Page 47 of Canned & Coated

“That couch was important,” I shoot back.

“You cried in the showroom.”

“I did not cry.”

“You teared up,” Milo says, grinning. “There were emotions.”

I open my mouth to argue, then close it again, because… yeah. Maybe there were.

In the weeks after the camping trip, things were awkward in that quiet, careful way where everyone’s pretending they’re not thinking about it while thinking about it constantly. Tanner got settled back in at his mom’s. Milo and I went back to our house, back to bills and groceries and full-time jobs, back to a life that looked exactly the same on the outside.

Except it wasn’t.

Somewhere between errands and routine, we had to keep remembering that Tanner was only a short drive away.

It’s not like he called much. I think he was waiting, giving us space to decide what this was, if it was anything at all. Exactly like him, really. Showing up, then letting us choose whether to meet him there.

The problem was, he’d been gone so long that fitting him back into our lives felt… off at first. Like trying to slide a missing puzzle piece into a picture we’d learned to live without.

It wasn’t a full-blown relationship. Not at first.

But we’d been friends forever. That part made it easier. No one questioned it when he started staying over now and then. Then a little more often. Then enough that it stopped feeling like visiting and started feeling like something else entirely.

We found a rhythm before we even realized we were building one, and somewhere along the way, it stopped being complicated and became us.

A fully formed unit.

Figuring it out between ourselves was never the hardest part. It was everything outside of that. We knew from the start it wouldn’t be simple once the rest of the world got involved.

My parents didn’t take it well. Milo’s dad, though, surprised me. So did Tanner’s parents. They didn’t just accept it. They understood it in a way that felt almost unsettling. I suppose they’d been watching this play out for years and were waiting for us to catch up.

My mom and dad came around eventually. I think what mattered most was that we’d found our way back to each other at all. The how of it and the shape of it still confused them though.

Not that it was their job to understand.

It was ours.

Moving in together felt like the obvious next step. Milo and I had the space, so we offered it to Tanner when things started to feel less tentative and more real. But it wasn’t about folding him into something we’d already built. It was about building something new. Something that belonged to all of us.

We didn’t want him to feel like an add-on, some piece hovering at the edges. If this was going to work, it had to be all the way

God knows he could use the stability.

That’s how we ended up here surrounded by new furniture, fresh paint, and the promise of finally unpacking something that felt like ours.

There are still boxes everywhere. Half-built furniture leaning against walls. A kitchen filled with new appliances and cabinets we picked out together after way too much arguing.

We practically stripped the place down to the studs.

A fresh start.

One I think we all needed.

Tanner brushes past me, shoulder knocking mine on purpose, heading for the next box. “What’s next, boss?”

I watch him for a second longer than I mean to. Then Milo bumps my other side, mirroring it.

“Don’t overthink it,” he murmurs.