Page 44 of Canned & Coated

I drag a hand through my hair, trying to organize the mess in my head into something that makes sense.

“Because if it’s a one-time thing, then yeah… it’s weird. It becomes this thing we don’t talk about. Something we all pretend didn’t happen.”

I glance between them.

“But it didn’t feel like that,” I continue. “It felt… good. Easy.”

Milo’s watching me closely now. Tanner too, quieter but just as locked in.

“I think that’s why you want to panic,” I say to Milo. “Because it should feel strange. It should feel uncomfortable. But it doesn’t.”

I let out a breath.

“We all liked it.”

I allow my words the space to sink in before I push through.

“I can’t speak for both of you, but it feels like we want more. This isn’t some random thing we stumbled into. It feels like something we should’ve figured out a long time ago.”

I shake my head, a small, disbelieving laugh slipping out.

“Honestly, I’m kind of mad at how long we all missed out on… all of that.”

“Okay,” Milo says, almost to himself. Then again, a little firmer, “Okay.”

I look over at Tanner, steeling myself for his usual caution. The careful words, the strategic distance.

“Well,” he says, brushing dirt from his palms, “I’m not going anywhere. You know that.”

“Hold on…” The words tumble out before I can stop them. I swallow, recalibrate. “We shouldn’t rush into anything permanent here.”

Tanner’s gaze catches mine. I feel Milo’s arm slide around my waist, warm and solid.

“What I mean is,” I try again, “there’s time to figure this out. We should probably talk more, see how it feels in the real world before anyone…” My hand waves between them, toward the packed Jeep, the winding road ahead, the whole concept of rearranging a life because of one weekend “…starts making promises they can’t keep.”

Milo laughs under his breath. “Right. Let’s not rewrite our futures based on a camping trip where beans featured so prominently.”

“Point taken,” Tanner says, but something in his face remains unmoved, certain.

“We should explore this,” I say. “Whatever it is. Whatever it might become. Without demolishing what we already have.”

Milo’s expression shifts from playful to contemplative. “Yeah. I’m in for that.”

Tanner watches me for a long moment. Then a single, firm nod.

“Alright,” he says. “We’ll explore it.”

Somehow those simple words carry more weight than all that came before, and with that, we fall back into rhythm.

Tanner collapses the tent as Milo rolls the sleeping bags tight, tighter than they need to be, almost as if he’s trying to compress the entire weekend into something manageable.

Something that fits.

I move between them. Grabbing, folding, tying, packing. Filling space. Keeping my hands busy so my brain doesn’t spiral out into all the ways this could go wrong.

It’s easy.

That’s the part that keeps catching me off guard.