Chapter Twenty-One
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Milo
“Who were you having phone sex with on Saturday?” Tom asked right away on Monday morning as we walked to our lockers.
I gave him a harsh, stern glare. “I thought we were never talking about that again.”
“Yeah, but if we were going to talk about it again… Who was on the other line?”
“I’m not doing this,” I told him as I approached my locker. I opened it and gathered my books as Tom leaned against the locker beside me.
“Is it one of the twins?” he questioned. “Or Claire? I heard she had the hots for you. Then again, who doesn’t have the hots for Milo Corti? The man, the myth, the legend.”
“It’s not the twins or Claire,” I grumbled.
“So it is someone. Who? Is it a junior? You dog, I bet it’s a junior.”
“It’s nobody,” I said, shutting my locker.
He pushed himself from the locker and slammed his hands to his chest. “It’s not my mom, is it? ’Cause if you’re screwing my mom, Mi-Mi, we might have some friendship issues.”
I let a small laugh slip out and shook my head. “You have too much energy for a Monday morning.”
“Not as much energy as you had Saturday night. By the way… Do you eat a lot of protein or something? Spinach? What’s your workout routine? Because that was quite the—”
I shot my stare at Tom. “T?”
“Yes?”
“We aren’t talking about the size of my dick at seven in the morning on a Monday.”
He tossed his hands up in surrender. “Okay. Fair, fair. I’ll ask you about it on a Thursday afternoon if that’s better for you. I tend to like to talk about my dick closer to the weekend, too.”
“Or we could never talk about it. Ever.”
“Yeah, or never. That’s cool. All I’m saying is I understand why the girls always talk about you. If I had what you had, I’d be a manwhore, too.”
“I’m not a manwhore anymore.”
Tom got a goofy smile on his face. “Because of her?”
I rolled my eyes and walked off to the principal’s office to see Weston for our morning meeting. I didn’t reply to Tom, but I knew the answer.
Yes, Tom.
It was because of her.
***
I sat across from Weston’s desk, slumped in a much comfier chair than before. The space looked renewed, with new furniture and sparkling hardwood floors. There was even an air freshener spitting out a scent every thirty seconds, taking away from Weston’s protein smells.
Not so bad, Unc.
“How are you doing today, Milo?” he asked me as he removed his glasses. He leaned back in his chair and smiled brightly.
“I’ve been worse.”
“That’s true. I’ve checked in with all your teachers. It seems you’re passing all your classes, which is remarkable. Having Ms. Evans as your tutor seems to work in your favor.”
“She’s good at what she does.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Did you just compliment a person? I haven’t heard you do that in a long time.”
“What can I say? I’m a nice guy,” I dryly replied. I was tired. I stayed up way too late studying for the damn math exam I had later that day.
Weston smiled Mom’s smile, and I felt it in my chest. Lately, I have been doing okay. I didn’t think about death as much as I thought about the living, and a part of me felt guilty about that. I wouldn’t say I was recovering from Mom’s tragedy, but the grief grew quieter. Was that what grief was supposed to do? Or was it supposed to stay at the forefront of my mind to remind me how much I loved the person who’d left?
Shit.
I was thinking about death again.
“She’d be proud of you,” Weston stated. I guessed he was thinking about the dead, too.
I shrugged, not certain what to say.
“How’s your dad?” he asked me. “I stopped by with my spare key and stocked up your fridge the other day. He wasn’t home.”
And there I was, thinking my father had finally made it to the grocery store. How sweet and naive of me.
“How is he?” Weston repeated.
That was a weighted question. I knew if I told him the truth, Weston would worry. I knew Weston would know I was lying if I told him a lie—a lose-lose situation. So I went with the truth.
“He’s worse than me,” I confessed. “And I don’t think he’s getting any better.”
Weston rubbed the back of his neck. “Healing doesn’t have a timeline.”
“So what? He might stay like this forever?”
“I hope not. I truly hope not. But maybe he just needs something that might shake him out of his depression.”
“It doesn’t help that he’s self-medicating with booze.”
“No, that doesn’t. I’ll try to catch him sometime this week. I’ll stop by and see how I can help.”
I nodded as the bell rang overhead. I grabbed my backpack and slung it onto my shoulder. “Your office looks good. I like the brighter lights.”
“Right? The past few weeks, it looked pretty awful during the construction phase. Maybe that’s the thing about progress. Maybe it has to look messy for a while before it can look good again.”
I rolled my eyes. “Okay, Fred Rogers, slow down. No need for the ’90s sitcom heart-to-heart speech.”
He laughed and stood from his desk. “Give your dad some grace, okay? If I lost my other half, I would forget how to breathe, too. Maybe he needs his son to help remind him that there’s still fresh air to take in.”
“It’s bullshit,” I muttered, feeling a tug of annoyance. “He wasn’t there to help me when I was drowning.”
“Grief doesn’t care about the age of a person. It hits them all differently. I’m not here to back your father up for how he’s been handling things. He should’ve been there for you over the past year more than he had been. But then I think about the shit he’s been through—shit we’d never understand. He was in the military and lost some of his best friends. He was overseas when his parents passed away. He lost the love of his life. That’s a lot of loss on one person’s soul, and it doesn’t get easier. It just gets heavier.”
I hated Weston’s words because I knew they were true. I wanted to resent my father for his grief. I wanted to yell, scream, and shout at how selfish he’d been. But then, sometimes, I’d think back to hearing him sob on the anniversary of Mom’s passing. I’d sometimes see the hurt when he’d choke on his words. His whole body moved as if grief controlled his limbs.
