13. She Had a Whole Speech Prepared, With Three Austen References
She Had a Whole Speech Prepared, With Three Austen References
Chapter Thirteen
I leaned against the doorframe of my kitchen, a coffee mug warming my hand, watching Vera move around the small space like she'd always belonged there.
She wore one of my old faded Army t-shirts that had survived two tours and approximately four hundred washes, and nothing else, her bare legs catching the morning light as she hummed while scrambling eggs.
Her hair was still a beautiful disaster from sleep and from my hands the night before, and she was completely at ease about all of it, moving through my kitchen like she'd been doing it for years.
I had been awake for eleven minutes. I was already completely gone.
We'd been playing house for months, both of us pretending we didn't want to make it real. Her toothbrush next to mine from nearly the very start. Her dresses in my closet between my uniforms. Her books conquering my nightstand like a literary invasive species.
It had been two weeks since we'd first said I love you out loud, and approximately two weeks since I'd started running the math on why we were paying for two apartments.
"Move in with me," I said.
The spatula stopped moving. Vera turned slowly, the way you turned when you weren't certain you'd heard correctly and didn't want to react to the wrong thing.
"What?"
"Move in with me. Or I'll move in with you. Whatever. I genuinely don't care which. I just want to stop pretending home isn't already wherever you are."
She stared at me. "Petra Alves."
"We're together every night anyway. Your shampoo is in my shower.
I know where you keep your spare glasses.
I've started buying the good vanilla extract because you actually use it.
" I crossed to her, took the spatula out of her hand, set it down, and held both of hers.
"I love you. You love me. Why are we paying for two of everything? "
"It's only been—"
"I know how long it's been."
"Other people would say—"
"I don't care what other people would say. I care what you say." I squeezed her hands. "So. What do you say, baby?"
I watched the emotions move across her face in sequence of surprise, hesitation, the brief appearance of something cautious, and then, like the desert after rain… hope, opening all at once.
Her hands came up to cup my face, her thumbs brushing over my cheekbones. "Yes," she said. "God, yes. Obviously yes. I've actually been waiting for you to ask for weeks."
"You've been waiting?"
"I had a whole speech prepared, but I was still unprepared when you finally suggested it. I'm sorry." She looked mildly indignant. "It was very good, too. Included three separate Austen references."
"You prepared a speech."
"I'm a librarian, Petra. I prepare for things. But your version was also good. Very direct. Very you."
"High praise."
"It really is." She kissed me, tasting of coffee and dreams, and the eggs started smelling gently of impending disaster on the stove. Neither of us moved.
"Your eggs," I said against her mouth.
"I don't care about the eggs."
"You're going to care about them in about forty-five seconds."
She turned and scraped them off the heat, flipped off the stove, looked at them critically, and then back at me. "They're fine. Rustic."
I laughed, unable to help it. "They're brown, baby."
"Rustic," she repeated firmly, "means different things in different contexts."
"Your place or mine?" I asked, before she could defend the eggs further.
She didn't hesitate. "Mine. Yours is just where you sleep. Mine has curtains."
"I have curtains."
"You have one curtain. Singular. In the bathroom." She pointed the spatula at me. "That doesn't count."
She was not wrong.
"Yours," I agreed. "Then yours. If that's what you want."
"Ours," she corrected gently.
The word settled into my chest.
Ours.
The crew showed up on moving day with Miller's truck, a concerning amount of enthusiasm, and absolutely no intention of being useful without commentary.
"Alves is getting domesticated," Jackson announced, appearing in my doorway. He was wearing his flame-patterned apron, which he had not been asked to bring and which served no functional purpose on a moving day. "I genuinely never thought I'd see this."
"Pick up a box, Jackson."
"I'm taking it in. Processing it emotionally." He looked around my apartment at the stacked boxes. "Also, you have so few possessions. It's almost philosophical. Like a monk."
"A monk with a motorcycle," Stevens offered helpfully, appearing behind him with his sleeves already rolled up.
"Stevens, take the books."
"On it." He picked up the box, immediately staggered under the weight. "Oh. Oh, these are—how do you have this many books?"
"They're Vera's."
"Vera's books are in your apartment?"
"That's generally what happens when you're in a relationship, Stevens."
"I'm just saying, this is already a lot of—" He attempted a step and had to start over. "She work here? This is like a whole library, Alves."
