She is the One

Valentine’sDay is not likely to do that, but I was still able to give her a good time andthat was enough for me. And hopefully enough for her too; she wouldn’t tell meotherwise. By which I mean, I doubted she would ever let me know if there werethings I could improve on.

Shewas normally good about filling me in at the moment, but when it came toholding onto things…well, let’s just say it can be really aggravating when,months later, you hear that your significant other didn’t like something andnow it’s way too late to do anything about it. Your internal monologueis not helpful unless it is shared.

Thisisn’t necessarily me complaining. I did the same thing. I think a lot of peopledo the same thing. Just…let it be something we all take a second and thinkabout before we cling onto slights for longer than necessary?

Nataliewas, of course, eager to hear all the details. Or, perhaps, not all ofthem, but the ones that concerned us going out and about. She seemedparticularly pleased when I told her that Kayla had suggested she could comealong with us sometime. “That sounds amazing!” she said happily, clapping herhands together gently, “It’s a date!”

“Atsome point,” I acknowledged, rubbing my face. It was always difficult to getback into the work week, particularly as I wasn’t sure I had completelyrecovered from the previous week. Indeed, being back in the call center on aSunday…Actually, it wasn’t all that bad, especially as Anton wasactually there this time. But I was not looking forward to going throughsomething like that again. “And what did you end up doing?”

“Samething as usual,” she snorted, “Put on some cheesy romance film and played videogames until I fell asleep. Had some nice red wine, if that makes it more inkeeping with the holiday.”

“Videogames for you too, Anton?” I asked, tilting my head back to look at him. Hegrunted in acknowledgement. “Dang, guys, you really need to get out theremore.”

“Finewith everything just the way it is,” Natalie replied primly.

“Samehere,” Anton said, his fingers continuing to fly across the keyboard. We’dreceived a shocking number of tickets over the past couple of days (I had thefeeling that the previous night have been a very lazy night), so we hada sizeable dent required of us. Nothing super out of the ordinary, but we wereso used to Sundays just being the clean-up day from the week that seeingtickets getting near triple-digits was concerning.

Iwas going to say ‘interesting’, but it’s really not.

Workingate up the first couple of hours readily enough until it came time for thefirst tour of the office. Anton took that one, leaving Natalie and I alone. “Notgonna lie,” Natalie suddenly said, “Sometimes I’m a little jealous of you andKayla.”

“Gladto hear it!” I said cheerfully, taking it as a compliment. I wasn’t trying tobe an asshole.

“Lastcouple relationships I’ve had…well, Grant was really good, actually, but heended up moving away. Rude, right.” She rolled her eyes. “He liked filmingvideo stuff with me—regular stuff—but dates were always just kindaregular. He liked hanging out around the house rather than going out and havingadventures or escape rooms.”

“AndI’m guessing…God, I don’t even remember his name—”

“That’sall right and we don’t need to talk about him at all,” Natalie said coolly, “Believeme, I get asked out a lot when I’m streaming. People ask me out all the time orthey send me messages and make comments about me…” She was trying to speaklightly about it but it was clear that this was getting to her.

“Jesus,I’m sorry about that. I promise I wouldn’t ever do that.”

“Well…You’vegot Kayla so I don’t think you would.” The hesitation was a little odd, but Itried not reading too much into it. “Some of the stuff they say honestly makesme wanna puke.”

“Jesus…”Natalie was pretty in her own way, but not a ‘model’. I know there’s a wholesubculture of ‘attractive gamer girls’ or something—if there’s a specific termfor it, I don’t know it off the top of my head—that favor a different kind ofbeauty than ‘classic’…or it’s entirely possible that it’s justNeanderthal-brained idiots doing their best to be the worst people possible.

Shepursed her lips hard and said, “All right, so we good kinda moving on from it? I’mgonna get in a really nasty headspace if I keep thinking about it.”

“Yeah,sure, let’s talk about something else!” I also got the feeling she didn’t wantto keep talking about it with Anton around. She may have been comfortablementioning it around me but Anton wasn’t the sort of guy you had theseconversations with. I wasn’t sure that I was the guy to have theseconversations with, either, but things happen when you’re trapped with someoneat work for two days. A trust builds up.

Plus,she and I got along well enough that it didn’t feel like a problem. At least,not until she decided to tell me it was. The conversation was set aside for themoment.

WhenAnton returned, conversation turned to the next holiday: Easter. I mean,technically there was Saint Patrick’s Day in there as well, but none of us wereheavy enough drinkers to have it be a big ‘thing’. “My apartment building goesnuts for it,” Natalie groaned, “Got a whole floor of people my age or youngerand it becomes hell.”

“Really?”Anton asked in surprise, “How many times has it happened?”

“Everyyear that I’ve been there. Like clockwork. The cops always show up and itquiets down for a little bit but, like, they’ve probably got a million otherthings to respond to so it’s not like they can just hang around.” She shudderedand said, “Makes it easy for me to not drink.”

Noneof the three of us were really into drinking. It says a lot when I mayhave been the heaviest drinker among us and even I made sure that it was donesparingly. Over the many years of my life, I have attempted to talk to multiplepeople who try to get drunk as often as possible and I can never find a goodexplanation why. It feels good? So does a head-rush, kind of, but I don’t lookfor those often. And since getting that drunk usually involves pukingand a massive headache the next morning, is it worth it?

Ichecked the calendar and said, “Well, at least we’ll be working on St.Patrick’s Day.”

“Atnight, yeah, but I don’t trust those assholes to keep it down during the day.They start as soon as they wake up and stop when they finally pass out.”

“Christ,don’t they have jobs?”

“Maybesome of them do,” she said with a shrug that told me she didn’t care to knowone way or another. Knowing meant you cared and once it seemed like you cared,you weren’t able to get rid of them.

“Well…”I was at the point of offering to let her hang out at our apartment, just soshe’d have some time away, but for what? So she could crash on the couch andthen wake up and we’d just head right back to work? At best, she’d get slightlybetter sleep than at her place but with a much longer drive included. There wasnothing I could really do to help here.

“What?”she asked.

“Nothing,sorry. Thought I had a good idea but turned out it wasn’t.” I had to grin ather scoff. “Hey, I try and help wherever I can! If you need me to come over andtalk with them—”

“Yes,Jack,” she said dryly, “You being the hulking, intimidating man that you are, I’msure you’ll be able to completely cow them into submission by your merepresence alone.”

“Aslong as someone is able to finally recognize it,” I said primly and we allshared a hearty laugh at that. It was yet another shitty situation that we wereall able to complain about, as it was the only way to really dosomething about it. She mentioned wanting to move out at some point but didn’thave the funds for it…or the inclination to make a massive move somewhere that,in all honesty, might be just as bad.

