Recovering Zombie

"OH GOD, Mari," Milo moaned over the phone. "It was so embarrassing!"

"Which part?" Mari asked, obviously amused. "The part where your small idiot dog tried to eat his giant Daniff, or the part where you had to confess you had her bowling for turkeys all last week?"

"I didn't tell him I did it for a week," Milo mumbled. "It was bad enough she attacked another dog , and I was the idiot who let her off lead! And she sounded ferocious— I wanted to check the other dog over for, like, giant rips in his skin, and all I could think about was how I'd fucked up again !" His voice rose in a wail, and he wanted to lash out at something, but Julia was sitting at his feet, the squeaky in her mouth, waiting for him to do his job.

He threw the squeaky, and she was happy.

"Did you know dogs were a paradox when you brought her to me?" he asked Mari suspiciously, and Mari's grunt indicated she, too, was invested in animal maintenance on her end of the line.

"No," Mariana said thoughtfully. "But listening to your stories is almost as good as being there. How did you fuck up?"

"I just told you," he muttered. "Julia, bring the ball to me . No, no, do not drop it halfway down the hall and then come stare at me. It's not… okay. Fine. I'll go get it. God."

He threw the ball—because she'd apparently misplaced her last rubber squeaky toy so there were only these fuzzy pretend tennis balls that also squeaked—out his office door, ricocheting it off the wall so it would go farther down the hall.

He was getting pretty good at that, but he was also wondering how to get rid of the scuff mark left on the paint from the many, many times he'd already done it.

"You shouldn't have let her chase turkeys," Mariana confirmed, "but your motives were pure. And now you know what can happen if there are no turkeys on the turkey field and other dogs instead. I mean, she's going to have to learn how to follow the lead sometime, Milo. This is not a tragedy."

"No," he admitted. "But I'm trying to get my shit together, and I was just letting my dog run wild, and now—"

"Honey," she said in that voice that had gotten him to chill for the last fifteen years, "lookit you. You are getting up, eating, going to the store, taking the dog for walks. You're making all these strides into being a real boy. You screwed up. We all do. Keep your dog on a leash, be glad she didn't attack a dog who would rip her face off, and let it go."

"Why do you think she was so mad at him?" he asked miserably.

"I got no idea," Mari told him. "It's weird. But maybe she hasn't been well socialized. She gets weird in your living room when it's clean. Maybe we should buy her a crate—"

"Like a milk crate?" he asked, confused.

"No, like a dog crate. It's basically a box that dogs sleep in. Where's she been sleeping so far?"

"My bed," he said, fondling her ears as she sniffed about his feet for another lost toy. "Under the covers. She likes it there. But we already have one of those dog boxes. We keep it in the kitchen. She likes it. She goes in when the door is open and mulls. It's her thinking place."

Mari snorted.

"What?" he asked defensively.

"You're just really attached to that dog."

"She seems to like me," he told Mari. "I… you know. Besides you, there's not a lot of that going around."

"Oh, baby," Mari said gently. "You absolutely can not use Stuart or your parents as an example. You realize that, right?"

"I'm not so good at making friends," Milo told her, as though this was a confession of huge proportions.

"Milo…." She sounded pained. "What part of that is supposed to surprise me?"

He sighed. He'd been shy in high school, huddling deep in the fallacy that he was a lone wolf purely through his own devices until Mari had tumbled into his life—and his locker—with her usual force.

As in she'd plowed her way through the hallway at passing period to glare at him.

" You ," she'd accused, as he carefully put his English notebook in his locker and pulled out his math textbook and the notebook that went with it, "don't have a locker buddy."

He'd stared at her, a diminutive powerhouse with a strong chin, a bold nose, and a lot of dyed blond hair piled high on top of her black roots in a fashionable messy bun. He had her in homeroom and art but couldn't remember her name. "Nobody wanted me," he blurted, not realizing how pathetic that sounded until it cleared his lips and settled in the air.

She'd stared back. "Your locker is pristine. I've seen messier libraries," she told him. "Scooch over. I'm taking bottom bunk."

"But—"

She'd glared up at him with snapping black eyes, because she had already reached her full growth at five feet four inches, and he'd already been on his way to five foot ten. "Milo Tanaka," she said, and she'd won the battle right then—they both knew it. "You are honestly going to tell me that having no friends at all is better than having me as your locker buddy?"

"No," he said in a small voice. "No, I'm just… you know. Surprised."

