26. Adriana
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Adriana
Three months later, and I’ve learned that happiness is boring.
Not boring in a bad way. Boring the way Sunday mornings are boring. Boring the way coffee and toast and arguments about whose turn it is to do the dishes are boring. The boring that people who’ve never had it don’t understand is actually the whole point.
I finish my semester. Pass everything, even the statistics class that made me want to cry twice a week. Enzo brings me flowers when I show him my grades, actual flowers from an actual florist, not the bodega carnations I would’ve expected from someone who’s never had to celebrate small victories.
“It’s not a small victory,” he says when I point this out. “You went back to school after everything. You did it on your own. That’s huge.”
“It’s a community college.”
“So?”
“So it’s not like I got into Harvard.”
“Do you want to go to Harvard?”
I think about it. “No.”
“Then why does it matter?”
He has a point. I hate when he has a point.
***
I keep my room through the end of the semester, like I said I would.
I stay there maybe four nights total.
The first time is on purpose. Lucia’s having a crisis about some guy, and I stay up until three in the morning eating ice cream and dissecting his texts like they’re ancient scripture. The second time, I just miss it. Miss the smallness, the simplicity, the proof that I can survive on my own.
The third and fourth times are accidents. Studying too late, falling asleep in my clothes, waking up to sunlight through that narrow window.
Lucia gives me grief about it every time I come back. “Just move in with him already. You’re paying rent to store your sweaters.”
“It’s not about the room. It’s about knowing I could come back if I needed to.”
“And do you need to?”
“No.”
“So?”
“So shut up and help me pick a dress for tonight.”
She throws a pillow at me. I throw it back. We end up ordering Greek food and talking until the restaurant closes, and I text Enzo that I’m staying over.
He doesn’t ask why. Doesn’t push. Just sends back: miss you. sleep well.
When I first met him, that restraint would’ve cost him. I’d have seen it in his jaw, his eyes, the held stillness of his hands. Now it comes easier. He trusts me to come back.
I always do.
***
The apartment starts to feel like mine too.
It happens in layers. First the practical things, a drawer, then two, then half the closet. My shampoo in the shower. My books on the nightstand. The cheap coffee I like instead of the fancy beans he used to buy.
“You don’t have to change your coffee for me,” I tell him.
“I like your coffee.”
“You called it peasant beans three weeks ago.”
“I’ve evolved.”
“You keep saying that.”
“It keeps being true.”
Then the less practical things. A blanket I bought at a street market, thrown over the couch. A print I found at a thrift store, hung in the hallway. Little pieces of me scattered through his space, making it ours.
One morning I come out of the bedroom and find him standing in front of the print, coffee in hand, just looking at it.
“You hate it,” I say.
“I don’t hate it.”
“You’re staring at it like it offended you.”
“I’m staring at it because I like seeing your things here.” He turns, and his face is soft in a way that still surprises me. “I like being reminded that you live here. That this is your home too.”
I don’t know what to say. So I kiss him instead.
That’s becoming a habit, kissing him when words feel insufficient. He doesn’t seem to mind.
***
We fight sometimes.
Real fights, not the polite silence I had with Rafael. Not the walking-on-eggshells terror I had with my father. Actual arguments, voices raised, doors shut a little too hard.
He works too much. I call him on it. He gets defensive, “This is how I built everything, Ana, I can’t just stop,” and I get frustrated, “I’m not asking you to stop, I’m asking you to be present,” and we snap at each other until one of us says something a little too sharp.
Then silence. Separate rooms. The specific loneliness of being angry at someone you love.
But here’s the thing. It always ends.
Sometimes he apologizes first. Sometimes I do. Sometimes we meet in the middle, both of us saying “I’m sorry” at the same time, laughing at the overlap.
“I don’t want to be my father,” he says one night, after a fight about his schedule. “Working until I die, missing everything that matters.”
“You’re not your father.”
“I could be. It would be easy. Just keep going, keep building, keep proving…” He stops. Shakes his head. “I don’t even know who I’m proving anything to anymore.”
“Then stop.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Isn’t it?”
He looks at me. Really looks, the way he does when he’s puzzling a thing through.
“I’ll try,” he says finally. “I’ll try to be better.”
And he does. Not perfectly. He still works too much, still disappears into his head some nights with his jaw tight and his mind a thousand miles away. But he tries. He leaves his phone in the other room during dinner. He takes Sundays off. He shows up.
That’s all I’m asking. For him to show up.
***
I’m messy. He’s pathologically neat.
