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It wasn’t entirely a surprise. I might struggle with a lot of stuff about being an adult, but there were still a couple things I’d figured out by then. I could still clearly remember that night in high school when, instead of doing my homework, I’d been texting Larry about increasingly disparate topics until, long past we should have been asleep, I brought myself to type I think I might be bi.
Larry, being Larry, had thought I was flirting with him and turned me down as gracefully as a boneheaded straight teenage boy could. No, I had to explain, I wasn’t interested in Larry, I just wanted someone to talk to. And Larry was the one person I still knew that would get who I was talking about — remember Miles from elementary school? I think I had a crush on him.
You think?
I didn’t know it then but it feels like when I have a crush on a girl.
At that point, Larry had freaked out over the possibility of me having the same crush as him on the girl in their chemistry class, and the conversation had derailed yet again. But after that, Larry had been oddly supportive. Mostly it came up with him asking me if I thought a certain guy was cute, and me trying to explain that just because I find men in general attractive doesn’t mean that I find every single man attractive just as he doesn’t find every single woman attractive and then remembering that that analogy won’t work with Larry.
The point is, attraction to a man wasn’t a surprise. Attraction to this particular man was even less surprising. Except that, in the years we’d been apart, Miles Edgeworth appeared to have grown up into a complete bastard. A gorgeous, well-dressed bastard with a voice that seeped into my ears, but a bastard nonetheless.
Just like the rumors said. Just like I’d refused to believe when I’d learned that Miles had become a prosecutor.
And now Miles never wanted to see me again, just after giving me a glimmer of hope that some good might still exist in him. And blaming me for “unnecessary feelings”. I rolled onto my side to glare out my apartment’s window. The moon above the city was still mostly full, and bright enough to be intrusive.
What the hell were “unnecessary feelings” anyway? What was he trying to say? The juvenile part of my brain had some answers, but they were ridiculous. I pushed that away. If he hates me, why doesn’t he just say it to my goddamn face?
But still, I’d made a promise. A promise to the memory of a younger Miles, at least. I pushed myself onto my back, staring at the ceiling. Maybe Miles just didn’t remember me? Maybe he’d forgotten everything in his past. No, he’d had a slight reaction when I accused him of changing. But maybe that was the trick.
I smirked, thinking of getting up in Miles’s face the next time he was a prick in court, dragging out for everyone his dark and sordid past of an adorable child who cried over origami and stood up to bullies. That might do a number on his reputation as the Demon Prosecutor. If nothing else, it would satisfy Maya’s curiosity.
No. That would be…maybe not unfair, after everything he"d done, but at least unproductive.
I closed my eyes and exhaled through my teeth. I hadn’t forgotten about my debt. It had been embedded in my brain since I was nine. But maybe paying back the younger Miles meant stopping the older Miles from hurting anyone else.
Fine. I could live with that. At least this time, the person I loved had the decency to be open about their distain for me.
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The moon had thinned to a sliver, barely visible through the holding cell’s bars. Between its light and a faint glow somewhere down the hallway, I could just make out the shape of my own legs, brought up against my chest as I sat against the wall. I’d tried lying down on the cell’s cot for a while before deciding it was too dangerous and forcing myself upright. If I wasn’t careful, I could have fallen asleep.
You must sleep at some point, I told myself. You’ve barely slept these last few nights. You’ll collapse in court tomorrow. And it"s nothing you haven"t endured before.
Maybe collapsing would be easier than facing tomorrow’s trial, passing out on the stand and waking up to be told the inevitable verdict that passed while I was unconscious. I could already hear Wright’s voice apologizing for failing to save me. As if this was his fault.
No, they’d make sure to wake me before handing down the verdict. Von Karma would make sure of that, at least. This was just getting self-indulgent and melodramatic. I should be above this.
But I should also be above accepting my rival’s help.
I shouldn’t have gotten Wright involved. Someone as soft-hearted as him had no place in the courtroom, especially in a trial like mine. But it was my own damn fault that Phoenix Wright was ever involved in any of this. As if that tiny, ignorant fool chittering about justice and protecting others didn’t have enough to answer for.
Maybe this was some twisted cosmic justice, dragging Wright back into my life, rubbing it in that he became the defense attorney I could have been — because I ran my mouth in front of him — to leave me a mess of emotions to bury, and then put me through what I’d put so many others through, all while dragging Wright down with me. Even if we lost the trial — which we almost certainly would — Wright had still antagonized von Karma far more than he would allow from a rookie defense lawyer. And I would be helpless to stop him.
Why hadn’t Phoenix listened when I told him to stay away?
Perhaps a miracle would happen tomorrow, and I would walk away from this a free man. Tomorrow could be one of the best days of my life. But I felt certain it would be one of the worst. December twenty-eighth had never been a good date for me.
And if I took that one spark of hope I had down with me, I could never live with myself.