Begin Again(79)

“Milo,” I say quietly, imploringly.

His gaze is utterly still on mine for a moment, a hush in the air between us. Then he blinks a few times like he’s pulling himself out of something. “Well. You were—I mean, I’m glad you told me what you thought about the whole thing. Because you were right. About where Harley was coming from. And about . . . how the stuff with our dad played into it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Milo clears his throat. “It turns out they fell for each other before our dad’s accident. She was always going to break up with me, then she and Harley were going to wait for a while to actually do anything. But after what happened to our dad, there just wasn’t a moment that felt right for any of it. And everything just kind of—escalated, after that.”

I nod. We both know by now that grief doesn’t play by anybody’s rules.

Milo lowers his head, his shoulders easing with it. “I’ll always be hurt about how it happened. But I can understand more of it now. Mostly because I could tell they meant it. The last thing they wanted to do was hurt me. But they were both hurting too much to be apart from each other, and I—I guess I get it. Now that I’m actually trying to.”

“That must be a relief,” I say softly.

Milo lets loose a heavy breath, reaching a hand for the back of his neck. “I mean. We’ve got a long way to go. But I’ve—missed him. And Nora.” His voice is tight when he adds, “And talking to them—they said they’ve missed me, too.”

There’s something uncertain, almost boyish in his expression. Some side of him that I’ve always known was there just under the surface, but he’s letting me see for the first time. Something cautious. Something searching. Like he’s only letting this part of himself go in this moment because he knows I’m a safe place to land.

“I hope it works out,” I tell him.

Even with his overly tall height our faces are inches apart, so close it feels like we’re not just separate from the people beyond the door, but everything else.

“Me too,” he says. “And I do feel a lot more clearheaded about this transfer thing. I might not know what I’m doing yet, but . . . at least I’ll feel good about it when I do.”

My throat is tight, but I still manage to say, “Good.” I may have to look down for a beat when I say it, but we both know I mean it.

“Hey, Andie.”

I glance back up at him, into the depths of those mossy eyes.

“I know you want to be like your mom. Trust me, I do.” Milo’s voice takes on this rasp to it, like he’s on the edge of something he usually tries not to touch. “Even forgiving Harley . . . part of me was open to it because I know it’s what my dad would do. I want to be like him, too.”

His head ducks down, curls almost covering his eyes. I want to reach up and brush them out of his face, want to silently let him know he doesn’t have to hide from me. But he knows that. By now, we both do.

“I wish I could have met him,” I say quietly. “But I don’t have to have known him to know he’s proud of you.”

Now it’s Milo’s eyes that mist up, so fast that I catch him trying to laugh at himself to cover it up. In the end, though, he just stares back at me and lets the words sink in before hitting me with a few choice words of his own.

“Well. Same to you,” he says. “And you know, you don’t need to re-create your mom’s shine. You’ve got that all on your own.”

It feels kind of wobbly, and another tear threatens to fall in the process, but I can’t help the smile blooming on my face.

I want to tell him he’s wrong. Want to brush it off before it can sink in some place where it doesn’t feel deserved. But then there’s this moment—this hypnotizing, heart-stalling moment where his warm palm is cupping my cheek and my own hand is bracing against his forearm and our eyes are locked, and it all falls away. The self-doubt. The hurt. The impossibility of everything that just happened today, and all the ways it will impact every corner of my life.

My calves burn and my legs quiver with anticipation as I lift myself up to my toes, Milo already leaning in to meet me. Our foreheads touch. I feel his breath on mine, coffee and mint and Milo.

“I . . . want to kiss you,” he says quietly.

The words reach something deep in the core of me before they reach my ears, making my limbs feel weak in a way they never have before. My eyes slide closed. It isn’t a feeling I recognize—it’s not desperate, it’s not pining, it’s not scrambling to keep up. But it still burns. It burns in a way I never thought something could.

“But . . .”

And then something shifts. Some piece of reality edges its way back in, slices us both down the middle. He presses his forehead into mine even further, but with the pressure of an apology, not a release.

“Shit. I’m—I’m your RA.”

I let out a strangled laugh. “Milo.” I don’t bother pointing out that so long as we let the housing committee know, it doesn’t really matter. I can’t point out anything just about now, because I’m reeling from the shock of it all. The immensity of these feelings that are swimming their way up into the surface of me like they’ve been there for longer than I was ever able to admit.

I look up at Milo with a hesitancy that feels intimate, like I am less scared of what I’ll see in his face and more scared of what I’ll feel when I see it. But Milo’s eyes are trained on the floor.