Day 14 of 21
Forwarded by Milo [ screenshot ]
*
Allie’s diary (via CloudLink Drive // The Lake Dock *new*)
I do not know what’s happening.
I spoke with Milo for almost three hours last night.
Three.
Whole.
Entire.
Real.
Hours.
And it was meant to only be a few minutes. Just a code, which we solved within moments of him flickering onto the screen with thick hair, wet and tangled from the shower, wearing a strange, holey-on-purpose brown jumper that nobody normal would ever look good in.
‘Hey! Here she is!’ He grinned. ‘Captain Lake, secretary of my phone . . .’ I keep thinking about the grin. Conspiratorial. Cocky. Liquid warmth.
We talked about work – mine and his. He showed me a prop he’d accidentally taken that belongs in the pocket of his costume.
A fake wallet, holding a fake photo of his beloved fake wife.
I showed him the gnome, which he studied like a museum relic and said, completely unironically, ‘Ah, wow, Allie, he’s a beauty.
’ It even made me warm to it a fraction.
Then he showed me the sunset from his balcony.
Sky dimming peach and gold, that same sun still wide awake and blinding out of my own window.
We watched together for a few moments in silence.
But then the conversation just . . . kept going, and going.
Songs that make us feel.
Obscure fake names Milo uses at hotels.
Favourite type of mug (for some reason).
Rain.
Inventing a time machine.
This diary. (Which again, I so easily gave up to him and told him about.)
And then he talked about Day Falls – all that stuff in the articles I found. Him leaving last year. Pissing people off. I could tell it was still raw to him. He went all shiny-eyed and I didn’t know what to say.
‘I had to leave,’ he said. ‘Hardest thing I ever did, but it was survival in the end.’ He said he’s used to people talking about him, that ‘to be known is to be content with being misunderstood’, but the backlash hit him really hard.
Fans were enraged. Writers had to scrap full scripts.
For a while, his Instagram page was ‘like a pocket in space and time where I could go to read the worst things I think about myself’.
He mentioned the ex too – the ‘he left the show and then left me’ ex.
He said her interview seemed to send him into some sort of ‘trending worldwide’ orbit.
But the truth was, he left to go to rehab.
He said he considered going public with it, but that the reaction to it can be either good or bad.
You gain support, or lose it. Forever seen as something different than who you are.
Sometimes getting ‘outed’, he said, works better.
‘Fuckin' benzos for me,’ he told me with a sigh. Prescribed initially for his insomnia. ‘Then they just made me make bad decisions.’ I keep shuddering with guilt because I think – no, I know – I froze as he spoke. I don’t always know what to say at the best of times, but .
. . it’s just Dad, isn’t it? Rehab. The fallout.
The language Milo used, reminds me of everything back then.
But he’s better now. Called it ‘a blip’.
‘And OK, now I don’t sleep, but I’ve got Bunty’s to keep me awake,’ he laughed, and I said, ‘And you don’t even have that now! ’
We started saying goodbye, then. But somehow, instead . . .
We ended up watching a film together.
It was all so random and silly. He said he was going to eat ramen and watch Roman Holiday, because watching old films with old actors shrank his anxiety; said ‘it’s humbling, the way a museum is.’ His worries are nothing new. He’s not special. Just another person.
I told him I hadn’t seen it. Then he said I was welcome to join and I thought he was joking.
But he sent me a link and I laid on top of my duvet, turned off my bedroom light, and together, we just .
. . watched Roman Holiday. We laughed at the same lines.
He pointed out tiny things about the dialogue – the way it felt unscripted and real – and we talked a little about fame.
He said he loves and loathes it, equally. And yet, a part of him chases it.
I ran downstairs for toast.
Milo made ramen in a giant mug covered in acorns, added extra seasoning, tasted, added more, and I found myself watching him, and thinking, plainly, what on EARTH is going on here?
I’m watching sunsets with a man I’ve never met.
We’re eating meals and watching films together.
We’re adding words to a shared list. (‘Surreptitious’, ‘perfidy’, ‘tryst’.)
He’s reading science papers that ping up on my ResearchPort. ( ‘Yoooo, puffin beaks glow in the dark? WHAT?’)
It unnerves and delights me how much I enjoy having him around.
Because in seven days, Milo will hand my phone back to me, and I’ll give his to him. He will go back to his life, and I’ll go back to mine.
And this will stop.
And I realised, as he sat listening to me, a hand flat to his chest, screen lighting his face, that I don’t think I want it to.