Page 52 of Topped

“Well, yeah. Obviously.”

“On a date?”

“Yeah.” He grinned as he sat down next to me. “We haven’t been on one for a while, and I thought it could be fun.”

He looked so earnest, enthusiasm practically bursting out of him. I wanted to ask if he considered all the times we’d been out to lunch together dates, more for clarity than anything else, because it was obvious he did. Had I missed something? Or was I just being dense?

“That sounds lovely, I’d like that,” I said, laughing as he did a dramatic fist pump and launched himself towards me for a kiss.

“Awesome! It’s gonna be amazing. Do you want to get food there or after? I guess we could go and see what they’ve got and then make up our minds. Then we’re leaving our options open. Also, we might see the others there, but they’ve promised not to follow us around like creepy weirdos, unless we want to hang out with them obviously, but I figured it’d be nice to spend more time just the two of us. I mean, we already do I guess, but I mean like, outside the house.”

He was chatting a hundred miles a minute, bouncing from topic to topic and then circling back to the start. I didn’t find it hard to follow him, but I kept getting stuck on various things he said. Like wanting to spend time together, just the two of us. And his friends giving us space to do that.

And then there was his unbridled giddiness at the whole thing.

It made me think back to things Norman had said, and suddenly I wondered if we’d accidentally missed a chunk of communication in the middle. Whether it was deliberate or not, I couldn’t say, but I had the distinct impression Milo and I had skipped the being open and vulnerable part and gone straight into a relationship.

It made sense, I supposed.

After all, neither of us could be rejected if we didn’t ask the questions we were afraid of.

And neither of us had resisted, objected to, or in any way questioned what we were doing. We’d both simply gone along with it.

“Hey,” Milo said, gently putting his hand on my knee and pulling me out of my wandering thoughts. “You okay? I think I lost you for a second there.”

“Are we dating?” I asked, blurting the question out and then clamping my mouth shut to stop myself from saying anything else.

Milo stared at me, his head tilted to the side and face screwed up as he considered my question. “Huh, I guess we are. Hmm, yeah, I’d say so. Why? Don’t you want to?”

“No, I mean, yes, I want to!”

“Cool! Awesome!” He grinned again and leant in for another kiss, his enthusiasm distinctly reminding me of an excited puppy. “Hey, boyfriend.”

“Hi.” It came out sounding very strangled and Milo frowned.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Yeah, there is. Nobody says hi like that if they’re fine. Is it ’cos I called you my boyfriend? I can use something else if you’d prefer. Partner sounds a bit serious… how about paramour? Is that weird? I like how it sounds, though.”

“No, er, boyfriend is fine,” I said, putting my hands out and cutting him off before he disappeared on another tangent. And as much as I enjoyed his circuitous conversations, now wasn’t the time for one.

“Then what’s the problem?”

“Well, it’s just… is that it? Do we simply say we’re dating now and go with it? Don’t we need to have a conversation?” I could feel myself starting to spiral, the lack of clarity and expectations making my chest tighten. As much as I wanted to go with the flow here, how could I when I didn’t know how he felt or what we wanted? Was this a casual relationship or something serious? How did we tell the difference?

We hadn’t talked about how we’d gotten here either, our summer feud still lingering in the shadows despite the fact Milo seemed to have forgotten it and moved on.

Was it really all water under the bridge or was it going to come back to bite us at a later date, when the feelings that had driven it resurfaced? I didn’t even know what had caused it, at least on his side, and pretending it had never happened or that it was ancient history wasn’t going to end well.

As much as I wanted to believe we had a clean slate, it wasn’t possible, and if we didn’t put the past to rest, I didn’t see how we could ever have a future.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Milo asked, scooting a little closer as Lizzie lifted her head to look at him. She’d been sitting quietly around my neck but as Milo got closer, she began to slither down to my arm towards him. He smiled and put his hand out to allow her to move over to him.

Her interruption gave me an extra few seconds to put my thoughts in order, and I was very grateful for it.

“Not really, but I think we have to.”