It was clear that our griefs weren’t equally yoked.
I’d lost my mother.
He’d lost his very best friend, the other half of his soul.
That kind of break was the kind that didn’t come with healing.
Maybe showing him grace was the right thing to do. Yet still, it was hard because I wanted him to be there for me when I was drowning, too. That was the issue with life. It never worked in perfect scenarios. If it had, Mom would still be alive.
I brushed my hand on my neck and nodded toward Weston. “I need a late pass for class.”
He agreed and scribbled a note for me. “Here you go. And, Milo?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m proud of you.”
I smiled slightly.
His words reminded me of Mom’s.
***
My days were mostly wrapped around getting to English class to see Starlet. She was the highlight of my days. A few months ago, I didn’t know she existed. Now, I couldn’t imagine her not being around.
Sitting in class, listening to boring Mr. Slade and staring at the beautiful Ms. Evans, I felt an odd sense of peace. Starlet and I had a secret that no one in class could know about, making me feel damn good. The only issue was I couldn’t stop wondering when my mouth would be allowed to find its way to hers again.
“Take out a pencil, everyone. Time for a pop quiz,” Mr. Slade stated. The classroom groaned. I didn’t feel as worried about it. I was officially up to date on knowing my shit.
“Need a pencil?” Savannah asked.
I shook my head and held one in the air. Right at that moment, panic washed over me as everything went black. I gripped my desk’s sides as adrenaline rushed through my system. When I say everything went black, I mean everything.
“Shit!” I shouted, going to stand from my desk but tripping over my feet. I rubbed the palms of my hands against my eyes, yet there was nothing there. I could hear everyone around me panicking, too. Savannah’s voice echoed in my ears, along with Mr. Slade’s and Starlet’s.
Starlet.
I couldn’t see her.
I couldn’t see anyone.
I couldn’t see.
I can’t see, I can’t see, I can’t see—
“Mr. Corti, stand up at once,” Mr. Slade ordered.
I blinked a few times as my chest tightened, and it returned. It was faint at first, but the more I blinked, the more vision returned to me. There those brown eyes were, standing over me with a look of nothing but straight panic. Starlet held out her hand to help me stand.
“Quite a way to try to get out of a pop quiz, Mr. Corti,” Mr. Slade rudely stated. He returned to passing out the exams, and Starlet kept her eyes on me.
“Are you okay?” she asked, concern soaked in every inch of her expression.
I didn’t answer because I didn’t know.
***
“What was that?” Starlet asked, leaping up from her chair as I walked into the library later that afternoon.
She rushed over to comfort me but stopped the second another person walked past the glass panels of our study room. I hated that she had to have that hesitation. I hated that I couldn’t wrap her in my arms and hold her.
“Nothing. Everything just went dark for a short period,” I explained, taking my seat. “I got the pictures from up north developed and—”
“What do you mean everything went dark?” she questioned, alert and concerned. She took a seat across from me and didn’t tear her eyes away from me. I didn’t know why I expected anything else from her. I did fall out of my damn desk and have a full-blown panic attack in front of the whole classroom.
“I don’t know. That’s exactly what I mean. Everything went black. I couldn’t see for a while. It’s fine now. Everything’s fine.”
“It’s not fine,” she disagreed. “You were having trouble seeing when we were up north, too. And I noticed you squinting a lot. You need to get your eyes checked out.”
I laughed. “Don’t worry about me, Teach. I’m fine.”
She reached a hand across the table and placed it on my forearm. “Please, Milo.”
The concern in her voice made my chest tighten slightly. “You want me in glasses that bad, huh?”
“It could be something serious.”
“It’s not anything serious.”
“But it could be—”
“Okay,” I said, tossing my hands up in the air. “I’ll get an eye exam if that makes you sleep better at night.”
She nodded. “It will. Thank you.”
“Now, can we stop being serious, and can I show you the photographs?”
She sat back in her chair, removing her hand from my forearm. I missed her touch before it fully disappeared from my skin. “Yes, I’d love to see them,” she said, combing her hair behind her ears. She did that when she was nervous. She was probably still working through her worry about me, but I’d be fine.
I was always fine—even when I wasn’t.
“Star.”
“Yes?”
“I’m okay.”
“Promise me you’ll go?” Her gentle brown eyes stared into me, into my soul, and that was when it happened. They say one couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment when they began to fall in love, but I could. It was in the study room at the public library on a cold winter afternoon. I was falling in love with Starlet Evans and knew I could not stop it.
No, it wasn’t because of her concern for me that I was falling in love with her. It was her concern with…everything and everyone. I knew I wasn’t special when it came to Starlet’s gentleness. I’d watched her interact with a few of the other students. I’d watched her extend her time and energy to help whenever others approached her. Starlet was the definition of love, and I was falling into her with every passing second.
When I looked at her, I was filled with light. That was what she did to others. She added light to the darkest corners of their spirit.
I wanted to tell her, but I knew it was too soon.
But it was there.
The love had begun, and I knew it would only keep growing as time passed.
Starlet was the kind of girl where love only grew stronger over time.
“I promise,” I told her. “I promise on my mother’s heart.”
Her lips pursed up, and those doe eyes blinked a few times before she nodded. Her shoulders relaxed as a tiny smile found her lips. “Let me see the photographs.”