Milo #4
He wasn’t wrong; that was precisely what I could see Eva doing.
She was a sweet and passionate woman, but hell had no fury like her scorned, and even hell didn’t want to deal with her if someone she cared about was hurt.
It would probably be a good idea if she wasn’t around me for a while after my stunt.
The last thing I needed was to add another ass beating on top of the one I’d already received.
“And my family?” I asked, not sure if I wanted to know.
“That...I’m not sure about,” Raf admitted with a shrug.
“Like we said, Eli hasn’t exactly been talking, and it’s not like he and I have had an in-depth talk.
I know he’s been getting calls and texts from people, but he’s never said anything about the conversations or if he’s even saying anything to them. ”
“Wonderful...wait, you’ve been with Eli?”
“Where the hell do you think we learned everything?” he asked in a tone that suggested I might be stupid, which.
..wasn’t unfair. I had been pickling my brains for three days straight, any time I was awake, and well.
..yeah, he would have learned about how Eli was feeling.
It wasn’t like I could picture Raf having a text conversation with him, or Marshall, for that matter.
“I guess that explains why you two are together,” I said and then thought about it, wrinkling my nose. “At least I hope that’s why you two are together.”
“He offered to drive if I gave him a blowjob in the car,” Marshall told me in a bland enough tone that I almost believed him. I was spared from reacting to the horrifying idea when Raf snorted in amusement.
“That’s so not funny,” I told him with a scowl.
“I thought it was hilarious,” Raf told me.
“Well, of course you did, you have a fucked-up sense of humor.”
“It’s been known to be weird on occasion.”
I sighed. “Is that it? You wanted to yell at me and tell me I’m a bastard? Mission accomplished.”
“Oh no, no, we’re here to retrieve you. Because if you don’t come with us, we’ll have to call in back up and considering the look on your face when I mentioned Eva hunting you down, she’s at the top of my list of people to call,” Raf said and while I could appreciate that he had every right to be enjoying my misery, that didn’t mean I had to like it.
“Seriously? Look at me!”
“I am. I’m also smelling you if you’ve been drinking this much. More booze than sweat is coming off you at this point.”
“And I look a mess, I’m drunk, not wasted, but drunk. What the fuck good am I to anyone right now?”
“To us? Not a whole lot. But there is someone who loves you so much that your absence in a moment of great pain is making things even worse for him,” Raf told me, arching a brow.
“And you’d be useful to yourself because you’re clearly not doing any better than he is.
The only difference is you’ve been doing it alone, save for the bottles and cans to keep you company. ”
I looked down at my stained shirt and dirty shorts and felt a new wave of shame.
I had let myself go to hell in just a few days.
Three days without a shower wasn’t that bad when you considered that I hadn’t done much, and yet I was dirty enough.
I didn’t know what most of the stains on the shirt were, and it was sad that it was the one at hand when I had a whole bag of clothes nearby, but I kept wearing the same shirt instead.
“Okay, look... no, actually look at me, because I think we’re getting through to you, and I need you to look at me while I’m talking so I can make sure,” Raf said.
I looked up with reluctance and met his eyes.
That didn’t do a thing to make me feel better, as I was forced to look into a face that was torn between trying to maintain his hardass attitude and pity that made me feel sick.
It didn’t help that I really had liked Raf, and there had been times when I’d played with the idea of taking all that extra stuff we had agreed to allow and throwing it away.
I’d always held back from taking that step, though, and I could never quite identify why.
For a little while there, I had thought maybe Eli had been the one to figure out what it was, and that deep down I had just been treating my relationship with Raf as.
..fun. Which, yeah, that was probably the reason closest to the surface, but thinking that and leaving it alone meant I’d ignored what was below that .
It was Raf who’d figured it out long before I had, that there was something inherently missing that had prevented us from taking those last few steps together.
And that missing piece had been whatever I still had for Eli.
And now I was here, instead of with Eli.
“I’m not going to speak for a lot of people, but I can speak for myself...and considering what Eva’s been bitching about for three days, I’m pretty sure I can speak for her too,” Raf said with a laugh. “We, and yes, that includes Marshall, do not have a problem with you and Eli’s relationship.”
