Chapter 25
IMPATIENCE
Milo
The chirping of the work phone on his desk finally quieted, then began again with another rapid onslaught of messages, only stopping when it began to ring. Milo didn’t move to check it, his mind lingering back at the picnic table with Eliana. Thinking about her story.
He’d noted the platform and the pen name when she’d shown him the comments, and he’d found her easily enough. She certainly hadn’t been lying about the fanbase. There was even fan art. Graphic fan art.
Reading through the story from Eliana’s perspective was enlightening.
And it certainly didn’t hurt his ego any to see that his character, Mitch, developed his own fanbase amongst her readers.
Though he did note that she never responded to the questions asking about him.
Never confirming that something deeper existed in their friendship.
He wished he could skip to the end to see what happened.
To see where she wanted things to go. He felt surprisingly nervous at the idea.
There was an unfamiliar anxiety pressing at him, urging him to act, and it took him a long while to put a name to the emotion—impatience.
At the realization, a flash of his father’s stern face popped to mind.
Milo had very few memories of his parents, but the ones he retained were startling in their clarity.
It was odd how the brain worked. He was eight when he’d lost his parents, and if he could’ve chosen a way to remember them, he would’ve held tight to every mundane second of their time together.
Even if some of the memories were a bit faded and a tad rough around the edges.
Instead, he’d been left with a small selection of crystal clear visions that lingered in his mind’s eye as vivid as the day he’d lived them.
The disappointment in his mother’s eye when she caught him in a lie about his homework.
The stoic stare of his father on the back of his head when Milo laughed at a kid who’d been struck out of a game of baseball.
But the worst was the heartrending fear he’d felt the day they’d left him behind.
It hadn’t been sorrow or anger or confusion making his body shake that day. Only fear of a life without them.
Ironically, he couldn’t seem to remember a life with them.
He knew there’d been a million moments of quiet love.
Even if he couldn’t remember the specifics, he knew his childhood was one to envy.
He knew it by the love in his heart when he thought of them, and the warmth that filled him—even when facing the chilliest of memories.
But what he wouldn’t give for one quick peek at a shared laugh or a car ride, or just sitting down at the dinner table as a family.
Just a glimpse of them smiling at him, rather than the relentless flashes of his parents working double time to keep him from becoming the youngest delinquent to ever grace the halls of a juvenile detention facility.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t fault his brain for its selectiveness, as the lessons often arrived right when he needed them.
And in this particular flashback, he found himself sitting in the desk chair of his father’s old computer desk, his eyes on his knees as he listened to his old man describe all the things he was grounded from.
“Do you understand what I’m telling you, son? No bike. No soccer. No Nintendo. No Sega. If I catch you on either of those, I’ll be dropping the pair of them at Goodwill.”
“I understand,” eight-year-old Milo muttered, scratching at a loose piece of leather on the seat by his knee while resisting the urge to pout.
He’d just talked his friend into lending him his copy of ToeJam and Earl, and he’d only been in such a hurry in the first place because he was excited to play it.
Now he was grounded, and he’d surely have to give the game back before he was allowed back on the Sega.
A full week of trading away his pudding—for nothing.
“Do you understand why you’re being punished?”
“Because I ran through the bushes after you said not to.”
“No,” his father barked, shaking his head and pulling Milo to his feet. He marched him to the window to point at where Milo’s mother stood in the backyard, a hand over her mouth as she stared down at the scattered remains of her tulips.
“You’re being punished because you destroyed something precious to your mother. Because you were careless. Because you were too impatient to walk through the gate.”
He paused, laying a hand upon the boy’s shoulder and taking a deep breath. “Impatience always has a price, Milo. Make sure you’re willing to pay it next time.”
His father left the room with those parting words, but Milo remained, watching his mother through the dusty panes of the window. Remembering how much time she’d spent preparing and planting the flowers that were now destroyed.
Milo watched as she brushed away an errant tear, and the guilt swelled within him, making his own eyes cloud. It wasn’t the loss of freedom that weighed so heavily upon his tiny shoulders—but the pain that he’d inflicted on another.
The memory faded, and Milo turned away from his office window, dropping back into his desk chair. He rested his head in his hands and did what he always did—he tried to remember what happened next. Did he go help clean up? Did he sulk? Did he cry? Did he talk to his mom? He couldn’t remember.
But maybe that was the point of the whole matter.
The simple truth of what love was meant to be at the core.
Love didn’t need to be so bold and startling that it could be summed up in one brilliant memory of perfect clarity.
But rather, it should be so consuming, so all-encompassing, so ingrained in one’s everyday life that the truth of it lingers long after the memories of such a love fade away.
But now, faced with new feelings that he wasn’t quite ready to name—Milo felt fear once more. Fear that Eliana would change her mind about the divorce. Fear that she wouldn’t feel the same.
His standard approach to handling fear was to face it directly.
He wanted to storm through the front doors of her house, make a declaration, toss her over his shoulder, and maybe even throw a punch at Jesse while he was at it.
But facing this fear wasn’t a matter of making some grand gesture and asking Eliana to choose him.
Facing this fear required patience. It required him to respect Eliana’s wishes and to wait until she was ready for such a confession.
And he could do it. He would do it. For the price of impatience, the price of losing Eliana entirely, was not a price Milo was willing to pay.