Epilogue #2
"What? To bring the walls in closer? I can practically touch both the walls if I stand in the middle of the room as it is..."
"Clarke made the same argument," Barrett's voice broke in, making us both turn a little guiltily to where he was walking in the door with a tray of coffee and what looked like a pastry box.
When I had told him about my mom popping over, I hadn't exactly been surprised when he had made up some excuse to leave.
I knew my mother would be understanding since we had talked about Barrett in a long conversation while I was staked in a hotel room waiting to grab a picture of the cheating bastard.
Barrett had been up on a balcony of a neighboring building, trying to get shots in the room.
She'd responded much like I figured she would to the fact of Barrett being a little different from many people.
Well, honey, given your track record, I think different is a good thing.
She wasn't the sort to get offended by him running off. She'd only maybe met one of my boyfriends in the past because they all tended to spook too easily when the topic of 'meeting the mom' came up.
At least Barrett had a better excuse other than being a chickenshit.
I really figured he would duck out and be gone well longer than was necessary to avoid having to run into her.
Yet here he was, just a couple minutes after she had shown up. With coffee. And sweets.
"I see some of me did rub off on her after all," my mom said, turning toward him. "You must be Barrett."
"And you're Clarke's mom."
"I apologize for all of her stubbornness. I am afraid that is all me."
"She's perfect," he objected, making my belly wobble, making my mom's eyes go all soft. "Well, she had this terrible habit of believing she needs the entire bed. Even when someone else is in it."
"Tell me about it. I once woke up when she was a kid to her seemingly attempting to smother me after climbing in with me in the middle of the night. She will also hunt the entire house trying to find her present before her birthday or a holiday. She's a shameless peeker. Always has been."
"That's good to know," Barrett said, likely locking that information away for later, ensuring that should he buy me a gift, it would be so well hidden that the FBI would have trouble finding it with scent dogs and radar.
"But yeah, I was thinking about upgrading the office. Someplace with some windows for Diego," he said, eyes twinkling as he looked at me.
He still wasn't great with subtleties—and likely never would be. But if I had to admit the truth, I had been as subtle as an air horn about the office thing.
"Really? Well, I might know the perfect place..."
"Actually," Barrett interrupted, handing her a paper cup of coffee, "the place next door is up for rent.
It would almost triple the space. So Clarke can get her own desk, and we can maybe put in a seating area.
And it has windows. For Diego," he said, shooting me a smirk I couldn't help but smile back at.
"Oh! A renovation project!" my mother cheered, actually clapping her hands together.
"You do know that she is going to be all over this now, don't you?
" I asked as she moved toward the far wall, waving her arms out, prattling on and on about neutral paint colors and the right kind of material for heavy-use furniture and what kind of houseplants would work best with the light we would have.
"I think we've established I have no skill at decorating. And you have an entire room of crap in boxes. So I think we could use the help."
"Did you already look at the place?" I asked, wondering when he'd had time.
We'd been together the majority of the time, save for when Brock had taken him back to Philly for his car while I talked to my dad again and the occasional trips to stores—trips I happily took while Barrett gratefully stayed at home.
"Yeah, that's where I went this morning. It's in better shape than this place is. And the landlord was alright with us knocking down the wall."
"Really? Why?"
"He'd still get the same rent rate. And I've been a steadier tenant than anyone else he's had in and out of there over the years. It's a win-win for him."
"Are you sure about this? I know that you aren't a huge fan of change."
"It's not that much of a change, really. It's the same building in the same place. It will just be bigger. Besides, we can't keep having you trying to work at my desk with me."
"Oh, we can't, can't we?" I teased, lips curving up as my arms went around his lower back, pulling him close.
He didn't get it.
I knew he wouldn't.
And I maybe even liked that fact a little.
"You know what we can have if we have a bigger office?"
"A full-size refrigerator?" he guessed with a smile.
"A man after my own heart," I told him, never having said anything truer.
We just... worked.
It was the safest I had ever felt with someone, never wondering if it could work out, no more endless hours wondering what he was thinking.
