Page 77 of Never Been Shipped

“You sounded good,” Frankie said. “You both did. Micah, that bridge—I got chills, for real.”

“Thank you,” Micah said. “And thank you all, for…” She seemed to be having trouble gathering her words, and John stroked his thumb along the warm skin of her waist where he’d left his hand. “Thank you for sticking up for me with Ryder. Iknow I’m the one you were angry at, I know I deserve it, but it meant a lot to me, you all having my back like that.”

“That shit was a long time ago,” Frankie said. “And Ryder was being a dick right now, in the present, in a way he just did not need to be. I’m sorry if we didn’t have your back more when he was a dick to you in the past. I just didn’t want to get involved in whatever that all was, but I never meant for you to think you were alone.”

“He was bad vibes,” Steve said. “But that punch was someStreet Fightershit. I’ll remember that every day for the rest of my life.”

He mimed like he was setting up some jabs into a right hook. Micah laughed, but John could also see her rub the knuckles of her right hand as if in memory, and he knew that she wasn’t ready quite yet to treat everything as a joke. Maybe one day.

Something caught her attention, and she glanced over before looking back at the group. “My ride is here,” she said. “To take me to the airport. So I guess…”

John felt panic rise into his throat. She couldn’t be leaving already. She couldn’t be leaving likethis, when they didn’t even have a private moment to themselves first. He watched her hug Frankie and Steve, saw her look at him uncertainly before he finally snapped out of it and set down his own luggage so he could grab the handle of her suitcase.

“I’ll help you to the car,” he said.

He spent an almost inordinate amount of time settling everything in the trunk of the car, waving away the driver as he worked to make sure the electric guitar was on top and nestled in enough not to slide all around during the trip. And then he closed the trunk, and there was nothing else to do but say goodbye.

She looked at him, and he could see that her eyes were a little shiny. And then she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him toward her in a hug. If he’d thought the one she’d given him onstage had been tight, this one wastight—it knocked the breath right out of him, but maybe that was all of it, everything about the last five days, not just the hug. It felt so good just to hold her, to have that full-body contact, and he wrapped her up, too, like he never wanted to let go.

“Johnny,” she said into his ear. “Don’t be a stranger.”

He kissed her cheek, the corner of her mouth, which tasted a little salty, like maybe she’d started to cry. His mouth found hers then, and he kissed her with all the feeling of a last kiss, even though that couldn’t be what this was. He refused to believe it.

“My number’s the same,” he said. “I never changed it.”

She kissed him again, and then she climbed into the back of the car, and he shut the door behind her, giving her a wave. He was still watching it leave when his phone vibrated in his back pocket, and he pulled it out to see a new message from a 213 area code number.

M:Hi <3

He grinned before typing his response.

J:New phone who dis

The three bouncing dots appeared for only a second before her text came in.

M:You’re such an asshole

He wondered if she’d still had his number programmed in her phone, or if she’d memorized it from all those times they’d talked. Even now, he could rattle off the phone number to her dad’s house, had thought about calling it several times over the years just to see if the number still worked.

J:Sorry, autocorrect. I meant to type: hi <3

Chapter

Thirty-Four

Over the nextseveral weeks, Micah texted John every day. She sent him pictures of stuff she saw on her walks—the reservoir, her favorite lemon tree, a typo on an ad printed on a street bench that made the slogan something really unfortunate. He’d sent her a picture of him with all his housemates, so she could know who they were, and sometimes he said stuff likeKiki said we’re both clowns for our pineapple-on-pizza opinionsorElliot has been listening to So Much Promise and says there are a lot of bops. It always gave her a warm and fuzzy feeling, just to think that he was talking about her with his housemates, that she was able to be a part of his life even in some small way.

They also sent each other things in the actual mail. It started when Micah asked John for some music recommendations, and he’d mailed her a mix CD just like they’d made each other back in middle school, the tracks labeled on the shiny silver surface in his bold, familiar handwriting. He asked her to send him a CD to get him into Elvis, and what had begun as her just trying to figure out a way to even burn a CD anymore had somehowled to her spending hours narrowing it down to fifteen tracks, designing and printing a zine to go along with the CD, making a bespoke friendship bracelet she could slip into the package,Chicken Tenderspelled out in tiny beaded letters.

She’d been obsessively tracking the package since she sent it, so when he called one night just as she’d climbed into bed, she knew he would’ve hopefully had time to listen to the CD and read through the zine earlier that day.

“Hey,” she said, a little breathless.

“Hey,” he said. “Sorry—did I wake you?”

It was late for him—one o’clock in the morning—but relatively early for her. She’d been trying to regulate her sleep schedule a bit more, both because she liked being up more of the day when John would be, but also because she knew it was healthier for her.

She assured him that he hadn’t, and they spent the next hour talking about Elvis and then veering off into other topics, karaoke song choices and the time one of his housemates had done an emotional rendition of “Blue Christmas” and whether ElectricOh! had never played in Louisville or if that was a fever dream. They’d talked on the phone before since the cruise—he’d call her when he was running errands, or she’d call after she’d woken up and was watering her plants. But they hadn’t talked like this, late at night before bed, and she wondered if that had been on purpose. The sound of his voice, the low intimacy of it directly in her ear, did dangerous things to her.

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