5. Ross
ROSS
She’d moved in over two days.
Not officially. Not with a big announcement.
Friday night, Suri stayed at Kyron’s place—same as every night that week since the canoe trip—and Sunnie hadn’t gone back to the cabin to sleep. She’d stayed with me.
Saturday morning, Sunnie packed a bag at the cabin while Suri was on the river one last time.
By Saturday afternoon, she had a duffel on my apartment floor and a row of toiletries on my bathroom counter.
I didn’t ask her how long she was staying because I wasn’t sure I wanted the answer in a number.
Sunday morning, Suri was leaving for Charlotte.
Sunnie went to the cabin alone to say goodbye. I waited in the truck. Twenty minutes later, she came back with the rest of her things and Suri walking behind her.
Suri stopped at the passenger door before Sunnie got in. She looked through the window at me.
“You take care of her,” she said.
“Yes.”
That was the whole conversation. She hugged Sunnie. She got in her sedan. She drove off down the river road, and Sunnie climbed into my truck with her bag in her lap and watched the dust settle behind the car that had brought her here.
“Okay,” she said.
“Okay.”
She unpacked. Slowly. She put a stack of books on the windowsill above my couch and a row of toiletries on the bathroom counter, and the apartment looked different in a way I couldn’t fully explain.
The half-unpacked boxes against the wall stopped looking like a man hadn’t moved in and started looking like a place waiting for someone to add what was missing.
I made dinner. We ate at the small table.
Then she said it. “I should probably call my landlord tomorrow.”
I set my fork down. “About what?”
“About the lease. I’d have to give thirty days. If I’m—” She stopped. “If I’m staying.”
“Are you staying?”
She looked at me across the table. “I think I am.”
“You think?”
“I am.”
I watched her say it. She wasn’t braced. She wasn’t apologizing. She was telling me a fact about herself.
It came out before I’d decided to say it. “I haven’t asked you to.”
She tilted her head. “I know.”
“I should ask you to.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I want to. Sunnie?—”
“Ross.”
“Stay.”
“I’m staying.”
“I mean it. Not the apartment. Not the week. Stay.”
She set her own fork down. She reached across the table and took my hand.
“Ross,” she said. “I left that cabin. I didn’t go back to Charlotte. I came here. I knew what I was doing when I set the bag down on your floor, and I knew what I was doing when I told Suri I wasn’t going with her. I’m not deciding right now. I decided yesterday on a rock.”
I looked at our hands. Hers was smaller than mine. The fingers were cold.
“I haven’t stayed anywhere,” I said.
“I know.”
“I’ve been about to leave Wildwood Valley three times in the last year.”
“I know.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you told me. At the spot. You said the river runs the same direction every day, and you said it like it was a thing you needed to be true.”
I let out a breath. “My partners have been watching me,” I said. “They knew. Wells handed me the keys to the truck because he knew you were at that cabin. They’ve been quietly arranging things around me for months because they thought I was going to take off.”
“And were you?”
I thought about it. “I was about to,” I said. “I think I was about to.”
“And now?”
“Now I’m not.”
“Why?”
“Because I’d be leaving something.”
She held my hand tighter.
“That’s the whole thing, isn’t it?” she asked. “You’ve been somewhere you didn’t think was yours. I’ve been someone I didn’t think had a story. Neither one of us has been wrong about the other person. We’ve just been wrong about ourselves.”
I looked at her across the table in the half-unpacked apartment with the lamp on and the night coming in through the window. I’d been certain of her since I saw her on that road. I had not, until right now, been certain of myself.
“Stay,” I said again.
“Yes.”
I stood up. I walked around the table. She stood up too. I pulled her into me and held her against my chest and felt her arms wrap around me. We stood there in my kitchen for a long minute while I made the same decision over and over.
“I’m going to buy a house,” I said into her hair.
She laughed. “Right now?”
“This week.”
“Ross.”
“I mean it. This apartment isn’t—you’re not living above an auto shop.”
“I don’t mind the auto shop.”
“I do.”
She tilted her head up to look at me. “I’d live in a tent with you.”
“Don’t tempt me. I have one.”
She laughed. The full one this time. The one she’d been learning how to do.
I kissed her on the top of the head. I kept her there for another minute.
Then I led her to the bedroom.