Unexpectedly, Milo - Matthew Dicks [142]
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