Begin Again

If I had a superpower, it would be avoiding math.

“So . . .” I lean into the library table, subtly pushing the statistics textbook to the side. “Kingdom of Lumarin was meant to be a romance, but the heroine doesn’t actually end up with the love interest in the end?”

Valeria sighs, her dark hair skimming the table as she lowers her chin into her hands. Her fingernails are a delightful shade of pink for Valentine’s Day, with little heart-shaped gems in the middle that twinkle in the early morning light streaming from the windows.

“The ending is ambiguous,” she says. “You don’t know if she ends up with her or not.”

I point a finger at her. “But Shay told me romance has rules. And that your ending between the heroine and the enemy sorceress she teams up with to save the kingdom . . .” I try to remember the indignant words that followed her equally indignant look upon finishing Valeria’s manuscript, which she devoured faster than a Bagelopolis special. “‘Goes against the genre.’”

Valeria’s lips purse in an adorable little frown. “I should never have let her read it. I don’t even know what possessed me. We just—sang so much that night we went to karaoke that I must have been drunk on the ABBA of it all, and she asked to read it, and I just . . .”

She makes this loose gesture with her arms as if her 350-page manuscript fell out of the air instead of an email attachment.

“So how do the characters end up? In your head, I mean.” I haven’t read it, but I got the gist from Shay, who has been launching into conversations about it apropos of nothing every other hour.

Valeria winces. “Honestly? I don’t know. It just felt like there was too much pressure to tie up the romance with a pretty bow at the end.”

“Huh. So are you going to change the genre or the ending?”

“I don’t know.” She yanks her purse up on the table and plants it there with a thud, rifling through it to find a calculator. “I mean, it doesn’t matter. Nobody else will ever read it.”

Her phone buzzes on the other end of the table. I’m about to open my mouth to tell her I don’t mind if she takes it, but she waves me off. “It’s probably just my ex again. He’s been texting all day.”

“He’s still bothering you?”

“It’s the weirdest thing. He did this whole ‘let’s be friends’ thing and didn’t answer my texts for like a month after we broke up, but now he’ll randomly text me or watch all my Instagram stories. I’ve had exes get back in touch before, but never ones that seemed to go off and on like this.”

“You could always block him.”

Valeria pushes a TI-84 toward my end of the table, but her eyes are in some far-off corner of the library, clearly mulling something over.

“I would. But I mean . . . a part of me is relieved. He ended things so abruptly that I wondered if he cared at all. But the other part of me is just so mad. At him, of course, and at myself for caring in the first place.” She runs a hand through her hair, fingers bunching around the thick strands. “And for letting it mess with my head about this stupid story.”

“Understandably,” I acknowledge.

Then I don’t say anything at all. Usually the big truths about people’s feelings come in the quiet. Sure enough, Valeria pulls in his heavy, shoulder-raising breath, clearly about to go on, when we’re interrupted by the sound of cheering in the corner of the library that snaps her out of it.

“Right. Chapter five,” she says, squaring her shoulders. “You said you were having an issue with . . . oh, whoops.”

When she pulls the case off the calculator, a white ribbon falls out and flutters to the table.

“Is that one of the starter ribbons?” I ask immediately.

“Yeah,” says Valeria, looking at the ribbon and then down into the depths of her purse. She carefully zips it shut.

It takes every fiber of my being not to just take it and run. “Aren’t you a sophomore?”

“I, uh, found it the other day. Nobody claimed it though.” She glances up toward the trash cans in the cafe. “I should probably just toss it.”

“Wait.”

Valeria’s hand hovers just above the ribbon, raising her eyebrows.

“Um—I’ll take it,” I say, lowering my voice. “If that’s okay.”

“I thought you had a starter ribbon,” says Valeria, puzzled. “Isn’t that why you missed the TA office hours to go over your missed test questions last Saturday? Because you were trying to get a red one?”

My face flushes. Not that I’d ever admit it to Valeria, but last week’s little incident is not the first time a ribbon collection has conflicted with my studying. There are intentionally a ton of events so you can easily miss some of them and still get all the ribbons you need, but the thing about collecting them for two people is you can’t really afford to miss any at all.

