Page 22 of Canned & Coated

It’s so weird. Milo and Tanner feel like two sides of the same coin. One chasing movement, the other building something steady. One wants to go, the other wants to stay. And somehow I’ve always been caught right between them, pulled in both directions at once.

“Well, he’s right,” Milo says, crossing his arms. “The guy’s moving home. You’ve spent, what, five thousand hours complaining about him being gone? This should be confetti-level news.”

I fumble the lid back onto the pot, avoiding his eyes. “I know. You’re right. It shouldn’t be weird.”

But it is. It absolutely is.

I can’t remember the last time something felt this off-kilter. Tanner being back for good has the texture of a dream I’ve had a thousand times, except now that it’s real, I’m a little sick with it.

There’s nowhere to put the old ache. The half-decayed longing I kept manageable by convincing myself Tanner was temporary. A comet. Bright, brief, gone.

Now he’s not gone.

Now we’re all here, the three of us circling something I don’t have a name for yet. And it hits me, sharp and unwelcome, that maybe stability is as terrifying as loss.

“I should go talk to him.”

“Nate, you don’t have to⁠—”

But I’m already moving. Halfway down the trail before my brain catches up with my legs.

“I do,” I call back, not turning around. “I’ll feel better if I tell him I’m happy about it. This is good.”

Good or not, I don’t know.

All I know is that I can’t stand there another second under Milo’s gaze, feeling like I’m being gently but thoroughly understood.

If I don’t find Tanner now, this tight, burning thing lodged somewhere between my lungs is going to eat me alive before morning.

6

It’s funny how every time I tell myself don’t be a disaster, the universe treats it like a challenge.

The campground bathhouse is a mossy brick cube, hunched in a tangle of sumac, maybe a quarter mile from my ongoing humiliation spiral. I’ve been power-walking the root-knotted path for ten minutes, rehearsing some version of hey, man, about before, and the closer I get, the more obvious the flaw in my plan becomes.

Apologies probably land better when the person you’re apologizing to isn’t naked, wet, and completely unprepared for emotional vulnerability.

Unless you’re a sadist.

Or one of those people who take improv classes for fun.

It also doesn’t help that my brain keeps swapping in entirely unhelpful mental images of a very soapy, very naked body under very different circumstances every time I try to focus.

You know what. Fine. I’ve committed.

I’m seeing this through if it kills me. Which, at this point, feels possible.

The door swings shut behind me with a soft click, and I’m immediately swallowed by steam. It clings to my skin carrying the scent of mildew and something sharper. Bleach, maybe?

Whatever it is, it’s fighting a losing battle against everything else.

My sneakers squeak against the wet tile as I edge past mint-green cinderblock walls, the fluorescent lights overhead buzzing.

I know this place by heart. Around the corner a row of clouded mirrors dangle above stained sinks across from empty shower stalls. Toilets sit behind the next partition, but what pulls me forward isn’t sight. It’s sound. Water drumming against tile.

One shower running at the far end.

The rhythm of it syncs with my heartbeat.