Begin Again(60)

“Shit,” says Milo, just as I mutter, “Frosted Flakes.”

He lets out a short laugh.

“What’s so funny?”

Milo opens his mouth. “You with your—” Another flash of lightning.

“Salted caramel Oreos!” I mutter, just as Milo lets out a low “Jesus.”

We brace ourselves for the rumble of thunder that follows the jolt of lightning, laughing at the same time.

“Oreos?” Milo wheezes through his laughter. “Where did these swear words of yours even come from?”

“My favorite foods, of course.”

“Is that it? Bad things happen, and you just think of foods you like to eat?”

Another burst of lightning. I yelp in surprise, but Milo yells, “Pretzel bagel and unicorn cream cheese!”

And just like that, I’m laughing so hard that the rumble of thunder barely even registers. “You like the unicorn cream cheese?”

“Indiscriminate fruit is my favorite flavor,” says Milo without a hint of shame. “Lucky Charms, Gogurt, whatever the heck we’re putting into unicorn cream cheese included.”

“I never knew. You drink Eternal Darkness black, I never thought you’d like something so sweet.”

“I contain multitudes.” He leans back against the box, propping himself against the wall. When he speaks again his voice is so low it’s hard to hear over the wind. “So. What do you think?”

I take a beat, but I already know my answer. I just don’t think he’s going to like it.

“I think . . . well. Both schools have amazing broadcast programs.”

Milo’s lip quirks again, realizing I must have done some side research on my own. My cheeks flush.

“And I know you initially switched out of biology because you were mad at Harley,” I add quickly, before he meets my eye. “But that also makes sense, since you were clearly meant to do this.”

“High praise,” he says, with his usual wry deflection.

“Honest assessment,” I correct him. “And an important one, because the thing is—you got lucky, with that part working out. Doing something because you were mad at your brother, I mean. But I don’t know if you’ll luck out again. What I mean is—I want you to make sure that if you’re making this decision to go, it’s just for you.”

Milo’s jaw tenses. “The other program is more well-known.” He picks a corner of the shed and stares at it, then concedes, “Blue Ridge State’s is smaller. More competitive, but more chances for hands-on experience.”

I don’t mention the radio show he’s technically supposed to lead until graduation, when he helps train another Knight. It wouldn’t be the first time one of them had to leave early. It’d just be the first time it was someone who mattered to me.

“Both good programs,” he says, echoing me.

I nod. “But the thing is . . . you’re never going to know if you’re going for yourself or because of Harley unless the two of you settle things first.”

Milo blows out a breath. “I’ve got a few weeks for the deposit, not twenty years.”

I nudge my shoulder into his. “He’s your brother. And it sounds like you were close.”

Milo doesn’t nudge back, but he doesn’t move, either. Our shoulders stay just faintly touching, this quiet, grounding thing in the tumult of the storm.

“Yeah. Especially after . . . well, after our dad died. We were the youngest. We got the least amount of time with him. So we just kind of—I mean, we were always close.” For once, Milo’s words aren’t as ready and blunt as they always seem to be. He has to pause. Has to consider. “But I think after that it was like—yeah, we were all hurting, but there was this specific kind of hurt that our older siblings didn’t quite get.”

I think of the way Grandma Maeve and I have our own little unit of grief, this lens we see the world through that it feels like nobody else quite does. One I know my dad must too, if we ever really talked about it.

“I can see how that would happen,” I say softly.

“Honestly, I think Harley wanted to go out of state himself, but stuck around to stay near me.” Then Milo clears his throat, blinking hard. Something in his posture changes. Hardens. “But I guess it wasn’t just for me. I guess it was for Nora, too.”

I choose my next words carefully. He asked for advice about college, not this. Trouble is they’re one and the same.

“It sounds like he didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“But he did.” Milo’s fingers curl and uncurl into his palms, some of the knuckles popping as he fidgets. “Nora was my . . . I mean, shit. She was my best friend. He’s my brother. And here I was, just the biggest jackass, thinking how lucky I was to have them in my life even after everything went to shit, and the two of them were just . . . waiting, probably. Who even knows for how long.”

Best friend. The words stick to my ribs. The way he said them first and only. It’s the way I think about Connor, too—my best friend first.

“And the way I found out was just—so humiliating,” says Milo, shifting his body slightly like the memory is itching just under his skin. “What did they think was going to happen?”

He says it with the tone of someone who’s asked it a hundred times since, and tried to wrap his head around the answer even more than that. I wince, imagining him in the theater that day, his eyes falling on the pair of them. The hurt. The embarrassment. But probably more than any of it, the surprise.