It’s also why I’ve been scrambling to keep up with my “Bed of Roses” column, and why I haven’t been able to go back to Little Fells to visit my grandmas, or even to visit Connor. I know it’s early in the semester to be worrying about that kind of thing, but I miss them. The idea of having to wait to see them until the ribbon hunt is over in March makes me ache.

But at least if I have this starter ribbon for Connor, it won’t be for nothing.

“My boyfriend doesn’t have a white ribbon,” I admit. “The one who transferred out. He’s trying to come back.”

“Oh. Then knock yourself out,” says Valeria, sliding it across the table. “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

It feels like magic when I touch it. Some of the guilt of Connor’s situation is flushed out by this immense, ridiculous relief—I’ll still be able to do this for him. I’ll be able to make this right. I’ll be able to—

“Oof.” My chair gets unceremoniously sideswiped by a group of students rushing out the door fast enough to leave a gust of wind in their wake. “Wait, did the fire alarm go off or something?”

“No,” says Valeria, glancing at a notification on her phone. “It wasn’t my ex. Turns out it’s Skip Day.”

This tradition is so notorious at Blue Ridge State that campuses all across the country are jealous of us for it—once a semester, the university lawlessly cancels classes for the day without warning. Last semester, Connor used it to come surprise me at the community college with a picnic, waiting for me outside the psych building.

I check my phone at the thought of him, but there’s nothing so far. Not even a “Happy Valentine’s Day” text. I remind myself that he’s busy with his dad, and we did spend the better part of last night co-watching old episodes of True Blood together.

“But we should still finish up since we’re here,” says Valeria, her eyes on the pages but her body undeniably tilted toward the door.

“Absolutely not,” I tell her, scooting back in my chair and closing the textbook with a satisfying thunk. I gesture toward the students leaking out of the building in a steady stream. “Run. Be free. Math isn’t real today.”

Valeria hesitates. “You’re sure?”

“Six thousand percent.” I point at the textbook. “That’s a statistic, right? You’ve done your job here today.”

Valeria leans in for a quick hug. “I’m gonna go back to my parents’ house for the day and work on that ending where there’s peace and quiet. But we’ll pick this up later this week, okay?”

I squeeze her back hard. “Sounds good,” I say, which is only half a lie. Valeria is quickly becoming a close friend, even if math will forever be my mortal enemy. “You mind if I read your book, too?”

“Manuscript,” Valeria corrects me. She bites her bottom lip, considering. “Yes. But only if you give the ribbons a rest this weekend, so you can get in some more study time?” she suggests.

I wince. It’s hard to get anything past her when she’s assessing my stats skills every week. I’m guessing they have not improved all that much, based on her request.

“Send it my way when you work out the ending!” I call after her, sidestepping.

She laughs on her way out of the library. “You have more faith in me than I do.”

By the time I get back to my room, Cardinal is a ghost town. I find a note on my bed from Shay saying she left to go visit her parents. I consider trying to hitch a ride to Little Fells, but Connor’s still busy and my grandmas are both out of town visiting D.C. so they can do a macaron and cupcake tour in Georgetown.

But there’s no point in getting down about being by myself. I rally quickly by doing what I always do if I sense myself circling the drain of a self-pity spiral: I take a shower, making a mental list of all the things I can tackle today with the unexpected free time.

“Dear god. It’s a sentient teddy bear.”

I don’t even register the words until I’m looking over at Milo, who is facing me in the hallway looking mildly astonished and impressed at my robe. He is far from the only one to comment on it—it’s floor-length and ridiculously fluffy, and it comes with a matching hair towel that may or may not have little ears poking out of it.

I stop in my slipper-clad tracks. “You’re still here,” I say, self-conscious. Not just because I am poofier than a cloud, but this is the first time the two of us have been around each other without any kind of social buffer since our tumble in the snow.

I search his face cautiously, but Milo just seems like Milo—edges rough and eyes soft, no trace of the awkwardness I worried we might be putting off. I feel my shoulders loosen in relief as he lifts his hand and jingles car keys at me, his long fingers fanned out just above my head.

