shorts, and me in a tank top and shorts, Milo wrapped around me from behind.
Anyone would have given some pause. Still, Reese had lived in constant fear and worry that Milo was cheating on him, and had been greedy about how Milo spent his time and with whom.
..specifically disliking Milo spending time with me.
I had been so groggy at being woken up by the yelling that I hadn’t realized what was going on until Reese had stormed out and Milo told me what had happened.
Honestly, I wasn’t sorry to see him go, but Milo had been testy for a week after the breakup.
Milo snorted, surprising me. “He was...so convinced you and me were like...a thing.”
I hadn’t known that, but it didn’t surprise me. “I mean, now you bring that up. How many of your boyfriends have thought that?”
“Mmm, most of them,” he said, face still pressed into my pillow. “Reese was just really convinced. He always tried to trick me into admitting we were sleeping together.”
“Really?”
“Mhmm. He’d like...like one time, we were talking about other guys we’d been with before, like dick sizes and stuff like that.”
“Probably not the best idea, I remember how jealous Reese used to get if a reasonably good-looking guy even talked to you.”
“I thought he was like...trying to be better about that stuff, ya know?”
“I do know, but you should know better.”
“Shhh. Anyway, he knew some of the people I’d been with in the past and he hadn’t been with, so he like...asked.”
“How big were they?”
“Yeah, but like...really fast.”
“Basically said the name and you listed how big you remembered them being?”
“Yeah.”
“How did I get caught up in that?”
“Probably ‘cause like...partway through, when he had me saying all that real fast, he suddenly dropped your name.”
I snorted. “He was trying to catch you out like one of those courtroom dramas.”
“Yeah!” he said, pulling his face from the pillow and grinning at me, proud that I understood. “It didn’t work though because like, I didn’t know what the hell you were working with...I mean, back then anyway. Now I do.”
I wasn’t sure how to feel about his giggle at that ‘revelation.’ I suppose it was better than him continuing to be disturbed by it; it was at least more on brand for Milo. “So that didn’t work out too great for him.”
“Naw, I got mad at him for it,” Milo said, rolling his eyes before twisting to lie on his back.
“I didn’t know what to be more mad about, that he tried to trick me, the fact that he still didn’t believe me that you and I weren’t a thing and never had been, or that afterward, he tried to turn it into another argument about whether I was cheating on him.
God, that shit got so old so fast. I shouldn’t have stuck with him as long as I did. Guy had issues.”
I glanced at him, smirking. “Please tell me you didn’t purposefully cuddle me that night to make him freak out.”
“No!” Milo said, the outrage in his voice making me believe him more than anything else. “But...I wasn’t against taking advantage of a happy little accident to push him to end things with me, ya know? Do you uh...think that was wrong?”
“I mean...not morally wrong,” I told him with a shrug.
“And honestly, as much as he kept acting like he didn’t want to be with you because he was so afraid of you cheating or leaving him, he kept a stranglehold on you too; didn’t let you out of his sight for too long.
I’m not sure there was going to be another way for you to end that relationship without him being so pissed off that he just.. .left.”
“Still kind of a chickenshit move, huh?”
“Oh yeah, definitely. But hey, he was probably the sort to stalk the shit out of you if you stood up and ended things on your own, so maybe it worked.”
“Moira says you enable my...my...what was the word she used?”
“Knowing her, it was slightly bitchy, mostly funny, but said with love.”
“Dipshittery.”
“Okay, that’s a very Moira thing to call it.”
“Yeah, she’s so mean sometimes. I love her.”
“She loves you too, you drunken idiot.”
His eyes opened, and he grinned at me. “Tonight was fun. I had a lot of fun.”
“Mmm, evident by the brewery smell coming off you like the worst cologne imaginable.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay, you and Marshall had fun. Good bonding time?”
“He’s a lot of fun, and the guy can drink like a fish. Seriously, he could probably outdo a goddamn group of frat boys in their last semester.”