Chapter 7 #2
I decided to chance the pancakes—after I drowned them in maple syrup.
It wasn’t necessarily on my diet, but it was a sacrifice I would make.
The other alternative was appearing rude by not eating much of the food offered to me.
I could hear my mother’s opinion of that from clear across the globe.
She and my father had started traveling within six months of my high school graduation.
I only saw them a few times a year, but it didn’t matter where she was.
She’d raised me a certain way, and she prided herself on that southern politesse.
I cut a sliver of the pancakes and took a bite as I pondered my answer. “It was nice,” I decided as I struggled to swallow my food. The syrup hadn’t done much to hide the flavor, and it hadn’t had any impact on the texture. “I got along with my teammates. Weather was pretty nice.”
“You’re very descript about it,” Milo teased. “I really feel like I was there.”
“I don’t know what to say,” I countered. “It was home. I played football there.” He opened his mouth like he was going to say more, and I decided to nip that in the bud. “Has Milo always been like this?” I asked Ethel instead.
Her wrinkled face split into a smile that made her eyes sparkle. It was another thing she had in common with her nephew. “He has been. You should’ve seen him when he first came to live with me and Annabelle. He was this stick of a thing, and he never stopped talking.”
“That hasn’t changed.”
“Okay, are we playing pick on Milo?” Milo demanded, his mouth agape. “Let’s go back to interrogating Rowan.”
I didn’t want to have the spotlight back on me, and besides, it was fun watching Milo react like this. He always seemed to be the one poking. It was about time he got poked back. “We’re not picking on Milo,” I informed him, even though I kind of was. “I’m learning more about my teammate.”
He groaned and popped a piece of bacon in his mouth, crunching down on it loudly.
“Most kids, they wouldn’t have been so cheery moving in the way he did.
Back then, we weren’t living in Tucson. We were still in this small town in Virginia.
” I hadn’t known Milo was from the east coast. It dawned on me that I didn’t know much about him.
“Me and Annabelle, we had this small house and a lot of land. Not like the place he grew up in with his parents. He was outside more often than he was inside, running around, climbing trees. He had nonstop energy.”
I could see that. “Annabelle was his other aunt, right? Your sister?”
Ethel and Milo exchanged glances and then laughed in unison. “Annabelle was most certainly not my sister.”
“She was her roommate,” Milo informed me, making air quotes with his fingers. “They lived together for, what was it, forty years? Fifty?”
“Almost fifty before Annabelle went. We moved to Tucson when Milo did, and then once Annabelle passed away, he bought me this place. Didn’t want me living too far away from him.” Ethel looked at Milo affectionately, and I felt a strange warmth in my gut.
This was the same man who had tried to pull me into conversations from the moment I stepped foot in the Scorpions locker room.
He’d gone out of his way to make me feel welcome.
He’d pulled me into the celebrations in Portland, not allowing me to isolate myself.
He had that same warmth for his aunt and for our other teammates.
Until now, I wondered how much of it was genuine.
He was a team captain, and everything he did for the team could have fallen under that.
Moving his aunt into an expensive condo right next to his didn’t. That was just pure Milo, and that meant the rest of it probably was, too.
Ethel told me more stories about teenage Milo.
He’d been fourteen when he’d moved in with them.
I got just enough of that story to know that he’d moved in under tragic circumstances, but neither he nor Ethel filled in any blanks.
I didn’t blame them. The death of one’s parents was hardly brunch table conversation.
I used the cover of the conversation to move food around my plate, making it look like I was eating a lot more than I was.
I also started volunteering stories of my own.
I told them about my high school football team and places my parents had sent me postcards from.
I told them about my draft weekend when Milo and Ethel started talking about his.
Milo seemed most interested in stories about my siblings, and I learned that he was an only child.
I lost track of time as we talked and Ethel and Milo shoveled breakfast food into their mouths. I hadn’t felt so comfortable anywhere since I’d come to Tucson. It had been over a month and a half, and for the first time, this place felt almost like home.
So, of course, something had to happen to ruin it.
Ethel was in the middle of a story about a vacation the three of them had taken with Milo’s signing bonus when the sound of someone pounding at the door filled the room. Milo hopped up and went to answer it.
An older man with dark hair streaked with white stood on the other side.
He looked distressed just before Milo pulled him into a tight hug.
I heard whispers, and when Milo pulled back, they rested their foreheads against each other.
My stomach swooped at the sight. They talked in low voices for a few more moments before Milo pulled him toward the table.
“Everything okay, Ray?” Ethel asked as he neared the table.
Ray. Who the hell was Ray?
“Yeah,” Ray said in a voice that very much sounded like he was not okay. He sighed. “No. Do you—do you mind if I steal him? I just—”
“Go, both of you,” Ethel answered, shooing them away.
Milo made his goodbyes, and the two of them disappeared through the front door. I stayed with Ethel for another ten minutes before leaving after she refused to let me help her clean up.
Apparently, the rule Milo mentioned didn’t apply to guests at her house either.