I got him.
And he got me.
It was perfect.
Barrett - 2 Years
The office had been an easy transition. Much like I thought it would work, it was just a knocked-down wall and then a bigger space.
And while Clarke's mother did her best to transform the place into somewhere respectable—changing paint colors, getting new, less industrial-looking storage cabinets, buying furniture—my desk got to stay where it was. It was easy enough.
After a while, we had started to spend more time at Clarke's apartment, which had more space, better water pressure, and room to keep Diego's cage, so he didn't have to stay in the office when we went home at night.
Eventually, we let my lease lapse.
It was a natural progression since we never went there.
But this?
This was a big change.
The kind of change that had my arm all red and puffy from scratching, that had my chest feeling tight as I watched Clarke—who seemed to sense my utter inability to do it myself—pack everything we had in the world into boxes that Brock, Tig, and Sawyer would help us pile into a moving truck and drive to our new place.
The kind of place that had mortgage papers and a yard that would need tending and pails that would need to find their way to the curb every week and all sorts of other things that I had never needed to worry about before.
We had never been able to stay there, get used to it. We were just going to show up, move in, and live there.
"Hey Barrett," Clarke called, making my jolt, turning to find her piling bird toys into a box. "I think Diego is going to love his new room."
That was true.
One of the best features about the new house was that there were three bedrooms. One for us, one for 'just in case’—whatever that meant—and one for Diego, so he would never have to be confined to his cage if he didn't want to be, but we didn't have to worry about his beak doing any serious damage to things we would have to replace.
Bringing it up was further proof that I had been right a couple years ago when I told her that I was pretty sure she was the right person.
She seemed to understand me.
I couldn't claim that many people could, even when they tried.
Because they all did—my brother, his wife, Brock, Tig, Kenzi—they all tried to get me, to figure out how I worked. Sometimes they succeeded, but most of the time I could tell they were disappointed or felt lost, unsure.
The only person who never seemed to get disappointed, to feel like they didn't know how to talk to me, to get me on the same page as them, was Clarke. And, what's more, she seemed to do it effortlessly, without thought. It came naturally to her.
I'd never been more grateful for anything in my life.
People underestimated how important it was to be understood, to feel completely comfortable with someone.
I never gave the concept much thought before, always figuring—since experience had taught me such—that it was out of the question for me.
I really don't think I had ever even longed for it.
But then there she was, and everything was different.
She was different.
I was—slightly—different because of her.
Had she never come along, I knew without a doubt that I would still be living in a shoebox, working in a matchbox, being too obsessed about work, fighting against any little changes.
"And maybe, since we will have the yard, we can fill out that adoption paperwork I had started a couple years back."
"I knew I saw you scrolling through puppy pictures the other night," I told her. At the time, she had said she'd just been swiping through Instagram. The liar.
"I know this is a lot all at once. There's no rush on the dog. I just like the idea of the possibility. Eventually."
"I have one stipulation with the dogs."
"Okay..."
"It has to be bigger than your average backyard opossum."
"Hey! You love Khal!" she told me, smile big at the mention of her mom's new puppy—some designer thing that made it small and fluffy and incapable of doing anything other than fill a purse.
"That is the most inappropriate name for that ball of fur."
"Tell you what? I pick the dog. You pick the name."
"I can live with that."
"And with me. In our awesome new home. With a nice big bedroom, a bird room, and a completely useless-to-us kitchen."
"Not useless. We need somewhere to store the coffee mugs and the stacks of takeout menus."
To that, she shot me one of those cheek-aching smiles.
And most of the anxiety melted away.
Clarke - 8 Years
We had talked about it.
It wasn't one of those things I knew could happen accidentally. We needed to discuss it, plan it, then execute it. Calmly. Rationally.
Maybe that made it sound less exciting, but I honestly felt the opposite. Being so open about it, genuinely sharing the process of it, I thought it made it all the more fun.
During all those talking sessions, we had both come to the same conclusion.
Just one.
One would be plenty.