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Smartphones are good, but they’re not infallible good.
And wouldn’t he have mentioned it? I mean, insane text messages like those aren’t exactly easily ignored or forgotten, no matter who the recipient is…
With a deep, anxious breath, I tap my fingers across the keypad.
Lunch would be great, but I’m super busy these days, you know, with my stupid boring life…
Delete.
What IS lunch, exactly?
Delete.
I’ve actually given up eating all food. Very new age diet. All the rage.
Delete.
Hey, Milo. Ha-ha-ha. Lunch? With moi?
Shit. I sound like a vagrant foreigner, and technically, I shouldn’t know who is texting me. I stole his number from the flapjacking computer and proceeded to solicit sex! Bruce & Sons ethical code has been all but destroyed.
Delete.
Me: Hi…um…mind telling me who this is?
Finally, I settle on unadulterated ignorance and send off a response. His reply chimes in a minute later.
Milo: It’s Milo. Ives. And no, I didn’t mean to say that in a Bond, James Bond kind of way.
Oh my God, he’s so funny, my heart yells. I love him!
I flash a flyer for a two-bedroom with rent control in Throatstown at my heart and tell it to shut the hell up. This isn’t a time for its opinion. This is a time to use my brain.
I contemplate the structure, cadence, and simplicity of his reply in forty different ways, and again, even after all of my analysis, I can’t help but notice that he doesn’t mention the anesthesia-fueled brain misfire.
Is he just being polite, or did he really, somehow, not get those messages?
Holy hell, the uncertainty is ball-shriveling. I mean, you know, if I had balls to shrivel.
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Get it together, you psycho! You can’t go through with this. You sent the man a ramble of text messages that included asking him to devirginize you!
I’m right. I can’t go to lunch with him.
Actually, I can never come into contact with him for the rest of my life.
Not tomorrow. Not next week. Not next month. Not one-hundred-fucking years from now.
No flipping way. I’d rather cut off my left tit than have to face him.
And I love my left tit. It’s the perkiest of the set.
I know it’s not exactly an easy feat since he’s my brother’s best friend and friends with my family and living in the same flipping city as me, but I’ll walk around in camouflage and start living like a damn vampire if I have to.
Two a.m. grocery shopping at the Quickie Mart up the block.
Wearing a bag over my head on the subway.
You name it, and I’ll do it.
Before I can overthink this situation to death, I type out a response.
Me: That’s really nice, Milo, but I’ll have to get back to you on it. I’m not free this week, and I’m not sure of my first available date after.
Yeah. I’ll get back to him in exactly one million years.
Milo: All right, well, I have to head into a meeting, but let me know if your schedule clears up.
Me: Will do.
More like, will don’t.
I might have to forgo my job search and enter myself into the witness protection program, but I will never see Milo Ives again. Never ever ever.
Milo
At a little after noon on Saturday, the bell above the entrance door chimes as I step into Bruce Willis & Sons Floral.
Now that Emory and Quincy are settled at their New York apartment—yes, they have one in more than one city, thus requiring a distinction…rich people problems—a gift of ostentatious, over-the-top, snooty cousin-approved flowers is in order.
And maybe, since I’m here, I’ll send another surprise bouquet to my mother just to push my brownie points over the top.
I could use a little goodwill in the son department, and Betty and Bruce will no doubt have some information about how to track down Maybe.
With her dodgy text messages yesterday about being too busy to meet me for lunch, I’m not sure how else to go about helping her make connections for work.
Gut instinct tells me she’s in the avoidance stage after sending me those insane—and honestly, when I think about it, pretty damn hilarious—text messages, but I have a feeling when we have a laugh about them and put it behind us, she’ll really appreciate the leg up I can give her in the publishing industry.
Bruce strides through the door from the back room, and a big ole grin crests his lips when he meets my eyes.
“Milo!” he bellows, just like the old days. “Well, I’ll be darned, son, you sure are a sight for sore eyes! How ya been?” he asks and steps around the counter to pull me into a hug and clap a steady hand against my back.
The familiarity of his hugs is still a welcome feeling, even at thirty years old.
“Pretty good.”
He steps back to assess me further, and a sly grin spreads across his lips. “You in here to buy some flowers for a lady friend?”