“Not for long,” he says.

Only then does a plan B occur to me. “Does Sean need help at Bagelopolis?” If I can get more work-study shifts in now, I won’t have to worry about them during finals. “I’ve got nowhere to be.”

Milo cuts me off with a sharp shake of his head. “It’s Skip Day. It’s illegal to work a shift.”

“Ha ha,” I deadpan. “But actually.”

“But actually, the store’s closed. Skip Day means everyone’s going to be getting hammered tonight, so Bagelopolis is changing its hours to capitalize on the drunk upperclassmen wandering the streets in need of cream cheese come nightfall.”

“White cheddar Cheez-Its,” I mutter under my breath, pointing myself toward my door. “Well, I’ll see you later, then.”

I’m expecting another quip about my ensemble, but instead Milo lets out a sigh, leaning against the wall. “You really want to knock off some of your hours today?”

I pause, turning back.

“I got some extra hours with one of the groundskeepers, is why I ask. And I’m sure she wouldn’t mind an extra hand.”

“Really?” I ask, way too quickly.

Milo pulls out his phone, leaning farther into the wall and making himself comfortable. “Can you be ready in five?”

I hold up a finger. “Give me six.”

Once I’m in my room I yank my wet hair into a quick braid, slap on some tinted moisturizer, then tug back on the outfit I’d met Valeria in—dark-wash jeans, a cozy red cowl-neck sweater, a pair of ankle boots that were clear Old Navy knockoffs of the ones Connor’s mom wore all last year. Even then I feel bare walking out in the middle of the day so much less polished than usual, but Milo doesn’t even bat an eye when he looks up from his phone.

“I only have one rule for this excursion,” he tells me. “You have to be nice to Stella.”

By “Stella,” Milo means a navy blue 2006 Jetta that has seen better days, likely several Flynn siblings ago. The bumper has several layers of crusted-over stickers like the car itself is having an existential crisis, with a Disney half-marathon-finisher sticker half ripped off next to some kind of faded Star Wars sticker half hidden under a sticker that appears to say MY LABRADOR IS DUMB, BUT CUTER THAN YOUR HONORS STUDENT. The interior is perfectly clean, but smells like coffee and old french fries. Still, there’s something about watching Milo seamlessly jam the keys in the ignition, check to make sure my seat belt is buckled, and back out of the lot behind the dorm that makes Stella feel like a getaway car.

On the ten-minute drive through the campus and arboretum we mostly talk about The Knights’ Watch—I am still patently refusing to take over the Friday show, Milo is still patently refusing to try tea as a coffee alternative, and by the time we get out of Stella we’re both laughing so hard at each other that I don’t even see the woman approaching until her very tall shadow is over me.

“Who might this giggly person be?”

I uncurl myself from the doubled-over laugh and stare up into celery-green eyes too distinctive to mistake. I straighten up immediately—the plaid-coat-wearing, curly-haired woman in front of me can only be Milo’s mother.

“Hi. I’m Andie,” I say, extending my hand out to her. “A pleasure to meet you.”

She takes my hand in both of hers, shaking it hard enough to rattle me. “Jamie.” She turns to Milo. “You said you brought reinforcements, but she’s dressed like a doll.”

I turn to Milo in mild panic, but he just shrugs at her. “She can still paint just fine, Mom.”

“Not in this cute sweater, she can’t,” she says, clucking at Milo. She hooks the crook of her arm in mine. “C’mere, I’ll get you something we can wreck. We’re painting the chicken coops today.”

I follow her. “Oh—I don’t want to inconvenience you, Mrs. Flynn—”

She snorts. “Jamie,” she corrects me. “With an ‘ie.’ How about you, doll?”

“Also an ‘ie,’” I tell her.

She pulls our elbows in close enough to knock our bodies together. “That’s what I was hoping.”

Jamie leads me into a redbrick house on the edge of the arboretum, one with bright blue shutters on the windows and a big yellow door and Christmas lights that still haven’t been taken down. In the front hall there’s a bench loaded with dozens of mismatched shoes and boots and sneakers and loafers and sandals, all splayed out like people are coming as often as they go. There’s this quick cinch of nostalgia in my chest for something I never had—the big family, the chaos of holidays, the perpetual undercurrent of noise—but before I can feel it too deeply, Jamie lets my arm go and says, “I know exactly what you need.”