She'd nodded sagely. "I was too when I saw that sketch you did of the fountain in front of the school, with all the students' faces in it and the branches overhead. It was fucking haunting. I've been trying to write a story for it for a week. You're going to help me, right?"

He'd smiled a little. "Here," he said. "Put your big binders on the bottom with mine and your books flat on the top, here, and the notebooks will fit in the side."

"We," she said distinctly, "are going to be fabulous ."

And they had been, pretty much from that moment on.

"I mean," he said, back in the present, "I thought, you know, I would have grown into more friends by now."

She laughed and then coughed, and Milo's antennae went waving in overtime.

"Are you okay? Are you sick? Are you getting sick?"

"Oh my God!" She coughed again. "No! I'm fine! I mean, a little under the weather—"

"Soup," he said, plonking onto the stool at his standing desk with sudden panic. "You can't get sick, Mari. You—"

He heard a sudden gulping sound, probably as she downed water like an Olympic sprinter after a dash, and then a deep breath. "Calm. Down. Milo. No. I'm fine. I'm not dying right now, I swear."

He let out a breath. "Sorry," he said, although he wasn't really. Mari had given him so much as a friend, but she'd also given him some big scares. Her breakup from Calvin had resulted in the drinking and the trip to the women's health clinic and the accidental overdose and the trip to rehab and the subsequent trip to the mental health facility until Mari had, in her words, gotten over herself and gotten her shit together.

She'd had to. Milo had sobbed on her after the overdose. He'd been the one to find her, seizing in her bedroom, and he'd been the one to call 911, and then when she'd been in the hospital, he'd been the only one to visit, because her sister hadn't been able to deal, and their parents had pretty much checked out of their lives when they'd been in high school.

He and Serena depended on her, dammit. She had to get her shit together. There was no functioning without her.

And she had. And while their friendship had been set in stone before then, now they were part of each other's molecular DNA. If she so much as had a hangnail, he was suddenly transported to those terrible months in college when he was at her dorm every day, and if he got a call from her number, he was never sure if it was because she wanted pizza after class or if her roommate needed his help getting her to crawl out from under her bed.

After Stuart left, he'd had nightmares that she'd been grievously ill and at the far end of a long tunnel, and he couldn't get to her.

There were only certain people in your life who could show up at your house with a dog and say, "Get the fuck out of bed and live, asshole," and Mari was one of them, but that kind of friendship didn't come without its price, and Mari and Milo's price was that if she so much as choked on her water, Milo was pretty sure she was dying.

"No worries," she answered dryly. "But it's my turn to freak out over you. Are you going to see the handsome Daniff owner again, or was this a one-time magical encounter at the park?"

"Why do you keep calling Chad a Daniff?" he asked, not wanting to answer her question.

"Because that's what you call a Great Dane/mastiff mix," she said. "That is, if it doesn't eat your city and establish a name for itself on the monster circuit."

"But he said Chad was also part Rottweiler," Milo told her conscientiously. "So that would make him—"

"A RottDaneroff?" she quipped, using a bad German accent so it sounded like G?tterd?mmerung except in dog breeds.

He gaped for a moment, tempted to hang up on her on general principle. "That's terrible," he choked finally. "That's a terrible pun, and you're going to writer hell for that!"

"Oh no," she said. "I'm going to writer hell for the Twilight fanfic I wrote in high school, but that pun is gonna get five to ten off my sentence!"

"You never let me read your Twilight fanfic," he complained, stung. "Was it Jacob/Edward?"

"Yes," she told him. "And I didn't show it to you because I didn't want you to feel fetishized."

Milo snorted. "You didn't want me to read it because you didn't know what an actual penis was until college, and you didn't want me to give you notes."

She howled in outrage, and he laughed, delighted because he couldn't usually score points on her like that.

And then she returned to her original topic and he was stuck having to give an honest answer.

"Well, he's going to text me in the morning," he admitted.

"Like, before twelve?" she asked, and he could hear the horrified fascination in her voice—and he approved. Unless it was his on-campus-meeting day, he usually didn't clear the bedroom until eleven at the earliest.

"Julia needs me to let her out by eight," he admitted. The first two days he hadn't known this, and his reward had been a rather pungent reminder left in front of the sliding glass door to the backyard—and Julia's flat-eyed reproach. Apparently pooping in the house offended her dignity, and he'd responded to that more than the cleanup, because he felt like she was sort of a dignified creature for all her weird size and her elongated nipples, and he felt deeply that all creatures should have their dignity.

