Milo
Keeping my pace was tricky on the slick ground, but thankfully, even in winter, plenty of people still used the park trails. Admittedly, it was nice; even the cold air had a hard time reaching me because of the trees' cover.
As much as I hated the cold, there was something about running through the bitter air.
It made my lungs hurt, and I didn’t think the ache in my face would dissipate until I plopped down in front of a heater going full blast. Yet there was something almost..
.cleansing about it. For every ache, there seemed to be an equal feeling of release.
I doubted anything about that idea was substantial, but it felt right, and I wasn’t going to second-guess it too much.
Once I reached an outcropping of trees that shielded me from the wind, which had been blowing steadily since the morning, I leaned against a tree and focused on breathing.
Pulling out my phone, I checked to see Eli hadn’t messaged me, which wasn’t surprising.
We still had the rest of the day to enjoy ourselves before deciding what to do about.
..well, everything that meant anything to us.
It had been easy to ignore for a couple of days, but now the clock was ticking closer and closer to the deadline, I was finding it more and more difficult.
That was why I had decided to go for a run even though I generally hated being outside when it was so damned cold and bitter.
Eli had given me a searching look when I’d told him, but he hadn’t said anything other than to nod and tell me not to break anything while I was out.
I’d flipped him off, reminding him I wasn’t as clumsy as all that, and he’d rolled his eyes.
We both knew he knew more than he was letting on, but he was letting me deal with things in the way I needed to keep my head straight.
As much as I teased Eli about how often he liked to sit and think on what I swore was everything , there was envy there as well.
Not because of the constant thinking or how intense it was, I could do that just fine if I let myself.
What I really envied was how well he handled it.
Almost everything he spent time thinking about was approached in a calm and organized way that I couldn’t begin to emulate.
The most stressful things didn’t bother him, even when he grew quieter and a little more testy about being interrupted when he was lost in thought.
I knew he did get stressed; we’d talked enough over the years about what was on his mind that I wasn’t fooled when he appeared completely in control.
His ability to deal with stress was what really drove me crazy, because how the fuck did he manage it?
Sure, he liked to say he envied my ability to make problems disappear from my mind when he felt like he could never get away from his.
He and others didn’t understand that it meant more trouble for me in the long run, at least with life-changing problems. It was one thing to be able to shrug off most of life’s problems because, hell, life had a way of working out a ridiculous amount of the time, and while I didn’t hold it against most people for not seeing it that way, it was ultimately how I got through a lot of stress and worry.
The problem came when something big and important happened, and suddenly, all my powers to ignore or shrug things off went out the window.
What was left was a person unfamiliar with how to deal with stress and worry, or how to process things effectively.
Sometimes it just meant having a “little” freak-out moment, which purged me of the overwhelming emotion and helped me focus on actually solving or dealing with the problem.
That was, except for things like... oh, I don’t know, the issue we faced.
Because as much as I was over the moon about having Eli in the way I’d always dreamed of, it invited a whole series of new problems that we, quite frankly, didn’t have a clue what to do about.
How our family and friends would deal with the truth was of enough concern.
Our livelihood currently depended on the goodwill and positive attention from a mass of faceless people, which was something else entirely.
And even if our faces weren’t exactly A-tier celebrity status, we got enough attention to keep an eye out for someone getting too attached or obsessed, but how much would that potential danger increase if we were suddenly thrust into the spotlight because of our relationship?
God, our relationship.
The thought made me grimace and open my phone to flip to the contacts, and I stared at Raf’s name.
I had told myself that other than the social media posts I’d done Friday night, I would avoid my phone so that Eli and I could enjoy our time together to the fullest. Yet guilt was churning unhappily in my gut, and it was that alone which convinced me to swipe right on Raf’s name and listen to it ring, unsure if I wanted him to answer or ignore it. ..or miss it.
“Well, well, well,” came his smooth, amused voice. “And I thought I wouldn’t hear from you until your bro’s weekend was over.”
God, I’d forgotten I’d described it that way to him.
