“Miles?” I say.
He looks over his shoulder at me, the light catching the streaks of dark brown in his eyes, lightening them to a maple-syrup amber.
“I’m sorry for saying anything,” I say.
“Nah, it’s fine.”
He turns toward me, my hands skating over his back, coming to rest on his shoulders. He catches my wrists in light, loose circles, his gaze falling. “Sorry, I’m . . .” He takes a breath. “I guess I’m surprised Petra told him that. I just . . . I barely even talked about that stuff with her.”
I press my palms against his trapezius muscles, trying to release the tension from them. His thumbs move back and forth on the sides of my wrists, restless. I get the sense he’s trying to soothe and distract himself. It’s doing the opposite to me.
“I’m sorry,” I say again.
His head jerks slightly to one side. “It’s true. I don’t really have a relationship with my parents. It is what it is, and I can’t change it. But so much of life’s good. What’s the point of dwelling on the shit that’s not?”
“Wow. I couldn’t relate less,” I tease gently. “I’m a born complainer.”
He smiles, just a bit. “You are not.”
“Are you kidding?” I say. “My mom and I used to play this game we called Whiny Babies. We’d just take turns complaining about smaller and stupider things until we ran out. Like, the girl I sat next to in English lit chewed her pencil really loudly. Whoever had the smallest complaint got to choose dinner.”
The corner of his mouth curls. “Sounds like a blast.”
“It was, actually,” I say. “Sometimes complaining about stuff, just having someone to empathize with you, takes the sting out of it.”
“There’s no sting,” Miles says. “It’s fine. I’ve got my sister. That’s my family.”
“I guess all families are complicated, one way or another.” I think of my empty driveway, of standing barefoot on the floor vent, letting the heat billow through my pajamas as I watched the window and waited. To be worth it, to be chosen.
The corner of Miles’s mouth hitches. “Petra’s was basically a Norman Rockwell painting.”
I sigh. “Yeah, Peter’s too.”
Miles looks up at me from under a slightly furrowed brow, his thumbs still gliding back and forth along my wrists. “Were you close?” he asks. “With Peter’s parents.”
My chest pinches. “Sort of. I mean, maybe not close. But they were always really nice. His mom came wedding dress shopping with me and my mom. And she got a monogrammed Christmas stocking made for me to match his and his brother’s. They’re the kind of family with a million traditions. Certain plates and specific desserts for each of their birthdays. Every single thing in their house was some kind of heirloom with some great story, and he and his brother, Ben, would argue over who’d inherit what someday, but in this jokey way. The whole extended family always comes here for New Year’s Eve and they do a white elephant gift exchange, and it’s all very . . . I don’t know. I just really wanted . . .”
“To be a part of it?” Miles guesses.
I nod.
“Yeah,” he says.
I hadn’t heard anything from any of Peter’s local friends after the breakup, not even Scott. But both his mom and his brother’s girlfriend, Kiki, sent messages in those first couple weeks. Kiki told me to hit her up if I were ever in Grand Rapids, and I knew she meant it.
Mrs. Collins’s message, however, had only read: thinking of you, with a little purple heart beside it.
“For what it’s worth,” I say, “what Peter said—it sounded like he didn’t really know what he was talking about. Like he got the CliffsNotes from Petra and made the rest up. I doubt she was harping on you.”
“Yeah, I know,” he says. “She wouldn’t.”
There’s a levity to his voice, but he looks uncommonly distant, halfway here with me and halfway deep inside his skull.
It’s surprising, how powerful the urge to comfort him is, how comfortable it feels to let myself lean against him in one of only a handful of hugs to pass between us in the months we’ve lived together.
His hands slide down my arms to wrap across my back. We stand there for several seconds, tangled up together.
“Want to go egg his car?” I mumble into his chest.
“Seems like a waste of good eggs,” he says.
“I agree,” I say. “I just wish my gynecologist told me that sooner.”
I’m joking, but Miles draws back enough to peer into my face. “You’d be a great mom.”
It’s the kind of thing everyone says to their friends, but I believe him when he says it, and I’m strangely touched. “What about you? You want kids?”
“I wouldn’t know the first thing about being a dad.” He smiles faintly, tucking my hair behind my ear. It makes me feel like a two-liter bottle of soda flipped upside down, all the bubbles suddenly rushing in the opposite direction. “Hey, tell me something.”
“What?” I ask.
“Something about you,” he says. “That has nothing to do with him.”
“Well.” I laugh. “I guess all you need to know is how blank my mind just went. That’s how sure I am about ‘who I am’ these days.”
“What about your family,” he says. “Any siblings?”
“None that I know of,” I say.