"Ooh…," Mari replied. "So you're going to start living human hours and not vampire hours. Fascinating ."

"Listen," he said firmly, "I don't know anything about dogs, and he seems to be able to control one who weighs more than you do. He has things to teach me, that's all."

"Really," she replied, and he sensed another barb coming on. "A man who has had two adult relationships in his entire life needs to learn things?"

Ouch. "I don't count whatshisface as an adult relationship," he muttered, talking about his first boyfriend in college, who pretty much held Milo's head on his cock until he came and then went ghost.

"I didn't either," Mari scoffed. "I'm talking me, Milo. You've had Stuart and you've had me. No, we're not a couple, but I'm pretty much the only other adult you know."

Milo let out a breath. "How am I supposed to know the people at my office?" he whined. "I only see them once a week."

"Then ask them out to lunch once a week," she chided. Her voice softened. "Come on, Milo. Look at what you've done with Julia in two weeks. You've taken her outside, you've made mistakes, you've met a cute guy who hit on you—"

"He said I wasn't ready," Milo told her, trying not to nurse the hurt.

"Oh my God—you found a perfect guy who hit on you and then wants to be your friend. Think about what you could do in the world of adult relationships if you set your mind to it."

"I'm fine," he said.

"No, you're not," she badgered. "Milo, come on. For me?"

"But what if all the other people become noise?" he asked, feeling a little desperate, "and I can't hear you if you need me?"

He heard her suck in a breath and wondered if he'd just made her mad. "Oh, Milo," she said after a moment. "My God. You must be raw. That's… that's some honesty right there."

Milo tried not to whimper. "It's been a rough couple of months," he admitted. Julia must have heard something in his voice, because she glanced up from the pink-and-violet dog bed he'd bought for her in that first week. She had several beds—one for each room where he went, including the one in the crate that he kept in the kitchen—and she would follow him from room to room. Should he decide to stay in one, she would curl up, often worrying a squeaky, and watch him warily, as though trying to determine if he could be trusted.

He had to go into the office in two days, and he was starting to think he might have to take her with him.

"SO WHAT would happen if you did?" Garth asked the next morning, his long-boned, athletic body uncoiling as he let loose another ball for Chad.

Julia sat at Milo's feet, keeping up a perpetual low growl that Garth insisted was good for her. It would wear her out, he said, and she'd eventually get used to Chad's company. All Milo had to do was keep a good hold on her leash and let her know he wouldn't tolerate any funny business.

Milo watched Garth's body move again under a hooded sweatshirt and battered jeans, enjoyed the way his tanned face seemed to glow as he smiled at his giant dog in action, heard his very deep voice as he urged Chad on, and had a passing thought that there was some funny business Milo wouldn't mind in the least.

Then he drew his attention back to the matter at hand.

"I don't know," he said nervously. "I mean, she seems to have the sense to pee outside." In fact, he'd taken her on a couple of errands that week, because he didn't fancy leaving her at home, not when she was so new and seemed so devoted to being near him. She'd hit the shrubbery or the planting boxes in front of the PetSmart, but hadn't gone inside. (Although there were stations there with spray bottles and plastic bags that assured him that if she did hit the floor in the PetSmart, she wouldn't be the first.)

"What did you do the last time?" Garth asked.

Milo grunted because he wasn't particularly proud of his final solution to this. "Called in sick," he said apologetically.

"Aw, Milo," Garth said, giving him an expression of pure pity. "You said she was fine with the crate—"

"I just… she gets this look of, you know, reproach?" He dropped his voice to as close to Helen Mirren's as he could figure. "Far be it from me, old chum, to tell you how to live your life, but do remember, you brought me here."

Garth chuckled. "Didn't you say your friend brought her to you?"

"Mari, yes," Milo said. "My only friend and the sister of my heart."

Garth's good humor seemed to fade. "Not your only friend, Milo," he said firmly, and Milo smiled.

It did seem like Garth had decided they would be dog-park friends, and he treasured that.

"No," he said, nodding toward Garth. "You and Chad are friends now too. But me and Mari have been friends since high school. There's history. You don't fuck with history."

Garth nodded, and threw the ball again. "No, sir," he said. "You don't. Why would anyone want to?"

