She couldn't bear to pull out of his arms, so instead she peeled out of the beautiful girl, and back into Everlost.
Milos peeled away a moment later, once he realized that Allie was gone.
Allie stood there knowing she had done the right thing, but was still unable to turn and leave. They stood there for the most awkward of moments.
"Now you will say you hated that," Milos said, sheepishly.
Allie shook her head. "No. No, I didn't hate it." And that was the problem.
Beside them, the couple who, after all, really were dating, went back to kissing each other, probably thinking their odd supernatural experience was solely the product of love and hormones. Allie watched them, part of her wishing it could still be her--but realizing that the other half of her wished that the boy could be Mikey.
Only now did she realize that the boy Milos had chosen did look just a little bit like Mikey. She wondered if Milos had chosen him for that very reason. What was it he had said? We could be for each other whatever we need. She wondered if the girl looked like Jackin' Jill.
"Next time, maybe?" said Milos with an apologetic grin.
"No," said Allie, and took his hands, no longer in passion but in sympathy. "There won't be a next time, Milos."
She could not hate him for this. He hadn't forced her-- he hadn't taken advantage. He was just doing what boys do--and he was very good at it.
"Too bad," said Milos. "I could have walked you down the red carpet at the Oscars. I could have danced with you in the White House."
"Now who's thinking too big?"
Milos sighed. "Will you now walk back alone, or may I escort you?"
"Well, since we're both going in the same direction, it would be silly to walk alone."
They returned to the highway together, yet apart. It was a long and painfully awkward walk.
"I'm sorry, Milos," Allie told him, when they were halfway there.
But Milos shook his head. "Please," he said. "I posed a question, and your answer was no. Never be afraid to tell anyone 'no'," he said. "And that includes me." It didn't make it any easier that he was charming even in defeat. She knew she could have fallen for Milos had Mikey not already been a part of her life, and Milos knew it too. Never before had Allie been put in a position of chosing between two boys. Some girls might like such a game--toying with them, playing one against the other. Allie thought to the times she teased Mikey about Milos, and realized that maybe she had done a little bit of that herself. It made her want to see Mikey all the more.
The one comfort Allie could take from the evening's festivities was that her momentous lapse of reason would go unnoticed and unrecorded. Mikey would never know.
Except that he did.
In fact, he was standing right beside them when they kissed.
Chapter 14 Strange Winds
When Allie and Milos returned to the interstate, Moose and Squirrel were there, but Mikey was nowhere to be seen. Now that Milos's advances had hit a brick wall, he was itching to move on, and didn't appreciate waiting for Mikey.
"It is just like him to make the rest of us wait," Milos said.
"How do you know what he's like?" Allie said, defensively. "You barely even know him."
Milos knew better than to argue the point.
Allie looked around--to the fields across the interstate, and behind her, to the neighborhood they had just come from. She tried to catch a glimpse of Mikey's afterglow, but the moon was too bright; everything seemed to be glowing.
"Wherever he's gone, he couldn't have gone far," Allie told the others. But when Mikey wasn't back by midnight, Allie began to worry.
"What if something happened to him?"
Squirrel stayed silent about it, but Moose--probably following Milos's earlier cue--was annoyed. "Let him catch up with ush." Milos, on the other hand, had moved past his irritation, and recognized that Mikey's absence was something out of the ordinary. "There will be a sensible explanation," Milos reasoned, "and when he does come back, we can all be suitably angry at him. But for now we will wait."
Allie kept a vigil all night, her mind filling with all the things that could have happened to him. What if the Nashville Afterlights kidnapped him? What if he got caught in one of Mary's stupid soul traps? Yet she knew she was grasping at straws. Those Nashville Afterlights were timid things--and as for soul traps, there was no evidence that Mary had ever been this far west.