It was perfect.
A low hum from an ancient jukebox whispered seventies hits, a whining guitar running beneath Milo’s instructions on where to sit before he glided to the bar and ordered for two.
It was only them and the bartender, the ideal situation for her impending breakdown.
“Starting a tab?” the bartender asked.
“Put it on the owner’s,” Milo quipped. The bartender rolled his eyes. Hanna guessed they were friends.
“They’ve got this bourbon just in from Texas you have to try,” Milo said, plunking two glasses onto the table between them.
“You seem to think I’ll like an awful lot of whiskeys,” she said.
Milo arched a brow. “Have I steered you wrong yet?”
“Hmm, I guess not,” she conceded and clinked the glass against his. She took a cautious sip, ice hitting her lips first, and tasted the sweet vanilla notes as they drifted downward. He was right, she did like it. “It’s good.”
“Told you.”
Milo fell silent. She knew what he wanted to hear, but she needed at least a second drink to say it.
“You have to go first,” she said.
“Me?”
“The person with the longest Dead Parent Society tenure goes first, duh.” Hanna sipped more of her whiskey, trying to get a buzz going before she'd inevitably crash the mood.
“Damn, I must not have gotten my copy of the rules,” Milo huffed.
“Well, we’re not very good with follow-through at the DPS. Between the depression and the paperwork…”
“Too true,” he groaned. He threw back half his bourbon and rolled up his sleeves. The motion reminded Hanna that she was, indeed, wearing his flannel shirt, and her face flushed to a deep scarlet. “Man, it’s been a while since I told the full story. Where to start?”
His face contemplated which threads of the story to include, and she could tell he wasn't lying when he'd told her it never got better. She could see it in the way his jaw clenched around the words.
All the pain rushed to his green eyes in an instant, and she was looking at a fifteen-year-old boy, not a thirty-year-old man.
“Well, you know I was in high school. It was a week before Spring Break, we were in class and the teacher’s phone rang. After all these years, that’s what I remember most vividly. The look on her face when she told me they wanted me in the office and to bring my stuff.”
Milo took a long sip of his drink.
“She wouldn’t tell me why. I just assumed I was in trouble for something stupid. I was a bit of a problem child,” he admitted. “Anyway, I walked into the office and my aunt was there. My dad’s sister. She’d been crying, I could see it all over her face. The school counselor was there too. I knew at that point something was wrong, but I never would have guessed…”
Milo trailed off, swallowing as his eyes scanned the bar.
“They pulled me into this stupid room with glass windows. That’s all I could think about. If anyone walked by, they’d see me fall apart. So I did my best to keep it together. Motorcycle accident,” Milo said, his face reddening. “He was changing lanes on the highway and a truck didn’t see him.”
“Fuck,” Hanna whispered. “That’s awful.”
“Yeah, I mean, it was quick. That’s really all I have to hold onto, I guess.”
“Tell me more about him,” she said. “What was his name?”
Milo’s lips dropped into the kind of smile she gave anyone who asked about her mom. It wasn’t a pure thing, sparked by joy or nostalgia. It was the bitter release of the fear that she’d already answered the last question about her.
“Elias. Greek as hell, he grew up in Crete but moved here as a teenager. He was a really big guy, but super soft spoken. You had to lean in to hear him. But he was fucking funny. Not in that typical dad-joke way. You always knew if he was opening his mouth, it was going to be good.”
Milo paused, laughing at something that crawled into his mind. She wanted to slip into it, live in the memory with him.
