Chapter Thirty-Two
MICAH
We bought a house.
This was, in retrospect, probably the most Micah thing we could have done — not because it was the most practical choice, although I did make a practical case for it; and not because it was the most romantic, although I'd thought about it; but because it was the most structural.
We had a pack. The pack needed a home that was the pack's home, not an apartment that everyone kept coming to because it was the one place nobody could defend claiming was a compromise.
The conversation had actually started with Isaac, in his typical manner of bringing up the obvious thing at the moment it became impossible to avoid.
"We're going to need more square footage," he'd said, about two weeks after the ruling. "Practically speaking."
"I have a building," I'd said. I owned three residential properties in the city; one of them had a top-floor unit that had been empty for a year waiting for something I hadn't been able to name.
"Avery has an apartment," Dean had pointed out.
"Avery can keep her apartment," I'd said. "As a studio if she wants it. Her workspace. Her separate space if she needs it."
Avery had been quiet for a moment. Then: "You've thought about this."
"I think about structural problems," I'd said.
"This is a structural problem?"
"A pack with four people and no common house is four people managing logistics around a fixed point," I'd said. "The fixed point right now is your apartment. That works because you're generous. It becomes less sustainable as a long-term model."
"He's right," Isaac had said. Which was not a surprise.
"You all want to move in together," Avery had said.
"I want to have a place that's the pack's," I'd said. "What you do with your apartment is yours."
She'd looked at me for a moment. Then: "Show me the unit."
The unit was on the fourteenth floor, south-facing, with windows that looked over the city in a way that made the morning light come in at the exact angle that made rooms feel larger than they were.
It had enough bedrooms. It had a kitchen that was genuinely large enough for four people who cooked with different levels of competence and enthusiasm.
The living room was not Avery's apartment's proportions. It was something else.
She'd stood in the middle of it for a long time.
"There's a second room I could use as a workspace," she said.
"Yes."
"And I keep my apartment."
"If you want it."
"I want it. For the first month at least. I want to be able to leave."
"You can always leave," I said. "That's not contingent on the address."
She looked at me.
"I know," she said. "I want to hear you say it anyway."
"You can always leave. This is a choice you make every morning, not a structure that holds you."
She nodded.
"I want the south bedroom," she said.
"Done," I said.
The first morning she slept there, I made coffee.
I'd told her I made good coffee. This was an accurate statement.
The coffee in the new kitchen was exactly what I'd promised — not because I'd changed anything, but because the kitchen was large and the light was good and there were three other people in the space learning its acoustics, which changed the way things tasted.
She came out of the south bedroom at seven and looked at the coffee and then at me.
"I didn't leave," she said.
"I know."
"That's going to take some getting used to."
"I know that too."
She took the mug. Sat at the kitchen island. Looked at the city through the window as if she was letting herself have the thing she'd spent a long time believing she wasn't allowed to want.
Isaac appeared from the hall. Dean from the other direction. The morning was ordinary and not ordinary. Four people in the start of a day they were building together.
"I have a client call at nine," Avery said.
"Tomas wants me in the office by ten," Dean said.
"Board prep at eight-thirty," I said.
"I have a meeting in an hour," Isaac said. "Can someone make breakfast?"
"I'll make breakfast," Dean said.
He made eggs and the coffee was good and the city came through the window and nobody went anywhere they didn't mean to go.
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