Miller arrived last, as he always did, precisely when he intended to, with the kind of competent silence that made everyone else feel slightly ashamed of their noise.
He surveyed my apartment, surveyed the boxes, and picked up my couch in a single motion that suggested he had done this before and found it unimpressive.
"Down the hall?" he said.
"Down the hall," I confirmed.
"Mm." He walked out with the couch. That was it. That was the whole interaction.
"I want to be Miller when I grow up," Stevens said worshipfully.
"You want to be a sixty-year-old man with a thirty-year fire career and strong opinions about vanilla extract?"
"The couch thing. Just specifically the couch thing."
Vera appeared in the doorway of what was now our apartment wearing denim cutoff shorts and a tied-up vintage blouse, her hair in a high ponytail. She looked like a photograph someone had taken of summer, personified.
God, I was so lucky.
"Pizza's here!" she announced. "Come eat before you do any heavy lifting."
The crew's transformation was immediate and total.
Stevens put down his box. Jackson untied his apron strings and then retied them, for reasons, I guess.
Miller set down the couch in the hallway and made a beeline toward the smell of cheese and pepperoni, which was the fastest I had ever seen him move voluntarily. It was almost comical.
"You didn't have to do this," I murmured, walking over and pressing a kiss to Vera's temple.
"They're helping us build our life together," she said simply. "Least I can do is feed them."
"Our life together," I repeated thoughtfully.
"Ours." She leaned back against me for half a second, her body warm against mine. "Go eat. Miller looks like he's about to pick up something else."
He was, in fact, eyeing my weightlifting equipment with the expression of a man considering his options.
"Miller!" I called. "Pizza first."
He set down the weights. "I wasn't going to drop them."
"I know. Eat first."
We settled on the floor of what was now our living room, my things stacked around us, pizza boxes open in the middle, my crew sprawled in various configurations of mild exhaustion and maximum comfort.
"So," Jackson said, gesturing between me and Vera with his pizza slice, "how does this work? Logistically. Do you have assigned sides of the bed?"
"Jackson—"
"I'm asking for educational purposes."
"I'm on the left," Vera said cheerfully. "She's on the right. She also takes up more space than the square footage would suggest."
"I'm nearly six feet tall," I reminded everyone.
"You're nearly six feet of diagonal," Vera said. "Last Tuesday you were practically horizontal."
"I was not—"
"Your foot was in my face, Petra."
Stevens pointed at me. "I knew it. I knew you were a diagonal sleeper. You set up sleeping systems like a wildfire perimeter. Maximum coverage, minimum consideration for other people's territory."
"I do not—"
"She does," Vera said pleasantly to Stevens.
"I'm going to need both of you to stop," I said, rubbing my temples.
"She also," Vera continued, accepting another slice of pizza, "has opinions about how the towels are folded."
The crew turned to look at me.
"I don't have opinions," I said. "I have—a method. There's a difference."
"What's the method?" Jackson asked immediately.
"Military fold. Thirds, then thirds again. Efficient use of space."
Silence.
"She showed me three times," Vera said. "There was a demonstration."
"Was there a quiz?" Stevens asked, grinning.
"There was not a quiz," I said, with perhaps more emphasis than the situation required.
"She's thinking about it," Vera said, eyeing me carefully.
"I'm not—"
"She's absolutely thinking about it," Miller said, which was the most words he'd contributed to a conversation about domestic habits in living memory, and everyone, including me, stopped talking for a moment to acknowledge that.
"Miller," I said finally.
"What? You are."
He went back to his pizza. I considered my options and found I had none.
Vera patted my knee with gentle sympathy. She'd won, and I was okay with that.
Everyone filed out after everything had been moved into Vera's apartment.
Stevens left with a container of cookies Vera had prepped specifically for this occasion, Jackson with an agreement for a phone call for the crime novel discussion she'd promised, Miller with the remaining biscotti she'd made that morning and a very small nod of genuine appreciation.
Vera closed the door and leaned against it, looking at me with heat in her eyes, still in her moving-day outfit, the denim cutoff shorts and the tied-up vintage blouse, her hair coming loose from its ponytail in the way it always did by end of day, a few pieces falling around her face.
"We need to christen the apartment properly," she said. "Every room."
"Oh?" I crossed the room toward her slowly, and she watched me come the way she always did. Like she had no intention of looking anywhere else. "And how exactly does that work?"