Mr. Write [COMPLETED]

Chapter 31 - "Life, the universe, and everything."

"I see," he said. "Trying to get above of the problem."

"Yup."

"Is it working?"

"Not yet, but this problem isn't a normal size."

"What's the problem?"

Elliot pulled her gaze up from the floor to look at Milo, his dark brown eyes meeting hers. She dropped her gaze and played with a cracker, watching as it crumbled in her hand.

"Milo," she said, "did you ever doubt yourself?"

He popped a grape into his mouth.

"Not until I met you lot," he said.

Scowling, Elliot looked at him, the remainder of the cracker forgotten in her hands.

"What do we have to do with anything?" she asked.

Milo barked out a laugh.

"You can't be serious?" he said.

"Not in most cases, no but in this one, I am. Why would knowing us make you doubt yourself?"

Milo gave her a frank look.

"El," he said, "your family breaks every norm there is. I thought life always had one path and one way of doing things until you bunch come in and blasted my ideas to pieces."

"How? It's not like we ever argued with you about your views on life?" Elliot made a face and added, "thinking about it, we probably did."

Milo laughed, the sound pulling Elliot further from her own troubles.

"Yes, you did, but it was more than that. It was the way you lived. The whole world was saying do this, do that and here the McKenzies come along, saying you can change that. You can defy what the world says you should do." He shrugged and tossed a grape into the air, catching it in his mouth. "After hanging out with you for a while, I doubted why I was doing what I was doing and whether it was worth it."

Elliot rested elbow on her knee and propped up her chin.

"What did you discover?" she asked.

"I discovered that what I was doing was exactly what I wanted to do, but knowing you just made it more clear. And there's the fact that I fell for your sister and have been wrapped up in crazy land for the past year because of it."

"I warned you."

"You did, but that made no difference."

"It never does."

Milo reached over and pulled out a handful of crackers.

"What is it you are doubting yourself on?" he asked.

Elliot shrugged.

"Life, the universe, and everything."

"Doubt no more, the answer is 42," he said.

"Then my doubts are appeased and I can write with no more qualms."

"Ah, it's writing that you are doubting yourself on. I thought you were excited?"

"I am. I was. I still am, I think. I don't know."

Elliot dropped the cracker and laid her head in her hands. The front door opened and Elliot looked up, expecting to see Tristan enter the kitchen. But instead, her mother walked through the doorway, dressed in trim slacks and a loose shirt.

"Mom?"

"Marilyn!" Milo said.

Marilyn beamed at Milo as he jumped off the counter and hugged her.