Mydrive home had me reflecting. Where the thoughts came from, I wasn’t sure; thenight hadn’t brought about any particularly different conversations than normaland though it was a busier Sunday, what did that have to do withreflection? I think it was the lingering thoughts from Valentine’s Day: goingout and about and seeing so many other couples. I had plenty of friends andKayla had plenty of friends, but we didn’t know many other couples. Alan andKelly were married, yes, and from everything they messaged me, they were happy,but they were also family. Joe and Charlie were all the way back home; wecouldn’t exactly plan double-dates or anything. She might have known somecouples in her classes, but she tried to keep all of that outside of our homelife as much as possible. School shouldn’t be creeping into every aspectof her life.

I’dheard before that couples need other couples; it’s lonely being the onlycommitted relationship in your social life. So maybe that’s why I wasreflecting on Natalie’s relationship status. Only out of curiosity, of course;I wasn’t going to pry or attempt to push her in one direction or the other. Iknew absolutely no good candidates for her to go out with; thinking back overthe course of high school and college, there wasn’t a single person I thoughtshe’d be able to get involved with romantically. Plenty of people she mighthave been friends with, but that was about it.

Itwas odd that I’d never really thought about this before. Then again, whenyou’re in school, you don’t really ‘have’ to. You’re surrounded by people allthe time and being home with your significant other, or just seeing them in anycapacity, is your break. Now that I was living with Kayla, with two cats ascompany, I was starting to understand just how much of the social aspect I’dtaken for granted. Fuck, high school was nothing but socializing while Icouldn’t wait to find some time to myself. Now, God help me, I felt like Icould do with a little bit of that: just being able to walk down a hallway andacknowledge people I kind of knew, without even needing to stop and talk tothem.

Kaylawas rushing around when I got home, looking a little green in the face. “Youall right, baby?” I asked at once.

“I’mfine, I’m fine,” she said quickly, running a brush through her hair as sheloaded up her backpack, “Think I’m just a little full still from the othernight.” She glared up at me. “Of the food. That’s what I mean.”

“Ipromise I wasn’t going to say anything,” I said peaceably, holding up my handsas she continued to scuttle around me, looking ill-at-ease, “If you need totake a day off…”

“I’mconsidering it,” she sighed as she downed half a bottle of water she had on thenearby table, “But we’re hitting big labs soon and I really can’t afford tomiss any. The couple of days off fucked everything up already.”

I’dlong since learned that she didn’t want my sympathy or me empathizing with herplight. I’d never been in a college course like any she was in and trying tosympathize didn’t really do much for her. At least, not when she was in a rushin the morning. So I just nodded and said, “Need me to refill your waterbottle?” An innocuous and practical request that it was difficult to getirritated about.

“Yesplease,” she said, actually sounding grateful as she slid her laptop into herbackpack as well, “I swear to fuck if I’m pregnant…” I had just started to pourwater from our filtered jug into her water bottle and at those words, I nearlydropped the damn thing. “Kidding! Mostly kidding!” Though my response brought asmile to her face, so that was something. “I know I’m not but, fuck, if Iactually was…”

Itwouldn’t be good. It would mean that her educational career was going to haveto take a major backseat. That, or I’d have to work out something withwork…Yeah, sure, I was home alone during the day when she was in class, sothere could always be someone around, but she’d need the time off to recoverand then there was all the care we’d have to give the baby constantly. Iwas home during the day, sure, but I needed to get some sleep, and babies wereawake during the day. And at night, so there went hope of Kayla gettingsleep, which wouldn’t be great for her trying to keep her grades up.

“You’restill on—”

“Yes,”she interrupted tartly, “Still on birth control, don’t worry. Think it’s justthat time of the month right now. Sorry, just…I need another weekend.”

Giventhat it was Monday, that was not a good sign for the week. I mean, who doesn’tneed a weekend as soon as one ends? Hell, who doesn’t need a holiday after theyjust get back from one? I had no words of comfort, so I just filled up herwater bottle and brought it back to her, making sure to give her a big hug.“Hope today goes quick.” It was better than saying I hoped the day went ‘well’.

“Thanks.I hope you get some good sleep.” She gave me a quick kiss, bent down to scratchEmber quickly behind the ears, and then left.

Emberpadded to the door and then looked back at me with an accusation on his littlefeline face. “You should be used to this tag-out by now,” I told him with asmirk as I plopped down on the couch. I was suddenly not very tired. My mindwas working enough that I would probably have gotten my pipe and gone outsideto smoke it, were the weather not still frigid. Seriously, we needed a good,insulated room at the new house; I couldn’t keep waiting for good weather tosmoke my pipe, however much it helped to restrict my nicotine intake.

Iwasn’t even on the couples thing anymore. Not really. Honestly, my mind wasgoing to a future where Kayla and I were in a house with the cats, closer toDes Moines, and ideally closer to a lot of different opportunities. I lovedAmes but once you were no longer at Iowa State, it was difficult to ‘justify’ livingthere. Either you were in college, worked at the college, or worked somewherethat saw college students as your biggest clientele. If you weren’t interestedor a part of any of that, it was hard to want to stay pinned down.

DesMoines had more options, but was the bigger unknown. Yes, I knew Jarod andNatalie and Anton lived not too far from it, but that also meant I didn’treally have an ‘in’ anywhere. If I were still doing theater, it would bedifferent. If Kayla were able to get a steady job, it would be different. But Ionly knew a couple of people and her summer internship, should she get itagain, would be temporary. It would be a big change.

Wecouldn’t keep clinging onto our old friends forever. I still chatted with thepeople from the theater department, though they had scattered far enough that Ididn’t think we’d be seeing them anytime soon. Heather would probably drop inevery now and then, but we couldn’t count on that to be consistent, even if sheended up dating someone.

Momand dad had other couples that they hung out with, as far as I knew; I tried tostay out of their business as much as possible. What good would it do me? It’snot like they would be the couple that we hung out with.

Theother thought that popped into my head—the one that made me shudder—was that ababy, at least in a social sense, might make things a little ‘easier’. As in,Kayla would have something that would help her bond with people, would giveboth of us something to focus on. As much as we loved the cats, they weren’tkittens anymore and appeared self-sufficient. At least until it came tofeeding, in which they became sweet helpless infants. As much as I wanted tostudy for this CISSP certification, that didn’t feel like much of a project.With Security+, I needed that for this job. Sure, there were jobs that neededme to have CISSP, but I wasn’t currently unemployed.

Ireally wished that I could just osmosis all the necessary information into myhead. I planned to start looking into sleeping while listening to books orlectures about the necessary information. That had to work, right? It totallyhad to.

Ifyou wish to ‘well, actually’ me, I promise you that I have long-since learnedmore about it and there’s nothing else to be said. I was at the perfect agewhere I was becoming aware of how little I knew, as opposed to being happy inthe mind-palace of my own ignorance. Few and far-between are the high-schoolerswho admit that they need to learn more than they already know. I wasn’tembarrassed that I used to be that way, of course; I wasn’t old enough to startapologizing for the bigger parts of how I’d lived my life. Small details? Likea prostitution ring and the like? Yeah, I could apologize for those, but Iwouldn’t apologize for being confident (read: stupid).