I leave clothes on the floor, dishes in the sink, books open face-down on every surface. He moves through the apartment like a man haunted by entropy, straightening and tidying and sighing louder than words.
“I’m not doing it on purpose,” I tell him.
“I know.”
“It’s just how my brain works. I set a thing down and forget it exists.”
“I know.”
“So stop sighing like I’m personally victimizing you.”
He pauses, dish towel in hand. “I didn’t realize I was sighing.”
“You’re always sighing. It’s very passive-aggressive.”
“I’m not passive-aggressive. I’m just…” He searches for the word. “Tidy.”
“Compulsively.”
“Consistently.”
I throw a sock at him. He catches it, folds it, actually folds it, and puts it in the hamper.
“See?” I say. “Compulsive.”
But I start picking up after myself. Not perfectly, but enough. And he stops sighing, mostly. We find a middle ground that doesn’t make either of us crazy.
That’s what this is, I’m realizing. Two people constantly adjusting, accommodating, making room. Not losing yourself. Just making space for someone else.
***
I forget to tell him when I’m staying late at the library.
The first time, I don’t think anything of it. I’m deep in a chapter, my phone on silent, and when I finally surface it’s past ten and I have six missed calls.
He’s pacing when I get home. Trying not to look like he was pacing.
“I’m fine,” I say. “I was just studying.”
“I know. I just…” He stops. Runs a hand through his hair. “I didn’t know where you were.”
“I was at the library.”
“I know that now.”
There’s something in his voice. Not anger. Fear. The fear that comes from loving someone and not being able to keep them safe.
“Hey.” I go to him, take his hands. “I’m sorry. I should’ve texted.”
“You don’t have to report to me. I don’t want to be that guy.”
“You’re not that guy. Wanting to know I’m safe isn’t the same as controlling where I go.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No.” I squeeze his hands. “One is about power. The other is about love. You’re not my father, Enzo. You’re not trying to keep me in a cage. You just worry. That’s allowed.”
He’s quiet a moment. Then: “I’ll try to worry less.”
“And I’ll try to text more.”
“Deal.”
After that, I make a point of letting him know when my plans change. Not because he demands it. Because I understand why he needs it. Because love is paying attention to the small things that matter to someone else, even when they don’t matter to you.
***
His right hand at the company comes over for dinner most Thursdays.
I didn’t expect that. I’m not sure Enzo expected it either, that the man who’s run his office for years, the closest thing he has to a real friend, would slot so easily into this new life. But he does. He’s loud and dry, with no filter whatsoever, and he treats me like I’ve always been here.
“You’re good for him,” he tells me one night, while Enzo’s in the kitchen wrestling with a corkscrew. “He’s less of a bastard now.”
“He was never a bastard.”
“He was absolutely a bastard. A well-meaning one, but still.” He grins. “Now he’s just well-meaning. It’s an improvement.”
“I’ll take the credit.”
“You should. I’ve spent years trying to knock the worst of it out of him and got nowhere. You did it in six months.”
“What are you two talking about?” Enzo asks, coming back with the wine.
“Your many flaws,” the other man says cheerfully.
“Ah. Carry on.”
Enzo sits next to me, close enough that our shoulders touch.
His friend launches into a story about some disaster at the office, and Enzo laughs, and I think: this is what I wanted.
Not the drama, not the revenge, not the high-stakes passion of our beginning.
Just this. Dinner with a friend. Wine on a Thursday. The ordinary texture of a life.
***
Amelia visits on a Saturday in early spring.
She and Enzo have reached some kind of truce. Not friends, exactly, but not enemies either. They circle each other politely, small talk about traffic and weather, neither of them willing to be the one who starts a fight.
“He’s still too intense,” Amelia tells me later, while Enzo is conveniently in another room. “The way he looks at you. Like you’re the only person in the world.”
“I like the way he looks at me.”
“Of course you do. You’re just as bad as he is.” She shakes her head. “You’re disgustingly happy. It’s revolting.”
“You love it.”
“I tolerate it. There’s a difference.”
But she’s smiling when she says it. And when she leaves, she hugs Enzo, briefly, awkwardly, like she’s not sure where to put her arms. He pats her back with equal uncertainty.
“That was painful to watch,” I say, after she’s gone.
“I thought it went well.”
“You looked like you were being held hostage.”
“I was being supportive. That’s my supportive face.”
“Your supportive face needs work.”
He pulls me close, chin resting on my head. “I’ll practice.”
***