Chapter 22
Devin
The apartment on Birch Street is a studio.
Four hundred square feet. One room that's everything: bedroom, living room, the life I'm about to start.
The kitchen has a two-burner stove and a counter barely wide enough for a cutting board and a window above the sink that looks out at the building next door's brick wall, which isn't scenic but is mine.
The landlord, Mrs. Zillmann, a small woman with reading glasses on a chain who looked at my application and said "you work for Robin at the café?
Good. Robin's good people," gave me the walk-through yesterday.
Clean, freshly painted, the carpet new enough to still smell like glue.
A door that locks from the inside. A closet that's mine. A bathroom that's mine.
Four hundred square feet and every inch of it mine.
We're standing outside now. Silas and me. The lease is in my hand, two pages, printed, the dotted line waiting. Mrs. Zillmann is inside at the kitchen counter with a pen and a folder and the patience of a woman who's rented apartments to young people before and knows they sometimes need a minute.
Silas has been quiet the whole walk over. Not the comfortable quiet. Not the library quiet or the reading quiet or the "we don't need to talk because we already know" quiet. A different kind. Loaded. The kind that means he's building a sentence and hasn't finished constructing it yet.
"It's a good space," I say, because someone needs to talk. "Small, but I don't need much. The kitchen has a window. I was thinking herbs on the sill."
"Yeah." His voice is off. Just slightly. A quarter-tone flat. "Herbs would be good."
"Jason said he'd help me pick out a starter kit. Basil, thyme, rosemary. The basics."
"That's — yeah. Good."
I look at him. Really look. He's standing there with his hands in his jacket pockets and his jaw set and his eyes on the room like he's trying to memorize it or burn it down, and I realize he's not okay.
"Silas."
"I'm fine."
"You're not fine. You look like someone cancelled your library card."
"I'm fine, Dev. This is good. This is your moment."
"Then why do you look like that?"
He's quiet. A car passes. The October wind moves the leaves in the gutter. Mrs. Zillmann's shadow moves behind the kitchen window.
"Because I'm about to say something selfish," he says.
"Okay."
"And I know it's selfish. And I know it contradicts everything I've said for the past two weeks about your plan and your timeline and respecting your independence. And I'm saying it anyway because we made a deal. No editing, no curating, honesty even when it's inconvenient."
"Okay."
"Don't move in here." He says it fast, like ripping off a bandage. "Stay with me. At the bar. In my terrible twin bed with the creaky frame. Stay."
The lease flutters in my hand.
"I know," he says before I can respond. "I know that's not fair.
I know you need this. I know the apartment is the thing you did yourself, your money, your plan, your name on the line.
I know all of that and I'm asking anyway because —" He takes a breath.
"Because I don't want to sleep without you.
Because my room doesn't make sense without your books on the nightstand.
Because you reorganized my shelf by emotional impact and I can't put it back and I don't want to put it back.
Because I'm selfish and I love you and I want you HOME, not three miles away in a studio with a two-burner stove. "
The words hang in the air. Honest. Messy. Exactly what he promised. No curating, no waiting for the right moment.
I look at him. This man. This quiet, patient, book-reading man who waited for me and now can't stand the thought of sleeping without me.
Who built bookshelves into a house I hadn't agreed to live in.
Who said "I love you" in a laundromat under fluorescent lights and meant it more than anyone has ever meant anything.
"No," I say.
His face doesn't change. Doesn't fall, doesn't close. He nods, once, the way Knox nods. Accepting, complete.
"Okay," he says.
"Let me finish."
He waits.
"No, I'm not staying at the bar. I'm signing this lease.
I'm moving into this apartment with its kitchen window and its door that locks from the inside.
I'm going to buy a kitchen scale and put herbs on the sill and sleep in a bed that's mine in a room that's mine and prove, to myself, not to you, to myself, that I can be alone and be okay. " I hold his gaze. "But Silas?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm only signing month to month."
He blinks. The nod freezes halfway. Something shifts behind his eyes, the calculation, the recognition, the slow dawn of what I'm actually saying.
"Month to month," he repeats.
"Not a year. Not six months. Month to month. Because the apartment is the bridge. Not the destination."
"The destination being —"
"Oak bookshelves. East-facing window. A reading nook big enough for two people." I step closer. "Four months, you said. Give or take."
"Give or take."
"Then I need four months. Maybe less. Long enough to prove I can stand on my own. Long enough to know that when I move into that house, it's because I chose it. Not because I had nowhere else."
"Dev —"
"I've seen the blueprints. I've touched the bookshelves on paper. I know where I'm going, Silas. I've known since you told me the window faces east." I put my hand on his chest. His heart is hammering under my palm. "But I need to walk there on my own feet. Not be carried. Not be rescued. Walk."
"Month to month," he says again. His voice is rough.
"Month to month. And I'll be at the bar every Wednesday for book club and every Saturday for breakfast and most evenings for dinner because Jason is teaching me to make risotto next week and I refuse to miss that.
And some nights I'll stay in your terrible bed because I want to, not because I have to.
And some nights I'll sleep in my apartment with my books and my herbs. And both of those things will be good."
"Both."
"Both." I take a breath. "And then one day, maybe three months from now, maybe four, I'll pack my backpack. And I'll walk to the five acres. And I'll look at the bookshelves and the reading nook and the window that faces east. And I'll unpack. For real. For the last time. In a home I chose."
He's crying. Silas, quiet, steady, reads-in-corners Silas, is standing here with tears on his face. Not many. Just enough. The kind that comes when you hear something so exactly right that your body can't contain it.
"You're going to unpack," he says.
"For the last time."
"In our house."
"In our house."
He pulls me against him. Right there. He holds me and I hold him and the lease crumples slightly between us because neither of us cares about the paper right now.
"I love you," he says into my hair.
"I love you. Now let go of me so I can sign my lease."
He laughs, wet, broken, the best sound he makes. "You're very practical for someone who just delivered the most romantic speech of my life."
"I'm a Virgo."
"You're impossible."
"I'm signing a lease. Let go."
He lets go. I smooth the lease against my thigh, straighten the pages.
"Month to month?" my new landlord asks.
"Month to month."
"Your boyfriend seems nice."
"He built me bookshelves."
"In the apartment?"
"In another building. It's a long story."
"The good ones always are." She slides the lease across the counter. "Sign here. And here. And initial here."
I sign. My name on the line. The first lease I've ever signed. The first door that's mine. The first window, the first kitchen, the first closet where more than three shirts will hang because people keep giving me things.
Mrs. Zillmann hands me the keys. Two of them, on a plain ring.
"Welcome home," she says, then leaves us alone.
Silas is leaning against the wall, hands in his pockets, eyes red, waiting.
"Done?" he asks.
I hold up the keys. They catch the light.
"Done."
He pushes off the wall. Takes my hand. Looks at the keys, then at me.
"Herbs on the sill," he says.
"Herbs on the sill."
"Kitchen scale."
"Jason's picking one out."
"Month to month."
"Month to month."
"And then bookshelves."
"And then bookshelves."
We walk back to the bar to get my bags. Both of them now, because the pride keeps giving me things and one backpack isn't enough anymore. Two bags. Progress. The slow accumulation of a life that's expanding instead of contracting, filling instead of emptying, becoming more instead of less.
The walk takes twelve minutes. His hand in mine. The fall afternoon, bright and cold. Our geography, the library, the café, the bar, and now a studio apartment on Birch Street with a window above the sink and a lease with my name on it.
Month to month.
But the bookshelves are oak. And oak lasts forever.