I looked at Marshall hesitantly as he nodded. “Even if I thought it was a little weird, which I don’t by the way, what could I really say? It’s not like either of you is taking advantage of the other. And you’re not true brothers.”
“It does offer up some fun ideas about another threesome, though,” Raf threw out because apparently his jokes didn’t die; they just waited for another opportunity to show themselves.
“Not where I was going with that,” Marshall said dryly. “But I’m not going to judge your tastes.”
I wasn’t even going to comment because that would require me to think about it, which I didn’t want to do.
I didn’t want to compare whether that suggestion was more disturbing for me or if his idea about getting with Marshall and me was worse.
Well, and there was that familiar niggle of anger inside me that didn’t like the idea of anyone touching Eli like that other than me.
I really didn’t want to take my jealousy out on my now ex-boyfriend after hiding things from him while we’d been together.
Did that make Eli and me boyfriends?
Shit, I really should have talked to him.
“If it helps, Eva tried to irritate Eli into something other than grunts by suggesting that if he found out he was into dick at his age, you might figure out you were into pussy, and if that was true, you two should give her a call,” Raf suggested.
“I really don’t want to think about Eva trying to peg me.”
“Why would you jump to…well, okay, she does seem the pegging type. Huh...that begs questions about Eli and her, huh?”
“No, it doesn’t. They didn’t do that.”
“Because of him?”
“Pretty sure. But I do know it didn’t happen.”
“Wow, so you broke him all the way in then? You did, didn’t you?”
“Raf,” I whined. “I know you’re being way cooler about all this than I have any right to expect, but really? I do not want to talk to my ex-boyfriend about my current...Eli and my sexual...habits, okay? Not right now. I’m too drunk for that...or too sober, I don’t know which.”
“You can just call him your boyfriend,” Raf told me with a smirk. “Because that’s definitely what he is. And he was for a while, it just seems like neither of you realized it. Though I guess it’s fair to say he was slower on that uptake than you were. Good of him to realize that men are hot.”
“We don’t know if it’s...actual bisexuality or just, uh?—”
“Milo-ality?”
“Situational.”
“That’s what I said.”
“No, it is not.”
“Well, look. You two have settled things more or less with the other people you were involved with, that’s Eva and me for the record,” Raf said, pointing to himself. “So what’s left is for you to deal with your family and talk to them...the rest of your family, sorry, Marshall.”
“Nah, again, I’m late to the party.”
“So you’re going to have to figure that out at some point, and soon.
Because I’d be shocked if at least part of your family wasn’t aware of what’s going on now, if not all of them.
But you’re still going to have to face them.
After that, you’ll have to figure out what to do about the internet.
The silence from the two of you is about as damning as it can get. ”
“I don’t know how it can be more damning. Everyone already knows we’re sleeping together, what else is there to damn?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe it's because the fact that you’re hiding means you both think it’s something to be ashamed of. Is it?”
“We haven’t exactly handled it in the best way.”
“That is not the same thing. Hiding it because you were unsure how others would perceive it isn’t the same thing as believing it’s shameful.”
“No, I don’t think there’s anything wrong about us being together. How we went about it? Yeah, that was wrong. But not us.”
Never us, but I left that part in my head.
“Well, there you go, you not only have some good ground to stand on, but you also have a good opener when you get around to addressing it. I’m sure once you deal with everything else, the two of you can figure out something.
You’ve been working as a team with this social media stuff for a while now.
I don’t see the point in stopping just because you have a little scandal. ”
For a moment, I felt a flicker of hope until it died under the weight of the massive amount of ‘how,’ ‘when,’ and ‘what-ifs’ that came with his solutions. “How?”
“One step at a time, that’s how. Stop trying to deal with everything at once. That’s a good way to,” he stopped and looked around, “well, end up in a place like this, drinking your brains out and leaving the rest of the people you care about to rot.”
One thing at a time? Okay, sure, that made.
..sense, a lot of it actually. But I wasn’t the best at doing things like that.
Eli was the one who could break down a seemingly complicated task and turn it into manageable bites.
If I was going to get any help, I would have to wait until Eli was ready to forgive me for running out on him.