Elijah
If I squinted and was a little drunk, I might be able to ignore the fact that there was something awkwardly sitting between the two of us.
It had been two weeks since our little incident, and a week since Milo had come home in a frazzled, panicked state to try to.
..I don’t know, knowing him, he had run back to the apartment with a half-formed plan in his head.
Some part of him was probably trying to apologize, another part trying to deny or confirm the worst-case scenario he’d built up in his head, and another part desperate to make sure the things that mattered to him hadn’t just exploded and scattered all over the place.
As I watched him come in, flashing a believable smile at me and setting a bag down to pull off his coat, I could almost believe he was doing fine.
The thing with Milo that many people missed was that he was exceptionally good at letting things roll off his back.
Hell, sometimes the things people thought should be a big deal didn’t even make it to his back to roll off, they just breezed right by as he continued his life as carefree and happy as ever.
People even thought that life and its troubles never found root in Milo’s head and heart.
They were wrong; it was just notoriously difficult for something to get to him.
In those rare moments where something did hit him and stick, all that energy and enthusiasm turned inward and focused on the problem with an intensity that bordered on psychotically obsessed.
He would run the entire problem, its causes, possible solutions, and the implications repeatedly in his head until he was worn down to the emotional bone.
The only way to prevent him from doing that was to distract him with something he couldn’t resist.
And a night of drinks, gaming, and takeout food was the distraction with a perfect track record.
“What did we end up with?” I asked, following him into the kitchen.
The other important thing when he was mentally obsessing was to act like nothing was wrong.
Sure, it could backfire and piss him off because he didn’t like being treated with kid gloves, but I could generally get away with it a lot easier than others.
The key was not to come off as condescending, but instead act normally and let him latch onto that normalcy instead of whatever thoughts were swirling around in the chaos of his brain.
“Rum sounded like a decent choice,” he said as he pulled rum and bottles of Coke from the bag.
“Interesting,” I said, making sure there was approval in my voice because we both knew I liked a good rum.
I chose to leave out that Milo didn’t like rum much.
He drank slowly if something had rum in it.
That was pretty telling, but doing the actual telling would set him into a spiral.
I’d be able to tease him more once he was calmer, especially after getting food into his stomach and a drink or two.
Sure enough, the first sign of the real Milo surfaced when he tilted his head back and sniffed the air, turning to eye the bags I’d brought in earlier. “And what do we have here? Oh my God, soul food?”
“I thought it sounded good.”
“You’re goddamn right it does, oh my God, I can smell everything.”
Which of course was my cue to finish putting away what he had bought, the liquor into the freezer and the Coke into the fridge.
He pulled out the boxes and laid them on the counter.
The smell of Mac N Cheese filled the air, along with the rich and enticing aroma of fried chicken.
The cornbread and greens weren’t as pungent, but I knew from experience the restaurant’s food could be relied on to be delicious, especially because the owners always threw in ham with the greens.
We loaded up, and I let him pick the video, knowing I was about to see some cooking show.
While filling my plate, I heard the familiar sounds of a show I hadn’t heard in a while and realized he was trying to get into a good mood.
It had been ages since I’d last seen him watch Worst Cooks in America, but it told me he was looking for entertainment and laughs instead of information or new ideas.
By the season's midpoint, the contestants had some well-thought-out and interesting dishes, but he was starting right from the beginning.
Taking my food with me, I dropped onto the couch with Milo.
I was pretty sure the only reason he hadn’t curled up in the chair where I wouldn’t have the option of being close to him was because it had a terrible angle for seeing the TV.
He was pressed against the arm of the couch, but I let him have the delusion of being subtle and dropped onto the opposite end while we watched the show.
It was one of those rare meals where he took his time.
The occasional glance in his direction showed me he was starting to relax, forgetting everything in his head while he watched the show and ate good food.
When I got up to get us more food and returned with drinks, his eyes lingered on the rum and Coke with the barest hint of wariness.
It didn’t last long, though, and he was back into the show, picking up his glass absently and taking a sip, making a small face but laughing when someone made a dish that could only be described as an affront to mankind.
We ended up sitting through three episodes, boxing up the leftovers, and stowing them away for the inevitable hunger trip to the fridge later.
Milo waited until my glass was empty before getting us a refill.
I had been tempted to check if there was even booze in his, but there was no way to be sure.
The alcohol was there to provide normalcy for the kind of night we liked to have with one another anyway, so I wasn’t going to start chanting ‘shots’ at him if he really wasn’t comfortable drinking.
I knew he’d been out drinking in the past couple of weeks, and I knew one of those times he’d only been a little buzzed after a mid-week night out with Raf.
He had stayed with Marshall in his hotel room when they’d gone out for the night.
Clearly, he was willing to drink, but it was either with overzealous moderation or when he went too far, he stayed as far from me as possible.
Not really necessary, but I couldn’t blame him for being cautious.
I didn’t want him to act differently around me, but I knew if the roles were reversed, I’d be awkward.
I also knew he was waiting for the follow-up conversation, both needing and dreading it in equal measure.
He knew there was more to my end of things than I’d let on, and while it was killing him not to bring it up, he was giving me space to think through things.
I appreciated it, even if I felt guilty for putting him on hold for what was probably one of the most impactful things he’d ever done.
But what was I supposed to say to him that wouldn’t make things worse?
I did see him in a different light, but while I couldn’t put a name to it, I knew it wasn’t a bad light.
I probably thought about that night almost as much as he did, but it wasn’t with disgust, annoyance, or judgment.
In many ways, I didn’t know how to approach the subject because I still wasn’t sure how I felt other than to insist that I didn’t think less of him.
If anything, I was more curious than anything else.
How the hell was I supposed to ask questions without tormenting him?
What exactly had he fantasized about when he’d given in and done that?
Had he always gotten off to the fantasies, or were most of them just moments, flashes of an idea that got his engine going before he diverted it to something or someone else?
How often had he looked at me walking around, completely oblivious, wearing shorts with no underwear or just my underwear, and felt something nagging at the back of his head?
Was it just lust? Maybe more the taboo than he’d originally thought, or was it just for me, without other things thrown in for a bit of spice?
The kind of questions I couldn’t just throw out there without causing problems.
So I sat on those questions, along with the questions I had for myself.
Because the thing was, he had been closer to the truth than I’d led him to believe.
I knew I was taking the whole thing with more grace than most people in my position would.
It would have been perfectly normal to be shocked and put off, even temporarily.
But I wasn’t. What discomfort I could name was just confusion, a big ball of it.
Confusion was not something I should feel first, but there it was, and I could only look at it with the same curiosity I felt toward everything else.
So I just...waited. I thought carefully, weighed everything, and waited.
Milo and I had navigated a lot together since we were kids, and I just had to have faith that it would happen here as well.
We didn’t have the answers, but I had faith in us, in our bond.
I didn’t know the end result, but that was a worry for when that bridge was crossed, not before.
“So...what are we thinking?” he asked after the episode ended. “Continue or game?”
“I’m thinking game,” I said, taking another drink.
“Hmm, competitive or chill?”
“The last time we mixed competitive with drinks, you got the building manager called on us, and the time before, it was the cops.”
“Chill, it is,” he snorted, sliding out the second screen we had stored behind the TV, and began booting up our systems. “It’s been a few months since we kept going on Kingdom.”
I snorted. “Alright, Minecraft it is then.”