Chapter Twenty-three | Savior Complex

♫ Savior Complex by Phoebe Bridgers

I've never seen Sergei and Milo Macarevich in the same room before.

At this point I've obviously grown to know Milo well, and I had quite the first impression of Sergei at the unveiling (second impression, actually) but I've never seen them interact and I've definitely never seen Milo as hesitant and wide-eyed as he is right now.

Sergei is slow in touring the space, his hands clasped behind his back and his lips pursed like he's been chewing a lemon rime. He hasn't noticed me — correction, he hasn't looked at me, seated on the couch, still.

Milo is nervously walking with him, fixing the rotation of lamps and picking up dishes before Sergei reaches them. There's a franticness that he tries to mask, but I can see right through it. He swallows and scratches the back of his neck every other second.

There's a certain distance Milo's tried to create between himself and his father. The fact that he calls him by his first name is an indicator in itself, alongside the more literal example of having left the family home. I kind of thought it translated to a certain carelessness, but he does care. The fact that he's scrambling and shaking, collecting and cleaning, swallowing and hesitating, shows that he cares about Sergei's opinion more than he'd ever admit.

"I'm hurt you haven't invited me sooner." Sergei unexpectedly turns on his heel.

Milo, who was previously walking after him, startles and clears his throat awkwardly. "I wanted to... when it was finished."

"It's not finished yet?" Sergei inquires, raising an eyebrow. "How much more of my money are you planning to spend?"

This is the second time I'm in Milo's apartment, listening in on a conversation I probably shouldn't be, but Sergei's entrance was very much a surprise and I'm kind of scared he detects motion, so I've been sitting here breathless for seven minutes. In any case, it seems like he's not the type of guy to acknowledge people he has no interest in, so I'm safe for now.

"I bought the furniture on my own, and Vivian was the one to help with the down-payment and rent."

Sergei nods. "Right, I heard. I've talked to her about that. You're not doing anything shady, are you?" He steps forward, clapping Milo on his shoulder and pulling him closer. "If you are, at least do it well so I don't have to find out." With a flick of his wrist, he's released Milo and pushed him back so that he stumbles over his feet.

On instinct, I find myself standing. I was right about Sergei detecting motion, at least, because he turns to find me watching the exchange and fiddling with my spastic hands, confused on what to do.

"Who are you again?" He asks, his eyebrows bumping together in a scowl.

I open my mouth, feeling the muscles pull and tremble before any sound has even escaped it. My words are intercepted by Milo, who steps between us, blocking his father's view of me.

"She's no-one."

"Ah, I see how it is," says Sergei. A deep laugh bubbles up from his throat. He takes a few heavy steps again, pacing around the space, then inhales when a realization hits him. "Isn't she Atlas' girl, from the Eduverse unveiling? I really did think I taught you better than to settle for the Wilder's sloppy seconds. I heard that Atlas is back with Ramona Sinclair. You should at least aim that high."

Atlas rejecting me didn't sting in the moment, but it stings now.

The way Sergei phrases it feels humiliating and it's even worse to know that this is how most people will think of it. I didn't even really consider how many of them were involved. How many people thought he could do better and eventually won't be surprised at all that he did.

My face heats up in shame. I even met his little sister, and Hudson Wilder at the unveiling— would he think like this, too? Would he just be glad Atlas dodged a bullet and chose the safer, smarter, prettier option?

If I was saner I'd never have gone along with it. I'd have stayed home from that unveiling like I wanted to, I wouldn't have told Hyde's support group and Olivia and everyone who wanted to hear. I just look stupid now.

I wish there was something I could say and that I was the kind of person whose mouth moves without any thought required beforehand, without any doubts about the words that escape it, but I find myself speechless. The fact that I don't entirely control the muscles around my mouth, and the fact that Sergei Macarevich in his undermining glory will see and hear it, makes me feel even more inferior. Forget the words and his money and my age, somehow it ends for me at my lips.

Milo's hands curl into fists at his sides. The tension that runs from his shoulders to his fingertips cause them to shake like leaves. I know he wishes he could get angry. Somehow we're the same in this moment: searching for sharp-edged words we can't find, all the while knowing we couldn't pronounce them if we did.

"Why are you here?" He asks, finally. "If you want to talk, we can talk. But leave Nova out of it."

"Nova," Sergei mutters, as if my name triggers a memory in his mind or locks a puzzle piece into the right slot.

He slowly sits on the loveseat by Milo's tiled window, leaning back comfortably and crossing his leg over his knee. In every move he makes, there's an air of authority. His son's name is on the lease, but in this moment it doesn't feel like the son in question has anything to say about anything. It's telling about the way Sergei views himself, for one, but it's also telling about the relationship the two have.

