But it was his smile I loved the most out of all his physical attributes. There was just something about it; when he laughed with abandon, that made me feel like I was floating and my heart had wings. Oh, how I loved his smile.
“Okay, sure,” I conceded. “I guess Milo is hot. So what?”
“Therein lies my main concern.”
I frowned, trying to think through her words and discover the hidden meaning. My sisters—and other people—did this. Ultimately, speaking in code was why my ex-husband and I had divorced. But he wasn’t the weird one, I was. I was the problem. I understood now that humans spoke in code, hoping I would pick up on some underlying message so they wouldn’t have to say whatever it was out loud. It annoyed me to no end. Why can’t people just say what they mean?
“Are you saying you think he’s too hot for me?” I switched my phone from my right hand to my left.
“No. I think he’s too hot for anyone. Hot guys like Dr. Milo Manganiello are genetically incapable of relationships.”
“Genetically incapable?”
“Yes. It’s a defect in their DNA.”
“Ha ha.” She had to be joking. I pushed open the stairwell door.
“Okay. Listen to me. Take Will, for instance.”
“What does Will have to do with anything?” My fingers skimmed over the rail as I descended. My ex-husband and I got along fine whenever we crossed paths, which wasn’t often. But it was unavoidable since we worked for the same university.
“Will is super hot, always has been. And why did you and he get a divorce? Because he couldn’t stop having sex with—”
“So what?” I wanted to argue with Jackie, tell her that the real reason for our split was because Will spoke in code and I didn’t. Communication had been our downfall. His infidelity was just the symptom.
“So I’ve dated hot guys before too. I just broke up with a hot guy. It’s always the same, isn’t it? And there are more red flags than just what Milo looks like. He’s almost forty, and he’s never been married.”
My feet stalled on the first landing and I leaned my shoulder against the wall. “You’re thirty-eight, and you’ve never been married.”
“It’s different for women and you know it. When was the last time he had a girlfriend?”
“A girlfriend?” My voice cracked. I noticed a chip of paint on the wall. I turned away from it.
“Doesn’t he tell you about all his girlfriends?” she asked, even though she already knew the answer.
“He doesn’t date, Jackie. But you know that already. And you know why. With all his traveling and work, it doesn’t make sense.”
“Yes. You’re right. Milo dating doesn’t make sense, especially when he has you there, watering his plants and waiting for him whenever he comes home.” A growly edge entered her voice. “You don’t think he’s hooking up with people on these trips? Come on. Hot professor traveling the world? You are naïve, but you can’t be that naïve.”
A sick feeling settled in my stomach. “I guess I am that naïve,” I admitted quietly, not needing to contemplate the level of my naïveté.
Not only was I naïve, I was a sucker, gullible in the extreme. I took things too literally; I knew this about myself. It was why—after so many painful experiences in my twenties—I avoided making new friends and remained suspicious and guarded with new people for years before trusting them. But after so many years of friendship, I didn’t think I needed to be on guard with Milo.
In the past, even during my marriage to Will, when I’d check in and ask Milo if he was seeing anyone, he’d say, “You know I don’t have time for relationships,” and then he’d make a face.
But that wasn’t really an answer, was it? Maybe that was code for something else? But no. Milo didn’t use code with me. He was one of the few people I could count on to just say what he meant.
“All I’m saying is, think this through,” she said. “You two are good friends. You know he doesn’t date. And you’re going to confess that you love him? Do you want to lose him as a friend?”
“Of course not.” I rubbed my chest with my fingertips. The sick feeling had spread to my lungs. I swallowed around something rough and thick, crossing the arm not attached to the phone over my stomach. “Why didn’t you say something before now? You know how I—you know how I’ve felt about him for years.”
My sister must’ve been standing because I heard footsteps and then a click, like a door closed. “I didn’t say anything at first—none of us did—because he was a good friend to you when you were going through your divorce.”
I nodded, biting the inside of my lip. Milo and I had met in college. He’d been a physics grad student and I’d been a computer science undergrad. He’d needed a tutor for a programming class, and I was a volunteer with the comp sci department. Tutoring looked good on grad school applications, but I also volunteered because it was one of the only—and most effective—ways I’d been able to make friends in college.
Milo and I did become friends. Good friends. Will and I were engaged at the time, but Will went to school on the West Coast. Milo and I would go out for coffee, go out to dinner, be each other’s friend-date to parties. He’d been at my wedding to Will and, ten years later, he’d taken me out to dinner the night my divorce had been finalized. I wanted to think, first and foremost, Milo Manganiello and I would always be friends.
“I was honestly really impressed with him after your divorce, keeping you company, helping you stay busy, going on that trip with you to Montreal. He was such a sweetheart.”
Now I made a sound of distress, and my eyes lifted to the stairway door I’d just passed through, one landing up. “Then why are you saying he’s a jerk now?”
“No. I didn’t say hot guys are jerks, I’m telling you they’re rarely, if ever, monogamous. And as long as they’re upfront about it, then that’s not jerky. But we’re getting off topic. The reason I never said anything after the divorce is because you two were really good friends, and you needed a good friend. But then you started . . .”
“What?”
“You started having feelings for him, or saying you did, and I thought that was great. You needed to move past your ex. Will had been your high school boyfriend, your college boyfriend, and then your husband. You’ve never been with anyone but him. Showing interest in Milo was a good thing . . . two years ago.”
“I was with Will for almost seventeen years. Two years doesn’t seem like such a long time to me.”
“Except you’re thirty-six now, and you’ve only had one relationship. You’ve been stuck on this one guy for two years. Haven’t you wasted enough of your life? Don’t you want to get out there and start living?”
“That’s why I wrote the letter on paper this time.” I gestured wildly to nothing. “I’m trying to—I need to tell him how I feel.”
“Why?”
“You know why.”
“Because you’re in love with him? Because you won’t give anyone else a chance? Because your life—a life you fought hard for—is slipping away because you can’t get over a guy who is never going to see you as anything but a really good friend?”