Page 16 of Dream Girl

Her fingers are cold against mine. “Let’s go home.”

I peer down at her, squeezing her hand reassuringly. “I’m fine. Just some old wound is acting up.”

I don’t give her a chance to change her mind. This walk may prove to be something useful for me so that I can take my mind off the pain.

Stopping in the middle of the street, she turns to me with her hand searching for my other hand that’s stuffed in my pocket. With a little of finessing, she is able to take mine out and frown at the indented skin from the keys that I had been holding.

The sharp edges had bit into my skin, leaving jagged and irregular marks with different degrees of redness. I hadn’t noticed the pain, but I was too focused on the aching on my side.

I squeeze her hand, purposely flipping my hand to not let her look at it. “Don’t you want to repel the devil with your whimsical lights?”

She still worries. “It’s okay. I don’t need them. We should go home and cuddle.”

“Amelia.”

She stops her fretting and pays close attention to me; her brown eyes haven’t blinked at all.

“We’re going to get your lights, go home and lay in bed, and watch a movie.”

Amelia finally blinks, lowering her gaze to my waist deliberating before pulling on her smile.

“Okay! That sounds like a plan!”

Chapter Five

Amelia

My throat is a little sore.

As I try clearing the aching away with a cough, my hands reach into the medicine cabinet to see if I have any cold medicine. Prevention is key, but I was halfway into a cold-flu when I woke up this morning with the strongest sore throat I have ever felt in my life.

It was different. It didn’t have that rasping soreness in my throat but rather around my neck. It’s still uncomfortable either way, and I don’t like it.

Well, it seems that we have run out of cold medicine.

I will not be sick tomorrow when we open our Christmas presents. Milo would be so disappointed in not opening presents because I know he would take it upon himself to nurse me back to health.

“Nurse Milo,” I say, stifling down a laugh behind my hand as a cough forced its way out.

I really need to get this soreness under control. If it wasn’t for the aching, I wouldn’t have the urge to cough my lungs into the sink when I woke up. For the entirety of the morning, I have been holding my neck so much to the point that I have bruises on my skin.

Milo had been strangely absent. He wasn’t there the morning I woke up, and it’s notable that he hasn’t been in the apartment for a while by the inactiveness of the silence. No breakfast was made, nor did he leave his dirty workout clothes in the laundry basket in the bathroom.

When I call him, he’s either going to let it go to voicemail, or he answers back with a curt text. It’s not uncommon for Milo to go a day without being a ghost; the government still contacts him when they need his advice or strategic mind about something.

It’s vague, but that’s what he is allowed to give me. At least I have peace of mind about his safety.

He always comes home for dinner. That is one rule that he had set for the both of us; we were to eat dinner and go to sleep together. No amount of rain or snow will stop Milo from coming home to me, and I simply wait in our apartment because I know he will never break that promise.

I search for my phone and dial his number again, and expectedly going to voicemail. I shoot him a text for him to bring back cold medicine. I clear my throat again, eyebrows tethering together when he reads the message.

There is no answer, but I know he saw the message. I shrug at his unusual behavior, but it’s also his character to be this ominously distant over text messages. He doesn’t care about technology like the obsessed generation as of now, and he would rather speak to me in person than over the phone.

Maybe his physical therapy is going too well, or he’s making an effort to be Eddie’s friend. I like Eddie. He’s a refreshing man that is the opposite of Milo. Over the last couple of days, after I had met him, we made a group chat and our phones have been receiving notifications almost every hour.

Milo doesn’t chime in the conversation between Eddie and me, but he reads them to see what we’re talking about. Our conversation can go from the newest movie and the critical points of what we liked and didn’t to the things we can do if we could breathe underwater.

I call Eddie to see if he is with Milo. Despite the prickly exterior of Milo’s face, I know he is warming up to Eddie. It’s only the tip of the iceberg, but these things take time. Milo has a problem with letting people in, and it took me one year to break through his defense.

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