Milo hmm ed and shrugged and bent down to fondle Julia's horizontal bat ears. She tended to keep her head tilted, so her bat ears looked like an airplane coming in for a forty-five-degree landing, particularly when she was fetching the squeaky. Milo was pretty sure that was magic and no other dog in the world did that, but he wasn't willing to risk ridicule by asserting that to anybody but Mari.

"You ready to walk?" Garth asked.

"Sure." Milo smiled brightly. "But only if Chad's done."

Garth and Chad looked at each other like longtime coconspirators. "Oh yeah," Garth said. "Me and Chad have a big yard for him to wander today. Lots of places for our boy here to stretch his legs." He hooked his lead—a thick rope-like thing—to Chad's collar, and together the two of them wandered up the soccer field, which was slick with dew, to the walkway. "Easy there," Garth murmured, sticking a hand under Milo's elbow when he slipped. "Maybe we should go through the parking lot instead."

Oh, how embarrassing. Milo resisted the urge to cup his elbow, though, where the warmth from Garth's hand was buzzing like the touch of a heated wand.

"No—it's good for me to climb the steeper incline," Milo told him. "I'm just getting my wind back."

"From what?" Garth asked.

"Just, you know, forgot to exercise for a while. Do you see any other dogs?"

While Milo's and Garth's vehicles were the only ones in the parking lot, Milo had started to wonder if people didn't come in from the neighborhood around the other side of the park.

"Usually not this early," Garth reassured him. "But yeah—this park gets used a lot . It's a good thing you didn't have Julia off lead any later in the day."

Milo sighed. "I need to take her to that park you told me about where she can run. Maybe in the afternoon before it gets too dark."

"She'd like that," Garth rumbled. "But how about Saturday morning? I'll meet you there, and Chad can run around his side of the park and Julia can run around hers, and then we can go get breakfast or something."

Milo brightened. "Waffles," he said happily. "You can't get waffles from DoorDash, and I don't have a waffle maker."

"I have just the place in mind," Garth said. "My treat. But first you have to tell me why anybody would want to get in the middle of you and your sister."

"Of the heart," Milo said. "We're not blood related, but—"

"No, no—sister. I get it. I mean, I have a sister, and we're okay, but she's not my best friend."

"Who is your best friend?" Milo asked. "Besides Chad?"

Garth laughed a little. "My old college roommate, Doug. He's using his engineering degree as a well-paid handyman, and he lives up in Folsom, but we get together once a week or so, grill some burgers, let his kids play with Chad. Love that guy. Would die for him. He's my brother. So she's your sister . You'd die for her. I get it. Why would anybody try to get in the way of that?"

Milo grunted. "You don't want to hear about my ex," he said uncomfortably. "That's… you know. Not dog-walking conversation material."

"Sure it's not. Tell me anyway."

Milo heard the implicit command there and thought about disobeying it. The image of Julia, disregarding feelings and stampeding boundaries, came to his mind, and he realized that he could be the turkey or he could be the dog.

Garth had done nothing to deserve Milo disregarding his feelings.

"I don't know," he said, as honest as he had been on this subject. Suddenly he yearned to tell somebody . He couldn't tell Mari. She'd feel terrible. Or she'd take out a contract on Stuart like he'd threatened to do on Calvin the creep. Either way, she didn't need that sort of emotional overload. "He just—he said he was fine with it," he tried to explain. "Me and Mari, it's… it's not negotiable . It's a no-brainer. There's no Milo without Mari and no Mari without Milo. Not since we shared a locker in high school."

"What's she like?" Garth asked, and he sounded genuinely interested.

"Short," Milo said, nodding, because that had been the first thing he'd noticed. "Blunt. Abso-fucking-lutely honest about everything. Mari doesn't bullshit. She notices everything . She has eight cats , even though she's only supposed to have five. Her newest boyfriend gave her three of them, because I guess she finally met somebody who sees that she's meant to love the whole world . She's been trying to find the whole world to love since we met, and…." His voice wobbled.

"The world can be stupid and blind about that," Garth said perceptively.

"High school sucks," Milo told him with feeling. "Unless you've got that best friend who gets you and cheers you on and tells you your art is good and warns you when you've got bats in the cave, high school can be a wrist-slitting catastrophe."

"Oh, Milo," Garth said, voice soft.

"I never tried it," Milo assured him. "But… but I think I might have. If Mari hadn't just thrust herself into my life. Into my locker . And when we got to college, we were there for everything. First kisses, first sex." He sighed. "First breakups. First sleazy ex-boyfriends who go ghost, first drink…." He wondered how much more he should say.

