Page 271 of What We Burn

“I can try,” I say, and just as I lean in to kiss him again there’s a knock at the door, followed by the sausage-and-biscuits timbre of Milo.

“I brought you both wet wipes, clean towels, and electrolyte drinks. Not sure if either of you needs a postcoital electrolyte, but if you don’t take care of your sodium you’re asking for a headache.”

Micah tries to sit up, but his limbs have conspired to mutiny. “Come back in ten minutes,” he calls.

“I’ll be back in six and a half, but I’ll knock extra loud,” Milo says, and I actually believe him. The footsteps retreat. I shake my head, still laughing, and look back down at Micah.

His head is on my chest, his fingers drifting over my ribs, aimless patterns, like I’m his favorite fidget toy.

“This family of ours,” he says. “The relationships we all share—they’re . . . interesting.” He looks up at me, eyes the color of a washed-out sky in the afternoon light.

“How so?”

“The way we can all be in love with Sage. And she’s in love with us. But then you and I . . . ” He lets the words trail off, and all I can do is squeeze him tighter.

“I don’t want to share you.” I swallow hard, then add, “With the guys.”

“I know. You don’t have to.” He keeps looking at me, waiting for me to expand on that. It takes me a moment to find the words.

“I love Sage like a fire,” I say eventually. “Everyone can see it. It’s loud and obvious and half the time it’s destructive and I’ve never pretended otherwise.”

“I see that,” he says. No bitterness. Just fact.

“But I love you like—” I stop. Not because I don’t know the word. Because the word feels too small for what I’m trying to hold. “Like the thing that’s always there. Like gravity. Like the reason I don’t fly apart into pieces. I love you like the ground under my feet, Micah, and I have been so stupid—so monumentally, catastrophically stupid—because I thought being careful with you meant being good to you. And all I was doing was making you feel like you were less.”

“Eli—”

“You’re not less. You were never less. You’re the reason I can love anyone at all. Before you, I didn’t know how. I had the violence and the discipline and the compartments and none of it added up to knowing how to be with another person. You taught me that. Not with words. Just by being there. Just by—staying, and meeting me wherever I was.”

His hand finds the side of my face. His thumb traces the line of my jaw, the way Sage traces it, the way I’ve seen him do it a hundred times with that quiet, patient focus that is uniquely, irreplaceably Micah.

“I stayed because there was nowhere else I wanted to be,” he says.

“Even when I made it hard?”

“Especially then.” He leans forward and kisses me. Slow. Unhurried. The kiss of two people who have finally arrived at the same place after years of parallel travel.

“Don’t put me in a box,” he says against my mouth. “I know you have them. I know it’s how your brain works—the teacher box, the killer box, the Sage box. Don’t make a Micah box. Don’t decide what version of Eli I can handle and then give me only that. Give me everything and let me decide.”

“Everything’s a lot.”

“I’ve met everything. I’ve been watching it from the next room for years. I can handle it.”

I pull him closer. Press my face into his neck. Breathe him in, the scent I fall asleep to on the nights he’s beside me and miss on the nights he’s not.

“Okay,” I say. “Everything. No boxes.”

“No boxes.”

“And if I slip⁠—”

“I’ll tell you. Loudly. And then we’ll do whatever we just did again until you remember.”

“That’s a solid incentive structure.”

“I thought so.”

We lie there. The afternoon light shifts across the floor. I can hear the TV downstairs—the renovation show still going, volume cranked, and I realize Milo turned it up to cover for us. Which is either considerate or a power move, knowing Milo.