Page 60 of Never Been Shipped

He was so lost in his thoughts that he only heard Micahapproach when she was practically all the way to his seat, and he tried to give her a smile, not wanting her to see all that was going through his head. “Hey,” he said.

“Hey.”

She sat on his lap, facing him by straddling his legs, which he knew he shouldn’t encourage. They really did need to practice, and the longer they stayed like that, the more chance there was that they’d just end up fooling around again. Especially since Micah still wore his hoodie, zipped up this time, and he was pretty sure she wasn’t wearing anything underneath it.

But he also didn’t want to go back to anything real just yet.

She touched his bottom lip, frowning a little. “You’re bleeding again,” she said. “We must’ve opened it up, when we were—I’m sorry, I was trying to be careful.”

He ran his tongue over the wound, tasting the metallic tang of blood. He’d noticed it’d flared back up when he was in the bathroom, and he’d dabbed it with some paper towels, hoping that would take care of it. He knew it wasn’t a bad injury—he didn’t need stitches or anything—so he wasn’t too worried about it.

“You tried to ask me about my dad,” he said. “A couple days ago.”

Her gaze was very serious, as she looked down at him. He knew she knew. She had to know. He figured she’d always known. But it seemed important, suddenly, to actually tell her.

“Was he a violent man?” he asked. “Did he drink too much? Did he hit me? I guess those might be your questions. And the answers would be yes, he was violent, yes, he got worse when he was drunk and he was always drunk, yes, he hit me. Pushed me, shoved me, kicked me, threw things at me, whatever he neededto do to feel better about himself after something had set him off.”

Micah reached out to touch his face, her hand on his cheek. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she whispered. “I mean…I’m not trying to blame you. But I would’ve…”

He smiled, wanting her to know he appreciated the sentiment even if he knew it would’ve been futile. What could she have done? She could’ve told an adult, he supposed, but he hadn’t wanted that. He’d wanted everything to be different. He’d also been scared to have anything change.

“When I was really little,” he said, “I didn’t tell anyone because I thought it was normal. I didn’t know anything else. But it didn’t take long for me to realize that itwasn’tnormal, and that my survival depended on me keeping it a secret. At least, that’s how it seemed. I can see now how if anything the opposite was true.”

“I worried about you all the time,” she said. “But I didn’t know what to do, if you didn’t want to even talk about it. Like that time with the clarinet, you didn’t answer the phone, I thought—”

John knew the exact incident she was talking about, because it had been one of the worst ones. His dad had flown into a rage at the prospect of possibly having to pay money for John’s mistake, and he’d beaten John so badly he’d stayed in bed for days afterward. He’d known it was Micah calling, and he’d also known he couldn’t talk to her. He’d picked up the phone and hung it up, hoping she would get the hint.

“He broke all my CDs for that one,” John said. “To pay for the lost clarinet, he said.”

Which hadn’t made any sense, of course. He could’ve takenthe CDs to a used record store and gotten maybe thirty dollars out of them, depending on their condition. John had always taken very good care of his music. But the point had never been the money—it had just been to hurt, and destroy, and John would be left angry with himself for caring about anything enough to even let his dad get to him that way.

“I’m so sorry, John,” Micah said, her eyes shiny. One reason he’d never told her was that he’d thought he couldn’t take it if she started looking at him with pity. But he realized that wasn’t what this was. She was looking at him with pain, yes, but it wascaring. She cared about him, and she hurt when he hurt. It felt good, actually—to share all this with her and let her carry just a little bit of it, too. “I’m sorry I didn’t do more back then.”

“You did everything,” he said. “You were my friend when I most needed one. Those times, just hanging out in your room, listening to music…they meant everything to me. And then once we started the band, I knew—Iknew—you’d get me out. And that’s what you did.”

She smiled down at him, but it looked a little wobbly. “That’s whatwedid.”

“That’s what we did,” he agreed. He grasped the zipper at the top of the hoodie, unable to help himself from sliding it slowly all the way down. He didn’t intend to start anything. He just wanted to see her, to touch her. He couldn’t get enough of it. He pressed his fingertips onto the chord shape tattooed on the smooth skin under the swell of her breast. That chord had always been her favorite—something about it being the saddest, she used to say. So of course it had been the one he’d had to use to start the song he’d written for her. Writtenabouther.

“If only,” he said. “Ready to crack this song wide open?”

Chapter

Twenty-Six

Rehearsal went surprisinglysmoothly, once they finally got down to it. Playing the song in this new way got her excited about it in a way she felt like she hadn’t been in years—not that she didn’t appreciate the song, because she always had. But it was their biggest hit, and a more standard love ballad, unlike the faster, more punk-inspired songs that had filled the rest of their albums. There’d been a time when she’d been embarrassed by the fact that it was the one the band was the most known for, when it was the least like their other songs. It was almost painfully sincere.

But playing it like this with John, actually strumming the chords, singing along to it together…it made her realize that it was just a beautiful fucking song. She was proud of it. She was proud of what it had meant to people, what it meant toher.

And she loved hearing John sing. He didn’t have the range to trace the higher harmony the way Ryder had, but he had a nice falsetto, which made him actually blush when she told him that. In the end, he sang the chorus straight-on, the way shealways would’ve performed it, and then she took the higher parts. It opened her up to do more with that part of the song—add a few little vocalizations and runs, leaning into her pop background a bit. It was different. It was a lot of fun.

They finally broke for dinner way after they probably should’ve, both too focused on the work to register that they were hungry until they were full-on intoIf I don’t get food I’m going to be sickterritory. They spread out the contents of the cooler on the stage and ate in silence for the first few minutes, their only priority getting to a point where they felt more human again.

“This feels like a date,” Micah said at last, reaching for the container of fruit so she didn’t have to see John’s reaction to that. “We did things a little backward, maybe. But here we are having a picnic. I don’t know, it just feels a bit like a date.”

He was in the middle of chewing, so there was an awkward beat where he didn’t respond, and she thought maybe she’d spoken out of turn. But then he swallowed, wiping at the corner of his mouth with a napkin.

“I was definitely thinking of this like a date,” he said. “Feels weird to have our first date be a working one, I know, but. If I’d had more time, I would’ve done this picnic right—gotten us a blanket and some flowers or something.”

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