Been Here All Along

18| ajar

"Heaven is a place on earth with you." - Lana Del Rey

I pulled Ian's suitcase through the airport while Ian voluntarily dragged my giant one. I told him I'd do it, but he insisted. It's probably for the better because I definitely would not be able to do it. There's a high probability it actually weighs more than I do.

"Who's picking us up?" I asked Ian as we neared the area that visitors would be to pick up people on flights.

"Hayden is," Ian answered. Sure enough, right as he said it, Hayden Miller came into view.

It's been so long since I'd seen him, almost as long as it's been since I'd seen Ian. However, Hayden stuck around for the summer and attended my graduation party before he went back to Massachusetts for school.

It was when Hayden returned to school in August that Ian's parents decided to move as well.

   The last time I had seen Hayden, he had lengthy brown hair that fell slightly past his shoulders. His style was different at home in Florida, where I knew him. He would wear flip flops on the daily with swim trunks as part of his everyday wear. Don't forget the bro-tanks, as Kaila and I would always call them.
   Hayden was clearly a grown man now. His hair was neatly cut and gelled to the side to give him a clean, professional impression. He was dressed in a pair of khakis and a navy blue button up three-quarter sleeve shirt. He no longer looked like the Florida-surfer hoodlum; now he looks like a professional MIT graduate.

"Josie Pappstein in the flesh!" Hayden said loudly when he laid his eyes on me. We've stayed in touch with a few phone calls and Facebook messages, but it's still been so long. "Still as beautiful as ever."

Hayden's always been like a brotherly figure to me, along with Anthony of course. Like the rest of the Miller family, he was always there for me.

"You look really put together," I commented, gesturing to his get-up that was very different than it was a couple years ago in Florida.

"The whole long hair and swim trunks look works better on the beach in Miami than it does up here at MIT," Hayden chuckled.

In high school, Hayden went against any and all stereotypes. He was a star athlete with a bad attitude and an impressive brain that worked like no other. His family actually worried about him when they sent him up to MIT on his own. They knew he was smart enough to handle it, but everyone worried he wouldn't always use his brain and would end up dropping out. But he didn't, proving everyone wrong and making them all proud. He graduated with an outstanding GPA and got a job almost immediately out of college.

"Hey E-Man," Hayden finally greeted Ian who was just standing by. He didn't seem to mind, though. In fact, he looked pleased to see Hayden and I interacting as though I had just seen him last week. "How have you been?"

I'm not sure if this is what Hayden was getting at, but Ian and I never talked about how much Ian's family knows about how he's been post-war, including his PTSD that he actually hasn't talked about with me.
Technically, I'm not even supposed to know about it. When I was over his place yesterday, I went to his bathroom looking for Advil, where he said to look for it, and came across medication. Naturally, I googled the use for it and found that it's used to manage PTSD symptoms.

Ian only shrugged. Hayden let him off with that, which told me they'd probably get more into it later. I guess the airport wasn't the place.

~•~

Hayden went inside his parents house ahead of us, taking my suitcase with him. Of course he complained along the way. It must be a Miller-boy thing.