Begin Again(99)

All this time I spent worrying about what kind of person I’d have to be to fit here, and it turns out it was just myself from the start. What really brought me here was something that went deeper than anything else they could measure about me. Something that evolved here in small ways each day, with every answered listener email, every segment, every push to be braver about it than I had in years.

I break out into a grin so wide that it feels like it might split my face. I’ve been slowly blossoming here all semester, but now thanks to this, I know I’m the one who planted the first seed.

“I had no idea I sent these in,” I explain to Milo. “These clips were supposed to go to my dad.”

“Well, maybe now you can send them again,” Milo says, both with hope and with caution. “Get a chance to talk.”

“Actually, we did. That’s where I was yesterday.”

Milo leans in closer. “How did it go?”

“Better than I expected.” I stare down at the clips in my hand. I want to tell Milo about the conversation with my dad, and I will. But right now I’m still too floored by what he did to revisit it. “I’m . . . I just can’t thank you enough for doing this.”

“You belong here, Andie.” The conviction in Milo’s voice sounds different now. More quiet and more sure. “You always have.”

I set the papers back down so haphazardly on his desk that they’re already sliding off when I lurch forward, hugging him again, this time hard enough to bruise. Milo lets out an oof more for effect than actual surprise, not hesitating to hug me back.

“Thank you,” I tell him.

He just tightens his grip and shrugs mid-hug. I don’t have to see his face to know his cheeks are tinged red in that affable way they do whenever he’s pleased someone.

“Well. I mostly just did it to prove I was right,” he says. “That, and Cleo owed me lunch.”

“Uh-huh,” I laugh as we pull away from each other. “Hope it was worth your while.”

Milo’s smirk is slow, his eyes entirely on me in this way that makes the rest of his room tilt. “More than.”

Then I perk up fast enough to make him blink in mild alarm. “I have something for you, too.”

I unzip my backpack, producing a plastic container. Milo opens it carefully.

“It’s Unicorn Bark,” I say, on my tiptoes so I can peer into the container with him. “Inspired by unicorn cream cheese. Rainbow-swirled white chocolate, rainbow sprinkles, a ton of Froot Loops, and a dash of Trix. Like you said—‘indiscriminate fruit.’”

“You,” he says, with more fondness in his voice than my heart can take, “are one ridiculous human being.”

If the Unicorn Bark was meant as an apology, the look on his face is all I need to know that he’s accepted it. For a moment we both just stand there mere inches from each other, my neck craned up at a ridiculous angle to look at him, his own bent down so I can feel the shadow of him all over my body. I open my mouth to say something. I’m not even sure what. I suddenly can’t trust myself to know what I’m going to say, what I’m going to do. All the usual functions are taken over by too many overwhelming things at once—this gratitude I have for this boy who understands me in ways nobody else has. Who knows me well enough not to try to fix me, but to give me the space to fix myself. Who is standing there with this flushed, perfect face it is taking everything in me not to lean upward and kiss right now.

The door is still wide open, so when Tyler yells, “No, it’s your turn to decide this Friday’s date spot!” and Ellie giggles back, “You’re gonna regret reminding me of that when you’re stuck in the drive-in theater’s back-to-back Marvel feature!” we both snap back to attention.

Milo scratches the back of his neck. His dark curls have gotten longer this semester, a little more unruly. I will myself not to look at them. Not to imagine running my hands through them.

Because that’s just it—it doesn’t matter how I feel about him. There won’t be date nights and drive-ins. There won’t be afternoons watching the chickens cluck around the coop and inside jokes with his brothers and sisters and trivia wins and terrifying bagel-related experiments. There will be Milo in California and me here. Excelling at things that we love, but entirely apart.

“There was something else I wanted to tell you,” says Milo.

Just then, my phone chirps in my pocket. I ignore it.

“What?” I ask, holding his gaze.

But Milo is glancing at my pocket. “Uh—you should take that.”

“No, no, tell me,” I say.

I need him to rip the Band-Aid off. I need him to tell me he’s leaving so I can nip all this in the bud, or at least as much of it as I can. It’s already overgrown in me, tangled into too many places, rooted in my heart.

But Milo shakes his head. “That’s the notification you get when a professor reaches out to you directly. So you’d better take it.”

My jaw drops. “Oh. Oh.”

I pull my phone out of my back pocket, half my attention on the screen, the other half watching Milo pluck a piece of Unicorn Bark out of the container and make an endearing little happy noise when he takes a bite.

The message is from Professor Hutchison. I’m holding office hours at 11 am. Can you make it?