Andante.Lola
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- Posted: Thu, 30 Oct 2014 22:51:57 +0000
XXXXXSO MUCH TO SAYXXXXXI FORGET TO STARTXXXXXSO MUCH TO SAYXXXXXI FORGET TO START
XXXXTHERE GOES A DAYXXXXFADING AS IT PASSESXXXXTHERE GOES A DAYXXXXFADING AS IT PASSES
XXXFORGET THE GREY.XXXLET IT FALL⇘ A P A R T.XXXFORGET THE GREY.XXXLET IT FALL⇘ A P A R T.
XXITʻS OKAY.XITʻS OKAY.XITʻS OKAY.
XI LIKE YOU IN G L A S S E S.
XI LIKE YOU IN G L A S S E S.
tab Milo laughed and leaned against the threshold of the door as Dru disappeared to change her shoes. He crossed his arms over his chest, patiently waiting at the foot of the stairs. He heard her quip about his cactus, which he responded to in mock-defense. "Hey now! That cactus is a damn fine administrative assistant and I won't hear you say anything against him." He had no idea where this love for ugly cacti had come from... but once he bought the first one (the one Dru was referencing) from a botanist at a conference , they had begun to pour in from all angles. Students would bring him cacti for bribes. Co-workers would leave them on his desk for his birthday or to congratulate him on a new publication or a job well done at a conference. One April Fool's day, his research students covered every surface in his lab with cacti and succulents of varying sizes.
Maybe they were a metaphor for Milo himself. Hardy. Kind of unusual. Prickly and rough on the outside, but mushy and sweet on the inside.
He felt a pang of sadness as he remembered that he wouldn't be going back there. He had left the cacti in his office on the desks of various co-workers, the leftovers in a box in the hall that had "Free to Good Homes" hastily scrawled on the side in sharpie. He missed his office. He missed his lab. He missed his co-workers and especially his students. He had an inbox full of emails from them, including several from some petition website or another, where his students had been attempting to convince the university to take him back. He hadn't been able to get himself to read any of them. Still in some denial that this was really happening to him.
He really didn't know where to go from here. He couldn't teach. Milo was a scientist first, a professor second. He wasn't licensed to teach in public schools. Only at the university level... And the nearest one was quite a ways away... He knew what he would probably end up doing, which was working peer review for some scientific journals he had been published in. The work wasn't exciting. He'd basically just spend hours each day reading papers. Editing papers. Sending emails. To someone who had spent the last ten years of his life actively participating in expanding the world's knowledge of animal behavior and evolution? Pretty boring stuff... but it would pay the bills. He had considered applying for another university job, but he knew what that would mean. He'd be off and moving his family across the country again. Which would surely thrill all of them. Or not. He missed teaching. He missed researching. He missed feeling like a productive member of society.
He shook off the bad feelings when he saw Dru trot back down the stairs toward him. He grinned... and then he had an idea. He walked quickly to the kitchen, opening up several cabinets, not quite remembering where his parents had kept anything. But eventually, he found what he wanted. He pulled a bottle of wine off the shelf, not bothering to look and see what it was. It didn't matter. The cabinet next to that one housed the wine glasses. He plucked two off the shelf, looked at them for a moment, and then put them back on the shelf. Why bother? He shoved a corkscrew into his pocket and jogged into the living room, grabbing up one of the afghans off the back of the couch. He met her back at the front door, the wine and blanket balanced precariously in his arms, actually excited for once. Since they had been married, Dru and Milo had actually spent very little time in his hometown. He preferred the city, Dru had only known the city. It only seemed to make sense... But, as a result, Dru knew basically nothing about his upbringing as a country kid. They had met after Milo had already been living away from his parents for about eight years... and while she had been one of the students in the class he was TA-ing, but that was a story for another day. He was firmly a resident of Academia... but this time, Dru was going to be the one to get an education.
