Chapter Thirty-Five
J: You ready?
John had started texting Micah when his house was all sitting down to watch their favorite dating show, because sometimes she cued up the episode at the same time and they texted back and forth afterward to discuss.
John tried really hard to stay off his phone during the episode itself, not wanting to be rude, but sometimes he couldn’t help himself.
Like now, when his phone lit up with a text.
M: This guy’s lost every job he’s ever had but it’s not his fault
John grinned, picking up his phone to send a stealth text.
J: His favorite band is The Used
This was one of the games they liked to play—speculating about a contestant’s favorite band, the only rule being that you couldn’t say Nickelback because the joke had been done to death.
M: You fucking love The Used, don’t even try to front
J: A band can be beloved and still included in the game. Last week you said that guy with the bowlcut’s favorite band was The Beatles, and they’re the most popular band in the world.
M: The point was that bowlcut would be the type of person to SAY The Beatles because he doesn’t know any other bands—it’s like saying The Great Gatsby is your favorite book
J: The Great Gatsby is a banger. I’m all about that green light.
M: I can’t talk to you when you’re like this
J: You love it 3
“John!” Kiki said. “Do we need to have a basket that everyone puts their phones in during family time?”
“Sorry,” John said, sliding his away from him on the couch. “I’m paying attention, I promise.”
He loved being in more regular contact with Micah again.
It felt right , having her there in his phone, where he could text her about his day or ask her about hers.
It felt so good to have her friendship back in his life.
He still thought about that possibility of something more than friendship, of course he did.
He was pretty sure Micah did, too. She’d made him a zine to go along with a mix CD that was practically a love letter; there’d been a moment on a phone call late one night where he’d been sure she was going to tell him she loved him.
But he also had to enjoy what they had without wanting it to be something else or he’d go out of his mind.
He had to meet her where she was. Micah didn’t seem ready to be serious about him in that way, and he was incapable of being anything but serious about her in that way.
The episode ended and everyone split off into their separate activities—Elliot to go work on an article they had due by midnight, Kiki out to the gas station to pick up some drinks, Asa to his and Lauren’s room to log into his crisis line shift.
Everyone except John and Lauren, who was curled up on the couch with her accounting textbooks out, studying for some exam she had coming up.
“Can I ask you something?” John asked.
“Sure,” Lauren said, putting her pencil in the middle of her textbook to save her place before shutting the cover.
He’d had the sudden thought that, of all people, maybe Lauren would be able to give him some insight on Micah.
He hadn’t known Lauren very well when she and Asa started dating, but he’d known she kept a lot to herself and could be hard to read.
It had really pushed Asa’s buttons, how hard she was to read.
But somehow Asa had cracked through those barriers she put up, and John just wondered how he’d been able to do that.
“This is personal,” John said. “You don’t have to answer.”
She smiled a little, which was just more evidence of how much had changed since he’d first met her. If he’d said that to her in the beginning, she would’ve looked alarmed.
“Okay,” she said. “What is it?”
“When Asa told you that he loved you,” John said. “What made you say it back? Did you say it right away, or…you know what. No, never mind. This is stupid.”
“I said it first, believe it or not.” Lauren laughed when she saw the expression on John’s face.
“I know, I was surprised, too. Asa was definitely surprised. It just kind of came out. But in retrospect, I think…I knew how he felt, you know? He’d shown me that he cared about me in a lot of ways, so it felt safe enough for me to say those words.
Not that I knew that at the time—it was all terrifying then. ”
John wondered if he was getting hung up on words, if he was rushing Micah into something before she was ready, just like he’d always said he wasn’t trying to do.
He’d just never felt sure of anything growing up, and he wanted to feel sure about her.
Not only that she cared about him, although that was a big part of it, but also that there wouldn’t be anything holding them back from being their whole selves in a relationship.
He needed music to feel complete, and the Micah he’d always known had been the same way.
But maybe that wasn’t true anymore, or maybe he just had to let go of being sure about anything.
Right now, the only thing he was sure of was that the most important relationship of his life was confined to a phone, and he hadn’t felt whole since stepping off that cruise ship.
“Did that help?” Lauren asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “I think it did.”
—
Ever since he and Micah had started up a regular correspondence, he always looked forward to the mail arriving. So when Elliot brought in a stack that included a small bubble-wrapped package on the top, John was right there to receive it.
“This one’s not poster-shaped,” Elliot said. “But I’m open to other merch.”
Ever since Elliot had gotten low-key obsessed with So Much Promise , he’d been waiting for a signed copy that Micah had promised to send.
She was also going to dig up other artifacts from her time as a pop singer for Elliot, including a poster from a show she’d done with Carly Rae Jepsen that she said she could see if Carly would sign.
“Carly’s touring in Japan right now,” John said. “Which you know, because you keep sending me links to watch that I can’t even open.”
“Your commitment to not having a single social media account waffles between Thoreau-level shit and Kaczynski-level shit every day.”
“Meanwhile he doesn’t even know how much social media loves him right now,” Kiki put in from her spot on the couch. “I’ve seen so many videos of that kiss on the stage it’s fucked up all my algorithms and now I keep getting ads for some nostalgic emo music festival in Las Vegas.”
John had to admit he’d watched that link. He’d even had Kiki show him a way he could save the video on his phone. It embarrassed him even as it thrilled him a little.
“It’ll die down,” he said. “So we kissed after an emotional performance. We’ve never been shipped like that.”
John could practically hear the record scratch as Elliot and Kiki both looked at him. Even from the kitchen, where Asa and Lauren were cooking dinner, John heard the sound of a lid being slammed down on a pot.
“What did he say?” Asa yelled from the kitchen.
“He said that he and Micah have never been shipped!” Kiki called back, her voice filled with glee, like she knew she was about to start some shit. Kiki loved nothing more than starting some shit.
“Dude,” Asa said, leaning out from the kitchen doorway, a wooden spoon still in his hand.
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about.
We were able to follow everything on that cruise in real time and let me tell you, the internet was screaming crying throwing up.
There’s footage of you guys playing together, where she touched your hair? ”
Okay, he’d seen that video, too. He’d had to watch the entire live performance—just to see how it had gone. And save it to his phone, in case he needed to revisit how it had gone.
“The beach pictures,” Lauren put in.
“Oh my god, yes,” Asa said. “You looked cozy as hell when you were sunscreening each other. And there are whole comment threads on the fight, where you and Ryder threw down over her.”
“That wasn’t how it went,” John said, for the hundredth time. Asa had loved hearing about the fight.
“The shuffleboard tournament, the casino, the sing-along,” Asa said, listing them on his fingers. “I’m just saying, you were not subtle. You were shipped all over the place.”
“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 am terminally online. 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 get Jicah to 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 like misters , 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.