Milo hesitates for a moment before he grabs my wrist the way he did in the afternoon, dragging me past Sergei into his bedroom before he starts rummaging through his closet.

"What?" I find myself asking, even though 'what' in itself doesn't make much sense given the situation. The door isn't shut entirely and I know the walls are thin, so I keep my voice low. "Shouldn't I go? I know you said I could stay, but I understand the situation's changed. You shouldn't keep him waiting, either."

Milo gives me a deadpan look as he tosses a T-shirt and basketball shorts my way. "You staying was never a question. If you think I'm sending you home in the pitch black of nighttime, in New York City, on your own, you're actually insane, Nova."

I glance at his bedroom door and the way the light pours in through the crack. It dissolves as Milo clicks on his desk lamp and strikes a match to light a random candle in the windowsill.

"There's a toothbrush in the cupboard over the sink," he says, turning to look at me. I don't think he's ever been this serious, lip in a straight line, a slight crease between his eyebrows, the heaving of his chest. For the second time today, he asks me, "Please, just stay?"

I consider his nervousness as he stands in front of me. Maybe I'm giving myself too much credit here, but staying could help him. It's not like I want to go out in the dark like this, and if I did, Milo would just be worrying the entire time. Besides, I'd be worrying the entire time after leaving him in an empty apartment with Sergei Macarevich.

"I'll stay. Don't worry."

Milo nods, slips through the door and shuts it behind him. His feet pad into the living room and Sergei's deep, vibrating voice says something to him, but I try to block it out. Instead, I hide next to the curtainless window to change into the clothes he gave me and take my phone out to text Olivia.

I hesitate for a moment before I slip into Milo's bed, allowing the weight of his duvet to warm me as I sit upright. It feels invasive to lie down, for some reason. I'm scared that I'll fall asleep, despite feeling wide awake after napping for so long, and miss something important. I don't know why I'm envisioning the Milo in this apartment as the small boy he once had to be, but somehow it feels like a responsibility being given to me: to stay awake and alert.

They speak in low voices for another half hour. Then the front door shuts and locks, and I take the opportunity to exit the bedroom and peek around the corner of the living room.

Sergei is nowhere to be seen, but Milo sits on the carpet, his back against the sofa and his knees pulled up. He's rested the teddy bear I gave him in the afternoon against his thighs, not doing anything. He's just sitting there, in silence, staring into the stuffed animal's beaded eyes.

I don't even realize how creepy I'm being, lurking around the corner, until he starts speaking to the bear. "Amico, chingu, vän, friend," he recites, a nod of his head accomodating each word. "Which one, hm? What's your name?"

A smile tugs at the corners of my mouth. He doesn't look up as I enter the living room, dressed in his T-shirt and basketball shorts, and sit on the carpet next to him.

"He left?" I ask shortly.

Milo nods his head slowly, not tearing his eyes away from the stuffed animal in his lap. Finally, he moves it, gently laying it on the sofa behind us, then turning back to stare at nothing in particular. "What's your Dad like?"

The question surprises me. It's the first time someone has asked about either of my parents, about anything involving my life prior to New York. I wonder what assumptions people make when they look at me, or if their perception of me ends at the obvious. Oftentimes, I've found my identity to be 'sad disabled girl'. To people like Scarlett especially, and the classmates that didn't invite me to lunch in the introduction week.

I feel like I've gotten used to listening to people and leaving it at that, so much that when I try to materialize a thought, conjure up a story to tell Milo about my father, it takes me a little longer than it should.

"He's really quiet."

I half-expect Milo to turn to me and ask, "that's it?" But he doesn't. He just waits.

"My mom says I'm most like him, out of the three kids. He's content with sitting there and listening. Sometimes I wonder if he thinks anything of anything at all." I tug at the carpet. My hands listen to my brain, albeit quite shocky and ugly.

"I always felt kind of bad for him, even though I don't really know why. Maybe my Mom's right, and I am like him, and I should understand, but I don't. I relate to him in the sense that it's hard entering into existing conversations and it's uncomfortable having people listen to me speak, but when I look at him and think about the way he's been my entire life, there just seems to be something so sad about it. Even I can talk out loud being with my family. I can uncurl my hands and open my mouth and laugh about jokes they don't see the humor of, but he'll still just sit there, watching us, unmoving. And he'll say nothing."