He grabbed her hand and nearly dragged her out the front door. "What you're wearing is fine. Now come on, I wanna show you something." He called back out to the rest of the house to the three children that were inside. "Your mother and I are going out for a bit. We'll see you guys when we get back." Pulling the door shut behind him a bit too enthusiastically, it slammed shut. He lead her down the winding driveway, the gravel crunching under their shoes. By the time they made it to the road, Milo was actually breathing a little heavily. Damn... That driveway's a little longer now than it was when I was sixteen... He slowed his pace down, allowing Dru to actually catch up with his frantic run out the door, surely a surprise for her. Milo didn't really do anything quickly. He laughed a little at himself for his over-enthusiasm. The sun was low in the sky, to the point where he almost wished he had brought his clip-on sunglasses (because he was that cool), but it didn't really matter. They'd be walking east anyway, the sun at their backs. As they walked down the gravel road, their shadows stretched out long in front of them, he reveled in the feeling of her small hand in his. Soft and familiar and comforting. He ran his thumb across the back of her hand, offering up a small smile as they easily walked toward some unknown destination. "You know, I don't think I actually ever even thanked you for making this huge adjustment for me... Without even giving it a second thought, you completely uprooted your life. Everything you've ever known... To move to some place you've never been, partake in a completely different lifestyle... And all just because I asked you to." He reached over and planted a kiss on the side of her head, burying his nose in her soft dark hair for a moment before just leaning his bearded cheek against the top of her head while they walked. "I don't think you realize how incredible that is.
As they walked, they passed a few houses, this neighborhood being a rarity in that they actually had neighbors they could see from the house. All the land at these houses was placed in the back. Each house they passed, Milo had some memory associated with it. Some funny "This one had the farmer who named all of his daughters after the cows on the farm. Seriously! He had Bessy and Elsie." Some were sad. "This one, the husband had a heart attack and died in the barn overnight... His kids found him the next morning when they went to feed... You could hear his wife crying all the way from our house..." but most were just inane details that everyone knows about their neighborhood where they grew up. "These people had this great dog when I was growing up... Just some brown and white farm mutt, but she was amazing. She was so smart, she could climb the ladders up into the haylofts! She had puppies when I was a kid and my parents bought one for me, but that dog was never as smart as theirs. I named her Emma."
After they passed the last house on the right, it was all corn fields, as far as the eye could see. He kept walking for a ways, gray eyes carefully scanning the rows of corn, looking for his sign. After a few hundred feet, his eyes lit up, "Oh! There it is!" He dragged her over to the side of the road, carefully climbing down one end of the ditch and helping her across it before scrambling up the other side. "Okay, now you can't let go of my hand, okay?" He held fast onto her hand and disappeared into the corn, pulling her behind him. "This is what we used to do on the weekends in high school..." They walked for what felt like hours (in reality? About five minutes) before emerging into a huge clearing, a large combine resting in the middle like a sleeping beast. Milo's face was completely lit up. Firmly in the clearing, he let Dru's hand go and took a few steps forward. "The farmers leave their equipment here at night after they go home... We'd always come here on the weekends. Pint of SoCo in my jacket pocket." He looked back at Dru and laughed. He could never drink that stuff now. High school stomachs were amazing when it came to that sort of thing. He spread the blanket out on the ground and lowered himself down, his knees propped up as he pulled the corkscrew from his pocket and started in on the bottle. He continued his story. "We would all show up here at an agreed time, usually around 10:30 after the farmers would already be home and in bed, sneak out of our parents homes, though I'm sure they knew exactly where we were going, and show up here. We'd light a fire sometimes, we'd drink... We'd meet up with girls here." Not that Milo had too many memories of bringing girls around here... Nerdy and awkward in high school, he wasn't exactly a hot commodity... but even he had a few stories. He finally managed to pull the cork out of the bottle and set it down on the blanket next to him. He looked over at Dru, who was just a vision as the colors of the setting sun reflected off of her, the shadows from the corn stalks playing across her skin. He patted the blanket next to him and gestured toward her with the bottle. "Come on, it'll be like college." He laughed before taking a pull from the bottle, reading the label after he did so. Some sort of Pinot something or other. Milo wasn't a wine guy. He'd drink it if it was available, but he never really sought it out... but wine seemed to be the thing to drink on an impromptu picnic with your wife who still loved you even though you smoked weed as a forty-something after you made her move across the country.
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Where ⇒ Inside his parent's old house With ⇒ Dru <3 What ⇒ Outfit Why ⇒ "I am entirely too lucky."