Page 81 of Never Been Shipped

“Any other places?” John asked. “Or were those the only ones?”

Kiki was the one who clocked that he’d asked the question with a bit of genuine trepidation, and from the way she cackled, he knew he’d never live it down.

“The point is,” he said, wanting to change the conversation, “before the cruise. I was never the one anyone wanted for her. Which was fine—I mean, obviously it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. But I’m just saying that people will move on.”

Elliot frowned, pulling up their phone and typing a few things in. “Okay, obviously I always tried to respect your cone of silence around the band,” they said. “But unlike you I amterminallyonline. I am also dedicated to the truth and actually no, that’s not the truth. The Tumblr pages alone, your mind would boggle. Some people tried to getJicahto take off, but that’s a terrible name so it never caught on. There are forums where people identify themselves in their signature lines as MJs or MRs—or actually I think you might pronounce that one likemisters, I’ve never heard it aloud before—and you’d be surprised how many MJs there are. They also tend to have better internet literacy, which. Feels appropriate.”

Elliot moved as if to hand their phone to John, but John didn’t take it. It did shift something, knowing that he’d been thought of as a viable option for Micah all along. It shouldn’t, maybe, but it did. It was a tiny piece of validation he’d never even known he needed until he got it, that he hadn’t always played a secondary role in the band or in her life.

But he didn’t need to see any of it. At the end of the day, it didn’tchangeanything. His and Micah’s relationship was still just about him and her, and no one else.

John looked down at the package in his hand, Micah’s return address written in her distinctive handwriting, starting outneat and then devolving into something spiky and a little rushed by the end. “She asked me to come to L.A.,” he said. He’d never told his housemates that, after the cruise, and he didn’t know why. He was afraid they’d be upset, tell him all the reasons why he couldn’t leave. He was afraid they’d encourage him to go.

“Ah.” Asa looked suddenly very serious, which always meant something because Asa was usually one of the most unserious people John knew. “You didn’t not do it because of us, did you?”

“No,” John said. “Well, maybe a little. This is my home.”

Theywere his home. Day to day, it was easy to focus on all the trivial stuff, the shows they watched together or the chores they assigned and then reassigned when people complained. But if John actually let himself think about it, he got emotional about how hard he’d worked to find this kind of place, how much he’d needed it. The idea of leaving it behind did scare him, even if it was for a future he’d always wanted.

“Sometimes home is just a place to land for a bit, until you find something else,” Asa said. “Lauren and I have been saving up to move out around when we get married. Elliot still talks about moving back to Jacksonville.”

“My family’s there,” Elliot said. “That’s the only reason.”

“I’ll be here,” Kiki said. “Because nothing about my life will ever change. But yes, Asa’s point stands. You should go to L.A. and be with Micah, if that’s what you want.”

“This house was never meant to hold you back,” Asa said. “You just have to promise to come home for Christmas, that’s all I ask.”

John swallowed past the lump in his throat. “Of course I would.”

“And bring Micah,” Lauren said.

“See if Micah can bring Carly,” Elliot said. “I’m just kidding, obviously. Unless…”

John smiled, saluting all of them with the package in his hand. “I’ll see what I can do.”

He shut himself in his room to open it up, because past experience had taught him that it was always better to open Micah’s packages in private. Once she’d sent him a copy of herPlayboyissue, a Post-it stuck to the front that saidDon’t just read the articles!She sent him Polaroids, too, nothing that salacious but still pictures that he liked to look at when he was all by himself and could study for as long as he wanted, taking in every detail of what she was wearing, what part of her apartment she seemed to be in, the expression on her face.

This time it was another CD, which made him smile because he loved when she sent him music to listen to. There was no zine to accompany this one, just a folded piece of notebook paper stuck in the front as a makeshift album cover, a few words written on it in black Sharpie.EP = Extended Play (not Elvis Presley).John inserted the CD into his old laptop and put his headphones on, cueing up the first track. He noticed that there was more writing on the inside of the folded paper, and so he opened it up to read.

track listing:

heart x 3

fruit punch

only if

---