"First trip to rehab?" Garth asked softly.

"Yeah," Milo conceded. "Yeah. She used to drag me out of bed for high school. It was my turn for college. You don't… don't let go of that friend, do you understand?"

"Of course I do," Garth said, sounding surprised. "Why would your ex ask you to?"

Milo let out a frustrated groan. "Jealousy?" he said, as puzzled now as he had been then. "Control? I… don't know."

"Did you stop seeing your friend?" Garth asked.

"No," Milo said promptly. "I just… pretended like I didn't. In a way I guess it was like cheating on Stuart with Mariana, but, you know, no sex. But I couldn't see what he was weird about. I'd told him we were inseparable. Nonnegotiable. And he was horrible about her when I even mentioned her name, so I just…." He shrugged. "Pretended it wasn't happening. Went out to lunch with her anyway. Went to movies with her and told him I was going with friends from work."

"How'd he find out?" Garth didn't sound judgy, which was a relief, because Milo was starting to judge himself.

Which was why the next thing slipped out. "He went through my finances," Milo said, disbelief coloring his voice.

"He what?" Garth asked, surprised.

"It's… see, Stuart was a lawyer, the lawsuit kind. He made a lot of money, wore the sharp clothes, drove the fancy car. And I'd just bought the duplex when we met—I rent out the other half to a retiree who likes to sit on his porch and do the crossword—but he moved into my half. He kept asking why we couldn't move someplace, you know, better." Milo sighed. "I got it at the time. He works down in Sacramento, and he had to commute. But then, I didn't make as much money as he did, so the one-day-a-week commute helped me pay my mortgage, and the renter next door is an investment, and I like having a neighbor I can talk to. So I told Stuart I didn't make as much as he did, and he'd have to make the down payment and put his name on the deed."

"He didn't want to do that because…?" Garth asked, and Milo shrugged.

"I don't know. At this point I'm starting to suspect second family, or he's about to be arrested for embezzlement, or he was planning to kill me and inherit. I have no idea. But it was a big deal to him that I be the one who took the financial risk and bought a better house. I didn't wanna. I told him I didn't wanna. I said I had my finances to my liking and the duplex to my liking and…." Milo gnawed his lip. "He said he was pawing through my finances to find a way to make it work, which is stupid because I didn't look through any of his financial papers. And he found a big monthly bill for…." This was embarrassing. Not even Mari knew this part. "Well, Mari's sister. Mari was at her wit's end trying to find a place for Serena that… didn't suck , you know? Adult care homes—it's a crap shoot. So I found one that wasn't awful, but the bill was six hundred dollars more than Mari could afford, but I could, so…."

Garth actually stopped. "Milo," he said softly. "That's…."

"Stupid?" Milo supplied bitterly. "Irresponsible? Shows my shitty priorities?"

"No," Garth said. "No. Did he say that? Because seriously, I'll take out a contract—and I bet Mari will help. No, I was going to say kind. I'm… it's like you've got a cape now. Like Superman. People talk about being friends all the time, but that's… that's being a friend."

Milo was really embarrassed now. "It's nothing," he insisted. "I just… you know. Couldn't let her… you know. Suffer. And she would have, knowing her sister was someplace she was unhappy. It's like…." He gave Julia's leash a gentle yank so it would clear her backside and she would get a move on. "C'mon, baby," he muttered. "I know you can do this."

"Like how Mari showed up at your door with a dog?" Garth asked.

"Part of that was that Stuart took the cat when he left," Milo admitted.

"Oh my God!" Garth exclaimed. "This guy keeps getting worse!"

"Time doesn't always heal all gaping assholes," Milo said shortly.

"So how'd he take your beautiful act of philanthropy?" Garth asked, and Milo had to work to not blush.

"He called me stupid," Milo told him, remembering being shocked at the word. Milo had always been smart—he'd been tested a million times, and his IQ was off the charts. His parents had despaired of the graphic-arts thing until it had started making money, because they'd felt it was "beneath his potential." Of all the names Milo had been called—and there were a lot—"stupid" had not been among them.

"That's obviously projection," Garth said.

Milo felt a tiny part of him—maybe his toes?—that he hadn't realized had been cold suddenly warm up.

"Well, he was the one who didn't understand. He was, like, ‘I thought you weren't hanging out with that bitch anymore.'"

"Oh my God," Garth muttered.

