Аманда Хокинг - Flutter

The house was incredibly subdued. Mae didn’t tend to Bobby the way she normally would’ve, and almost immediately after he was stable, she returned to her room. Ezra stationed himself in Milo’s room to monitor Bobby, but Jack later confided in me that it was just as well because Ezra’s been crashing in the den with him the last few nights. Mae has all but kicked him out of their room, apparently. Milo didn’t feel right being around Bobby, and he was positive that he would hate him when he woke up. I couldn’t convince him otherwise, but he wanted to bunk with me, and really, I didn’t mind. I was glad for the company.

Milo cried in his sleep a lot, and that made it harder for me to sleep, but I didn’t complain.

After what he’d been through, I didn’t blame him at all. I don’t know what I would do if I did anything to Jack, and then I immediately pushed the thought from my mind. I would never do anything to him, even if that meant I had to wait months and years to do things with him. Or maybe never do anything with him. I wasn’t going to hurt him, not like that.

Not like that. I had to amend everything with that now, because I was clearly okay with hurting him other ways, as seen by me making out with Peter. That situation didn’t want to resolve itself quite so easily either. When I got up in the morning, I bumped into Peter in the hall. There was this awkward exchange where neither of us knew what to say and just kind of stared at each other. At least he hadn’t said anything to Jack, so that was something.

It was almost twenty hours after the transfusion that Bobby started to really come around.

He’d some hazy conversations before that, but he obviously wasn’t lucid then. Milo was too afraid to go in and talk to him, even after Bobby had started asking for him. I even went in to talk to him, and Bobby repeatedly assured me that he didn’t blame Milo for what happened and he still loved him. He was pale and tired, but otherwise, he seemed okay, but Milo was too ashamed to have anything to do with him.

His plan was to hide away from Bobby as far as he could, so he went down into Mae’s room with her.

Mae was being abnormally useless in the situation. Jack and I were the ones who ended up getting Bobby food and clothes and doing all the maternal/nurse things that Mae usually did, leaving him to survive entirely on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and Campbell’s soup. He mostly slept at first, so I let it slide, but I wasn’t going to let Milo just hide while I took care of his boyfriend. I gave Milo another night to sleep on it, but that was all I would stand for.

When I went to fetch him from Mae’s room, I brought along Jack with me. Milo was still pretty fond of Jack, and I thought he might listen to him, even if he wouldn’t listen to me. Stupidly, I had half-expected Mae to be encouraging Milo to get up and deal with Bobby instead of hiding, but that wasn’t how new sulky Mae rolled. They were curled up in the dark, listening to Norah Jones, and if anything, it seemed like she was persuading him to avoid life with her.

“Milo, come on.” I flicked on the bedroom light, even though I didn’t really need it see anything. I just felt like they needed a flash of something to wake them up. They both squinted at me and groaned, and Milo buried himself deeper in the blankets and pillows. “Bobby wants to see you.”

“He does not!” Milo pulled the blanket entirely over his head, so his protests came out muffled.

“I’m sure he does, love,” Mae sounded almost like her normal self. I don’t know if it was our presence or the light, but it momentarily snapped her out of her funk. She scooted a bit closer to Milo and pushed back his blanket. “He loves you, and you know he does.”

“I can’t see him!” Milo insisted, and he was fighting back tears. “Not ever!”

“I know it seems major, but it’s really not as bad as you think,” Jack sat at the down at the end of the bed and tried to coax Milo out from the bed. “I mean, it would be major for normal people, but he understood what he was getting into when he got involved with a vampire.”

“Well, maybe I didn’t!” Milo was whining, and he almost never whined. Mae pushed back his hair from his forehead, and he rubbed at his eyes with the palm of his hand. “I don’t know how I can ever face him again.”

“Just face him the same way you did before,” I shrugged. “You haven’t seen him, but if you had, you’d understand. He really doesn’t hold anything against you.”

“But he should!” Milo had pulled himself out from underneath the covers a bit more, but he just stared up at the ceiling, looking complete desolate. I couldn’t imagine how terrified and guilty he felt knowing he had almost killed someone he loved, but Bobby was alive, and I didn’t want him to spend the rest of his life moping about. “I nearly killed him. He should hate me. Something should happen. There should be repercussions for my actions.”

“You don’t think there are?” I asked. “Look at you!”

“It’s not enough,” Milo protested. “I mean, I’m a monster! I should be locked up and kept away from people forever!”

“You’re not a monster, love,” Mae cooed, running her fingers through his hair. “You’re just young, and you have some things to figure out. That’s all.”

“The fact that you’re beating yourself up so much about this proves you’re not a monster,” Jack added. Milo looked at him, sniffling, and for a minute, I thought that Jack might have really gotten through to him.

“Have you ever done anything like that?” Milo asked him, almost sounding hopeful. If Jack had behaved somewhat like this, then it would make it okay that Milo had done this. Jack wasn’t horrible, so it was evidence that Milo wasn’t horrible either.

“Well… no,” Jack replied hesitantly. He knew the answer he was looking for, and if he wasn’t such a terrible liar, he probably would’ve made something up.

“And you haven’t even bit anyone, so you have no idea what I’m going through,” Milo said to me, making me feel like an idiot and a loser. I really hated that he had more experience in all of this than I did. I wanted to be able to advice him and comfort him through this, but like everything else in life, he knew more about it than I did. I was completely useless to him as an older sister.

“I have,” Mae admitted reluctantly. Milo and Jack looked at her with surprise, and she gave Jack a weird look out of the corner of her eye. “It was a long time ago, but I remember it very clearly. I know how terrible it feels, knowing that you almost took a life. But I also know that it’s something you can get past.”

“So what happened?” Milo asked. The tears were drying under his eyes, and at least Mae had been able to distract him from his misery. “Was it with Ezra?”

“No, he was a human, but he didn’t die, and that’s what matters.” Mae forced a smile, but there was something incredibly pained about it.

“How come I’ve never heard about this before?” Jack looked confused. They had been very close, and I was even a little surprised that he hadn’t heard this story before. Mae was big into sharing things. “Was it before I turned?”

“Yes, it was.” Mae shifted uncomfortably in the bed and tucked a curl back behind her ears.

She sat up more and refused to look at Jack. Right now, he was only feeling bewildered and intrigued, but I was getting the impression that there was something that she wasn’t telling us, and it made me nervous.

“Did he need a blood transfusion too?” Milo was obviously starting to feel better about this whole thing if Mae had been there too. She was one of the kindest people we had ever met, and if she was capable of this, then it couldn’t be that bad.