Your pencil fell again. You didn’t complain — you just stared at it on the floor, defeated. Before you could lean down, Mikey practically threw himself under the desk, grabbed it, dusted it off, and set it in your hand like he’d saved a living creature.

You told him he didn’t need to keep doing that. He just smiled, small and stubborn. “You drop it. I get it. That’s how it works.”