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That word totally wasn’t losing all its meaning or anything.
21
Milo
After staring at his ceiling for hours on end he finally fell into a fitful sleep, only to jump awake what felt like only a few minutes later at the sound of his alarm clock.
He rolled out of bed bleary-eyed and not feeling any better than he had yesterday. In fact, he felt a little worse; sluggish and slow and like he wanted to curl up under the sheets and never move again.
Which never happened to him. He got dressed in his comfiest sweatshirt and put his titty hat on over his messy hair. Because fashion didn’t care if you felt like crap.
He snatched up his Stanley cup and headed straight to the kitchen to make a gallon of coffee. He hadn’t yet found a problem more coffee couldn’t fix. It was what had led him to his brilliant idea of chaining himself to the tree, after all.
As he sat in the doctor’s waiting room. He realized maybe he had overestimated its powers a little.
Betrayal tasted worse than the dregs of cold coffee at the bottom of his cup as he waited anxiously for the health check to be over.
It was always like this though.
He hadn’t chalked it up to being a dragon hoard thing, because why the hell would he have jumped to that conclusion? But Milo was never not a nervous wreck on the other side of the door. Every check was like rolling the dice as the years ticked by. Milo wished he could smash the clock.
“And you’re all done,” the nurse said as she opened the door.
Milo was on his feet in seconds.
“Is he—”
“Fit as a fiddle, Mr. Tobitt,” the nurse said, ushering Glenn out the door. He shuffled over to a little metal stand with pamphlets and picked some random ones to read over. “Physically, that is.”
“Yeah.” Milo nodded, looking at Glenn, who was studying a leaflet about cavities with the seriousness of a PhD student. “He does live in his own reality.”
“So long as he’s happy and not in danger, I don’t think there’s anything different you can do,” she said with a gentle smile. “You take good care of him. He’s healthy, happy, and grounded.”
Milo felt his chest expand with pride and his first instinct was to call Rowan to tell him he just got told he took good care of his hoard. It felt important. Larger than life. But Rowan was working and Milo shouldn’t be distracting him with things that weren’t that important.
“Thank you,” he said, and the nurse smiled before looking at Glenn.
“See you soon, Glenn,” she said, and he turned to her, a serene smile on his face.
“Looking forward to it,” he said before hooking his arm around Milo’s and walking out. “I am not looking forward to it.”
“Huh?” Milo asked.
“She’s nice, but there is no chemistry there, so a second date is out of the question.”
“Ah.” Milo bit his lip to stop himself from laughing. “Well, it’s good you put yourself out there anyway.”
“Indeed.” Glenn nodded as they walked down the street toward the bus station.
“Okay, so, remember what we talked about?” Milo asked.
“Get on the bus,” he recited. “Sit behind the driver. The driver will tell me when my stop is up. Ethel will meet me there.”
“Good,” Milo said, fishing out some change for his ticket as they waited for the bus to arrive.
He made sure Glenn was situated before heading for his own bus stop on the other side of the road to take him to Sips and Scales.
The anxiety in his chest didn’t ease until Ethel texted him that Glenn was back safe and sound. She was the only one who knew how to operate a smartphone.
