Page 65 of Loverboy

Milo

DRIVING HOME IN separate vehicles was a blessing in disguise, one that allowed me to dissociate for the entire fifteen-minute drive. When I parked in my stall outside the apartment, the world snapped back into focus, leaving me wondering who had been driving the car, because it sure as fuck didn’t feel like it was me.

I was bracing myself for him to pull up shortly after me in the parking lot, but by the time I’d turned the car off and looked at my phone, there was a message waiting for me. Jasper was going into work to cover someone’s shift at the last minute. I couldn’t even be properly disappointed, not when something else was already tangled up in knots in my brain.

I can’t.

Whatever that meant. Those two words still buzzed in my ears. I knew what I wanted them to mean, but that didn’t mean it was what they meant. Especially when, rather than coming home, he had gone to work.

He didn’t want to see me.

My hyperactive mind supplied the reason for his choosing to go to work with ruthless ease, and it didn’t stop there, not when I was beyond the point of talking myself down from racing thoughts. They were too loud and out of control.

It’s because he’s ashamed.

I was too needy in the restaurant, and he’d had enough of it. Before I knew it, he’d be packing his things back up and going back to Mom’s. I would be all alone again. I’d gone and needed him too much. Attacking Oliver, the jealous antics in the restaurant, and the constant hot and cold—I was a fucking disaster.

Nobody could ever handle the chaos, but the chaos was where I felt safe. Without it, something was wrong. If I wasn’t in fight-or-flight, what did I have? Unnerving silence? Dangerous thoughts that had free rein over my mind and body? The thought made goosebumps break out on my skin.

I rested my head on the steering wheel, letting the events of dinner replay in my head on a loop. My brain kept dragging me back to the parking lot. Did Jasper say he couldn’t tell me it meant nothing to him to save my feelings because it was nothing? And if it wasn’t nothing—what kind of something was it?

I smacked my head on the wheel. Again. Again. Again.

Pain blossomed across my forehead, hot and tingly.

The thoughts, unsurprisingly, went nowhere. I peeled myself out of the car and dragged myself inside. The stairs felt at least a dozen flights longer than I knew them to be, but I eventually made it to the door. I fumbled with my keys, missing the lock several times thanks to the uncontrollable tremor I’d developed on the way up.

Fall apart once you’re inside, you fucking moron.

The apartment was quiet, the kind of silence that my turbulent thoughts thrived in. I closed the door behind me and locked it, then tugged on the handle. One grounding action to quiet my paranoia, if only a little.

Every moment of dinner continued to torture me.

Jasper hated how childish I was. I embarrassed him. Blane’s friends hated me, and I’d made a monumentally shitty first impression. Nobody wanted me around, and I was better off dead.

Dramatic.

I was being dramatic.

Even though I was capable of acknowledging the outlandishness of all my conclusions, it didn’t make them hurt any less. It didn’t make them feel less real.

I should have gone to lie down, but my feet had other plans. I didn’t even bother taking off my boots. I stopped in front of one of the bookshelves in the living room, pulling out my phone and immediately going to the camera roll. I swiped back and forth through the photos, comparing them to the one of Jasper and Blane sitting on the shelf.

It was undeniable. Jasper looked way happier with Blane in their photo than in ours. There was no forced smile. He was at ease; he was soft. There was no being soft with me, not when I was little more than exposed nerves. I couldn’t make him happy like that even if I tried.

He hates you.

He couldn’t hate me, not when I had tangible proof. The vial of my blood was in his dresser, and I had my own vial of his. My palm tingled where the scar sat, as if it were backing up my claim. I felt the urge to go and check on that little black box in his nightstand just to prove it to myself, but I was paralyzed. The nagging voice persisted despite my efforts to snuff out the lit fuse.

My body wasn’t my own anymore.

I swiped the framed photo off the shelf and hurled it at the ground, the glass fracturing on impact. I stomped on it over and over, until my mind went quiet and the glass was scattered across the carpet, some of the fragments lodged into the bottom of my boot. My lungs scraped for air that I couldn’t seem to swallow as I let the consequences of my actions seep in.

Why did I do that?

I dropped to the floor with no regard for the shards of glass, pain exploding in my knees as pieces punctured my jeans and sank into my skin. I choked out a sob, desperately trying to pick up the mess with my bare hands, tears darkening the crumpled photograph as I wiped my eyes with my wrists.

He would see this, and it would seal the deal. I was a crazy person. I was beyond helping, beyond saving, beyond fixing. He was going to leave me. I couldn’t let him see the photo like this. I couldn’t let him see me like this, either.