I’mnot sure anything actually came out of my musing but I liked to do mentalexercises for my brain every so often, just to part-and-parcel everything thatwas going on and become wiser. You’ll note I didn’t say ‘smarter’; I said‘wiser’. Dad used to say that between a wise man and a smart man, he’d take thewise man every day.

Italso had the effect of making me tired, so it was with a grateful yawn that Istood up and made my way to the bedroom. And, of course, because I was about topass out for a few hours of blissful sleep, that’s when my phone rang. Withouthaving to check, I knew that it was Rhona.

“Hey,”I said without bothering to check the Caller ID; my head was against the pillowand my eyes were already closed. My motor skills were operating at the bareminimum of what I would allow at the moment.

“Wereyou asleep?” were her first words.

“Iwas about to be,” I said pointedly, wondering if that would be enough tofend her off for a little bit.

“Butyou weren’t asleep yet,” she said with a sigh, which sounded very muchlike she was reassuring herself that she had made the right call, “Went to thedoctor’s yesterday and they said that I am firmly in remission. I kicked itsass, baby!”

“Great!”I actually mustered up enough reserve strength to show my appreciation. I washappy for her, but one can only give so much when one is absolutely exhausted.“So it’s completely gone? Forever?”

“Technicallyit never actually leaves but they wiped out the really bad parts.Or…they just cut them away. They did stuff to make it better. And my hairstarted growing back so that’s the real victory here.” I could almosthear her thumping her chest in triumph.

“I’mreally glad to hear that, Rhona. So is it back to its regular length?”

“Oh,shut up. Don’t ruin this for me. It’s not all the way there but it’senough that I’ve got a decent color for it. I’ll send you a picture…Actually,I’ll go ahead and send you a picture right now!”

“Iwon’t look at it until later,” I mumbled into the phone, my eyelids stillrefusing to open, “I’ll look at it after I wake up.”

“No,I want you to look now,” she declared. She was silent for a few momentsbefore she said, “There, I sent it to you! And you better tell me what I’mdoing in the picture or I’ll know that you didn’t look at it!”

“Areyou flipping me off?” I guessed, really not wanting to put in any more effortinto anything at the moment. I wanted to go to sleep and pass out for afew hours. I didn’t think that was too much to ask, even from Rhona in herexcited state.

“No,actually, because I knew you were gonna guess that! Come on, just take a look,and then I’ll leave you alone.” She paused for a moment before saying, “You’rethe first person after my parents that I told about this, by the way. I figuredyou were important enough for that.”

Shewas trying to butter me up and I had no way of knowing how sincere it was, butit was enough of a strong push that I figured…fuck it. I pulled my phone awayfrom my ear and opened up the messages to see the picture Rhona sent me. Shewas giving her best ‘demon face’, her hair now just a bit longer than a pixiecut. It was a combination of seafoam green and hot pink, which put meimmediately in mind of candy and I hoped that Rex hadn’t really starteddeveloping his sweet tooth or he was going to try to eat her hair.

“Niceface,” I said as I put the phone back to my ear.

“See?My hair’s almost done to my shoulders this quickly!”

“Thefuck it is. Maybe in a few more months.”

“Okay,good, you really looked at the picture,” she said in a triumphant voice,“You were too vague with the first one. Good save.”

“Rhona,I love hearing from you and I’m glad about your news from the doctor and I’mreally glad that your hair is getting back to where it needs to be, but I’mfucking exhausted and I’m in bed and I would really, really like to getsome sleep.”

“Fine,I guess I’ll let you go.” She hesitated once more. “Hey…thanks for being thereto reassure me and talk to me and stuff through this whole process. It reallymeant a lot. It helped.”

“GladI could help. Just sorry I couldn’t be around there more to…” If I kept talkinglike this, I was keeping to door of conversation wide open and I reallywanted that nap. “I’ll message you when I wake up.”

“Iguess if you want to…”

Ihung up with a quick, “Goodbye.” The conversation was going to lead intosemantics and I wasn’t planning on having that be what kept me up. I was fullyexpecting rude and churlish messages to come in while I was snoozing but I’ddeal with them later. I reflected that even if she was annoyed at me and Ifound her attitude more than a little pushy, at least she was still alive andwell enough to be pushy and abrasive.

Atsome point Athena must have figured that my pillow would serve as a goodrelaxation pad, as I woke up to a face full of fur. It took me a few moments toidentify what it was before realizing that she was half an inch away fromcompletely smothering me. I rolled over, earning me a protesting meow, likelyjust because I disturbed her rest. “Don’t wanna hear it,” I mumbled over myshoulder as I checked my phone.

AsI thought, there were about five new message from Rhona. I didn’t read them,just so she wouldn’t be able to tell I was awake. Not yet. What do I have todo today? There was studying that needed to be done, of course, but thatrequired getting up the motivation to do it. I could always work out, even justsomething simple around the apartment, but it was also a question ofmotivation. Writing more of my story? Okay, that required lessmotivation…or, rather, less of a push towards motivation.

Inall fairness, if the book did well, I had the capacity to make more money thanI would if I worked out or got a CISSP certification. That was assuming allwent well and people actually wanted the book. I’d peeked ahead a little atpublishing and literary agents and the like, but not with a strong eye forusing them yet. I had to finish the damn thing first. I hated that all of theonline recommendations were so vague, usually going with something innocuouslike, “Choose whatever path works for you!”

It’sa cute statement but not much help. Sort of like when you ask what your friendsor significant other want for dinner and they reply with, “I don’t know, whatdo you want?” There’s giving me the power and then there’s just puttingyour hands up and assuming I’ll take care of everything. A little sharing ofburdens never goes awry.

Iwish that I could say things remained interesting for the rest of that day, oreven the rest of that week, but the truth was that it was the same day-in andday-out for a while. Hell, we got into March without much more in the way ofanything noteworthy outside of things that happened in the game and me pushingforward on my studying. I’m not going to dive into the concepts that I wasstudying. Have I said that before? I’ll say it again. I can’t describe what Iwas studying because it’s not something I very easily remember and, also, itwould probably be incredibly boring to most of you.

Iactually had to blink and look around when March suddenly snuck up on us. Imean, where did that come from? We’re suddenly a quarter of the waythrough the year (sort of) and nothing major had happened? No massive bits ofstoryline or character development? Did school really include thatmuch drama?

Iknow a lot of people think of school in terms of whatever show they happened tobe watching at the time. If you were in the early 2000s, you probably had ArrestedDevelopment or Scrubs or Malcolm in the Middle. When you gotto the 2010s, you had Game of Thrones and Steven Universe andstuff like that. Was that what I needed now? A new show to follow to help addflavor to my life? I would, except so many shows liked to just dump allof their episodes at once and I could watch them in a day. I actually missedwaiting a week for a new show.