I stand uncertainly in the hallway for all of thirty seconds before she comes back with a gray Henley and a pair of overalls, beaming as she plops them into my arms.

“Milo’s, from back when he was short as you,” she says, bopping me on the head. “Bathroom’s down the hall. Go change and we’ll get you a paint roller.”

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.C0ntent © 2024 (N/ô)velDrama.Org.

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.

“If anything, he’s something I can’t plan for,” I say, trying not to grit my teeth as I put the phone away. “His parents are like—super strict. They’re the ones calling the shots, not me. They have high expectations.”

“For you too, then.”

The urge to defend them comes faster than a reflex, but it doesn’t change the truth. “Yeah.”

Milo doesn’t say anything for a few strokes of paint, me focusing on the bottom end and him reaching up to the top.

“Well, for what it’s worth. Some of the fun in radio is what you can’t control. Even the embarrassing parts.” He tilts his head just enough so I can detect his slight smirk. “I can crack jokes without choking on my own spit now, but you must remember my first few shows.”

I smile to myself, remembering. It wasn’t perfect by professional radio host standards. But it was its own kind of perfect, with his blunt delivery mixed with a string of candid swear words the few times he lost track of his notes. And, of course, the ill-fated burping.

“I remember the part where you immediately dressed down the entire administration with that first segment about the work-study program,” I say.

Milo holds up his paint roller at me like he’s pointing a finger. “And thanks to the show, I’ve managed to get them to actually listen to the businesses that wanted to work with the program off campus and get more positions available.”

“Hence Bagelopolis.”

Milo nods. “And a few others so far. It’s only a temporary fix, though. The problem is just that tuition is getting too damn high, and now they’re either shoving people into work-studies where there aren’t enough spots or putting them into massive debt.”

Anyone who knows the history of The Knights’ Watch knows about the Knights all choosing a particular topic or running segment, so I know Milo understands what I mean when I ask, “So why’d you decide to make work-study your thing?”

Milo’s eyes are intent on the paint roller as he speaks, but his focus seems to go somewhere else entirely as he thinks on his answer. “Well, you know my mom works for the school. My dad did, too. So all my brothers and sisters went here, all of them with work-study positions—and over the years, they’ve been harder to get.” He pauses in his painting for a moment, glancing back in the direction of his family’s house. “Now most of my siblings work either for the school or for the community, so Blue Ridge State will always be important to me. I want it to live up to its promise. It’s a state school, it’s supposed to be accessible. And right now it just isn’t, and if we don’t do something about it now, it’s not going to be the same kind of community I grew up in. The one that people could come to and make a home.”

It’s more than I expected Milo to say on the matter—more than I think I’ve heard him say on anything this close to his heart. Even I’ve paused in my strokes to watch him, struck again by a recognition, by something I didn’t understand until this moment that we shared: a connection to Blue Ridge State that goes a whole lot deeper than the ground it sits on.

“You really love this place, huh?” I ask.

Only then does Milo notice my eyes on him, and when he turns his face back to the pink paint, his cheeks flush almost as bright. “Yeah, well.” He clears his throat, resuming his painting, but not without shooting me a pointed look. “All this to say, I had no idea what I was doing going into this. Just that I had stuff to say. But people who only like to do stuff they’re already great at? They end up limiting themselves. And they end up regretting it.”

The words settle in the air between us, taking their time to sink in. It’s not that I’ve never heard some variation before. It’s that it means something else, coming from Milo. Coming from someone who is doing something I always wanted to do, and worked hard to improve at it. Someone who believes I’m capable of the same.

“And you said you didn’t want to give advice on the show,” I tease him quietly.

His expression is rueful when he looks down. “It’s not my advice, really. It was my dad’s. ‘Anything worth doing starts with a mess.’”

We let the words settle in the air, holding their own quiet weight. Then Milo lifts his head to look at me again.

