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That was a complicated conversation with myself because if I wasn’t the person I thought I’d been before, then who was I? What were my likes? What were my needs? What made me happy? I thought I’d have a few years before encountering my quarter-life crisis. Truthfully, I figured I’d skip over any life crisis because I had everything planned out to the T. That was all until I met Milo Corti, who turned my world upside down. Or was my world upside down all along, and he was the one who set me right-side up for the first time in years?
Whitney didn’t ask me about Milo again. That was because I gave her the impression that he and I were done doing whatever it was we’d been doing. I wasn’t lying about what was going on between Milo and me, yet I wasn’t sharing the complete truth.
The omission of the truth is still a lie, Starlet.
My mind felt as if it were set in a back-and-forth fight between doing what was wrong and what was right. I tried not to think about it too much because the guilt of it all would eat at me. Some days when I looked in the mirror, I didn’t know who stared back at me. I felt like I was in the middle of a massive personality split. I was shifting from the good girl I’d always been into something else, which scared me.
I wondered if my mother would’ve been proud of my changes or disappointed in how far I was veering off the original path. I wondered if she was ashamed of how I’d been acting. I wasn’t behaving like she would’ve behaved, which created a heavy level of guilt that I wasn’t certain I knew how to deal with. When I allowed my mind to slow down from the high Milo gave me, I’d sit with so much remorse and shame when I allowed myself to emotionally sober up.
Mom would’ve never fallen for the forbidden boy.
She would’ve never had a one-night stand.
She would’ve never gone to a fraternity party.
She would’ve been better than me, and she would’ve wanted better for me.
Realistically, I knew what I was supposed to do. I was supposed to push Milo away. I was never supposed to let him in as much as I had. I was better than that. I was the responsible girl who’d always done the right thing. Yet it seemed that my mind shut off whenever I was near him. All I wanted to do was be near him. To touch him. Hold him. To help him through his current struggles. It scared me how much I cared about him in such a short period. It scared me that I had a hard time focusing on my own life because I was overthinking the possibility of a life with Milo after he graduated.
When I built up a little courage to push him away, I’d walk into the library and see his stare on me. His lips would smile, and he’d say, “Hey, Teach.” And the courage I’d held would slip away. I knew I was playing with fire, but I had no fear of being burned for some reason.
Plus, he made me feel alive. I didn’t know I hadn’t felt alive since Mom passed away. I’d spent years walking in a daze, moving on autopilot, trying to cover up my grief by becoming a perfectionist. In my mind, I might not have been able to control death, but I could control my life with strict guidelines. Yet somehow that guide was destroyed the second I met Milo.
I didn’t know I could feel so deeply for another person. Looking back, I hardly even let John in. He was just a pawn in the chess game I’d been playing with my life. I’d been directing every single move to protect myself—to protect the queen from being hurt again.
Maybe that was why I tried so hard to become my mother—because if I were her, I couldn’t get hurt. If I were myself, my true authentic self, I could shatter. I could break. I could grieve the hardest things so deeply, and that frigthened me.
Falling for Milo was terrifying because life didn’t promise everything would be okay. It didn’t make promises at all. If life made promises, then Milo would’ve been okay. He wouldn’t be going through his current struggles, which seemed extremely unfair.
He’s going blind.
My chest ached when I thought about his diagnosis.
All I wanted to do was ensure he was okay, which meant that many of my thoughts were wrapped around him. He didn’t speak about it often, but I knew the possibility of him losing his sight ate at his thoughts. It ate at mine, too. The more time we spent together, the more connected we became. The more he hurt, the more my heart crumbled.
