“I could say the same to you.”
“It’s just… so good, you know?”
“Oh, I do. But the question is—” He leans in, folding his hands together and resting them on the table. “Do you like strawberry milk?”
“God, no.” I shake my head. “Do you?”
He looks serious for a moment, until he smiles. “Not at all.”
“Wow, at least now I can tell my sister to screw off when she complains I’m weird about that.”
His smile falls. “You talk to your sister about me?”
The air shifts around us, to something a little heavier.
“Well, no, not really. I mean, she heard you come upstairs. I didn’t say anything… like, serious. Just that we’re friends.” He nods but says nothing, so I ask, “Is that okay?”
“Sure. Yeah. We’re friends.”
And now things are weird again…
“Yeah, friends,” I say, a heavy feeling settling in my chest.
You have to do it, Miles. You have to ask him. This needs to be talked about because this is weird.
“About that,” I start. JJ meets my gaze, waiting for me to continue when the waitress comes back to the table.
“Here you go,” Cherish says, putting the milkshakes down with spoons, and pulls two straws from her apron. “Let me know if there’s anything else I can get you, and I’ll be right back with those waters.”
“Thank you,” JJ and I say at the same time.
Then I panic again, and don’t go back to what I was going to ask.
“How often do you work?”
“A lot. My official position is two 24-hour shifts. Monday into Tuesday and Thursday into Friday.”
“That’s a long time.”
“We get to sleep… when the alarms aren’t going off, which feels like never sometimes.”
“Still, I can’t imagine not being home for that long. Not sleeping in my own bed?”
“You’ve never been on vacation? You don’t travel?”
I shake my head and stab the straw into my milkshake to take a sip.
“Not really. You travel a lot?” I ask.
“Yeah, sort of. I guess. My brother lives in California, and I visit him sometimes.”
I do remember him talking about his brothers a little the first night we met.
“Is that where you were the other day?”
“Yeah,” he says quickly. “So, how is it being a teacher?”
I don’t miss the quick change of subject—something he does often when we get to touchy subjects. Maybe he doesn’t want to get too personal and talk about his brother. I can understand that. Not everyone is as open about their life as I am.