Itwas surprisingly existential, thinking about this. I knew that the safety netof school was going to fall away, but I never realized how much of my actualidentity was tied into the things I didn’t even think about. I didn’t thinkabout Halloween parties anymore; the idea just seemed…kind of boring to me now.Go over to a friend’s house to hang with a bunch of other friends? Sure, couldbe fun, but now I kind of expected booze to be involved and I always knew I’dbe going back home. Hell, there was even an art to bitching about homework anddebating your friends about which teacher was the lamest.

Icould survive without that, sure, but was work all I could fill the gapwith? D&D was there too, of course, but I kept finding my mind winding backaround to having kids. At least there, I’d be able to somewhatexperience school again. That wasn’t the ultimate goal, of course, but it nolonger seemed like such a crazy perk.

OnceMarch hit, that’s when I officially began the search for houses. Kayla helpedas much as she could between all of her studying, which mostly boiled down tome finding houses and sending her the details and her giving a thumbs-up or athumbs-down. It was a wide search for now, the parameters very specific. Wewanted something with at least three bedrooms and three bathrooms; someplace wecould have people over if we wanted. It needed to allow cats, of course, and ayard was preferrable. And there was the price cap, of course, but I tended toleave that off of the searches so I didn’t immediately whittle things down toomuch.

Mythought was that, when I saw the right house, it would just ‘speak’ to me. LikeI’d look at it and boom, it would be the one. Romantic ideals. Maybelater on, when we had the money to throw around for more flexibility, thatmight happen. Then again, my ‘dream house’ had once been a mini-manor that Ihad driven by a few times back home, with broad steps leading up to twoplatforms before the main door and with an arched hallway over a driveway thatled to a separate wing. It was the sort of place so fascinating to look at thatyou had to want to live there. I’d never stepped inside, never evenlearned the address so I could try to get some pictures or a floorplan. Justone more thing that I’d stuck in my memory and couldn’t get rid of.

Butyou ask me anything from high school math beyond basic algebra and I was justgoing to stare at you blankly.

Theinitial search turned up one or two decent houses, the first of which,unfortunately, didn’t allow cats (but confusingly allowed dogs) while thesecond had an unfinished basement. Not a deal-breaker, but enough of a stickingpoint that Kayla suggested we keep looking. “I don’t want the kitties gettinginto the walls,” she said, looking at the pictures of the open walls, theinsulation bare.

“Goodpoint,” I conceded, feeling a little bad. Our house search was going to behalted at that point for now, given that there were no more good optionsavailable. I’d expanded the search beyond the city limits, which brought in afew more selections but not as many as I would have liked. There was stilltime, of course; the market was always in flux and new houses would becomeavailable as leases ended every month. But I didn’t want us coming up on amonth before our lease ended and having to take the first thing that popped upjust to have someplace else to go.

Ihate the idea of ‘having time’. It encourages laziness, even in me. I ‘hadtime’ to study for CISSP. I ‘had time’ to get my writing done and hopefullyturn it into something worth publishing. Kayla and I ‘had time’ to plan for thefuture. No, one should not leap on every scheduling debacle with the intensity oneassociates with nuclear negotiations, but I hated the idea that things couldjust be put off. In my experience, things are always put off until the lastminute, when everyone is scrambling and lamenting that they didn’t startsooner.

Theworrywart in me hated this. No matter how much I tried to talk myself out ofit, I couldn’t.

Thecampaign continued along briskly and it was these moments of joy and reprievethat I clung to. I was greedy for more, though both Jarod and Franklin, who hadalso gained some experience as a DM, explained that playing more than once aweek got rough. Jarod had let me in, more than once, on his process for theweek: how he had to plan out the story and then make adjustments just in caseus players decided to go in a different direction. Then there was finding theright monsters, pulling the maps, figuring out how to develop a story that was,technically, always changing…It was a lot. Then there was the stress of playingthe game, in which he had to be able to adjust on the fly whenever we decide toleap the tracks.

Istill wanted to run my own session, but it was statements like that which heldme back from trying to push too hard. That and ‘everything else’ I had going onin my life. Even when I wasn’t necessarily ‘doing anything’, it still felt likethere was too damn much going on at the same time.

Andthat was just it: I’d made plans for what would happen ‘later’. When I wouldrun my own game, when we would have a house, when we would get married andstart a family…Was this what grown-up life was like? Mom and dad always seemedso busy that whenever they got some spare time, it felt like they were beyondgrateful. But was it more like this? Were they just trying to plan out the next‘thing’ to fill up some time?

Momhad her experimentation that she called cooking and dad had…well, ‘dad things’.But was there more to it? I didn’t like to imagine there being more to myparents’ lives than had been obvious for most of my life, but maybe now I couldempathize. Over the Christmas holiday, dad had alluded to the idea that he andI would have ‘more to talk about’ now. What that meant, I still wasn’t sure. Wehadn’t suddenly started texting or calling more.

Itfelt like another one of his platitudes that he liked to throw out to appear‘wise’ and ‘sage’. It wasn’t that I was starting to peel back the layers ofparental mystique as I got older, but it was more difficult for them to say,“I’m your parent, deal with it.”

So,yeah, there wasn’t a whole lot going on at this time. I could probably havesummed up everything over the course of the next month with, “And life passedas it did…”

Ihate this device for most stories but as much as I wish I could keep going intothe minutia of my life at the time, there were no play rehearsals to go to, notheater parties to attend, and little in the way of hanging out with friends.Yes, back in high school, that was all my life was. Now, especially with howshitty the winter had been, I was stuck either at home or at work andoccasionally going out with Kayla. There was the game on Fridays and then work.And round and round and round it went…

Yeah,I kind of felt like I was going crazy. Honestly, I wish I could jump ahead afew years to some more meaty stuff, but I can’t justify that much of ajump. Can you imagine it? You’re reading along like normal and then all of asudden:

Threeyears later…

Lifedoesn’t work like that, not unless you’re Captain America or you’re just wakingup from a coma. I can’t do that. Life simply isn’t like that.

So,yes, we’re going to be on the housing stuff for a little bit. I apologize and Iwill attempt to spice it up with some more D&D stuff. I just want to letyou all know what you’re in for coming up, just so you’re prepared. I promisethat I don’t want to make this just an endless repetition of the same damnthing, over and over. Lord knows I had to live it.

Itwas almost towards April—yeah, sorry, I’m skipping over March—that I actuallyfound something that looked good. Or, at least, could be made to begood. I’d had a chat with mom and dad during that time where I’d mentioned thestruggle to find a good house and mom had given me some words of wisdom:

“Nevertake a house because it’s already what you want it to be. Everything you do toit will just make it a lesser version of that. Go with a house you only kindof like and then make it even better. Then you’ll really feel at home.”