"Yeah—he said that. And I…." Milo glanced around the park mournfully, noting the sky was gray again today and grateful it hadn't opened up to rain. Yet. "I sort of told him off."

"Yeah?" Garth asked, and he sounded… brighter. Like this was something good. "What did you say?"

"I told him he was jealous," Milo said. "And controlling. And cheap."

"What did he say?" They were rounding the final corner of the loop now, with only a long straightaway shaded by trees until they took the turn to the picnic rise.

"I don't want to talk about what he said," Milo murmured, because it was still a knife in his chest.

"Aw, Milo," Garth replied. "How bad was it?"

Milo shook his head. "He gutted me," he admitted, and saying the words felt like picking the scab off an infection. "Just… can you imagine all the things you're most afraid of as an adult?"

Garth let out a sigh. "Yeah. But mine might be different than yours."

Milo wanted to ask what Garth's fears were—with all his heart he did. But then he knew he'd have to confess his own. "Stuart knew mine. He used every one of them, and then told me I was a coward and a terrible lover and a parasite to boot. And when I was standing there, my mouth open, and I knew I was going to sob but it hadn't hit me yet, just how awful it all was, he told me he'd take it all back if I stopped paying Mari's sister's bill."

"Oh my God," Garth said, and Milo heard a note of boiling fury that was oddly satisfying. "What did you say?"

Milo shook his head because although that moment had been nearly three months ago, he could still remember it so clearly. It had felt as though he was floating outside himself, watching his mouth gape, his eyes welling with tears, his hands clasped around his middle as though Stuart had used his actual fists. And that floaty person, watching Milo, was remembering all those great movies and TV shows with heroes in them. Neo, Indiana Jones, John Wick, Tony Stark, Captain America, Bucky Barnes—they all floated through his head, and he watched his mouth open and thought, Please, Milo, be heroic, just this once .

"What?" Garth prodded, and Milo shrugged.

"Did you ever see My Fair Lady ?" he asked.

"No…." There was an expression on Garth's face as though everything in his life hinged on what Milo said next.

"There's this song at the end about how the whole world would be standing without the manipulative asshole who told her he made her," Milo explained. He and Mari had memorized that song in their senior year in high school. Whenever their peers got nasty—and high school had been a cesspool of misery on its best day for the two of them—they'd sung it. "Mari and I… we sang that song at the top of our lungs every day for a year. It was our fuck-you song for anybody who tried to make us feel small. And suddenly I'm standing in my kitchen, knowing my life has just ended, and I open my mouth and… and that song comes out. I… I never thought, in my entire life, I could be brave like that."

"That's amazing," Garth said, and Milo glanced at him quickly to see if he meant that or if it was sarcastic and, well, mean. But Garth was grinning at him, open admiration written in his eyes, and Milo felt his cheeks heating against the cold.

"I was still singing it when he left," Milo said and then shrugged. "The next day I had lunch with Mari, and I went and… well, didn't tell her about the fight because I didn't know what to say. And when I got home…."

"All his stuff was gone?" Garth surmised—correctly, in fact.

"Yeah." Milo's shoulders hunched, and he almost tripped over Julia for the nine-hundred-and-twelfth time, and for a moment, he wanted to stop on the path and shrink into himself like a slug. "Including the cat."

Suddenly there was a warm weight over his shoulders, and Garth said, "I'm so sorry about the cat." Milo allowed himself to be comforted.

"Stuart hated that cat," he said in a small voice. "I… I spent a week checking the shelters in the area to make sure she hadn't been turned in." It had actually been Stuart's sister coming over to get Chrysanthemum's collar collection that had sent Milo into the depression Mari had interrupted. Because that meant Stuart meant to keep him. He'd never get him back.

"I'm so sorry," Garth said, and God, hearing that—it made a difference. "You know, I've never heard that song. Sing it for me."

"Seriously?" Milo asked. "It's pretty bitchy." That lovely warmth suffused him, and he wanted to melt into Garth's protection. But nothing was ever that easy, was it?

"Naw—look around us, Milo. It's sort of a dismal day, and I have to go work outside when the whole world would rather be drinking hot chocolate and watching old movies. You said the song made you brave. Let's hear something brave."

Milo was shorter than Garth, but their strides still seemed to match, and it was almost like they were keeping time with the music.

In his head, he could hear Audrey Hepburn singing as Eliza Dolittle, complaining bitterly about being a fool on a puppeteer's string, and his mouth opened, and there it was. He felt it in his chest.