“I like that,” I say. “Like—getting a new start doesn’t mean you have to wipe the slate clean. Just pick up the pieces. Begin again.”

“Yeah,” Milo agrees, and then we both fall quiet. As if we’re both thinking, in that moment, of the pieces we’ve been trying to leave behind. The ones that will never really leave us. The ones that will only pull us back the longer we try to pretend they don’t exist.

“Sounds like a good guy,” I say.

His voice dips low. “The best of them.” His eyes sweep back to the ground, and he takes a quick breath and says, “Now pay attention before Tommy here clucks your eye out.”

Only then do I notice curious chickens circling us underfoot. By the time we finish, I learn all their names, the chicken coop looks like a free-range, worn-down Barbie Dreamhouse, and Bozo has scammed three more treats from Milo.

We walk back into the house and are greeted with the unmistakable smell of grilled cheese. I wash my hands at the sink and Milo ducks out to change into a pair of pants that isn’t streaked pink. When I sit down Jamie takes the seat across from me and leans in conspiratorially.

“You’re the girl who staged the coffee coup, huh?”

I rub my hands together, warming up. “My reputation precedes me.”

Jamie winks. “Glad someone’s looking out for him on the big bad Blue Ridge campus. Pardon the chicken joke, but you and Shay seem like good eggs.”

My cheeks warm up faster than the rest of me does. “We’re glad he took us under his wing.”

She lets out a barking laugh and pats me on the hand. “I like you.”

I blink as she turns around to take the grilled cheese off the stove, startled by the impact of those three simple words. It’s just so easy, is all—to talk to Jamie. To sit in her kid’s worn-out overalls and slouch in her wooden kitchen chair. When I’m with Connor’s parents I’m constantly pre-screening every word that comes out of my mouth, taking cues from his mom, trying to keep up with his dad. When I’m with Connor’s parents, I never quite know where I stand.

“Smells good in here,” says someone who is decidedly not Milo. I look up and see a boy who looks just like him—same dark hair, same green eyes, but with several days’ worth of stubble and an entirely different bearing. He seems sharper, his movements quick and his gaze fleeting. Behind him is a strikingly beautiful girl with long red hair who seems to instantly soften his edges when she stands next to him.

“Harley, honey,” says Jamie, knitting her brows. “I thought you two were going to that brewery.”

I freeze in my seat the way you do when you’re bracing for a crash.

“Yeah, we were, but—”

“What are you doing here?”

And cue the crash. I turn to see Milo standing in the hallway with his eyes wide and his cheeks redder than I’ve ever seen them, his arms so rigid at his sides that I feel my own muscles twinge in sympathy.

“Hey,” says Harley, his voice unmistakably nervous. “I didn’t realize you’d be home today.”

“Like hell you didn’t,” says Milo, his voice tense, but every bit as shaky as Harley’s.

“Milo,” says the girl softly.

Milo shakes his head with one singular, sharp motion. “Don’t. I’m leaving.”

I push my chair back to follow him. I have no idea how much context I’m lacking for all this, but I know Milo. If he’s out, so am I.

“Don’t be silly, Milo,” says Jamie, taking a few steps toward the hall. “This is your home, too. Maybe this is an opportunity for the two of you to work this out.”

Milo yanks his arms into the sleeves of his coat and walks out the door, a storm-out only made slightly funny by the way he carefully closes the front door behind him. Jamie lets out a sigh, turning to the grilled cheeses.

“Excuse us,” she tells me, wrapping them in paper towels for me and handing me a bag with my clothes in it. “Never a dull moment in the Flynn family.”

“Thank you,” I say. “It was really nice to meet you.”

“You too, doll.”

I feel the eyes of Milo’s brother and his ex on me as I hustle out the front door to find him leaning against Stella with his nostrils flared, staring down at the concrete of the driveway like it committed a crime against him.

“I’ll drive,” I offer.

Milo looks up in surprise, like he hadn’t expected me to follow. “You don’t have to.”

“Give me the keys. I promise I’ll be nice to Stella.”

Milo sighs but relents, handing them over. I move the seat up closer to the wheel by about a mile, and that at least is enough for Milo to let out a breath that almost qualifies as a chuckle. I hand him the grilled cheeses.

