Title: an oral history of rainbows: regret
Author: natasha/collations
Responding to challenge #: 17
Characters: liam and milo
Summary: liam does not like to be uncomfortable.
liam is crushed ice cubes that melt as soon as they hit your drink because it’s a thousand degrees outside and it’s the middle of summer and your thighs are stuck to the plastic of the lawn chair in your parents’ backyard, and milo thomas is the umbrella in your drink that doesn’t give a damn.
they used to sit across from each other in the library and liam would watch the way milo chewed on the end of her pen, and now he’s a senior in intro bio lecture surrounded by freshmen and milo’s sitting in front of him, and he thinks about the first time he liked a girl. he was 8 years old and she had long blond hair that she wore pulled back with a headband with a small pink bow on it, and she sat by him in class and he admired the way she held her pencil and never spoke to her, excepting when their elbows brushed, because she was a lefty and he was a righty.
liam knew as soon as he met milo thomas that she was decidedly more interesting than marla carter, but he didn’t realize why until she was gone.
their first conversation: at the library doors. the glass read “this door has more agency than you” and liam had thought fuck it, and made an immediate u-turn to follow her outside.
“are you following me?” she’d asked. her voice was crisp, like autumn leaves underfoot.
“yeah.” he thought he should be embarrassed. he wasn’t.
“our names are almost the same,” she’d said when he introduced himself.
“no, my name’s milo. i said almost the same.”
now, in intro bio lecture, she doesn’t turn around. he is all alone.