This isn't weird.

Complicated

An unexpected invitation arrived approximately five minutes into Ben's first waking moments as a thirty-four-year old man.

Of all the members of his friend group, Isaac—by far the most reserved among them—was the person Ben had spent the least time with one-on-one. Miguel, from time to time, was known to flounce into social outings unaccompanied, but Isaac only ever came as a package deal. In general, if he couldn't be with his husband, then he'd rather be alone, re-alphabetizing his comic books or re-reading some punishingly dense scifi/fantasy tome like Dune or The Silmarillion. ("Who reads The Silmarillion twice?" Millie had once teased. "Who reads it once?" Miguel had piled on.) But there it was, an early morning text message, casually offering to meet up for a quick birthday breakfast. It was too novel to pass up, and besides, it wasn't as if Ben had anything else to do. Dustin was adamant that he shouldn't be working on his birthday, and the gesture was so kind, he didn't have the heart to tell him that the alternative was a long day of listlessly milling about his apartment, bored to death and missing Millie. This time last year—shortly before everything had gone so horribly wrong—he'd woken up to a cheerful text message: Good morning, birthday princess! She always insisted on calling him that for the entire week leading up to the day. The stupid hope that the same message might be coming at any minute only exacerbated the sense of loneliness.

Indigo was gone. Three days prior, he'd received a last minute invitation to some film festival in Mumbai, and Ben had never seen him so shaken, though he hadn't the faintest idea why. Indigo apologized for missing his imminent birthday (so someone else had remembered, too!), dropped a tastefully wrapped box on the kitchen table, and was on a plane by that same evening. (Too curious to wait, Ben had unwrapped the gift as soon as he was alone. A pristine pair of Jordans—an exact match for the pair that he'd bled into ruin earlier that year. It was unfortunate he had no one to hug.)

So, breakfast with Isaac sounded like a pleasant enough diversion to escape a small portion of his day of boredom. Knowing Isaac, Ben expected to meet at some no-frills bistro with a streamlined, no-substitutions menu rife with breakfast crepes, but to his surprise, he suggested a humble little taco truck down on 3rd Street. They eschewed the available seating in favor of leisurely stroll through downtown, and so found themselves eating breakfast burritos and discussing the increasingly fatiguing slew of upcoming Marvel movies, while Ben sensed there was some other subject Isaac was trying to work up the nerve to bring up.

Finally, as he was depositing his crinkled foil wrapper and empty to-go cup into a sidewalk trash can, Ben turned to him and said, "Alright, so what is it?"

With his freckles and naked ears, Isaac looked more like the proverbial deer in the headlights than the figure of speech was ever intended to imply. "What?"

"You brought me out here to talk about something, right?" Ben pressed.

After a moment of faltering, Isaac scratched his clean =shaven head, sighed, and looked at the ground. He had the mannerisms of a much smaller man when he was feeling awkward. "I'm worried about you."

"Worried?" Ben gave him a baffled look. "I've been doing great these past few months."

"I know, I know. I just... I'm hoping it stays that way."

"What do you mean?"

Isaac hesitated, then gestured toward an empty bench beside the bus stop across the street. After a quick spurt of unrepentant jaywalking, they both sat down. "Come on, what are you talking about?" Ben pressed.

Folding his hands in his lap, Isaac replied stiffly, "Millie."

"Millie?" Once again, Ben was incredulous. "It's fine, Isaac. I've come to terms with the fact it might be a while before she's ready to come back. I've just gotta live my life til then."