by Max Monroe
I lose the ability to breathe, and all blood officially leaves my head.
Deflower me, please? I said.
Oh. My. God.
How many times is it possible to die in a seventy-two-hour period? I have to know. Because if I wasn’t dead before, I surely am dead now.
I scroll up and down again, hoping it’s a figment of my imagination.
But ohhh boy, it’s real. So real that right below the final message sits a read receipt from two days ago.
He. Read. Them. And for fuck’s sake, he just had to be the type of person to leave read receipts on text messages.
The panic is intense for a minute and a half. I pace my kitchen, yank at my wet locks, and bump into every piece of furniture I’ve never owned—thank you, Evan.
But when I finally reach the end of my initial breakdown, I remember one, tiny, glorious detail.
Milo Ives doesn’t have my number. Bruce and Betty were all about keeping shit real with their kids, and I had to hold out for a phone until I was fifteen. Two long years after the disappearance of Milo.
Thank God he doesn’t have my number.
If he did, I’d have to ask Bruce for the inside track on a two-for-one coupon for resuscitations on Groupon.
Maybe
Two days later and I’m well on my way to a full recovery. I’m no longer injured, bleeding, swollen—or contemplating creating a scenario where I could achieve that status again, thanks to the text-pocolypse.
All in all, I’m back to normal, can eat solid foods without my gums bleeding, and am actually feeling better now that I don’t have constant oral pain. Unfortunately, that means I’m back to working with my parents.
“Betty!” my dad shouts from the back room of the shop, thirty seconds away from starting World War III, Floral Edition. “Have you had a chance to check these shipments?”
“Could you stop yelling!” my mom yells. “What if we had customers out here?”
“Do we?”
“No, but if we did, they would’ve hightailed it out of here because you’re an idiot!”
“You’re giving me shiitake mushrooms because my yelling would have driven off the customers we don’t actually have, and I’m an idiot?” Bruce shouts back. At the reminder of his funny little practice of using other, somewhat ridiculous, versions of curse words when he’s at work, I close my eyes and let my head fall back. “If you would’ve looked at these shipments, I wouldn’t have to be back here yelling!”
Man, I’m so glad I decided to move back to New York and work at my parents’ floral shop while I try to find a job.
Probably the best idea I’ve ever had.
No, no, my mind taunts. Not the worst idea you’ve ever had.
The pure thought of the godawful anesthesia-blissed-out decision to text Milo with a sexual proposition makes nausea clench my gut. I immediately will my mind to other things.
Ariana Grande’s new album.
How many days there are until my brother’s wedding.
How many tacos can I actually eat at Taco Bell? Like, if I really apply myself? Four? Five?
Fun-size candy bars are too damn small to be fun.
You name it, and I’m thinking about it.
Problem is, every time I finish thinking about something else, I start thinking about the embarrassment again.
I mean, what in God’s name could he be thinking? He didn’t say anything. Is that some sort of don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all type of thing? Or did he assume I was just some desperate harpy, looking for my stake of his billion dollars?
My mom shoves the cash register shut with her hip and pulls me from my painful inner monologue. For once in my life, I’m grateful that my entire family consists of unusually loud people.
“I’ll kill him,” she mutters under her breath. With a roll of her eyes and a heavy sigh from her lips, she turns on her heels and pushes open the door to the back room with both hands.
“You are driving me crazy!” Her voice bounces off the walls of the shop, just before the door swings closed behind her.
“Ditto, Betty!”
Filled with the disquiet of my embarrassment and a euphemistic bucket full of uncertainty, for the first time, maybe ever, I find comfort in my parents’ bickering. It’s annoying, sure, but it’s also consistent. I’m fortunate enough to have parents who’ve been willing to fight with each other for over thirty years. That doesn’t happen much anymore.
I smile to myself and carry a bushel of fresh cut sunflowers toward the front of the shop and proceed to stock a few of the water-filled glass bowls that sit in our DIY-bouquet section.
My parents’ bickering penetrates the walls of the back room, and from what I gather, this week’s shipment of lilies and roses looks like total shiitake mushrooms. Bruce’s words, obviously, not mine. And, evidently, this has been a far-too-frequent issue with one of our shippers.
I’d say in about ten minutes, an irate Bruce will be telling the shipper in question where to shove their shiitake mushroom flowers—right up the grasshole. Again, his words, not mine.
One-by-one, I pull the sunflowers out and place them in the display. And just before I add the final ten stems to the water, my phone pings in my back pocket, and I pull it out to find a text message notification.
My lock screen reads, Text Message from Milo Ives, and my heart migrates out of Chestville and into Throatstown. And, hey, it might as well do some apartment shopping while it’s there because it seems like it’s seriously considering relocating.
I wonder if the universe has something against me. Have I invited bad karma into my life somehow? Done some dirty deeds I’m unaware of? Strong-armed an old lady unknowingly?
A million questions roll through my mind, and I realize they’re most easily answered if I’d just find the strength to tap the fucking screen and look at what he sent.
Sunflowers completely forgotten, I brace myself for impact. Locked knees, vomit bucket at the ready.
Milo: Hello, Maybe.
Sweet Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, he knows it’s my number! How in the h-e-double-hockey-sticks does he know it’s my number?!
He knows I’m the one who sent those crazy fucking text messages.
I almost put the bucket to use immediately, but I don’t have time for it because another text message comes through.
Milo: Evan reached out on your behalf the other day. He thinks I might be some help in your job search.
Oh. God.
Milo: What do you say we grab lunch this week?