Itwas another ‘wise parental saying’ that probably sounded better than itactually was, but I took it into consideration. I wasn’t going to find theperfect mansion for us but, maybe, we could find something that we could tweaka little and end up with something special.

Andthat’s when I found a house that captivated me with, of all things, thebasement. It was a completed basement, one with carpeting and a bathroom and,if the pictures were to be believed, completed walls and ceiling and nothingthat suggested it was a hastily-renovated storm cellar. The rest of the housewas perfectly fine—hardwood floors, three-and-a-half bathrooms, most appliancesincluded—but looking at that basement put me in mind of all the thing we coulddo with it. It could be a gaming cellar, where I hosted D&D sessions. Wecould make it into a video game area with a massive TV and surround sound. Wecould turn it into a wine cellar or someplace where we stored food or anynumber of things.

Lookingat pictures of it, I was imagining getting replica swords and maps and otherstuff to decorate the walls. A wine rack, maybe a couple of rustic bookshelves,some shelving…yeah, my mind was already painting the perfect image. I was alittle nervous about cats in the basement, but only because I liked knowingwhere they were at all times. We’d do a once-over just to make sure that therewere no holes in the walls they could get into or gaps into the ground thatwould look tempting.

Therest of the house wasn’t exactly a slouch. The bedrooms were carpeted but notthe main floor. The stairs curved to a harsh right on the way up, which didn’tlook like it boded well for furniture, but that’s why you could take it apart,right? The kitchen was decently-sized; Kayla had said that the only thing shereally wanted from a kitchen was enough room for us both to be in it withoutgetting in each other’s way. The fridge was a dual-sided one which…okay,honestly I didn’t know how I felt about it. It was nice to have a freezer thatwas the same size as the fridge, but that just meant everything was narrower.It could absolutely work, but I’d have to see it for myself.

Therewas a good-sized yard and a driveway capable of having our cars side-by-side.Which was good, as I don’t think either of us was planning on utilizing thegarage for anything other than storage. Sure, we could park inside if wewanted, but I hadn’t seen any houses in the area that had garages utilized foranything other than storage. My parents’ house had a large enough garage, butmaybe that was exclusive to that part of the country. When did it get to be aperiod in time when parking garages didn’t actually have anything parked inthem? Aside from everything you couldn’t fit in your house.

Therewas no shed, which I found kind of a bummer. There was also a part of me thathad hoped there would be an extended part of the garage like where grandpa hadhis woodworking tools, but their garage was detached so I was just trying tomake the house into something it wasn’t. I looked at pictures and the floorplan and even the 3D tour, which was a cool idea until you realize that you’relooking at everything in what appears to be a fish-eye lens, which has thehabit of making everything in the periphery of picture look tiny and squashed.

Still,it was by far and away the best place I’d looked at so far, if only because Icouldn’t find anything that immediately put me off. And it allowed pets! Allthe better. I passed on the link to Kayla and then went to lay down again. I’dbeen doing more exercise recently in addition to studying, so I was feelingmore and more exhausted in the middle of my work week. Kayla teased me that Iwas starting to become old and even a good spanking wasn’t stopping her muchanymore. She just kept at it, commenting how I had good ‘wrist strength’ for aguy my age. And if I pointed out that she was technically a few months olderthan I was? Just meant that she was wearing her age better than I was. Icouldn’t win.

Thenap I took only cemented my excitement more and more, especially when I woke upto Kayla telling me, “Yeah, I really like it. I think we should call them.”

“Awesome!”If it seems like I was having a bigger reaction, I was, but only because shewas busy with studying and she had that pinched look on her face that told methat she was fighting hard to keep all of the information in her head. To chatabout it too much would be to pop a leak and she would get grouchy.

I’dbeen looking at the house long enough that I’d actually gotten the addressmemorized, so I took the time at work to pull it up again and keep looking atit. I knew it wasn’t a good idea to obsess over it—getting my hopes up fornothing and all that—but I was excited, okay? The idea of our first house!I’d even started mentally putting furniture in certain rooms, reflecting that,damn, we would have a lot of empty space.

“Thatthe house you’re going with?” I heard Anton ask behind me.

“It’sone that I found today and Kayla thinks looks good so—”

“Oh,oh, let me see! Let me see!” Natalie had tossed her headset onto the desk andwas rocketing her chair over to mine, eyes eager.

“Yeah,maybe one of you guys recognizes it,” I said to the group at large, though theother two were perfectly content to keep working rather than get involved in mystuff.

“Don’trecognize it,” Natalie commented when I pulled up the picture of the front ofthe house, “But it looks really nice!”

“It’snot insanely more expensive than what we’re paying now,” I suggested, whichwas true but it was still a matter of a few hundred dollars. Absolutelyaffordable on my salary and, when Kayla was able to pin down a more regularjob, it would be even easier. Still, we’d have to go over our budget and makesure that we weren’t popping a hole in the bottom of our finances.

Antonactually came over to look as well and I found myself squashed between him andNatalie, both of them staring at the house with, I hoped, friendly interest.Friendly to me, which meant that they wouldn’t start getting any ideason trying to get it for themselves. If I had to start fighting people for thisplace, I might actually become a huge asshole.

“Don’trecognize it,” Anton said after a minute.

“Meeither,” Natalie said with a shrug, pulling away from me, “Oh well, easier tofind you, I guess. So when are you guys moving in?”

“Wehaven’t even gotten in contact with the people yet! I’m not gonna start sayingthat it’s ‘our place’ until we’ve actually got something in writing!” I wasreally getting nervous about jinxing this whole thing, given the state of therest of the houses around. “Earliest we would move in would be June.”

“Soonly a couple of months left,” Natalie nodded, “Good thing you got on this now.You gonna miss your apartment?”

“Memoriesof it, I guess.” I would miss it the same way I ‘missed’ my dorm rooms oncampus: they represented a significant time in my life, but not one that I feltlike I would need to cling onto for nostalgia. We would have lived in theapartment for two years, one of which was a year of school for me and the othera year of work, so it was splitting the difference between two very differentlives for me. That made it significant. But I wasn’t going to take a picture ofit and stroke it while saying, “I remember when…”

“Notme!” Natalie declared, then realized what she said made no sense, “I won’t…I’llmiss my apartment when I leave. I’ve got it all set up exactly how I like it.”

“Same,”Anton replied as he moved back to his seat, “Don’t think I need anythingbigger. Worst thing that happens is sometimes my neighbors smoke too much potbut I can deal with that.”

