Begin Again(61)

“It’s not like I would’ve been okay with it if they had just told me,” Milo admits. “But the way they went around my back, it’s like—shit. I knew things weren’t perfect, but I thought she and I were happy. And I thought Harley and I were pulling each other along. I thought the deal was that I needed them, and they needed me, but I guess they just really needed each other.” He takes a breath, some of the tension in his body giving way, making space for words pulled up from somewhere deep. “So was I just not . . .”

He shakes his head roughly. Enough, he was going to say. My throat is thick with the familiarity of the feeling. It’s followed me through my family falling apart, through the years I spent trying to make myself fit in someone else’s. Sometimes I’m scared it might follow me my whole life.

I reach out for one of his hands, gently uncurling the fingers. Once his hand is in mine I squeeze like I can will that feeling out of him. I know that words alone aren’t strong enough to fight it; at least not right now, when he’s staring down to the deepest part of it. I can’t make it go away, but we can share some of it for a little while.

He stares at our intertwined fingers, shifting the warmth of his further into mine, easing his own pressure into it. And this—this is why I love what I do. Why I want to spend my whole life doing it. For these heart-stuttering, breathtaking moments when you realize that if you carve us all down to our barest parts, we’re all the same.

“I think all of those things can be true,” I say. “That you need each other. That you love each other. Sometimes life just changes the nature of it. But it doesn’t make it matter any less. And it doesn’t make it anybody’s fault.”

Milo lets out a terse laugh, but doesn’t interject.

“You’re good, Milo. To the people you love and the people you don’t.” Milo might not be willing to look at me when I say the words, but I can feel him letting them settle all the same. I press on. “And they know that. Anyone who knows you does. And I bet you anything that’s why they lied. Because you would never do anything to deserve it.”

Our hands are still tangled, his gripping mine like it’s anchoring him to the spot. Before I can think the better of it, I add, “You must miss them.”

All of the hard lines in Milo’s face soften at once. Like the opposite of bracing yourself; something that lands before you even saw it coming.

“It sucks,” he says, the words dull on his tongue, without their usual edge. “Knowing they probably don’t miss me half as much.”

I let out a hum of doubt. We both know it’s not true, even if it makes him feel better to say.

Something in the room seems to shift then. A change in the light outside, the sun briefly gleaming behind a storm cloud, jolting us back to our senses. Whatever spell Milo was under seems to flash through right with it. He gives my hand a quick squeeze before letting it go.

“Unlike you lot, who probably won’t miss me at all,” he jokes, his throat still thick with emotion. “Probably go changing Eternal Darkness’s recipe again the minute I leave.”

I stare out the tiny window like the light might come back. I’m so fixated on it that the words slip out of me before I know whether I really mean them. “I don’t know if I’ll be here, either.”

“Wait, really?”

I swallow hard, casting my eyes away from the window but still avoiding his gaze. “I mean . . . even if it weren’t for Connor. I’m not doing so hot in my classes either. Maybe it’d be for the best if I just went back.”

I brace myself for a scoff or some remark I no doubt deserve, but instead Milo asks the kind of question that cuts right past all the tangles of the situation and to the core of it.

“What are you scared of?”

I open my mouth, but I’m too stunned to think of a response. At least one that doesn’t feel like more of a reflex than the truth.

“Because leaving Blue Ridge State . . . maybe for me, it’d be running away,” says Milo. “But for you it’d be chickening out. And you’re no chicken.”

“Says who?” I mutter. “You’ve seen me on the radio show.”

Milo swings his foot out under the chair to gently knock mine in the back of the heel. “I’ve seen you get braver and braver every week. So what’s different about this?”

The difference is what’s at stake. The difference is that despite everything—despite the plans and the dreams and carefully curated lists I’ve made all on my own—I sometimes feel like I have no sense of who I really am. But knowing I always have a place to belong with Connor and his family makes me feel solid in a way nothing else has.

It’s the first time I’ve ever admitted the full extent of it to myself, even privately. There’s almost a relief in the understanding. But with it is the magnitude of everything I might lose.

“It’s like you said,” I manage. “About Nora being your best friend? He’s mine. And his family . . . they’re my family, too.”

“So you’ll get past this. If that’s really how it is.”

I don’t want to test that boundary again, the way I did when I transferred here. But Milo’s right. I know he is. It’s like the bird’seye view I can have for strangers—suddenly, seeing it through his eyes, I am starting to see it for myself.