Chapter 8 #2
“I still feel bad for the doctors. I could tell it was torture for them, having to try and stay positive for a young girl when her mother was defying death with every breath she took. There was one time—” Hanna surprised herself with a laugh that caught in her chest. “—she had a fever and, in chemo, that’s a do-not-pass-go, d0-not-collect-two-hundred-dollars, straight-to-the-ER thing.
They asked her what she was in treatment for, and she told them she was just one big tumor and to stop asking stupid questions.
The pain meds made her a little bitchy,” Hanna added.
“It was only eight weeks from the fainting to her dying.”
“Hell of a ride,” Milo said. He pushed against his chest, and she wondered for not the first time if they were doomed to always be walking triggers for one another’s deepest pains.
“There’s no winning that game,” she said.
“But I got time to say goodbye. I had time to have conversations no one ever wants to have. We got to go to the Grand Canyon together for a weekend and said all the things everyone is afraid to say.” A sob bubbled up through her chest, unstoppable. “Sorry,” she said.
“For… being sad about your dead mom? That shit doesn’t scare me, Hanna.”
She couldn’t look at him.
“I mean it, Arizona. I can hold it. I’ve had lots of practice.”
She ignored him, battling it back down. She’d had lots of practice in that. Maybe she’d brave that meltdown one day.
But not that day.
She held her breath for a second while the prickling settled.
“My mom was funny, too. Like your dad, not in the goofy-boomer-parent way. But just truly funny. Unlike your dad, however, no one would ever dare call Lisa soft-spoken. She was a fucking force. You knew when she entered a room and when she left. Sweet as hell, but she bit when necessary.”
Milo smiled. “What about your dad?”
Hanna glanced at one of the neon signs on the wall as feelings much older and much less accessible to her made an appearance at the table. She tried to think of the last time she’d even talked to him.
“Ah, yeah, they divorced when I was pretty young. I’m sure it was hard for him in a way, but they hadn’t spoken in like two decades.”
Milo’s lips twisted. “You keep your therapist busy, huh?”
“I believe I’m saved in her phone under Job Security.” Her eyes snapped to the far end of the bar as the door swung inward and three older gentlemen strolled in, nodding at the bartender.
“It’s been about a year, right?” Milo asked.
“Just about to the hour,” she whispered.
“Goddammit, Hanna,” Milo exhaled. “I’m torturing you. The movie, making you relive it. I’m so sorry.”
She wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. “Hey, love means never having to say you’re sorry, right?”
Milo dropped his eyes to hers. “I told you not to fall in love with me,” he whispered dramatically.
Hanna blushed. “I was quoting the movie—”
“Relax,” Milo chuckled. “I was referencing A Walk to Remember. One sad terminal illness movie to another, I figured it would translate.”
Hanna hesitated to confess, “I’ve never actually seen it.”
Milo leaned his head back against the peeling vinyl behind him.
“Why would you have? It’s only one of the most iconic love stories of our generation!”
“I missed my window!” she cried. “I never saw it as a kid and then the whole mom dying of cancer thing kind of put a damper on it. Plus, you just spoiled the ending.”
“Nah,” he shook his head, grinning against the edge of his glass. “When you’re ready to stop doing this suppress-all-tears nonsense, you let me know. We’re watching it.”
“Gimme a few days to recover from Love Story Gate.”
“Deal,” he murmured and swiped her empty glass. “You got another round in ya?”
“Yeah,” she said, shaking off the emotions clinging to her arms. He strode across the bar and she couldn’t help herself—she watched the muscles beneath that damned T-shirt ripple.
“Where you been, hotshot?” One of the older men bellied up to the bar and clapped his hand on Milo’s shoulder. She couldn’t hear his reply, but it sparked a roar of laughter between them.
The bartender pointed to Hanna and asked a question to which Milo nodded. He plucked two more glasses off the back of the bar and filled them with something new.
“Your ma know you’re seeing other women?” the man asked, moving his hand from Milo’s shoulder to pinch the skin at the back of his neck. Milo batted him away playfully.
“Don’t tell her she’s prettier,” he said, winking as he snagged the glasses and returned to the booth.
“Friends of yours?” Hanna asked, taking the whiskey from him.
“Kind of,” Milo said, sliding back into the booth. “Uncles.”
