Miles quickly typed up and sent a brief addendum:
x_kilometers_x:(Oh, and btw, I don’t mean I’m all tongue tied/fingertip frozen/whatever bc you’re famous. Like, that doesn’t HELP obviously, but rest assured, Iwould be just as awkward and embarrassing no matter who you were. I’m all about equality, you know.)
Grimacing, he closed his laptop a little harder than intended. Pathetic and anxious indeed, but it would have to do.
Miles managed to leave his laptop alone for a whole day before temptation took over. Twitchy from nerves, he opened it back up that evening and refreshed the page only to see that somehow, miraculously, Jun had replied.
Jun_iper:Brain parasite is such a good way to put it. It’s been about a month now and I can’t shake him, and it’s not like I haven’t hooked up with guys and moved on without issue before. There was just… something about him, you know? We didn’t even talk for all that long, but I still feel like I know him. Like I want to get to know him better. Like somehow, our souls already knew each other, and when we got together and got down to business, it was like coming home. It’s messed up, especially knowing he doesn’t feel the same way about me.
Jun_iper:You have any tips for how to extract a parasite like this? Because I can’t keep simping forever, and rn it feels like I’m going to without some kind of intervention
Maybe Jun wasn’t talking about Miles. That was entirely possible, right? Probable, even, right? If you thought about it? Despite all evidence to the contrary? That had to be the case, because the alternative was that Jun—gorgeous, talented, funny, sex god Jun—was “simping” over a man whose personality essentially amounted to a sad and scared wet puppy shoved inside a human body.
God, he really needed to work on his self-esteem. What was it his therapist kept telling him to do? Rephrase. He needed to rephrase his thoughts to be more positive.
Miles, sitting cross-legged on his bed with his computer balanced on his lap, stared off into the middle distance for a moment, trying to think of a way to describe himself that wasn’t “a sad and scared wet puppy shoved inside a human body,” but he was coming up blank.
He’d worry about rephrasing tomorrow.
Right now he had bigger concerns, anyway. Like the fact that Jun had replied to him again, which meant that he now had to send a reply back. Again. Weren’t humans supposed to be fundamentally social creatures? Hadn’t he heard that in his Sociology 101 class back in college? If that were true, then you’d think that being able to have a simple conversation—one that wasn’t even in person, for fuck’s sake—would be considerably more intuitive to him than it was.
This wasn’t exactly a “simple” conversation, though, was it? This was a balancing act, and one slip off the tightrope would send him barreling down toward a series of confessions he did not want to make.
Yes, I am the guy you slept with.
Yes, I do know who you are and have since the start.
Yes, I have been longing for you like a wife standing on a pier staring out at the horizon after her husband has been lost at sea.
Oh, and while we’re at it, I should probably also tell you that we accidentally made a… Well, actually, maybe I’ll still keep that one to myself for now.
That last one made the back of his throat taste acidic, and he knew it was a warning to tread carefully. His nausea had gotten bad enough that it was set on a hair trigger, and the slightest whiff of something would send him flying to the bathroom with his head over the toilet. Work at the bakery had been hell. Usually the process of making pastries and cakes calmed him. The act of kneading dough, measuring ingredients, decorating the finished products—all of it was soothingly predictable and routine. It had been something stable and consistent his overactive, anxious mind could cling to, but now he dreaded it, because the smell of yeast and flour and sugar and the rest all made his stomach churn dangerously. More than once, he’d come much too close to not making it to the bathroom in time, and god, the amount of bleach it would take to sterilize that whole kitchen if next time he wasn’t quick enough? It wouldnotbe a good time.
But even though he had, over the years, grown close to Miriam, the shop’s owner—to the point that she had mentioned on more than one occasion the possibility of offering him a co-ownership deal, to lighten her load and give him a chance at his dream of having his own bakery—he still hadn’t found the words to tell her what was going on.
Miles hadn’t told Enrique, the other baker, either, even though he always felt guilty brushing off his looks of concern when he’d disappear in a rush to the bathroom, or the few occasions he’d felt sick enough to ask him to cover the rest of his shift.
He hadn’t told Astrid, the freshman undergraduate student who worked the cash register, even though he tutored her in writing composition and had bailed on her twice now. He’d just given vague excuses.
He hadn’t told his little sister, or either of his older brothers. He hadn’t told his auntie, and hadn’t told his mom.
Hell, he wasn’t sure he’d even thought the actual words to himself yet. Not really. He knew the… “condition” he currently found himself in, but instead of a thought he dwelled over constantly, it was more like a buzzing mosquito following him everywhere—something that he could hear at all times but could mostly ignore, until he was so itchy he had no choice but to stop and address the situation at hand.
But that would be a problem for future Miles.
The Miles of today wasn’t nearly itchy enough to face reality.
Right now, all he cared about was somehow finding words and putting them in the correct order to create some semblance of an adequate reply. It hadn’t occurred to him that Jun might feel jilted. He was so charismatic and beautiful, Miles had just assumed he would know that he was being ghosted because his hookup was the one who was inadequate, not because he was. But he couldn’t very well up and say, “Well, you’re wrong and I know that as a fact, but don’t ask me how.”
He typed, deleted, typed, deleted, typed, typed, typed, deleted, and typed some more, until he finally decided on what he was going to say.
x_kilometers_x:If I had any tips, trust me, I’d be using them myself. Do you think they make some kind of antidote for this sort of thing? You’re always doing those charity streams. Maybe you should find whoever is funding research into brain parasites and toss them some cash. See if they can fix us. I’ll chip in what I can spare, but unfortunately I’ve got a lot of big expenses coming up soon. The fate of our brains is on your shoulders, I’m afraid…
x_kilometers_x:On a more serious note, can I ask you why you think your feelings are unrequited? I mean, I know you said you left your number, but speaking on behalf of all socially anxious weirdos in the world, I could see it being entirely possible that he was just… Idk. Afraid, mb?
x_kilometers_x:Just a thought.
It wasn’t perfect, but it would have to do. With an early shift at the bakery on the horizon, Miles closed his laptop and sank into bed. He slept, but fitfully, and dreamed of Jun all night.
