Page 50 of Never Been Shipped

“You’re delusional if you think I’ll give it up,” Micah said, settling onto the now-vacant lounger. “Move your, lose your.”

The words had flown out of her mouth before she’d had time to think about them, but man, did they bring her back. It’s what they always used to say when they were kids—it had started out asMove your feet, lose your seatand had morphed over the years to the simplifiedMove your, lose your. Once they’d had a whole library of sayings and phrases and jokes like that, a lexicon that was all their own.

Micah scanned the people on the beach. Everyone was in their little groups, having a good time—splashing in the water, spread out on towels to catch some sun, and there was even a game of volleyball that had broken out. It occurred to her that this cruise was maybe a little stressful, and not just for the people working it like ElectricOh! and the cast ofNightshiftersand everyone else. Although it was a vacation, it also had an intense itinerary, featuring nonstop opportunities to see panels andmusic and play trivia and attend group activities. This was the first time she’d seen people just seeming torelax.

She still didn’t see John anywhere, and she was starting to wonder if he was going to come down to the beach at all.

“You really don’t know where he is?” Frankie asked, seeming to clock Micah’s search and understanding the reason for it.

“Why would I?” Micah asked.

Frankie glanced over with anAre you kidding me?expression. “You two have always had vibes, but ever since we got on that boat you have hadvibes. I just assumed you’d spent the night together.”

They said it so casually, like it wouldn’t be the kind of event that would completely explode everything. Then again…would it? What was there now to explode?

“We didn’t always have vibes,” Micah protested. It sounded weak, even to her ears. “We were friends.”

Frankie pressed their lips together and pushed them out. “What’s that saying? Love is friendship caught fire? I’ve been waiting about a billion years for this one to catch.”

“I already made the mistake of dating someone in the band,” Micah said. “I wasn’t about to make that mistake again.”

“Your mistake was datingRyderin the first place,” Frankie said. “Fuck whether he was in the band or not. I mean, objectively I see it, in the way that people keep telling me Captain America is hot and I have to nod and pretend I see anything other than a red-white-beige-and-blue blur. But I never did understand why you went for him at all, if I’m being honest.”

Ryder had had that kind of charisma you could have in high school just by virtue of being a couple years older and beingreasonably attractive.He’dpursuedher, which had felt so flattering at the time. They’d played a late-night show, and afterward he and Micah had both gotten drunk, John having already gone back to his own hotel room sober as a judge like he always was. She’d wanted to join him, had known that if she knocked on his door he’d let her slide under the covers like she had so many times before. But she’d also felt reckless and out of control and she hadn’t wanted John to see her that way, hadn’t wanted to risk somehow tainting him by even letting him around it. When Ryder had kissed her, she remembered feeling a drop in her stomach, less a swoop of anticipation and more one of dread, like she knew what she was doing was wrong and yet she was going to do it anyway. She barely remembered that first night they’d been together, but after that they were suddenly a couple, and she’d figured it was best to keep everything going as best as she could. First, by not letting the rest of the band find out. Then, by trying not to let any of the cracks show. And finally, by cutting the band off when she cut Ryder off, to try to make it as clean a break as possible.

Which was a laugh, of course. These past couple days, she’d been confronted over and over with all the jagged edges of that break.

“Capricious youth,” Micah said.

“Sounds like a band name,” Frankie said, then smiled as their eyes caught on something behind Micah. “Hey! There you are.”

Micah knew without turning around that it would be John. She really did feel hungover—tired, clammy, a little sick to her stomach. She ached everywhere, including a throbbing between her legs that she knew was as much anticipation as it wasa reminder of what they’d gotten up to yesterday. She already missed the way they’d been then for a few precious hours, the way she could touch John any way she wanted, the way she’d begged him to touch her. She missed the way they’d been before that, all those years ago when there were most definitely alwaysvibes, when she could tell him to lay his head in her lap so she could play with his hair.

Frankie had been wrong about John at the beach. He hadn’t come in his usual jeans and black T-shirt—instead, he was wearing proper swimming trunks, showing off his legs dusted with dark hair, his bare chest, the flat brown circles of his nipples, and another trail of dark hair from his belly button disappearing into his waistband. Even after all they’d done together, she realized this was the most naked she’d ever seen him, and it felt suddenly wildly intimate, like she couldn’t believe she was seeing himnow, in public, likethis.

Luckily, Frankie spoke, because Micah didn’t know that she could. “You own a bathing suit!” they said.

He gave them an odd look. “I live in Florida,” he said. “I go to the beach all the time?”

“Of course, of course, that makes sense. I keep forgetting that you live in that hellhole.”

John rubbed the back of his neck, the action causing his biceps muscle to flex. “I guess I can tell how much it feels like home to me now by how annoyed I get when other people call it ahellhole. It’s hot, the politics suck, but there are a lot of good people there and a lot of things to fight for and to love about it.”

He glanced at Micah before glancing away, like he was embarrassed to have said so much.

“There are legit alligators, though,” he said. “That’s not onlyin memes. I saw one in a retention pond just outside my neighborhood.”

“Stop it,” Frankie said. “You were almost selling me and now I’m all the way out again.”

John was also holding a book in his other hand, like he’d planned to go off and read by himself instead of hanging out with them, and Micah wished she could ask him about it. John felt as inaccessible to her now as if he was miles away in the middle of the ocean.

“You need someone to get your back,” Frankie was saying. “Micah can do it.”

Wait. What?

John’s gaze slid to Micah again, and this time the eye contact caught and held.If you don’t want to do it, say no, he’d told her last night about the reunion tour, as if it were that easy, just to figure out what you wanted and then to tell other people what that was. He seemed to be saying something similar with his eyes now, something along the lines ofYou don’t have to. Or maybe he didn’t want her to touch him, but speaking up went both ways. She’d let him say that if it was how he felt.

She scooted back on the lounger, straddling it to leave room right in front of her for John to sit. “Sunscreen?” she asked, holding her hand out.

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