Milo sang, the words coming back to him automatically, much as they had done with Stuart, except with Stuart his voice had been choked, he'd been sobbing, and he'd snorted his way through the end. This was different. This time, singing the song was redemption, and as his voice grew stronger, he raised his head, belting out the final words.

Of course when he was done with the final words, he was left with the look of disgust, of superiority, on Stuart's face, and his voice dwindled into nothing as he remembered that, in the movie, Henry Higgins had used that lovely, perfect, dignified "Fuck you!" to claim credit for Eliza Doolittle's personhood.

For a moment, the grayness of the day had faded, and Milo was left with that same feeling Julia must have had, chasing the turkeys in the dawning sunshine, but as usual it was a feeling destined to fade.

Except Garth's arm was still around his shoulders, and Julia, perhaps encouraged by their beat-keeping lockstep, had managed to stay, trotting at the same speed, a couple of steps ahead of them, not letting her leash go slack enough to touch her bottom and make her stop in her tracks.

The warmth that suffused Milo's belly then was better than soup or coffee.

"That was a great song," Garth told him, not dropping that lovely living security blanket. "That song was everything you should have told that guy for trying to control your heart."

Milo sighed and relaxed a smidge. "I haven't told Mari," he confessed. "She'll feel like it was her fault, or she will take out a contract on him, and either one of those things would be bad."

Garth's chuckle seemed to warm him from the toes up.

"I'll take your word for it on the second one," Garth told him, "but you're right about the first, and we don't want her to feel bad. It's not her fault Stuart was a terrible person."

"Is it bad that I'm willing to let it stand there?" Milo asked. "That you think he was a terrible person? I keep thinking I should try to balance it out. Say, ‘Well, he did this bad, but he did other things good.' But I don't think I'm that nice."

"Good," Garth said simply. "You are under no obligation to both-sides a controlling asshole who asked you to do the unthinkable, Milo. You and your friend have a right to be friends. As long as you're not dragging each other to opium dens and bank robberies, Stuart, God rot his soul, has no place to complain."

Milo nodded and took a glance at Julia, who finally seemed to be okay with this trot around the park. No tugs on the leash to chase after the turkeys—who were just as insolent as they had been earlier—and she seemed to have found a sort of rhythm to get them down the path.

"Mari put cat ears on her," he admitted. Milo had replaced the cat ears with a pumpkin sweater, via Amazon. "I think she'd chase cats—that was probably an affront to her dignity."

"We won't tell her what it meant," Garth admitted. Chad shifted in his grip, and Garth had to drop his arm. Milo resisted the urge to give him a shy smile—partly because he was afraid Julia would stop again and they'd go sprawling if he looked away, and partly because… well, because.

"She's probably better off not knowing," Milo figured. They were drawing around the corner to Milo's little sedan, and Garth and Chad walked him to his door.

"So," Garth said, "what are you doing with her tomorrow?"

Milo gazed down at his protective little dog, who gazed back up at him with zero expectations. "I think I'll take her with me," he said thoughtfully. "If she behaves, my boss might not even notice. If she doesn't, I'll look up a dog walker or something." Julia reached up and put both her paws on Milo's knee. "It'll be fine."

Garth's warm chuckle made him think it would be.

"Well, Saturday's the day I take Chad here to the dog playground. Does your girl have all her shots?"

Milo recalled the long, detailed explanation of Julia's healthcare plan that Mari had walked him through. "Yes!" he said excitedly. "Should I bring her paperwork?"

"Just her little tag that says she's had rabies vaccinations," Garth said. "Otherwise the rest is for her protection. Anyway—Julia and Chad will be in different enclosures, but maybe afterward we can take a loop around the park, okay?"

Milo paused enough to really smile this time. "Yeah," he said. "I'd… gee, I'd like that."

Garth's tanned face was such a thing of beauty. Milo practically lost time when he smiled.

"So," Garth rumbled, his voice cutting into Milo's dreams, "I'll see you the day after tomorrow, here, and at C-Bar-C Park on Saturday."

Milo nodded, then bit his lip. "Would you like me to… uhm, bring coffee?" he asked shyly.

"Sure," Garth said. "I'll text you with my order."

Milo wondered if he glowed on the way to his car. He certainly felt like he glowed. Was it possible to glow, like a radiated bauble?

It must have been. He didn't trip on Julia once .