"I never got why people equate silence to sorrow," says Milo. "Silence is more like peace to me. Nothing's happening, nothing is cracking and breaking and gasping for air. Stillness isn't sad, it's an indicator of comfort. When I feel upset, I try to find ways to fill silences, otherwise it's all just uneasy. But for some reason, people assume I talk a lot because I'm so happy."

"It's like fits of laughter when you're nervous."

"Do you laugh when you're nervous?" He asks.

"I laugh when I'm scared. It's so stupid. I'll burst out laughing and everyone will laugh with me, but they have no way of knowing that it's burning in my chest, right underneath my throat, and that I can't breathe, and that if I stop, I'll cry." Ironically, I laugh after I finish my sentence. Milo's lips remain in a straight line and his eyes remain on nothing at all.

"You might be right, by the way. About my Dad," I continue. "His silence might be comfort instead of sorrow. Perhaps I shouldn't be making assumptions based on my own personal associations. But he's been through a lot and he never talks about it. At night, he'll lay next to my Mom and answer her 'goodnight' with a kiss and then he'll fall asleep. And when he comes home from work, he sits behind his desk and works again until dinner, after which he'll work again until bedtime. I've always been too embarrassed to ask him about his day or his work. Maybe it's a result of his silence, or a cause of his silence, or it's a viscious cycle."

I take a breath. It feels like a lousy description of a person I genuinely love, but it's the only description I can come up with. "He's really quiet."

"I don't think you're like that." Milo finally turns his head and looks at me. "You're talkative. And you're funny. You tell me about things."

"That's because it's you," I emphasize.

He raises his eyebrows. "So?"

"So. You've been there since the start. You've never looked at me weird. There are so many things you do, things you've done, that would've embarrassed or upset me if anyone else did it, but I've never doubted your intentions. You treat me like a normal person, made of skin and bone."

"Is that so uncommon?"

"Maybe not. I might be seeing things that aren't there. I might be giving you too much credit."

He grins shortly, averting his eyes, but then it slips from his face. "How do others treat you, then? Is it so revolutionary for me to be nice to you?"

"No, but I... I think my personality, or this inherent fear I have of people as a collective, is an accumulation of small happenings. It wasn't like I got severely bullied by a mean girl squad, or like I had a teacher who was intent on hurting me, it was just... all these undertones that I collected. All these comments that I internalized, these looks that I prescribed my own meanings to. Although– maybe that's not the right way to say it. It wasn't all in my head."

Claire confirmed that early-on. Anytime I told her a story about something that had hurt me and ended it with something along the lines of, 'but I don't know', she'd give me the same disapproving look.

"Don't invalidate what you've clearly experienced, Nova," she'd say, shaking her head. "You're not sitting here reciting fantasies, you're telling me about the things that have hurt you. Whether or not the person meant to or didn't mean to is not the point. The point is that it hurts."

"And a lot of it hurt. Sort of as if the things people did to me got added to a heavy stack of the pains I already had to experience." Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Milo shift so that he's half-facing me, but he doesn't say anything, even when I clamp my mouth shut and wait.

"I'm kind of conflicted about it all," I finally continue. "I look back to the things that I remember hurt me deeply and it's like I'm looking at them from two perspectives. One of them being the kid I was then, the one who felt it so deeply, and the other being the me of now who hates that it hurt so much. Maybe that's why this entire inner child thing doesn't work for me. Because I kind of despise who I used to be for being that way, even though I haven't changed all that much."

"Maybe you're directing your anger to the wrong person."

"Maybe. But that's because I get it."

"Get what?"

"Why they treated me the way they did." I lean my head back until it's resting on the sofa's cushion, my cheek tickled by Milo's teddy bear—'amico, chingu, vän, friend', whatever its name will be—and stare up to the ceiling. I know I'm being too vague.

"I had this teacher in kindergarten who everyone adored. She was still young, she'd just finished her studies, so I guess my classmates liked her more because she just got it. What would excite them, what kept them busy in their day-to-day lives, what things made them laugh and what things distracted them during school hours. But she was a perfectionist. We always had to walk in straight lines, had five minutes to put on coats before recess, we had to earn this 'diploma' before we were allowed to use scissors and gluesticks. And she had easy favorites.

"I was not one of them. I tried to be. I mean, before I ever had my first day of kindergarten I'd had countless doctors appointments, speech therapy, physical therapy, occupational therapy— settings in which I was given an assignment and I listened. Settings in which I learned to speak when I was asked to, play when I was handed a toy, sit quietly and wait while they wrote on clipboards. So, kindergarten wasn't that much of a challenge in that sense. But it was the first time where my imperfections, literally in action, weren't tolerated. Especially not by my perfectionist teacher. Suddenly this idea of 'as long as it works, it's okay', got replaced by, 'you're not doing it the way I want you to do it and therefore you're failing'. She didn't care that I couldn't button my coat. She'd just stand there and cross her arms and punish me for not abiding to her five-minute-rule, despite my four-year-old, cerebral-palsy-hands shaking so much that I couldn't even hold onto the buttons."

