Unexpectedly, Milo

by Matthew Dicks

No one answered on the first knock, so Milo knocked a second time and then rang the doorbell when that proved fruitless. They waited another minute, unwilling to accept that after they had come all this way, she might not be home.

  Finally, they had no choice but to accept defeat.

  “So we wait?” Emma asked.

  “No. I think I may know where she is. But I want to swing by my apartment first.”

  The sun was low in the sky as Milo and Emma crossed the wide expanse of grass at Mill Pond Park in the direction of the crowd gathered along the north end of the field. Practice was under way on the baseball diamond to their left. Round, hairy coaches shouted commands to small, pale boys wearing gloves twice the size of their hands. The wide path around the pond was peppered with people in spring jackets and sneakers, pushing strollers, holding hands, and jogging in circles. Above the crowd to the north, kites fluttered in the late-afternoon breeze, rising and diving at the command of their owners. Small children were running beneath them, their arms waving, their laughter carried on the wind to where Milo and Emma were now standing.

  “There she is,” Milo said, pointing to Cassidy, who was talking to a short, thin Indian man while examining a yellow and red striped kite in his hands. She was wearing a green polka-dotted shirt and jeans, and her hair was tucked into a pink baseball cap.

  “Look at her,” Emma said in a hush. “She’s all grown up.”

  “You are too,” Milo said.

  They stood, staring for a moment longer in silence, watching as Cassidy continued her conversation with the man.

  Finally, Emma took a deep breath and sighed. “So I guess this is it, huh? We should go?”

  “No,” Milo said. “You should go. I’m going to leave.”

  “What?”

  “I’m going to leave you two and go. But please, give this to her for me.” He held out the nylon camera bag that he had found three weeks ago under a park bench beneath a dying elm. “The camera and all the tapes are inside.”

  “Milo, don’t be stupid. You’re coming. You didn’t spend all that time and energy finding me to quit now. If I’m going to be brave enough to walk over there, you are too.”

  “It’s not about being brave,” Milo said. “It just took me this long to realize that this whole thing isn’t about me. I thought that by knowing all of Cassidy’s secrets, I had some kind of connection with her. I thought I could ride in on a white horse and be her hero. But she doesn’t even know me, and she sure as hell doesn’t need to see me today. She may never need to see me, and if that’s the way she wants it, that’s okay with me. If I knew that someone had watched my video diary and learned all my secrets, I’m not sure if I would want to meet them either. But she needs to see you, Emma. She needs to see that Tess Bryson is alive and well and know that what she did twenty years ago was good. That she’s the hero. This is about the two of you, Emma. Not me.”

  Emma opened her mouth and then closed it again in what seemed to Milo as a preempted rebuttal. Then she reached up, placed her hands on his shoulders, and drew him close. “I can’t believe that a nerd who plays Dungeons and Dragons could say something so sweet.”

  “Look who’s talking. You still sleep with the lights on.”

  “Low blow, Milo.”

  The two stood in the thick grass for a moment longer, smiling at each other, before Emma finally spoke. “Thank you, Milo. But this isn’t goodbye, right?”

  “Hell, no. And if you need a ride to the train station or a place to sleep tonight, just call me. Okay?”

  “All right. But I’m still going to tell her what a catch you are. I don’t care what you say.”

  “Save it for later. You have too much catching up to do. And Emma, thank you.”

  “For what? My splendid company?”

  Milo thought for a moment, unsure how to condense so much into such a small space. Then he smiled again. “For catching me with the jelly,” he said. “And everything that came after that. You’ll never know how much it’s meant to me.”

  “I have that effect on people,” Emma said, returning the smile.

  The two embraced as the sun began to mingle among the trees that lined the edge of the park, and then Emma turned and began walking slowly toward Cassidy, shuffling her feet through the carpet of green. Milo began walking in the opposite direction but stopped after a moment and looked back. He looked on as Emma approached Cassidy from behind, tapped her lightly on the shoulder, and waited for her childhood friend to turn. Too far away to hear their words, he watched as Emma spoke first, taking pleasure in the unusual timidity and uncertainty in her posture. Then he smiled as Cassidy’s hands flew up to her face, cupping her mouth to muffle a scream that just managed to reach Milo’s ears. Emma spoke again, for longer than Milo would have expected, as Cassidy stood frozen in place, staring at her friend, before reaching out and embracing Emma with all her might. The two were still clutching each other a minute later when Milo finally turned and headed back across the field to his car, the demands of life already reasserting themselves in his mind.

  He was late in picking up his dog.

  epilogue

  Unsure of what she preferred, Milo had purchased nine different kinds of candy, ranging from Twizzlers to Whoppers to the pink Canada Mints, which, much to Milo’s dismay, were not actually manufactured in Canada. He had stuffed them all into a brown paper bag, which was sitting between his feet and ready to go as soon as she arrived. This was his first date since he and Christine had negotiated the details of their divorce four weeks before, and even though they would have to wait six more weeks for it to be official, Milo had decided that it was time to return to the dating scene.

  Emma’s prodding had certainly helped.

  Thick-Neck Phil had already moved in with Christine and was assisting with the refinance and eventual buyout of Milo’s interest in the home, even though his soon-to-be-ex-wife had assured Milo repeatedly that nothing had happened between the two of them until well after the divorce papers had been served. Milo had his doubts but was surprised to find that he no longer cared. Though the thought of all of those wasted hours pulling rosebushes around the house and refinishing the wood floors still bothered him more than it should, the settlement, which had proved to be sizable, more than made up for the bloodied hands and bruised knees.