When I don’t respond within a few minutes, he sends another.
Milo: I’m free Wednesday around noon. You?
Shit. I need to answer him. The last thing I need is to actually face him right now.
Just play it cool… Who knows, maybe the read receipt was just some kind of weird error and he never actually got the text messages?
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?”
Lady friend. I chuckle. “My cousin, actually. And maybe my mom too. Is it true that you can never send your mother too many flowers?”
“You bet your grass!” Bruce says enthusiastically, and I smile.
“Great. Maybe you can recommend a couple of arrangements, then.”
“Of course, son. What are ya lookin’ to spend?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Bruce’s eyes start to gleam, and I love the look on him. With how infrequently I see my own parents, this exchange with him feels like it’s filling a little bit of the void. “Something really obnoxious for my cousin Emory.”
He rubs his hands together and moves to step behind the counter, remarking, “Oh, you just wait.”
I put a quick but gentle hand to his arm to stop him before he gets too involved. “I’m also hoping you might know where I can find Maybe. I’ve been trying to get our schedules to line up, but it just hasn’t seemed to work out.”
He quirks a brow and, instantly, I feel the need to add some details. It’s not like Maybe and I have hung out over the years. I can imagine me asking for her now feels a little out of nowhere. “Evan asked me to help her get in contact with some publishing houses in the city.”
“Ah, okay,” he clucks with a pat to my back. “She’s in the back. Let me grab her for ya.”
She’s in the back? As in, she’s here?
Instead of physically going to the back, Bruce shouts, “Maybe! Come out front!”
I laugh a little to myself. I guess she’s in the back.
“Dammit, Bruce! Stop shouting like a banshee!” Evan’s mother, Betty Willis, shouts from somewhere in the shop. Her voice seems disembodied and omnipotent—which is a little creepy—but I’m guessing it’s just the acoustics of the building.
He is completely unfazed by her request. “Would ya tell Maybe to come out here? She’s got a customer.” He elbows me in the arm and winks.
“Oh my God! You’re killing me today!” Betty moans dramatically.
“Women, you know.” He shrugs. “Can’t live with ’em, can’t live with ’em.”
My eyebrows draw together. “Don’t you mean can’t live without them?”
He chuckles boisterously, even grabbing his chest at one point, he’s laughing so hard. “Oh, son. No. No, I don’t.”
All I can do is grin, and thankfully, before Bruce can dive headfirst back into yelling, the back door pushes open and the gorgeous brunette from the other day comes through with a bucket of fresh flowers.
Her head is down, her eyes fixated on juggling the container in her hands, but I have to admit, I’d recognize her body anywhere. The subtly luscious curves made that big of an impression. “Jesus, Dad!” she snaps. “Could you be any more Effie Trinket right now?”
“Who the fun factory is Effie Trinket?” Bruce thunders back. He’s obviously confused by the reference, and honestly, I might be too if I were paying more attention.
But I’m not. I’m fucking fixated on her.
Maybe was the one who took my order the other day. The goddess with the big brown eyes and perfect skin, the woman with the figure I’ve been thinking about ever since the first time I saw it, the awkwardly adorable store employee—this woman—is Evan’s little sister. And it’s fucking jarring.
Between one breath and the next, my whole world slows down.
This is really Maybe Willis?
This can’t be the lanky, unsure thirteen-year-old girl who was obsessed with books and Janis Joplin and ate an entire box of Sour Patch Kids a day.
“It’s a Hunger Games reference,” she says to Bruce through a snort without looking up. “And it is not flattering.”
Either she’s been through one of the biggest transformations known to man, or my foggy memory of her really didn’t do her justice.
Long golden-brown locks flow past her petite shoulders and halfway down her back, and fuck, those chocolate eyes of hers could swallow galaxies.
Her skin is cream and ivory and silky smooth save a few tiny freckles th
at outlasted her adolescence and still dot her nose and cheeks. Her lashes are long and dark, and her lips are so full and pink, I’d think they were photoshopped if I weren’t witnessing them in person.
A small waist is hidden beneath a red ribbed top, and her dark-wash blue jeans fit perfectly over her curvy hips.
Maybe Willis isn’t a girl anymore.
No. She’s all woman.
“Where in the heck have ya been?” Bruce asks—loudly—and grabs my attention before my thoughts head toward places they shouldn’t be.
“In the back.” She rolls her eyes. “Working like a normal person.”
“Well, Milo is here to see ya,” he says. She stops mid-step and snaps her shocked gaze to mine.
“W-what?”
Her big brown eyes grow wide, her lips part into a perfect little O, and her cheeks turn a bright shade of red. Recognition has set in, but unlike me, it’s painfully obvious she’s known who I was all along.
Man, she must think I’m a real prick. Talking to her the other day like she was a goddamn stranger.
I’ll apologize for it at some point, but right now, with Bruce playing witness, I don’t see much of an option other than diving headfirst into the fray.
“Hi,” I greet, and I don’t miss the way her throat bobs when she swallows. “I’m here to take you to lunch.”
“Y-you’re what?”
“I’m here to take you to lunch,” I repeat, taking a step toward her.
She takes a noticeable step back. “But I-I’m working…”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Bruce chimes in. “Go to lunch with him, Maybe. You and I both know we’re always slow on Saturdays.”
Her mouth opens and closes a few times, but words don’t come out. I don’t know if she’s mad about how cavalierly I treated her as a stranger or if she’s still embarrassed about the messages, or hell, maybe the two are directly related. But I’ll never know if I don’t get her out of this building.