“Oh, seriously? Your family hangs out here?”
“Yeah,” Milo said, leaning over the table and flashing a grin that would have stopped her heart if either of them was even remotely emotionally available. “I mean, I kind of own it.”
Her eyes widened as she tried to do the mismatched career math in her head. As far as she knew, Milo worked for some tech company.
“What do you mean? Aren’t you in sales?”
He leaned back, stretching an arm over the booth.
“By day. But this was Dad’s bar. It stayed in the family.
That’s my brother, Frankie.” He pointed at the bartender, who waved briefly.
Hanna gave him a good look and, had she done so sooner, she wouldn't have been so caught off guard. They had the same green eyes, the same sharp jaws. Frankie was a few years older and a few inches shorter, but they had the same warmth to them. “We all own it. Frankie runs it most of the time. Our older brother, Nikolas, is in LA with the wife and kids, so he’s just an owner on paper. Mom lives in the apartment upstairs.”
Her brows tucked together. “You marched me into your family bar without any warning?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Why not?”
She thought about that for a second. Milo didn’t owe her a damn thing, certainly not any explanations.
They were barely friends, let alone something that warranted warnings.
She glanced around the bar, family photos warming the walls above outdated furniture they’d never give up.
Regulars poured in as the work day drew to a close.
She sipped her second whiskey.
“Tell me more about your mom,” she said.
* * *
She was halfway across the hall, leaving Milo at his own door, as she tried to beat Sara and Matty home so she could hide out again.
“Wait,” he said.
She spun, apprehensively moving back toward him.
“You never told me how you ended up with Chloe earlier.”
Her face flushed. It seemed so silly now. “It’s kind of embarrassing and makes me sound a little crazy.”
“Safe space,” he said, the words bouncing off the hallway. Something about the earnestness in his eyes did her in.
“Okay. I think I told you my mom had a thing about sunflowers, yeah? I was having breakfast this morning and trying to figure out how to spend this stupid day, and I saw this flower shop—oh, shit. I forgot to go back and pick up my sunflowers.” She chewed at the edge of her thumb.
“Anyway, I started following sunflowers I saw around the city—or sunflower adjacent. And I ended up at The Roxie.”
“The Sunflower has good food, we should try it sometime,” he said.
“Noted,” she said.
“That’s not crazy, Hanna. I think it’s nice.” He folded his arms over his chest, leaning against the door frame.
“Day certainly could have been worse,” she murmured.
“Wait! You forgot about me!” He pulled his shirt out, the crumbling silk screen graphics hardly counting. “You want to know something crazy?”
“Crazier than following sunflowers all over the city?”
“This was my dad’s shirt,” Milo said. “I found it in a box when I moved in here. I don’t even listen to Stone Temple Pilots.”
Hanna tilted her head, fighting the blush threatening to take over her entire face.
“Maybe your mom sent me to be your guardian angel.”
“Alternatively, maybe you’re a demon from hell.”
Milo bounced his eyebrows, leaning in closer. “Yeah, yeah, you seemed so miserable hanging out with me today.” He turned and pushed his door in halfway.
“Thanks,” she said, drawing him back out.
“I told you I make a great distraction, Arizona. But make sure you don’t stay distracted. Feeling like shit is a key part of the process.”
Hanna saluted him as she backed away and shoved her shoulder into the front door of Sara and Matty's apartment.
“It seems like the main part of the process.”
Milo laughed, the sound twisting something inside of her she’d rather have never known was there.
* * *
“Hanna!” Sara’s voice echoed off the walls below as she closed the front door behind her.
Hanna popped her head out of the loft to see Sara holding a bouquet of sunflowers wrapped in kraft paper in one hand, and a second arrangement in the other. As Hanna raced down the stairs, she recognized the teal mason jar.
“Kind of rude of Milo to show me up like that,” Sara muttered, pointing to the amber bottle beside the arrangement. “I grabbed these on the way home.” She wiggled the bouquet in her hands.
“Add them in!” Hanna said, pulling the bottle from the kitchen counter. A handwritten label across the front read The Lisa Anniversary Blend. Sweet as hell, bites when necessary.
“Menace,” Hanna whispered under her breath. Sara leaned over and giggled, unwrapping the flowers she’d picked up.
“You’re so in trouble,” Sara said.