Milo #2
“Only when it suits you,” I told him, narrowing my eyes. “But we both know you’re jumping on the train of giving us hell over....well, you know.”
Arlo chuckled, setting his glass down and staring up at the sky. “There are worse things in this world than being teased by your family because you’re close to...someone.”
“My stepbrother, you mean,” I said, hissing the emphasis.
The subject felt more sensitive than usual, which made sense considering a couple of weeks ago, I got an eyeful of Eli in a way I never had before.
Even then, I still felt more sensitive about it than usual, even with.
..well, seeing Eli hard right in front of me.
Which was strange, I generally figured out what was going on in my head enough to know what was bothering me if I dug hard enough, but every time I’d tried lately, I ran into a mental.
..well, it wasn’t a brick wall, it was a fog.
I was being kept from understanding something about myself, but I couldn’t get close enough to figure out what it was, let alone how to deal with it.
Annoying is what it was.
One thing stuck out. It was a dream from that night when I came home and just... lay down with Eli. Of course, if it were that simple, then it wouldn’t matter, but that dream had much more weight. Like I lay with him, and there had been so much more that I didn’t know what to do with it.
Not that significant dreams about him weren’t something I hadn’t dealt with, because fuck knew I had. I’d had several dreams about him, mostly about sucking and fucking. But what stuck with me was somehow more significant and yet...less.
“If that makes it better, sure,” Arlo said with a grunt as he took a drink.
I knew he meant something, sure, it was something innocent, but I still?—
What?
I remembered Eli.
Warm and available.
Present and there and?—
And?
Hard?
Oh God, he was hard?
“Whatever makes you feel better,” I offered limply.
Hard?
Why would he be hard?
The fuck kind of dream did I have?
Eli hard from...my touch. Yeah, that made sense.
That was just the kind of dream I would have about him.
He was, after all, the epitome of my fantasies, and just..
.no, it made sense. Well, no...it didn’t make sense.
Not exactly. First of all, I didn’t have sex dreams; when I remembered my dreams. I’d only had a dream about Eli like that once, and it was.
..different than the dream I swore I had had about him that night.
The memory of the dream was off in a way that was hard to put into words.
It wasn’t hazy in that I could barely remember the details because while the whole dream didn’t stick out, there were more details than I usually had.
Yes...that was it. Remembering my dreams was based on the feeling the dream left me with, not necessarily the details.
But I could remember details more than emotions.
I remembered how good it had felt to lie against him, talk to him, and be honest about.
..things. How I had felt him grow hard and then felt him touching me like I’d always wanted him to?—
My fingers fumbled around my beer, pushing it forward when my grip missed as my fingers clenched, knocking it over with a harsh crack as the glass split and sent beer splattering everywhere.
I barely noticed the sounds of disgust and surprise from Arlo and Marshall as the fleeing beer hit them.
Because… I fully understood that what I had in my head wasn’t the memory of a dream.
It was just a plain, old-fashioned memory that had sunk below the surface of my thoughts.
A memory that was fuzzy because I’d been drunk.
A memory that probably should have been lost to the universe because I’d been drinking, and I rarely remembered what happened the half hour leading up to falling asleep with booze in my veins.
A memory that, even fragmented and hard to piece together, was still strong enough for my addled mind to hold on to those scattered, glittering pieces.
“Oh God,” I groaned.
“It happens,” Arlo said as he tried to contain the worst of the beer before it went everywhere.
Oh, something happened, alright.
I had groped Eli.
I had groped Eli.
I had been hard and pushed my cock against him.
Jesus Christ, I couldn’t remember what I’d said, but… holy hell, what had I said?
I thought of the little things from the past week that had screamed something was wrong with him, despite his insisting he was fine. A little, strangled noise that was probably an attempt at a laugh burst from me, and I was on my feet. “Well, that explains that.”
Arlo looked up, face pinched, and after looking at me for a moment, his brow raised slightly. “Uh...Milo? You’re making even less sense than usual.”
“I have to go,” I said faintly, wondering if someone could pass out from getting hit like a truck by the sudden understanding that you had copped a feel of your best friend, who was also your stepbrother. “I’m so sorry.”
“You’re white,” Marshall said, leaning forward.
“I’m fine,” I said, yanking out my wallet and throwing money I didn’t count onto the table. “For my part, I’ll...call you...text you...one of those.”
“You’re worrying me,” Arlo said, reaching out, but I stepped back.
The last thing I needed was to be comforted or taken care of.
I needed to get back to my apartment and pray Eli was still there, and that there was still something to salvage.
I didn’t know what I was going to say to him, but it had to be a hell of a lot better than whatever I’d said, drunk out of my head and rambling God knows what while shoving myself at him.
“I’m fine,” I repeated, turning and walking away, body stiff and jerky as I hurried, pulling out my phone. “C’mon, c’mon.”
Except there was no answer from Eli. For the first few blocks, I kept trying, hoping that if he was ignoring his phone, he might get curious about who was calling him back to back.
At a certain point, I had to accept that he was either not hearing his phone or, worse, he knew it was me and was purposefully avoiding talking to me.
I hoped my repeated calls would make him wonder if there was an emergency.
..or he just thought I was being dramatic.
Of course, if there were an emergency, he’d also get calls from the family.
So he had to be avoiding me. Not that I blamed him, but answer the goddamn phone!
I probably should have summoned a ride because I was too far from the apartment to make it quickly, but waiting in a car while they navigated traffic would have felt like torture.
Walking was slower, but it let me do something while my thoughts whirled, dragging my emotions behind them.
I didn’t have to sit in the back seat and remind myself to take deep, even breaths because I already had to do that as I walked as fast as I could without breaking into a full-blown run.
The worst was when I had to stand at an intersection and wait for the light to change so I could finally scuttle across and keep moving.
By the time I reached the apartment building, I was going to explode from the pent-up stress.
It had built high enough that I swore I could feel it manifesting as a tangible object lodged in my chest. My fingers fumbled with the keys to the front door, and by the time I got it open, I decided the elevator was as bad an idea as waiting in a car.
I took the stairs two or three at a time as I climbed to our floor, the act of powering up the stairs helping with some of the pressure built up inside me, but I was still shaking when I tried to shove the key into our door.
I stumbled into our apartment, heart in my throat as I closed the door, ears straining for the faintest noise.
Kicking off my shoes, I walked into the living room and let out a slow and shaky breath.
Seeing nothing had changed in the apartment, I realized I had been holding onto the fear that, for whatever reason, Eli knew I’d remembered what had happened and had been packing his things.
I wouldn’t have blamed him, because seriously, what the fuck was wrong with me?
Once, I had tried to pull off some stupid trick involving a skateboard, one of Mason’s bikes that I had asked to use beforehand, and a poorly made ramp that went too high for what I was trying to do.
The thing was, it had worked, the ramp had stayed put, and I hadn’t lost control of the skateboard as I went over it.
The problem was that neither Eli nor I had thought about what would happen when it came to safely landing.
The board had broken under me, shattering and sending pieces in every direction, including up against my stomach.
I had sat there, staring down at my shirt that was growing bloodier by the second.
I’d gone to the ER, but it was a long time before I could pull up my shirt and find out if my guts were hanging out.
Lifting my shirt that day took half as much courage as it did for me to suck in a breath and call out, “Eli?”
I glanced back and saw his shoes sitting against the wall, always positioned where they wouldn’t get in someone’s way. My heart was a furious drum in my chest as I sucked in another breath. “Eli?”
“The fuck?” I heard from down the hallway, and I let out that heaving breath at the bewildered, groggy tone in his voice. He hadn’t been avoiding me; he’d been napping. “Milo?”