I stacked boxes and wiped the table with quick, jerky movements. And maybe some of my concern was because I had a strong feeling where he was headed and why he hadn’t told me. He knew I’d stop him. Which I probably still would. I knew exactly how long it would take Milo to walk there at a slow pace, so I’d let him get a head start, finish up here, then go talk some sense into him.

Thump. I was almost done cleaning when I tripped over Milo’s backpack. Heck. He had to be really worked up to have forgotten it. His sketchbook was under it because he’d been noodling with a drawing earlier while I’d been busy doing stuff for Arthur to close up the store. When I lifted up the backpack, the motion pulled the sketchbook open. And what I saw took my breath away.

Me. Over and over again, me. Me as the Frog Wizard, me as a regular guy in my hoodie, happy, joking, quiet, sexy, a myriad of different moods. I crouched low to get a better look, transfixed. I should have shut it fast, but I couldn’t. Because there on those pages was love, bold and fearless. He’d said the word the night before, but I’d been half-convinced that was sex talking. But here on these pages, his pencil didn’t lie.

He saw me like no one else had ever seen me. Saw beyond the joker and funny guy to the parts of me that were softer, more serious. Vulnerable. More like him.

My legs cramped from holding the position, but I didn’t care. If he could see me so well, didn’t I owe it to him to try to see him too? Not simply my stack of assumptions about him and what he needed, but him as he actually was, all of him. I’d spent days trying to come up with plans for him, but had I seen him amid all my scheming?

Because there he was on the pages too. Self-portraits and cartoon Milo both. Cartoon Milo was more like me, joking and open. In so many ways, we’d always been mirror images of each other. Seeing him like this underscored both our differences and the ways we complemented each other. He was always saying how I was nicer and a better person, but he made me that way, both as part of my past and now as what I wanted for my future.