Chapter 11 #2
“Honestly, I’m kind of mad at how long we all missed out on… all of that.”
“Okay,” Milo says, almost to himself. Then again, a little firmer, “Okay.”
I look over at Tanner, steeling myself for his usual caution. The careful words, the strategic distance.
“Well,” he says, brushing dirt from his palms, “I’m not going anywhere. You know that.”
“Hold on…” The words tumble out before I can stop them. I swallow, recalibrate. “We shouldn’t rush into anything permanent here.”
Tanner’s gaze catches mine. I feel Milo’s arm slide around my waist, warm and solid.
“What I mean is,” I try again, “there’s time to figure this out.
We should probably talk more, see how it feels in the real world before anyone…
” My hand waves between them, toward the packed Jeep, the winding road ahead, the whole concept of rearranging a life because of one weekend “…starts making promises they can’t keep. ”
Milo laughs under his breath. “Right. Let’s not rewrite our futures based on a camping trip where beans featured so prominently.”
“Point taken,” Tanner says, but something in his face remains unmoved, certain.
“We should explore this,” I say. “Whatever it is. Whatever it might become. Without demolishing what we already have.”
Milo’s expression shifts from playful to contemplative. “Yeah. I’m in for that.”
Tanner watches me for a long moment. Then a single, firm nod.
“Alright,” he says. “We’ll explore it.”
Somehow those simple words carry more weight than all that came before, and with that, we fall back into rhythm.
Tanner collapses the tent as Milo rolls the sleeping bags tight, tighter than they need to be, almost as if he’s trying to compress the entire weekend into something manageable.
Something that fits.
I move between them. Grabbing, folding, tying, packing. Filling space. Keeping my hands busy so my brain doesn’t spiral out into all the ways this could go wrong.
It’s easy.
That’s the part that keeps catching me off guard.
Not the tension or the wanting or the fact that everything has shifted in a way we can’t undo.
The ease of it.
This is what we were always supposed to be doing.
By the time we’re done, both cars are packed, zippers pulled tight, doors shut. The campsite is stripped down to nothing but a flattened patch of grass and a faint ring of ash where the fire used to be.
No footprints. No trash. No evidence of what happened here.
Except we know.
The three of us stand there for a second staring at the empty space. At the place where everything has changed for us three a million times over. At this place where nothing really looks different at all.
Milo exhales beside me. Tanner shifts his weight, hands on his hips, scanning the site one last time clearly committing this moment to memory.
I don’t know how long we stand there, but it feels important.
Maybe leaving too quickly would mean we missed something. I like to think there’s a version of us still sitting around that fire, still laughing, still pretending none of this mattered, and if we wait long enough, maybe we’ll see them.
We don’t.
So I turn and catch Tanner’s eye. “See you at home?” I ask.
It comes out softer than I mean it to because home isn’t just a place anymore. It’s not just the town or the house or the life we left sitting there untouched while he was gone. It’s… this. Us. Whatever we agreed to without fully saying it out loud.
Before he can answer I’m thinking about all the other versions of this moment. The ones where he shrugs it off. Says something vague. Keeps things open-ended. Leaves himself an out.
He doesn’t.
Tanner nods. “Yeah,” he says.
That’s it.
Milo bumps his shoulder lightly into mine, a quiet, grounding touch, and then we start moving. Bags get loaded. Doors slam. The kind of small, ordinary sounds that shouldn’t feel this heavy, this final, this… significant.
I take one last look at the clearing before climbing into the passenger seat. The trees are still. The air’s warmer now. Morning fully settled in
Milo starts the car, engine turning over with a low hum, and we roll toward the exit. Gravel crunches beneath the tires, each turn of the wheel pulling us further away from the place where everything finally made sense.
At the park entrance, the road splits.
Left. Right.
Decisions don’t usually feel that obvious.
In the rearview mirror, I watch Tanner’s Jeep approach the fork. He slows enough that I can fully register the choice. Enough for me to remember every other time he’s taken the right.
Chasing something. Running from something. Always moving. Always leaving.
Then his blinker clicks on and he follows.
We merge onto the same road, his Jeep settling in behind us.
I lean back against the headrest, the tension I’ve been carrying all weekend finally starting to ebb, replaced by something steadier.
Hope.
It’s unfamiliar and a little uncomfortable, but it’s there.
The road stretches out ahead of us, long and winding, disappearing into a horizon that finally feels shared instead of separate.
As we snake through the trees, I glance back at the side mirror, catching sight of Tanner’s Jeep behind us.
I’m not thinking about where we’re going.
I’m thinking about who’s coming with me.
For the first time in a long time, I let myself want it believing that wanting it might finally be enough to have it.