Page 80 of Never Been Shipped

The episode ended and everyone split off into their separate activities—Elliot to go work on an article they had due by midnight, Kiki out to the gas station to pick up some drinks, Asa to his and Lauren’s room to log into his crisis line shift. Everyone except John and Lauren, who was curled up on the couch with her accounting textbooks out, studying for some exam she had coming up.

“Can I ask you something?” John asked.

“Sure,” Lauren said, putting her pencil in the middle of her textbook to save her place before shutting the cover.

He’d had the sudden thought that, of all people, maybe Lauren would be able to give him some insight on Micah. He hadn’t known Lauren very well when she and Asa started dating, but he’d known she kept a lot to herself and could be hard to read. It had really pushed Asa’s buttons, how hard she was to read. But somehow Asa had cracked through those barriers she put up, and John just wonderedhowhe’d been able to do that.

“This is personal,” John said. “You don’t have to answer.”

She smiled a little, which was just more evidence of how much had changed since he’d first met her. If he’d said that to her in the beginning, she would’ve looked alarmed.

“Okay,” she said. “What is it?”

“When Asa told you that he loved you,” John said. “What made you say it back? Did you say it right away, or…you know what. No, never mind. This is stupid.”

“I said it first, believe it or not.” Lauren laughed when she saw the expression on John’s face. “I know, I was surprised, too. Asa was definitely surprised. It just kind of came out. But in retrospect, I think…I knew how he felt, you know? He’d shown me that he cared about me in a lot of ways, so it felt safe enough for me to say those words. Not that I knew that at the time—it was all terrifying then.”

John wondered if he was getting hung up on words, if hewasrushing Micah into something before she was ready, just like he’d always said he wasn’t trying to do. He’d just never feltsureof anything growing up, and he wanted to feel sure about her. Not only that she cared about him, although that was a big part of it, but also that there wouldn’t be anything holding them back from being their whole selves in a relationship. He needed music to feel complete, and the Micah he’d always known had been the same way. But maybe that wasn’t true anymore, or maybe he just had to let go of being sure about anything. Right now, the only thing he was sure of was that the most important relationship of his life was confined to a phone, and he hadn’t felt whole since stepping off that cruise ship.

“Did that help?” Lauren asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “I think it did.”

—

Ever since heand Micah had started up a regular correspondence, he always looked forward to the mail arriving. So when Elliot brought in a stack that included a small bubble-wrapped package on the top, John was right there to receive it.

“This one’s not poster-shaped,” Elliot said. “But I’m open to other merch.”

Ever since Elliot had gotten low-key obsessed withSo Much Promise, he’d been waiting for a signed copy that Micah had promised to send. She was also going to dig up other artifacts from her time as a pop singer for Elliot, including a poster from a show she’d done with Carly Rae Jepsen that she said she could see if Carly would sign.

“Carly’s touring in Japan right now,” John said. “Which you know, because you keep sending me links to watch that I can’t even open.”

“Your commitment to not having a single social media account waffles between Thoreau-level shit and Kaczynski-level shit every day.”

“Meanwhile he doesn’t even know how much social medialoveshim right now,” Kiki put in from her spot on the couch. “I’ve seen so many videos of that kiss on the stage it’s fucked up all my algorithms and now I keep getting ads for some nostalgic emo music festival in Las Vegas.”

John had to admit he’d watchedthatlink. He’d even had Kiki show him a way he could save the video on his phone. It embarrassed him even as it thrilled him a little.

“It’ll die down,” he said. “So we kissed after an emotional performance. We’ve never been shipped like that.”

John could practically hear the record scratch as Elliot and Kiki both looked at him. Even from the kitchen, where Asa and Lauren were cooking dinner, John heard the sound of a lid being slammed down on a pot.

“What did he say?” Asa yelled from the kitchen.

“He said that he and Micah have never been shipped!” Kiki called back, her voice filled with glee, like she knew she was about to start some shit. Kiki loved nothing more than starting some shit.

“Dude,” Asa said, leaning out from the kitchen doorway, a wooden spoon still in his hand. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about. We were able to follow everything on that cruise in real time and let me tell you, the internet was screaming crying throwing up. There’s footage of you guys playing together, where she touched your hair?”

Okay, he’d seen that video, too. He’d had to watch the entire live performance—just to see how it had gone. And save it to his phone, in case he needed to revisit how it had gone.

“The beach pictures,” Lauren put in.

“Oh my god, yes,” Asa said. “You looked cozy as hell when you were sunscreening each other. And there are whole comment threads on the fight, where you and Ryder threw down over her.”

“That wasn’t how it went,” John said, for the hundredth time. Asa hadlovedhearing about the fight.

“The shuffleboard tournament, the casino, the sing-along,” Asa said, listing them on his fingers. “I’m just saying, you were not subtle. You were shipped all over the place.”

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