  Emma had offered to drive up to assist in the plans for this first date, but Milo knew better than to accept her offer. The two had spoken at least once a week over the phone since their drive up from North Carolina, and last month she had spent the weekend in Connecticut playing a two-day Dungeons & Dragons marathon after losing a bet with Milo over a Red Sox—Yankees game in mid-April.

  It turned out that Emma enjoyed wagering a great deal.

  Though Milo and his friends did not typically dress up for their Dungeons & Dragons adventures (with the exception of Cushman), they had made an exception for the special occasion and donned the outfits of a dwarf, an elf, and a Paladin. For Emma, they purchased a wizard’s robe and matching hat, tall and pointed and covered in stars, which she grudgingly wore for most of the first day. Even under an agreement that she would play enthusiastically and by the rules, she had made Cushman look like a saint. Still, by the end of the weekend, Andy, Danny, and Cushman had all fallen in love with her.

  Milo knew better.

  He had also spoken to Cassidy over the phone and had met her once for coffee at her insistence (though he’d ordered an apple juice and water). As he feared, the conversation between the two of them had been strained and awkward. It was understandable. Though Cassidy had expressed great appreciation for his bringing her and Emma together (the two were speaking over the phone almost as much as he and Emma were), she was also talking to the man who had taken her camera and tapes from a park bench, watched them despite their obvious private nature, and knew secrets about her past that she had not shared with anyone in her life.

  Milo certainly understood if Cassidy’s feelings regarding him were mixed, or if
she felt uncomfortable in his presence.

  “I don’t understand why you aren’t taking her to a real movie theater,” Eugene said, reaching in and grabbing another handful of popcorn from the bag on Milo’s lap.

  “This is where we watched our first movie together, so I thought it would be a nice place to come back to the same place for our date.”

  “In the break room?”

  “Yeah. You don’t think she’ll like it?”

  “I know I wouldn’t,” Eugene said.

  “Well, I’m going to take her out to dinner after the movie, if that makes you feel better.”

  “Only if you don’t sing to her. You’re just lucky that she wasn’t working that night when you got on the stage. Damn, that shit was funny.”

  Milo had called Lily about a month after his stay in the Ramada, and they had been speaking over the phone two or three times a week since then, exchanging texts and e-mails as well. Milo didn’t really think that a relationship with a five-hour commute was going to work, but Emma had persuaded him to give it a try. “You can’t expect the first girl you meet after Christine to be the one, so let Lily be your rebound girl. Be nice, have a good time, and get laid.”

  No wonder her advice column had been syndicated in more than a dozen markets.

  By maintaining a buffer zone of more than three hundred miles, Milo had also been able to avoid telling Lily the truth about his condition, which was something he had hoped to do with future women. So far Emma was still the only person who knew about the jelly jars, the bowling, and the replacing of air in the Honda’s tires, which had unfortunately become a regular item on the U-boat captain’s list. But if things went well with Lily, he hoped to tell her soon.

  Maybe.

  He had also thought about seeking help to try to reduce the influence of the demands on his life, as Emma had suggested and continued to suggest, but so far he hadn’t done this either. Since he was living alone and could easily satisfy the demands quickly, he wondered if it wouldn’t be easier just to continue with the way he was living rather than talk to someone who ultimately might not be able to help him.

  What Milo had done was continue to recite the poem that he had extracted from the Highlights magazine in Dr. Teagan’s office, attempting to apply Nurse Mancuso’s advice to his demands by not scratching when one arose. He was beginning on a small scale, attempting to ignore the demand for ice cubes by deliberately diverting his attention to other things, including and especially the poem. He had even gone bowling and sung at Jenny’s when the demand for ice had arisen, thinking that perhaps he could find a way to substitute one of these demands for another, hoping that this substitution might begin the process of gaining more control over them. Sort of like scratching around an itch instead on top of it, as Nurse Mancuso might suggest. Though this new strategy hadn’t met with any success yet, he was still trying.

  The door to the break room opened and Lily entered, wearing a short black dress and heels. “Wow, you look great,” Eugene said before Milo could say the same.

  “Are you staying?” Lily asked, with the beginnings of a grin.

  “Don’t worry, Lil. I told Milo that I’d stand in the hall and guard the door so you won’t be bothered. Unless you want me to stay.”

  “I love you, Eugene, but how about letting me and Milo watch this one alone, okay?”

  “Sure. No problem. I seen it already anyway. And I won’t spoil it for you like you did to me last time.”

  Eugene rose to leave and Lily moved in to take his place on the bench.

  “You be a gentleman,” Eugene warned as he stood in the doorway.

  “We’re in the break room, Eugene. Even if I wanted to make a move, what could I do?”

  “You have no idea the stuff that’s happened on that table,” Eugene said.

  “That’s right. I forgot.”

  Eugene switched off the lights and shut the door, leaving Milo and Lily alone on the bench under the glow of the wall-mounted television screen.

  “What are we watching?” Lily asked.

  “Thelma and Louise. Have you seen it before?”

  “No. Have you?”

  “Yes. It’s great,” Milo said. “Not as good as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but it’s close.”

  “Doesn’t it have a sad ending too?”

  “I’m not sure,” Milo said. “Things might change at any time. Let’s find out.”

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2010 by Matthew Dicks

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Broadway Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  www.crownpublishing.com

  BROADWAY BOOKS and the Broadway Books colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Dicks, Matthew.

  Unexpectedly, Milo : a novel / Matthew Dicks. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  1. Married people—Fiction. 2. Obsessive-compulsive disorder—Fiction. 3. Psychological fiction. I. Title.

  PS3604.I323U63 2010

  813′.6—dc22

  2010011082

  eISBN: 978-0-307-71582-1

  v3.0