Page 14 of Loverboy

“I’m just saying, you’d be a lot less miserable if you got laid.”

“I don’t think there’s a cure. I was born like this.”

I could count my relationships on one hand. At the end of the day, dating didn’t really suit me. People needed too much in a relationship, and the unspoken pressure to perform stressed me out.

I had to reserve my energy for Milo.

With him, I didn’t mind the neediness. I liked it even. He forced me to go out to parties, made friends for me, and was just enough of a pain in my ass to keep me on my toes. As codependent as he was, I got as much out of our relationship as he did, in my own way. He made me realize that I didn’t need to go out and search for what I already had at home.

“I’ll handle the next wave,” Brandon declared. “Stock the wedges so we don’t scare off the patrons with your resting bitch face.”

Weariness bled into my laughter as I crouched behind the bar. My knees popped. I thought I had at least eight more years before my body started betraying me, but apparently not.

Someone had done a shit job with the limes again, half of the wedges thick enough to choke on. I fixed them one by one, nearly cutting myself once or twice, my focus stuck on the silent phone in my pocket.

“Low on tonic, too,” Brandon called from the other end of the bar.

“Yeah, I’m on it,” I acknowledged, throwing the old wedges into the trash.

By the time I stocked the tonic, I knew I needed to get outside. With only a few hours left in my shift, I excused myself from the bar, grabbing my coat and scarf from the back as I shoved my earplugs in my pocket. I didn’t usually smoke anything other than pot, but like in any other kitchen, smokers got the most breaks, which meant pretending I needed a smoke if I wanted my hard-earned fifteen minutes of solitude. Once I was outside, I propped the door open with a crate.

The chill of an autumn night was all I needed to clear my head. I reached into my back pocket and pulled out a crumpled-up pack of cigarettes. I slid one out of the crinkled foil and held it between my lips, never lighting it, my back against the brick wall.

I heard a faint rustling in the dark next to the bins and turned to investigate. A man was curled up next to the trash bin, wrapped in a jacket far too thin for the cruelty of a fast-approaching northern winter.

I shouldn’t have looked.

“Jesus Christ,” I muttered, tucking the cigarette behind my ear as I pulled away from the wall and yanked the scarf from around my neck. “Here.”

I watched awkwardly as he wrapped himself up in the scarf, muttering thanks. His nose was bright red, and his fingers were trembling. The guilt gnawed at my insides, and I couldn’t help but feel like what I’d given him wasn’t enough.

“Do you want a smoke?” I asked.

“Oh, yes, please.” He perked up.

It wasn’t a solution, but it was enough to quiet the guilt. I pulled another cigarette from my pack and handed it to him along with my lighter, and watched quietly as he lit it. Once I was sure he was in decent enough shape and had gotten my lighter back, I turned away, pulled out my phone and returned to the matter at hand.

Oliver wasn’t a friend of mine, though I’d known him for years through Milo. It didn’t make calling him any less weird, but I needed to find out if he’d left the apartment yet, and how urgent my brother’s cry for help really was. My job didn’t actually matter in the end, not as much as Milo. If it were a life-or-death situation, I’d leave in a heartbeat.

“Hello?”

“Have you left the apartment?” I interrogated him immediately.

“Yeah, about an hour ago. What’s up?” He sounded worried. “Do you need me to go back there?”

“No,” I hesitated. “Just wondering.”

The last thing I wanted was for Oliver to go back. No matter how much he tried to convince himself he was just a really good friend, he was always waiting for the day Milo would acknowledge his feelings. Every relationship was a substitute, every girl a stand-in for what he really wanted.

Politely turning him down every time they were drunk and partying wasn’t enough—Milo needed to cut him loose and end his self-imposed suffering, or one day, I might do it for him.

“He seemed okay when I left,” Oliver said. “But if you think I should go back—”

“It’s fine,” I clipped. “I’ll drop by the apartment after work.” I didn’t bother with a proper goodbye, promptly hanging up on him and shoving my cigarette back into the pack.

Fuck.

Oliver wouldn’t be able to tell from looks alone when Milo was spiralling, wouldn’t clock the distant look in his eyes, or the little nervous movements he made while trying to swallow the need to pull himself apart.