Page 265 of What We Burn

“It’s chamomile.”

“It’s punishment.”

“Drink it.”

“I’m drinking it. Under protest.”

I settle into the armchair. The house is still in a way it almost never is—Sage and Holden still haven’t made it back from the apartment, and Knox is at the club doing inventory. Just the three of us. A home-renovation show plays on the TV that nobody’s really watching, though Milo occasionally glances up to critique the tiling choices.

Nobody has said Stephen’s name in eight days. I’ve started counting, which is its own kind of answer.

“That grout is criminal,” he mutters. “Whoever signed off on putting green glitter in grout should be tried at The Hague.”

Eli makes a noncommittal sound. His pen keeps moving. I pick up my book. I’ve been on the same page for days, reading the same paragraph over and over because my brain won’t cooperate.

Today it’s doing what it always does when Eli is in the room. Tracking the way his hand moves across the page. The way his jaw works when he’s concentrating. The way he’s pushed his sleeves up to his elbows and the muscles in his forearms ripple with the movement.

I’ve been cataloging these details for years. Long before Sage. Long before the Hangmen became whatever we are now.

The show cuts to commercial. Milo takes another sip of his chamomile and grimaces. Then he pulls a bag of gummy bears out of his pocket and starts eating one with every sip. Eli finishes a worksheet, adds it to the pile, picks up the next one. I turn a page I haven’t read.

“Can I ask you something, Eli?” Milo says, still looking at his laptop screen. The typing has stopped and there’s a quality to his stillness that tells me this isn’t a casual question. I slide a finger into my book to mark the page.

“Depends,” Eli says, focus still on his grading.

“Okay. Well, I’ll jump straight to it—would you be jealous if Micah sucked my dick?”

Eli’s pen stops. Coffee cup freezes halfway to his mouth. He turns his head very slowly toward Milo, his face caught between alarm and disbelief, as if he’s waiting for the punchline to a joke that might actually be a threat.

“Excuse me?”

“What the fuck, Milo,” I say.

“Hear me out.” Milo closes his laptop and turns to face us, cross-legged. I know that face—the one he gets when he’s been chewing on a thought for days, decided that ripping off the Band-Aid is less painful than slow-peeling it, and is now about to drop something nuclear into polite conversation. “The morning after my . . . episode. When we were all in bed. Micah made a comment about sucking my dick.”

“That was a joke,” I say, even though my face is suddenly very warm, because in that moment I was so relieved he was okay that I think I would have done anything to show it. “A half-joke, anyway.”

“Half. Whole—my dick didn’t think it was a joke. My dick had opinions, Micah. And I’ve been sitting with those opinions for a week and they’re getting stronger. Which means I can’t stop thinking about what it would actually be like.” He bites the head off a gummy bear with zero self-consciousness. “But I know you two have your own thing going on that you keep separate from the rest of us. And the last thing I want is my curiosity fucking up whatever that is. So I’m asking. Like an adult. With words.”

The room is very quiet. Eli is staring at Milo. I’m staring at Milo with an expression that probably reads as I cannot believe this is happening right now because I cannot believe this is actually happening right now.

“You’ve been thinking about Micah sucking your dick,” Eli repeats, as if he’s unsure what he heard.

“For a week. Yes. In vivid detail. Some really intense dreams too. I’m not proud of it. Actually, no—I am proud of it. It was very creative. There was a scenario involving the treadmill in the garage that I think you’d both appreciate more if I got a whiteboard and drew some diagrams.”

“Milo.”

“I’m just being honest. You all told me to stop keeping secrets. This is me not keeping secrets. My secret is that I want Micah’s mouth on my dick. There. Transparency achieved.”

I drop my head into my hands.

This is awkward.

“Eli,” Milo says, and his voice shifts. Softer. More careful. “I’m asking you because I respect what you two have. I’m not trying to step on that. If you say no, I’ll drop it and we never speak of this again and I’ll just quietly deal with my Micah-sexual awakening in private.”

Eli puts his pen down. He sets his coffee on the side table, leans back into the couch, and locks eyes with me. My breath catches. His eyes are dark and steady and I’m kind of struggling to breathe while I wait for his reaction.

“You offered to suck his dick?”