Itwas a thought that stayed with me for a little bit, purely out of intellectualcuriosity: what would ‘my apartment’ look like? One that didn’t have to beshared with Kayla or anyone else. I’d probably go with something similar towhat we had right now: two bedroom, one bathroom. It was always good to have anextra room, even if you were fairly sure no one would ever come visit you. Ididn’t know what I’d decorate with…maybe I’d invest more in video game stuff orswords and the like. I wasn’t entirely sure. I think I’d probably get a winerack just so I could buy wine and display it, maybe pop open a bottle once aweek or something like that. I’m sure I would use my money for otherknick-knacks and…

Huh. What would I spend mymoney on? Back in high school, it would have been video games. Now, with videogames being only a side-hustle at best, what would I go with? Natalie wouldhave put it towards her streaming stuff and Anton had his Japanophile stuff,but me? I don’t know, maybe I’d build myself a really good PC just to say thatI did. Or maybe I’d spend it on a hobby. Like, I’d actually use the money to geta hobby, I didn’t know.

Oh,wait, I could afford good kitchen stuff and spend my time experimenting withwhatever recipes I wanted? Mom would be so proud of me. Seriously, though,maybe it was good that I had Kayla and the cats in my life: I now how somethingto work for.

Evennow, some time later, I really don’t know what I would do with a ton of money.Even if I were to buy all the video games and movies and books and everythingthat I was—assuming that the money means I don’t have to work and thereforehave time to enjoy it all—I don’t know how much of a dent it would make in myfinances. As long as I have someplace to sleep and the ability to get food, I’mhappy.

Oh,and maybe eventually we’d get a house with a nice view of a quiet valley whereI could walk out early in the morning with a cup of tea and just breathe in thequiet tranquility. Maybe have a boat I could take out onto a lake just to getaway from everything. I could live with that.

Isent off the email to the company listed on the website, expressing ourinterest and desire to see the house as soon as possible. There were no listedviewings online so I figured we’d just have to set up something privately. Iwas liking the pictures more and more—possibly because, like most people, themore it seemed like something was in my grasp, the better it looked—but Iwanted us to walk through and actually look at it. Visualize our stuffin it, smell it, see the little chips and dents that the pictures never show.

Kaylawas still too preoccupied with her studies to really ‘get into’ the idea of thehouse, but she still smiled whenever I brought it up. “As long as theyapprove,” she commented, nodding at Athena and Ember, who were face-first intothe food bowl at the moment.

“Aslong as they have food and a litter box, I’m sure they’ll be fine,” I saiddismissively, wishing the cats wouldn’t moon us the whole time they ate. Nomatter where we were in the room, they somehow always angled themselves toensure we were looking at their butts the whole time. Kayla liked to call them‘fuzzy-butts’ in a cutesy sort of way. I really didn’t want to think of themlike that.

“Whatif they say they need us to move in earlier?” Kayla suddenly asked, looking upfrom her laptop where she appeared to be studying the skeletal design of…well,without the skin or ears or anything, it could have been a dog or a horse or adragon. Minus the wings.

“Thenwe’ll move in earlier,” I replied, speaking a little quicker than I shouldhave. This was actually something I’d thought about—that we’d thoughtabout—and it had informed why I waited until this particular time tostart looking for a place. We’d already received a couple of emails from theapartment people about renewing our lease and we had told them that we wouldnot be renewing. Of course, if we didn’t end up finding somewhere else to live,we’d have to consider that and hope that they hadn’t ended up signing onsomeone else to the apartment.

It'ssuch a quick-change procedure. One would like to imagine that there was a bitmore of a grace period allowed between your movements. I’m sure that buying ahouse gave you a bit more wiggle room, but we weren’t there yet.

“Andpay two rents?” Kayla pointed out.

“Itwould only be for a month or two. I don’t like it but we’d be able to doit. I can ask Mr. Henderson about some overtime, see if that can give us aboost.” Shit, I might as well ask about that anyway, just to get some extracash.

“Don’tpush yourself too hard. If it’s only for a couple of months…” She trailed offand looked back down at her book, gripping it with trembling hands. “I reallywanna throw this thing right now. My fiancé is working to get us a house and Ican barely do anything to help out. I’m sorry, Jack.”

“Nothingfor you to be sorry about, baby. You’re working to get a great job once you’reout of college. I’m not gonna get in the way. If all you did was playvideogames, maybe I’d have a problem with that, but this?” I gestured at hertextbooks, shaking my head.

“Ijust don’t want you to think you’re doing this completely on your own. Or thatI don’t care.”

“Inever think that. I never would. Honestly, I’d feel even worse if you startedgetting worse grades because you were trying to help me with stuff.” I didn’tactually know what her grades were; she was reluctant to talk about them and Isaw no need to push. She was passing everything and, from what I was able todiscern, not just by the skin of her teeth. She was doing well and that was allthat I needed to know.

Ididn’t get an email responding to my inquisition about the house for anothercouple of days and I was at the point of considering sending another email. Ichecked every day but the house was still listed so that was a good sign. Itwas right near Des Moines so there were probably a good number of people eagerfor it but nothing had been signed yet. I was wishing on whatever luck I hadthat it would hold.

Andthen came the email response. It was not really personalized or anything; itjust thanked me for my interest in the place and gave me the name and numberfor one of their agents, who would be able to properly set up a viewing dateand time. I would have thought that the company itself would do that, but Iwasn’t in the business so I didn’t know their style.

Icalled up the agent named Kate Marshall and she chipperly informed me that theycould get Kayla and I in for a viewing as early as Monday afternoon. Kaylablanched a little—probably thinking about the studying she’d have to shufflearound—but still immediately agreed. “You’re not doing this on your own,” shesaid resolutely when I’d offered to just take pictures and video of the placefor her.

“Atleast you can study in the car ride down there?” I suggested.

“Iam so sick of studying,” she groaned, pushing her laptop away and rubbing hereyes, “I feel like I know all of this already but I have to keep readingso it really sticks. I need you to quiz me on the skeletal structure of a catand I should be able to just automatically name every bone that you point to.In, like, two seconds.”

“Really?”That was extreme. Granted, sometimes it felt like school demanded that—toss youa math question and if you take longer than a minute, you’re a dunce—but I washaving a hard time believing it could be that crazy.

“Notreally but if someone brings in a pet that’s in distress, I need to beable to diagnose parts of them right away. Sort of like if you got brought tothe hospital. You’d want your doctor to be right on top of all of that, right?”

“Yeah,I would. Still, that’s a lot.”

Shesmiled wryly at me. “Baby, I will bet you money that I could ask you to recitesome Shakespeare monologue right now and you’d be able to rattle off the wholething from memory. That’s basically where I need to be.”

“Butyour stuff is way more complicated than Shakespeare. I’ve seen the sortsof words you need to be familiar with. Shakespeare’s twisty but he’s not thatincomprehensible.”

Shebarked a laugh and grinned at me. “Maybe he makes sense to you, baby, but thisstuff?” She tapped her textbook. “This makes…well, it makes sense to me in away it wouldn’t make sense to you if I just gave it to you.”

“You’veplayed Shakespeare! It’s not completely new to you!”