“Thanks,” he says.

I nod, checking the mirrors before I back out. “So that’s Harley.”

Instead of answering, Milo deliberately shoves at least half a grilled cheese into his mouth. An Andie Rose conflict-avoidance move if there ever was one. I wait until he’s finished chewing and ask, “Are you okay?”

“Peachy.”

“Milo.”

He sighs yet again. “He’s a jerk. He knew I was coming home today. I told Sean to tell my mom to tell Harley. And then he just comes marching in there with Nora like a damn ambush, I just . . .”

“So Nora’s your ex.”

Milo rubs his eyes with his thumb and index finger, propping an elbow on the console. “Yeah. Shit.” I can practically feel the way he’s trying to scowl but can’t quite make his face do it, everything wobbling even in my peripheral vision. “Feels weird to call her that. We were . . . I mean, I thought we were . . .”

“Endgame,” I finish for him.

He straightens back up. “So much for that.”

“I’m sorry,” I say quietly. I’m careful not to say anything else. It’s not that I’m out of my depth, but more that I worry we’re out of Milo’s right now.

“What,” he says after a few beats. “No Andie Rose advice?”

I pull out into the main road. “Do you want it?”

Milo stares down at his feet, talking more to them than me. “I feel like I’m going to get it at some point either way.”

I clear my throat, pointedly ignoring the edge in his tone. “We can talk about it some other time, then. I don’t want to say anything you don’t want to hear right now.”

“No,” says Milo, a bit of apology in the hardness of it. “I want to hear it.”

He watches me from the passenger seat, waiting. I let a few beats pass, half certain he’ll deflect like he has before. When he doesn’t, I say carefully, “I mean—you’re still hurting. It’s going to take time.”

Milo is unmoving as a statue, still watching.

“But at some point . . . you’ll have to resolve it, right?” I say. “You can’t just avoid him and the rest of your family forever.”

“I’m not avoiding the rest of my family.”

“You just did,” I say gently. “You said Harley knew you’d be home. Maybe it wasn’t an ambush. I think maybe he wanted to talk.”

I only catch the edge of Milo’s deepening scowl before he directs his face away from me.

“And whatever happened—I think when it comes to grief, the more you can process it together, the easier it’ll probably be to heal.”

It’s my dad I’m thinking of then. The way he fell out of orbit more and more with each passing year. How there were pieces of myself that would have been a lot easier to put back together with him there to make sense of them.

“The thing is,” I say, pushing past my own hurt, “family is forever. But this thing with Nora . . . I think you’ll get over it eventually.”

“You think so?”

The directness of the question catches me off guard. “I mean—I hope so.”

“Would you if it were Connor?”

I purse my lips. “Milo, we’re talking about you.”

“Yeah?” says Milo. “Because it seems like you’re telling me to get over my ex when you can’t get over a guy you’ve been running around for all semester, who can’t even be bothered to text you on Valentine’s Day.”

He flinches before I do, more surprised to have said it than I am to hear it.

“That was uncalled for,” I say anyway.

“I’m sorry,” says Milo, all the anger punctured out of him. He runs a hand through his hair, and even in the periphery I can see the slight shake of it. “Shit. I’m just . . .”

“I know.”

We drive the rest of the way in silence, me with my eyes on the road, Milo fiddling with the zipper on his coat and sneaking glances at me. I’m coolly composed, a neutral version of the syndicated-talk-show smile. Only then do I realize that the awkwardness I was anticipating this morning—the tension I thought we’d been dancing around since that moment in the snow—it’s here now, thick in the air between us. Like it was only waiting for a catalyst, for one of us to brush up against the other too close.

“Really, Andie—I’m sorry,” says Milo, as I ease the car into a parking spot.

I hand him the keys to Stella. “I’m here if you ever want to actually talk about it, okay?”

His hand grazes mine when he takes it back, and then lingers for a moment, like he’s going to say something else. I look up and see something in his face start to crack open, something honest and miserable and real.

“Andie!”

We both tear our eyes away so fast that the sound of my name might as well be the sound of a car backfiring.

“Connor?”