Unexpectedly, Milo - Matthew Dicks [31]
As with many things, the need to complete a task quickly caused the process to become exponentially more difficult, as the relaxation he felt moments ago was replaced by muscle-wrenching tension. For a minute, Milo thought that he might abandon the process altogether, his body offering him a last-minute reprieve, but as he rose from the commode, his body reminded him of what must be done.
Milo was in the restroom for twelve minutes (he watched the minutes pass on his cell phone) and had no idea what to say when he returned to the table. He had been gone excessively long. The salads had probably arrived five minutes ago. Christine might already be on her second glass of wine. He could attempt to pretend that the time that he was away did not warrant mention, but then he feared that the specter of his absence would linger over the night.
He thought about telling his date that he had met an old friend in the restroom and had chatted with the guy for a few minutes, but Arugula was a small restaurant with no more than a dozen tables, all in clear view of one another. Christine would surely ask Milo to point out his friend, which he would be incapable of doing.
Unable to come up with a reasonable excuse for his delay, Milo resigned himself to returning to the table and hoping for the best. But as he exited the restroom into the narrow corridor that connected the dining room with the restrooms and the kitchen, Milo noticed that the rear door to the restaurant, one that appeared to be for employees only, was ajar.
Suddenly, he had an idea.
Four minutes later, a total of sixteen minutes after he had stepped away from the table, Milo reentered the restaurant through the front door, slowing and deepening his breathing in order to mask the effects of the sprint that he had just made around the building and down the alley between the restaurant and the adjacent gourmet dog bakery.
“Huh?” Christine said, startled to see Milo walk through the front door and across the restaurant to his seat.
“Sorry,” he said, sitting and placing his cloth napkin back in his lap. “It was stupid. There’s a door at the back of the restaurant. In the back hall. It was open a crack, and I heard some shouting coming through it as I came out of the restroom. Coming from the back parking lot. So I went to take a peek. A couple of teenagers with skateboards were picking on another kid, a smaller kid, calling him fag and queer, so I chased them off and made sure the smaller kid was okay. But I got locked out in the process.”
“Oh,” Christine said, eyes widening in surprise. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah. I’m fine. I mean, they were just kids. No big deal.”
“God … I feel bad,” she said, a grin forming on the corners of her lips. “I was sitting here thinking that you were indisposed. Or worse. You were gone so long, and it was getting a little awkward, just sitting here alone, sipping wine. I was starting to get a little annoyed. But I didn’t know that you were out saving someone’s life.”
“I didn’t save anyone’s life. I just told the kids that I’d call the cops if they didn’t get lost.”
“It sounds pretty heroic to me,” she said, reaching her hand across the table to squeeze his. “A lot of people would have ignored the whole situation. And I bet the kid thinks you’re a hero too.”
“Maybe,” Milo said. “But honestly, it was nothing.”
The rest of the date had gone exceptionally well. Transforming a potentially negative moment into a positive one, Milo had managed to relax and gain a measure of poise, shedding the nervousness and apprehension that he had felt ever since asking Christine out. She had found his actions, albeit fictitious, heroic, and that had set the stage for an unexpectedly positive first impression.
It had also been the first time that Milo had lied to his future wife, and though he sometimes wished that he could have been more honest with her at the beginning of their relationship rather than starting off on fraudulent