"But you get that?" Milo asks ludicrously. "You're still mad at that four-year-old you instead of that teacher?"

"I'm not mad at myself, I'm just..." I sigh. "I think of the frustration she must've felt. The amount of times she had to wrap a bandaid around my finger because I nicked myself with the scissors again, the amount of times I made everyone wait, the amount of times I ruined this image she had and undid the effort she put in. I might've been a four-year-old, but I was a problem for her. In the same way I was a problem when I was eleven and turned in a math test written in pencil instead of pen, which was against the rules, just because it was easier. Or when I caused a literal car accident because I was thirteen and it was the first time I rode a bike on my own. I can be the most deserving person alive, I can be kind and make jokes and get good grades, but at the end of the day, wherever I go, people will have to adjust to me. I'll have to break rules and ruin aesthetics and demand more time. Just because it's not my fault doesn't mean it isn't still an inherent part of my being. Something I carry with me wherever I go. Something deserving of weird looks and misunderstandings and disappointment, even if I'm not deserving of it."

The sound of the street floats into Milo's living room through the open window. There's cars going by and honking, there's the chatter of a small bar somewhere, or a party in an apartment, maybe. I wonder why Milo has his windows open in November, but I don't ask. I don't think I've ever said as much at once as I just did, much less so much about me, and had someone sit and listen without interrupting or reacting.

I raise a trembling hand to touch my cheek. When I remove it from my face, my knuckle is wet. I didn't even realize I'd been tearing up when I spoke. Milo's still staring at me, so it's not very subtle, but I quickly wipe at them. "I meant for that to be a short example. I don't know what happened there," I say, laughing.

I feel guilty, even. Milo's piece of crap father just left and he probably wanted to talk about it and be comforted. Now he's sitting here feeling like he should comfort me, instead.

"I'm not as good with words as you are," he says. "I'm sorry."

I laugh again. "That's okay."

But he shakes his head. "No, I don't mean I'm sorry about not being good with words— well, I am sorry about that, but I mean..." He inhales deeply, then lets the breath escape through parted lips. "I'm sorry about everything that happened to you to make you feel like such an inconvenience. You couldn't be farther from an inconvenience to me. If I was better with words, or even art, or anything at all, I would've shown you how much of a... not inconvenience you are."

I've never heard an apology before. It's the logical thing to think, it might be the truth even; that I was a disabled child and that people have wronged me. Deep inside, I know it. But I think there's always going to be a part of me that can't accept it, that insists that my bare existence in itself is an inconvenience. I'll always need more help where other people won't. I'll never look normal or sound normal, have my voice come out gentle and clear, have my touch be soft and kind, have my demeanor be professional and elegant.

I wonder if I'll ever be able to convey it to someone else. Someone entirely normal, like Milo. What would I even say? "Listen, I am never going to be normal, I will always cause trouble and flail around and ruin perfectly good things, and the agony of it is something I'll have to learn to bear—not something I can rid myself of."

Maybe, if I could accept it, I could stop caring so much about what people think of me. But the way people think of me affects the way people treat me, and the way people treat me inevitably affects everything else: how far I'll go in life, how happy I'll be in turn. If it was a matter of do they like me do they not like me it would be far simpler. In my case, it's a matter of do they believe in me do they see me as a person do they take me seriously. It's a heavy place to start. It's an all-consuming, ugly first impression to have to make.

I inhale sharply, eager to change the subject. "Sorry this turned the entire atmosphere so heavy."

Milo shakes his head. "It was heavy the second Sergei entered the apartment. I feel icky all over, as if I should have a priest come in and expell all the demons he brought in here."

I can laugh about that. A genuine, carefree laugh instead of a nervous one I can't reign in again.

The conversation's over, I think, but then Milo says, "I would've been your friend."

"Hm?"

"When you were four years old. How old was I, then? Six? I would've come find you, and I would've waited before recess, wrapped bandaids around your nicked fingers."

I consider his brown eyes, the way his hair swoops over his ears and tickles his neck. The metal straws laying on the kitchen counter, the teddy bear between our heads, the dirty dishes that once presented his Italian Sloppy Joes.

"You would, wouldn't you?" I hum, turning the words inwards instead of directing them at him. But he's nodding as I confirm it. "You definitely would."

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