Broken Carts ✔️

Aisle 30: Getaways

My parents gave me a month to find a new place to stay. The conversation was short and tense, and I had no rebuttal to their claim that I was letting them down.

After sleeping off the previous day, I laid in bed for the rest of the current one, feeling absolutely nothing. The memories of the past day just played in my head on an emotionless loop, my brain adding none of its own commentary.

Eventually, Jude came into my room.

"Let me guess: You're pissed, but mostly disappointed in my actions, just like Mom and Dad," I said to him.

Jude shook his head. "I was going to ask if you wanted to come down to Florida to help me move."

"Move? Like, you're moving back here?"

He sighed. "Yeah, I am. For now. Things just kind of panned out that way."

"Oh. Wow." I knit my brow. "So... you're not disappointed in me?"

He shrugged. "Not disappointed," he said. "Just confused. I can't figure out why you... you know... ended up in that position."

"Passed out under a cocaine-laced coffee table?"

"That's one way to put it," Jude said uneasily.

"Guess I'll have plenty of time to explain myself on our way to Florida."

Jude smiled.

•

My meeting with Nadia was surprising. I was fired, of course— but she seemed reluctant to go through with it. Then, instead of focusing on my wrongdoings, she was much more curious about why Ryan claimed that I had confronted Ezra over a "lover's quarrel."

"That wasn't it," I lied.

"Are you sure?" Nadia narrowed her eyes when I nodded. "Ryan was convinced, Milo. I'm inclined to believe him."

I hesitated. "Why does it matter if we were seeing each other or not?"

Nadia appeared taken aback by my bluntness. "Because," she said slowly, as if giving herself time to come up with an answer. "We can't trust Ezra to keep working here if he incites incidents like this with other employees."

Sure, that's the reason, I thought. Nothing to do with the fact that you're less inclined to excuse his slip-ups if there's no chance he'll be into you.

"So what's your game plan?" Lynette asked when I told her about everything over the phone.

"I have no idea," I replied. "Go to Florida with Jude, I guess. Make things up from there. Not sure how I'm going to find a place to stay by the time I get back, though— maybe I should just ask Sonja if I can crash on her couch."

Lynette paused. "I'm actually staying at her apartment right now."

"Well, then screw that plan."

"I'm not crashing on her couch, though."

"Oh?"

"Yeah." She paused again. "'Cause we're hooking up."

"Holy shit," I said through my first genuine smile in days. "You used to think she was sooo weird."

"Yeah, and then I got to know her. Lay off and don't spread it around, okay? We're keeping this on the DL for now."

"You know I made out with her a while ago, right?"

Lynette blew a long raspberry into the phone and hung up. Then she called back to tell me Sonja said I could crash on her couch anytime.

Jude paid for my plane ticket down to Florida. The plan was to pack up his apartment, throw away whatever couldn't fit in his hatchback, and drive everything else back up to New York. It was a daunting task for just the two of us, considering we had five years worth of shit to sift through. If he had asked me a few months ago, I would have found any excuse to get out of it. But at that point, I found the concept therapeutic.