“Doesn’tmean I always understood it or that I completely remember it. Just like you anddinosaurs.” That shut me up. Mom always liked to tell people how, when I waslittle, I could rattle off the names of almost every dinosaur and what era theylived in. I was the kid who would smugly tell you that a T-Rex and atriceratops could never have fought since they lived millions of yearsapart.

Kaylawas smarter than me. I felt no shame in admitting it. When we eventually hadkids, I had no problem helping them with basic homework stuff, but there was nochance that I’d try and take the ‘scholar’ role away from her. Even if I becamea published author, I wouldn’t claim the title.

Mondayrolled around and though I was not looking forward to how exhausted I was goingto be at work—I always looked forward to Friday and the prospect of sleeping inwith great relish, meaning that the first couple of days were the worst—havinga house to look at was pushing all of that to the side. I was going to pick upKayla on campus and then we were going to be driving down to the house, givingher an opportunity to study along the way. She’d made a face when I recommendedit again but appeared content.

Asalways, I took the long route through campus, just to look around and remember.I hadn’t been there much this semester; I still texted Connor but she was busywith a lot of her own stuff and I think the inability to see me every singleday had finally become something ‘normal’ for her. That, and the cold discourageda lot of hanging out. And she was fully committed in her new relationship. Andshe’d gotten cast in the musical (they were doing “Merrily We Roll Along”) soshe was focused a lot on that.

Iwas happy for her and knew that my presence in her life was always going tohave to slowly be rolled back. Just, you know, it might have happened a littlequicker than I’d thought. It was a cruel thought but having Natalie around madeit easier to transition from college friends to work friends. And then when wemoved out of Ames? That would be about it.

AndI found myself oddly at peace with that. Not happy, not content, but what wasthe solution? To demand I push myself further into Connor’s life? There was areason I didn’t go to the parties they were still holding at Bessie, eventhough I still got notified about them.

Iwas waiting outside of the building for about ten minutes before Kayla camerunning out, zipping up her coat as her backpack bounced heavily against herback. “You all right?” I asked her as soon as she got in.

“Yeah,why?” she asked breathlessly, staring at me in confusion.

“Just,your backpack…” I gestured to it in the backseat. It was bulging and thick andI didn’t have to pick it up to know that it was heavy.

“Yeah,it’s fine,” she replied in confusion as she buckled her seatbelt, “Come on, weneed to be there in, like, thirty minutes, right?” It was a little less thanthat but I wasn’t worried about making it on time.

Ipulled us onto the street and said, “Sorry, just…Just sorry, that’s all.” Ismiled at her. “How were classes?”

“Aboutthe same,” she replied dully, reaching back to pull one of her textbooks out ofher bag, “Of course today would be the day they decide to push another paperonto us.” She chuckled humorlessly as she plopped the book open on her lap.

“Howlong do you have to write it?”

“Amonth but it’s just on top of everything else.” She ran her hand through herhair, twirled the end of her bow for a moment, and then said, “Is it okay ifwe’re just quiet for a little bit so I can study?” I was about to tell her thatthat had been my plan all along, but saying that would have meant continuing totalk, so I just mimed zipping my lips shut and turned my attention to the road.I saw her give me a grateful smile out of the corner of my eye before sheturned back to her textbook.

Ireflected that I had seen Kayla with her laptop or a textbook more than I’dseen her without one. I considered teasing her about forgetting what her legslooked like because they were always covered, but didn’t think she’d appreciateit at the moment. Maybe when summer rolled around and she didn’t have all thatknowledge to cram into her head.

Theneighborhood we were driving to was about as close to the ‘suburbs’ as youwould get in Iowa. Yes, there were streets with houses all in a row, but itnever actually made me think ‘suburbs’; it was just an area where people lived.It’s hard to explain. I guess I just always thought ‘suburbs’ meant the placewhere people got away from the hustle and bustle of the ‘work’ area. Is thatmaking sense? I wish I could explain it better but I have no pictures of theplace.

Inany event, the road we were on had plenty of space between houses, enough thatwe could get a garden going if we wanted. Heck, with Kayla being out of schoolduring the summer, she might actually have time to tend to it when she wasn’tat work. I glanced at her to tell her this but she was still stuck in hertextbook. I cleared my throat and she looked up. “Oh, nice!” she said, moreloudly than enthusiastically, and she tossed her book in the backseat.

Thehouse we pulled up to was, to my surprise, not as small as I thought it wouldbe. It was no mansion but mom had warned me that pictures of houses online usedpictures that deliberately upscaled them so they looked bigger. This didn’tlook especially smaller. It had a small porch and a curved sidewalkrunning up from the side of the driveway. The garage looked large enough forone vehicle though, like I said, we would only use it for storage.

Therewas already a car in the parking lot—I assumed it was Kate Marshall from therental place—so I parked along the curb in front of the house. “Hey, look atthat,” I said to Kayla with a grin, “We get to fight over who gets thedriveway.”

“Whoevergets home first, that’s who,” she replied, then got a smug look on her face,“So I think it’ll be me.”

“UnlessI shift it there while you’re in class.”

“Isuppose, but then you have to go to work and then I can justshift it myself.” It was a stupid discussion, and utterly pointless topic thatmeant nothing, but it was a discussion we were having about what couldpotentially be our house, so I was fine having it.

KateMarshall was dressed with the sort of professionalism that led one to believeshe was all business, no fun, but her smile was bright as she waved us inside.“Come in, come in!” she called to us, “It’s warm in here!”

Weshook her hand as we walked up and, indeed, the house was very warm. Thefoyer was large enough to hold the three of us, though would have struggled tohold more. The living room was immediately to the left—I already startedmentally placing the coffee table, the couch, and the entertainmentcenter—while off to the right was a small hallway that held a bathroom and ledto a door that I guessed was the garage.

“Allright, so, welcome,” Miss Marshall said, gesturing around, “I’m assuming you’veseen the pictures online but we can go ahead and just show you around. Is thereany room in particular you want to start with?”

Iglanced at Kayla but one look at her told me that she was fine handing me thereins on this one. “I guess we can just start down here and work our wayaround?” I suggested lightly, not really sure how to take point. Dad had alwayssaid to come to a house with plenty of questions. Aside from rent and theincluded utilities, I didn’t really have any questions.

“Fantastic!Well, to start with…”

Shewalked us around, rattling off facts about the house: how old it was, what sortof work had been done on it, and so forth. It was all innocuous stuff; I didn’tmuch care about how old it was, so long as it still held up and there wasn’tanything likely to fall or break while we were around. As for the house itself,everything was looking perfectly fine in terms of the dimensions. We wereexpanding upwards and downwards, meaning there was more space to spreadeverything around. It wasn’t massively larger than the apartment—Kaylaand I would later estimate that we were only adding a few feet in each room—butthat would make all the difference. Plus, with it being spread out, it gave thecats plenty of room to zoom around and get all their energy out.