The guilt in my stomach doubled, and shame was slathered on top, leaving a nasty taste.
I needed to start thinking about the shit that came out of my mouth.
I was reaching the point in life where I regretted the things I said because it was all too often backing me into corners I had to fight my way out of later.
“Sorry,” I said, cringing and suddenly realizing how cold it was. It was safe to say that the thrill and enjoyment of the run were utterly ruined. I needed to head back anyway. I’d been gone almost two hours, much longer, and I would have Eli texting me to make sure I hadn’t ended up in the ER.
Which was rude since I’d call him if that happened...if I was conscious. Not that he and anyone else didn’t already know that, but he was the only person who worried about me like that, so I wouldn’t get too annoyed. That he was usually justified in his worry didn’t matter; it was just...Eli.
“What the hell do you have to be sorry about?” Raf wondered with a snort. “You told me way ahead of time that you were going offline for the weekend. Obviously, that nice dinner you had was an exception, but?—”
“Well, I suppose I should be sorry about that,” I muttered as my feet crunched along an untouched patch of thin ice.
There were other things to be sorry about regarding Raf, but I was not ready to handle those yet.
Eli and I had set up the weekend to fully enjoy some wild spending on a credit card before we inevitably had to face the bill. “Since that was technically a lie.”
“Jesus,” Raf laughed softly. “You literally get most of your money from doing crap on TikTok and Insta, why the hell would I be mad because you were doing your job?
Because it definitely looked like a date night...which it had been. “I guess you’ve got a point.”
“I gotta say, it’s not like you to act all, I don’t know, guilty,” he said, and I could picture his mouth puckering when he was bothered by something. “I’d ask if you were cheating on me, but that’s not exactly a question that works in our relationship. Did you kill someone?”
“What?” I asked in surprise at the sudden and weird shift.
He laughed again. “I don’t know. This sounds like a breakup call.”
“Really, Raf? That’s what you’re going with? Murder to break up? That covers a lot of ground.”
“There’s just not much I could picture you calling me to sound guilty about. I mean, there probably is stuff in between all that, but still.”
“Fucking...no, this is not a murder confession or a breakup call,” I protested with a roll of my eyes. “If I were going to break up with you, I wouldn’t do it over the phone.”
“That sounds more like you. You’ve always been....direct.”
“Thanks. That sounds exactly like the kind of backhanded compliment my mom would give me when she’s trying to avoid saying something mean, but doesn’t want to lie.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s not a backhanded compliment; that’s just being tactful.”
“Fine, then you sound like my mother when she’s trying to be tactful and avoid saying something mean.”
His chuckle rolled through the phone. “Well, you are. I wasn’t trying to make it out to be a bad thing.”
“Then why did you hesitate before saying it?”
“Probably because it’s mostly true for you.”
“Mostly true?”
“Look. Most of the time, people who are ‘honest’ or ‘direct’ or ‘straightforward’ are mostly like that. You can’t always be honest; otherwise, you’re being an asshole, same thing with being direct or straightforward.
And even honest people have reasons to hide shit, direct people have reasons to swerve around things, same thing for straightforward people. ”
I couldn’t help but smile, freezing when my foot slipped as I reached the sidewalk leading out of the park and then straightening as images of the amused look on Eli’s face as he stood next to my hospital bed flashed through my mind.
It disappeared when I regained my footing, and for a moment, I was able to savor that I’d stolen the joy of an ‘I told you so’ from Eli.
“Is this going to be one of your accurate insights into human nature by way of bartending?”
I could hear the grin in his voice. “Maybe, do you want to be the judge of it?”
“Sure, hit me with it.”
“Well, all I was going to say is, even if someone is usually direct or honest while avoiding being that way all the time so they don’t stomp all over someone else’s feelings, there are still other reasons to lie and hide things.”
“Lie and hide,” I repeated, the words bitter and sour in my mouth. That was, after all, precisely what Eli and I were doing, me most of all.
No...I was definitely doing more than he was.
“Look, I know lying and hiding the truth get a really bad rep with people.”
“Pretty sure that’s for a good reason.”