Chapter 21 #2
"I know." He touches the blueprint. The bookshelves. The reading nook. "I'm starting to know."
* * *
That night, Devin sits on the bed and texts Tyler.
I don't ask to see the conversation. I give him space. Read in the corner chair while he types and reads and types. But I can see his face, and his face tells me the conversation is important.
"Tyler wants to know if I'm okay," Devin says after a while.
"Are you?"
"Yeah. I think I actually am." He keeps typing. "He says Melissa felt bad about the cayenne thing. She wanted to apologize but she was too embarrassed."
"You did put two tablespoons of cayenne in her latte."
"She earned those tablespoons." He types. Reads. Smiles. "Brian's trying to get the policy changed. Zero tolerance with an exception for defensive intervention."
"Will it work?"
"Probably not. Policies exist to protect institutions, not people. But Brian's trying." He types something else. Reads the response. His face softens. "Tyler says he's proud of me. For staying here. For letting people help."
"Tyler's smart."
He finishes the conversation and sets his phone on the nightstand. Lies back on the bed with his hands behind his head, looking at the ceiling.
"Not long now," he says. "Until the apartment."
"Not long."
"Are you going to be weird about it? When I move in?"
"Define weird."
"Like, sad. Moping. Sitting in the garage pretending to work while actually staring at the wall."
"That's oddly specific."
"Because that's what you do. You sit on the garage stool and pretend to fix things."
"I fix plenty of things."
"You fixed the Sportster. Singular. Everything else is sitting and reading. Jason told me."
"I'm between projects."
He rolls onto his side and looks at me. The lamplight. His face, the bruise finally fading, yellow-green now, almost gone. His eyes dark and warm and clear.
"I'm going to miss sleeping here," he says.
"You can sleep here whenever you want."
"I know. But I need to sleep there too. At the apartment. I need to know I can."
"I know."
"It's not about wanting to be away from you."
"I know that too."
"It's about knowing I can be alone and be okay. That I won't fall apart without someone holding me."
"Dev, you slept in a laundromat chair and got up the next morning and went to work. You can be alone and be okay. You've been doing that your entire life."
"But I was surviving. I want to know I can be alone and be more than surviving. That I can be alone in my own apartment with my own kitchen and my own window and be... happy. By myself. Without needing someone else's arms to make it okay."
"You will be."
"You don't know that."
"I know you. That's enough." I close my book. "And for the record, you'll be three miles from the bar. You're not moving to another continent. You'll be here for dinner, and book club, and cooking lessons, and Saturday mornings. The apartment doesn't mean you disappear."
"Promise?"
"The dragon mug will be on the bar. Your stool will be at the counter. The blueprints will be in the garage. Nothing changes except where you sleep. And even that's negotiable."
"Negotiable how?"
"My bed misses you already and you haven't left yet."
"Your bed is a twin mattress on a frame that creaks every time we move."
"It has character."
"It has a structural problem."
"Same thing."
He laughs. The real one. The full brightness. And I think about the apartment on Birch Street, and a house with bookshelves four months from being real, and the fact that everything I want is right here, in this room, arguing about my mattress.
"Silas?"
"Yeah?"
"Thank you. For the bookshelves. For the nook. For building something without telling me and then telling me when I needed to hear it."
"Always."
"And for the record, your mattress is terrible."
"Noted."
"The house better have a real bed."
"King-sized. It's on the plans."
"You put the bed on the blueprints?"
"Dave asked about furniture placement. I may have been specific."
"How specific?"
"King bed, facing the window. Reading lamps on both sides. Nightstand deep enough for a stack of books."
"You designed the bedroom around books."
"I designed the bedroom around you. The books are a bonus."
He's quiet. Then, very softly: "I don't deserve you."
"Wrong. You deserve everything. But we can argue about that tomorrow. It's almost midnight."
"One more thing."
"Yeah?"
"Kvothe is a disaster."
"Kvothe is a complex character with —"
"Kvothe is a disaster and you love him because you see yourself in him and that's fine but he's still a disaster."
"Go to sleep, Dev."
"Disaster."
"Sleep."
"I'm sleeping. I'm sleeping and Kvothe is still a disaster."
I turn off the lamp. He curls against me in the dark. His breathing slows. His hand finds mine across his waist and holds on.
Soon. The apartment. And then, eventually, in its own time, bookshelves.
We'll get there.
* * *
Thursday and Friday pass in the rhythm we're building.
Library mornings. Café afternoons. Garage time while Devin does cooking lessons with Jason.
He can make three things now: cacio e pepe, a simple roast chicken, and a soup that Jason calls "rudimentary but honest." The soup has too much salt but Devin is learning that his relationship with salt is adversarial and adjusting accordingly.
Friday afternoon, Knox takes me to the back lot.
The first two houses are framed. Wooden skeletons against the fall sky.
Two-by-fours and plywood, the bones of homes that will have walls and windows and people inside them.
Vaughn and Robin's house on the left, Ash and Jason's on the right, there if Ash ever decides to move to the pride, but for now they can split their time between the houses.
Knox wanted them to have a place of their own here too.
The shapes are clear now. You can see where the kitchens will be, where the bedrooms will face, where the porches will look out at the fire pit in the center.
"Framing's ahead of schedule," Knox says. "Dave's got a good crew."
"When do they start on three, four, and five?"
"Once one and two are under roof. Another month." He looks at me. "The bookshelves will add a week to house five."
"I know."
"Worth it?"
"Every day."
Knox nods. We stand there in the October afternoon, looking at the beginning of something. Two houses with bones. Three more in the ground. A fire pit that will have string lights because Robin declared them non-negotiable and nobody argues with Robin about aesthetics.
"He's good for you," Knox says.
I don't ask who. "Yeah."
"You're different. Since he came."
"Different how?"
"You talk more. You're in the room instead of next to it.
" Knox is quiet for a moment, the alpha quiet, the kind that has weight.
"You were always the patient one. The one who watched and waited and didn't need anything from anyone.
I used to think that was strength. Now I think it was just lonely. "
"Both things."
"Yeah. Both things." He claps my shoulder. "The apartment soon?"
"Soon."
"The house will be ready in four months. Give or take."
"He'll come to it in his own time."
"I know." Knox looks at the framed houses, the cleared land, the sky. "But I've got a feeling about that kid. He reads books like he's building a home inside them. Eventually he's going to want one made of wood."
I look at the five acres. The bones. The beginning.
Knox is right. He usually is.