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“Sorry, man. Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”
“I will.”
The waitress approached and took our orders. I got a big-ass fucking burger. It wasn’t that I didn’t eat meat anymore, but sometimes it was just easier to have whatever Milo was having.
“How’s Milo doing?” he asked, and damned if a stupid smile didn’t pull my cheeks back almost to my ears. Kris chuckled. “Yeah, I thought so.”
“Thought so, what?” I pretended not to know what he was talking about.
“You like him.”
I shrugged because there was no reason to deny it. Even if I wanted to, Kris would see through my lies. “Yeah, I do. He’s…” Hell, I didn’t even know how to explain Milo. “He just makes life better,” was the only answer I could come up with.
“Yeah, Meg does too. Not the same as what you felt for me, is it?”
I wasn’t surprised Kris went there. He could be pretty blunt. I respected him for it. “Nope, though I realized that a long time ago. Maybe in a different world we could have been more, but we’re better as friends.”
Kris nodded. “He’s crazy about you too. He watches you like he’s in awe of you, like there’s nothing you can’t do.”
I laughed. “Oh, he knows there’s plenty I can’t do. He’s trying to teach me chess, and it’s a mess.” We shared a chuckle, which turned into a groan from me. I leaned back against the seat. “I wanna be with him for real.” But I wasn’t sure that was something Milo would want.
“I’m pretty sure you already are.”
“Nah, not really. He was on the phone with his mom, and she flat-out asked him. He said I wasn’t, that I would never be his boyfriend.”
Kris frowned. “Ouch. He said that in front of you?”
I thought about the time I’d invited him home with me and he’d asked why he would do that. “He’s honest. Sometimes he says things and doesn’t realize how they make others feel. He’s not trying to be hurtful; things just don’t process the same for him.”
“Still…maybe you should talk to him.”
“What? You mean be an adult about the situation? Why would I want to do a crazy thing like that?”
Before he opened his mouth, I could see the serious gaze Kris sent my way. “Because then you might be happy, and I don’t think you realize you can have that—or that you deserve it.”
My chest got heavy, like each word had packed more and more weight on it. Jesus, I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. Kris had never said something like that to me before. It wasn’t true, was it? “I have no reason to feel that way.”
“People don’t have to have a reason to feel a lot of things. Sometimes we just do. It’s how we work, some predisposition or whatever the fuck in our DNA. It just is what it is. Look at that ‘cursed love’ tattoo on your chest. You feel that way, don’t you?” He pointed where those words were inked into my skin.
In some ways I did. In my twenty-six years, there’d been only two people I’d actually wanted more than just fucking with. One had been Kris, who didn’t feel the same; the other had been an asshole who was cheating on me. Two people before Milo, at least. I didn’t think I could handle losing him, and it would be a whole lot harder to just be friends with him afterward, the way I was with Kris. Milo was special, like he occupied this hidden space inside my chest that hadn’t been there until he discovered it.
“Here you boys go,” Patsy broke up our conversation, setting plates in front of us. Thank God for that, because I wasn’t sure how in the world I would have responded to him.
Kris took a bite of his food before pointing at me with his fork. “Nice hickey, by the way.”
I lifted the neck on my shirt to try and cover it. “Shut up.”
When he laughed, I couldn’t help but join in.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Milo
As if he had a beacon attached to him, I looked up from the stack of books on the counter just as Gideon walked by out front. He had his hands stuffed into his pockets and didn’t turn my way, but still my heart pounded. Just seeing him made me feel like maybe I was having a heart attack or something, the funny feeling he brought to my chest growing every day.
I wasn’t stupid; I knew I had a crush on him. It wasn’t my first crush. This one just happened to be with one of the most important people to me in the world, one I just happened to be having sex with, and a person I was incredibly afraid of losing. I worried it was more than a crush too. That was part of the reason I always stressed we were best friends. We were, of course, but it was to remind myself not to think Gideon was more to me, and also, so he didn’t think I saw us as something more than we were.
