Begin Again(45)

She pivots and disappears again, leaving me to change into Milo’s well-worn, floral-scented hand-me-downs. I wander down the hall, the walls clad with photos of Flynn kids cheesing at the camera, all dark curls and big grins and gangly limbs hanging over one another, until I find a bathroom. The end result of my outfit switch is by no means cute, but decidedly more paint appropriate.

“Mom?” I hiss at Milo once I join him back out in the cold.

He hands me a paint roller with one hand, the other occupied by a large can of hot pink paint. “Not the first Flynn family member you’ve worked for, and probably not the last.”

“Yes, but I look like a mess,” I point out.

Milo scowls. “You look just fine. Now let’s get this over with before we turn into Popsicles.”

He leads us to a spot in the arboretum a few hundred yards away from the house that I’ve never seen before, with a chicken coop and a gated area with goats in it and a bunch of little gardens. He explains it’s partially here for the agricultural majors—one that Shay crossed off the list real fast—but mostly here because as Blue Ridge State’s head groundskeeper, his mom decided the school needed chickens, so chickens they would have.

I just barely dodge some of them moseying out, their feathers ruffled by an old Labrador Milo affectionately calls “Bozo” before grabbing him a treat from a little container strapped to the chicken coop door. He turns to me with a slight smile, the winter sun sharp on his face, brightening the red tinge in his pale cheeks.

“Here,” he says, dabbing my shoulder with pink paint.

I step back. “Milo!” I splutter. “This is your shirt.”

“I’m well aware. And I also know you were about to spend the next hour panicking about staining it, so I went ahead and did it for you before the perfectionist vibes could kick in.”

“I don’t have perfectionist vibes,” I protest, tearing my eyes away from the wall of the chicken coop I was already mentally taping the edges for.

Milo leans down to pry open the can of paint. “Sure you do.”

I crouch down next to him, the two of us at eye level for a rare moment. “Based on literally what evidence?”

Milo doesn’t hesitate, picking up our conversation from the car as he spills the paint out into a bin. “You love the radio show. I know you do or you wouldn’t be rolling into the studio with us at hours too unholy to name.” He pauses, the paint can empty. “And you won’t do it . . . why? It seems like giving advice on air isn’t all that different from what you’re already doing with your column and the emails.”

He dips his roller in the paint and I follow suit, biting the inside of my cheek at the mention of the column. The truth is, I’m behind on that, too. Not just because of the ribbons—but because I realized after I finished the column this week that nothing I wrote suited the format of a high school newspaper. I’d written it like it was a script. Like it was something I might say on air, too casual and with too much open space in it, like I was anticipating a dialogue with whoever was asking.

I know I have to rewrite it soon, but I’ve been anticipating it with a weird kind of dread ever since. Like I already know I won’t be able to shape it the way I meant to, now that I’ve seen another version of what it could be. Imagined some other version of myself I could be.

By the time I look back up he’s already started one side of the coop and is tilting his head at me, waiting for an answer.

“Because . . .”

Because I’m afraid of letting my mom down. The thought is a reflex, even if I know it’s not true. I could never let her down. The thing is, it’s that thought that creates a very cushy barrier between me and the real truth, which is that I’m afraid I’ll keep letting myself down. That for all these grand designs I have for helping people, even just at Blue Ridge, I still feel so far from them—from the easy way they seem to move through the world, the way everyone else seems to fit—that I feel like an intruder. That I get so far in my head about it that I can’t connect in real time the way I can when there’s no pressure, no watching eyes. When nobody knows who I am.

When I can hide.

“It’s not like I want to be perfect,” I hedge. “I just—I like situations I can control. Writing things down alone in my room is a situation I can control, but a live show is something else entirely. And I feel like there are already so many things we don’t get to control.”

He’s already watching me, the paint roller paused. He nods, because of course he knows. I think of all the shoes littered by his front door and ache for the pairs of his dad’s that must be missing from them.

“But I can still make plans. And stick to them. My major, my career plans, my—”

“Boyfriend?”

I raise my eyebrows. Milo doesn’t see, focused on a crisscrossed line of hot pink paint as if he’s determined to pretend he didn’t say anything.

And I’m happy to pretend with him, even if it does strike a dissonant chord. Connor is steady and safe; not a factor I can control, but can definitely account for. But I don’t love him because of that. I love him the way I love looking at big stretches of the sky, or feeling the grass under my toes; he’s a feeling I’ve always known.

My throat tightens. Without meaning to, I pull my phone out of my pocket and glance at it. No messages.