Itried to ask questions but found that I didn’t really have much to ask, giventhat the house was not exactly a complex one. It was modestly-sized, had a goodyard, and space for all of our stuff. If I wanted to think ahead, there wouldbe room for a baby as well, probably up to toddler age. That was the importantpart. Other than that, it was a perfectly fine house, with comfortableamenities, working appliances, and nothing that jumped out at me asparticularly egregious. There were some scuffs on the walls, the carpet clearlywasn’t new, and the bathrooms could do with a little cleaning, but nothing thatmade me want to flee for the hills.

“So!”Miss Marshall said as we rounded out the tour by looking into the garage, whichhad a trash can and a recycling bin pressed into a corner beneath a mountedcorkboard, “What do you think? Do you have any other questions?”

“Uhhh…”Once more, I glanced at Kayla, who gave me nothing to suggest there wasanything else on her mind. “No, I think that’s just about it when it comes to—”

“Anybodyelse showing interest?” Kayla suddenly asked, making me and Miss Marshall jump.Kayla had only said one or two words the whole time so an entire sentence,however short it was, ended up being a surprise.

“I…Oh,um, there have been a few other asks,” Miss Marshall said, recovering herselfand turning the wattage back on with her smile, “I’m not sure how serious theyall are but there will be a few other viewings.”

“Andhow do we make ourselves the top candidates for it?” I asked the questionlooking at Kayla the whole time, just in case she had an objection. She’dlooked interested in the house as we’d gone around and her question made methink she was good to start staking a claim, but I didn’t want to assume.

MissMarshall was more prepared for that question: “Just submit your application as soonas possible.” She held up a small notepad she carried around with her. “I canwrite down that you are both very interested?”

“Yes,”Kayla confirmed with a hard nod, “We are.” She took my hand and gave it astrong squeeze, giving me a warm smile. “Perfect first home.”

“Whereare you both living right now?” Miss Marshall asked. She had given us one ortwo questions during the tour, mostly aimed at figuring out what we werelooking for or if we had alterations we were considering for the house. Focusedall on the house, not really on us.

“Apartmentin Ames,” I replied, wanting to contribute as well. Then, on an inspiration, Iadded, “I’m working at Terraton Industries around here and, well, it’s a bit ofa drive.” Let her know that I’m employed somewhere with the word ‘Industries’in it. A respectable position and, more importantly, a stable one.

MissMarshall did not react in any obvious way to my mention of employment otherthan to write down a quick note. “Well, I can understand wanting to be closerto your job. Like I said, just fill out the application and get it to us as soonas possible. Just to let you know, there will be a deposit and first and lastmonth’s rent required.”

Hityou up front for a nice chunk of change. Of course. We took care of ourapartment so we were fully expecting to get our deposit on that back, but forall that they needed to know that we were making so much of an exponential ofthe rent per month, why crack so hard at the bank account? A deposit? Sure. Hitus up for the first month’s rent? Made sense. Everything else just feltexcessive.

“Yeah,that’ll be no problem,” I said at once, keeping my cool. No reason to have herthink we would be a ‘problem’. I felt Kayla stiffen slightly next to me but shedidn’t say anything.

“Wonderful!Well, you both have my email and my number if you need to reach me aboutanything.”

“I’llshoot you an email as soon as we get the application in,” I said confidently,still in ‘acting’ mode. Have her think that we were fully ready, that we couldmove in the next day, no problem. Honestly, we probably could were itnot for our current living arrangements. With them hitting us up for that muchmoney initially, I’d prefer not to have a whole other rent to pay on top ofthat.

“Thatsounds good to me! Well, hope to hear from you both soon!”

Wewaited until we were in the car before deciding to say something. Kayla got thewords out first: “She’s super perky.” She didn’t sound upset or judgmental,though I wish she sounded more amused than she did.

“She’strying to get us to sign something. So what did you think of the house?”

“It’sgreat. We’re putting in the application right away, right?”

“Yeah.”I looked at her as we drove away, sensing something else in her voice. I didn’tknow how to explain it. It wasn’t hesitation or disappointment or anything likethat; it was a catch around something. “Everything all right?”

“Yeah,I just want us to get it as soon as possible,” she said bluntly.

“Baby,if you want me to keep looking around—”

“No,I don’t. I like this house. I really like it. Just…I want us to get itas soon as possible because I feel like if I see something else come along thatI like, I’ll start trying to figure out which one we want more and then therewill always be ‘another one’ and then we’ll run out of time to get ahouse.” She said all of this with minimal breath and so had to take a moment ortwo to breathe. “I know we can be happy in this house. I want it to be ourhouse. I just…I know how we’d get.” She gave me a smirk. “See? I didn’t justsay you. We both would be.”

“Thanks?”I took the compliment, even though it felt like it had a nice nougat center of insult.“And yeah, I like it too. I know the cats will love it just as much.” I lookedat the house in the rearview mirror. It didn’t look any different—it wasn’tsuddenly ‘beautiful’ now that we had decided to put in an application for it—butseeing it still felt…warm. The kind of warm you feel when you come in fromshoveling your driveway and there’s a nice hot cup of cocoa waiting for you. “I’llhave to get good at shoveling and mowing again.”

“Yeah,you will,” she said with a grin, looking like she was perking up a little bit, “We’llhave so much space for stuff! What should we get first?”

“Thehouse, obviously.”

“Well,duh, smartass! I meant what should we get, like, for the house? Anothercouch? Some more bookshelves? Stuff like that.”

“Maybewe should look at some more stuff for the kitchen?” The kitchen at the housewasn’t massive but it had a lot more cabinet space for equipment. We didn’t needto go overboard with something like a juicer or anything, but it would be niceto see what we could get to expand our culinary options.

“Yeah,we can do that, but what else?”

“Well,clearly you’ve got an idea, so how about you just tell me?”

Shechewed on her lip for a moment before saying, “Maybe a nice comfy armchair? Mygrandparents always had this nice big leather one that I loved sitting in and Ialways told myself that I’d get one when I had my own house. It wouldn’t fit inthe apartment but maybe now with some more space…?”

“Wecan look into doing that,” I replied solicitously, “Were you really nervous toask me about it?”

“Look,jinxes still happen! I don’t wanna jinx anything about this!” She looked at thetime and said, “And we need to get you home so you can get your nap in.”

“There’sgonna be a time when you get bored with treating me like an old person needingto be put down for their nap,” I told her with playful sourness, “Imagine ifthey put me back on the day shift!”

“Idon’t think you’d ever allow that. That would take you away from Natalie.”

Again,the lack of a distinct vocal indication had me glancing at her, but she’dalready grabbed her textbook from the back of the car and had plopped it openonce more. She wasn’t jealous; she’d told me that many times. She knew nothingwould ever happen to threaten our relationship and, by her own account, she’dbe happy to hang out with Natalie again once her classmates stopped being thenecessary focus of her attention.