Page 85 of Never Been Shipped

“Well, I wouldn’t have just invited myself into that situation anyway,” Micah said. “I’d always intended to get my own place. We can still do that in Orlando, or stay in L.A. if you’d rather. What do you think?”

But John just pressed his spoon to her lower lip, leaving a dab of ice cream there. “Oh,” he said. “You have a little—here, let me get it.”

He touched his warm tongue to the cold spot on her mouth, licking the ice cream off her.

“There,” he said. “That’s better.”

She rolled her eyes, although she was smiling. “Now that that’s settled, we should—”

John pressed his spoon to her lip again, leaving even more ice cream smeared there. “You just can’t seem to get it in your mouth, huh?” he said. “Don’t worry, I’ve got you.”

He started kissing her, but she was too busy laughing, her open mouth against his. “John,” she said in between kisses. “I’m trying to be serious here.”

He took the pint out of her hands, setting it next to them on the counter. With his arms bracketed around her, he leaned in, his gaze dropping to her mouth before lifting again to her eyes. “I’m always serious,” he said.

Of course she’d seen John’s goofy side, shelovedseeing that side—but she knew that he typically had been the serious one, when they were kids and then later in the band. He was steady and strong and true, and that was what she saw in his eyes now when he looked at her.

“What are we going to do?” she whispered. She hated to think she’d already messed something up in their brand-new relationship, created a stressful situation with their living arrangements.

John nudged his nose against her cheek, pressing a kiss to her temple that she worried gave him more a mouthful of hair than anything else, but he didn’t seem to mind. “Whatever we want, Micah,” he said. “We’ll do whatever we want.”

Epilogue

Winter

“Hear me out,”Micah said, coming down the stairs and pausing for dramatic effect. “A cruise to the Bahamas actually soundsperfectright now.”

John leaned back in his chair, pushing the headphones that had already been off one ear down his neck. “You explicitly said if you ever went on another cruise again, it would be too soon.”

“That was the first night,” she said, dropping into the chair next to him. “You can’t hold anything I said the first night against me. How areyouhandling this winter thing so much better than I am, Florida boy?”

John laughed, taking her bare feet in his lap and rubbing them until she could feel the warmth start to tingle back into her toes.

“For one thing,” he said, “I’m wearing socks, which I would highly recommend.”

“Mmm. It’s too bad, because I love your feet.”

They’d enjoyed her L.A. apartment in the limited time they’d had it, hanging out and listening to records and havingsex and finishing packing up all her stuff. And then they’d led a somewhat nomadic existence for a while, traveling around and spending a couple weeks back in Orlando with John’s housemates. He wasn’t wrong that Asa had already moved some art supplies into his old room, but the bed was still there and it wasn’t a bad place to crash. Micah had felt so shy about meeting everyone, knowing how important they were to John. But they couldn’t have been more welcoming, and she quickly felt like part of the group.

They’d discussed going back to L.A. or staying in Orlando, and they’d even discussed moving somewhere else entirely, but in the end, it had seemed inevitable that they’d find their way back to Ohio. Micah wanted to be closer to her family, and John joked that it wouldn’t hurt to be closer to a reliable, hard-hitting drummer. They’d bought a house only twenty minutes away from Steve and were renovating the basement to be a recording studio and rehearsal space.

Now John was sitting in front of the monitors they’d set up for playback, leaning forward as he adjusted something on one of the scratch tracks he had up on the computer. She still had her feet in his lap, close enough that she could look over his shoulder at whatever he was doing. He’d unplugged his headphones and taken them off so that the music played in the room for both of them to hear.

“Isolate that one,” she said. “The backing vocal.”

He muted the other tracks until the only one still playing through the monitors was the harmonies she’d recorded a couple days ago.

“That note isn’t right,” she said. “I’m flat.”

“It’s your timbre,” he said, scrubbing back to play it again. “I think you’re on pitch, actually, it justsoundsoff.”

“Well, if it sounds off, then it’s off.”

“Not necessarily,” he said, leaning forward like he was suddenly excited by something. “It adds a little depth to it. Hear that?”

He’d added back in her lead vocal, playing them together until she could hear the way itwasmore interesting, actually, for that subtle feeling of something being a little strange. John had such a good ear for those kinds of things, and she felt like she got better at appreciating them, too, the more time she spent listening to him talk. She loved the way his eyes lit up when she reallynaileda take, when she played him something new on the piano, when they finalized the arrangement of a song. They had more than enough demo tracks for a full album and were starting to record parts for final versions. Whatever they’d end up doing with them still remained to be seen.

“Fine,” she said. “We’ll call it an innovative new sound instead of me being flat as shit. I guess I should be happy to have a complete take—that day felt like all I was good for was fucking up.”

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