Page 43 of Canned & Coated

Tanner snorts. “Oh, I understand it. I think you’re choosing some very specific highlights.”

“Those were the highlights,” Milo shoots back. “I’m not gonna lead with ‘we made tacos.’”

“We did make good tacos,” I mutter.

“No one cares about the tacos, Nate.”

“I care about the tacos.”

Tanner laughs. “Of course you do.”

“I just…” Milo says, rubbing the back of his neck. “Are things gonna be weird now?”

“Things are more weird because of this conversation,” Tanner points out.

Milo turns to me immediately. “Nate. Is this weird? Do you feel weird?”

I stop to think about it.

Do I? No. Not as much as I probably should.

Which feels like its own problem.

Because objectively, this is weird. It should be. It was weird. Last night was a series of decisions that, on paper, should have me pacing in circles right now, trying to figure out how to undo them or at least pretend they didn’t happen.

But I’m not.

I’m standing here, helping pack up a campsite, talking about it like it’s some inevitable thing that happened between us. Like it fits.

Maybe that’s the part that’s throwing me.

Because it does fit.

Not the specifics, of course. Definitely not the details Milo’s so eager to catalogue, but the feeling of it. The three of us in the same space, moving around each other without friction, slipping into something that felt… natural.

I glance between them. Over to Milo, still watching me for an answer, and then to patient Tanner, who is quiet now, but not withdrawn.

“I don’t know,” I admit finally. “I thought I would.”

Milo frowns. “That’s not reassuring.”

“It’s not not reassuring,” Tanner says.

Milo looks between us again. “I’m serious,” he says. “We did all that, and now we’re just standing here?”

“Would you rather we panic?” I ask.

“A little, yeah,” he says. “Feels appropriate.”

Tanner huffs a laugh. “I think we missed our window for that.”

“I guess my question is whether or not we plan to do it again,” I say.

Milo goes still, Tanner’s brows lift slightly. Clearly neither expected me to be the one to say it out loud.

“Do you want to?” Milo asks.

“Yeah,” I say, before I can overthink it. Then, softer, “I think I do.”