31. Honeymoon Phase Too Long #2
By the time Friday night arrives, I’m cleaning the apartment for no reason other than nerves.
The good kind. The kind that feels like anticipation instead of fear.
Liam is already half-asleep on the couch with a blanket over his legs when the knock hits the door.
I open it to Reid—hoodie, messy hair, tired eyes, warm smile.
“Hi,” he says, voice low in that way he uses only with me.
“Hi,” I say back.
He steps inside and pulls me into him before the door even shuts. His mouth brushes mine once, twice, slow enough that I feel it everywhere.
“God, I missed you,” he murmurs.
I breathe him in. “Me too.”
Liam wakes up long enough to climb into his arms and tell him about a frog he “almost saw,” then falls asleep again on Reid’s shoulder.
Reid carries him to bed with a gentleness that still surprises me.
After we lay Liam down, the house goes quiet again—but this time it doesn’t feel unfamiliar. It feels full.
I angle toward him in the hallway, brushing my fingers along the hem of his hoodie. “You’re here.”
“Finally,” he says, dipping down to kiss me again.
We end up in the living room, sitting close enough that our knees touch.
We talk about his classes and my workload, about the weird smell in the stairwell of his dorm, about how Liam tried to convince a daycare teacher that he had a secret pet dragon.
Normal stuff. Good stuff. But then the conversation shifts.
I don’t remember how. It’s seamless, subtle, a small crack opening.
He traces the wedding ring on my finger with his thumb. “You okay?” he asks.
I don’t lie. “Mostly. I just… I want to be good at this. At us. At all of it.”
“You are good at it,” he says.
“I don’t always feel like I am.”
His eyes soften. “Ames.”
And that’s all he says. Just my name, quiet and steady. It’s enough to undo every knot in me.
I lean into him, resting my forehead against his cheek. “Sometimes I feel like I’m one mistake away from everything falling apart.”
He wraps an arm around me and pulls me into his chest. His voice vibrates against my skin when he speaks. “We’re figuring it out. Together. You don’t have to do everything alone anymore.”
“You’re not here all the time,” I whisper.
“I know. I hate that part too.”
He turns my face toward his with careful fingers, brushing his thumb under my chin. “But being married… it doesn’t mean being perfect. It means choosing each other even when we’re tired and messy and scared.”
He kisses me then—slow, grounding, warm enough that my eyes close on instinct.
The kiss deepens gradually, like he’s giving me time to pull back if I need to.
I don’t. I slide my arms around his neck, pulling him closer, letting the familiar feel of him settle the anxious parts of me.
His hands slip to my hips, steady and sure, and he exhales softly against my mouth like he’s been waiting for this touch all week.
When we break apart, my breath stutters a little. “Reid…”
“I’m right here,” he says. “I’m not going anywhere.”
The certainty in his voice settles something sharp inside me. For the first time all week, the distance doesn’t feel bigger than us. We feel like a team again—one that’s bruised at the edges, stretched thin, still learning—but still a team. Still us. Still choosing each other.
By the time I get to his apartment, the sky is already sliding into that soft blue-gray that means the day is almost done. My shoulders ache from the drive, my brain still half full of work emails and Liam’s daycare notes, but the second Reid opens the door, all of that noise shifts to the edges.
He looks tired. Not exam-week destroyed, but there are faint shadows under his eyes and his hair is doing that messy, I-ran-my-hands-through-it-too-many-times thing. He still smiles, though. Not the distracted kind he gives his classmates. The one that’s only for me.
“Hey, wife,” he says, voice a little rough.
It hits me harder than I expect. “Hey, husband.”
He steps forward and pulls me in, arms wrapping around my waist, face tucking into my neck. The hug is long enough that my muscles slowly start to loosen, like my body needed his touch to remember how to breathe properly.
“I’ve missed you,” he murmurs.
“I saw you last week,” I say, but it comes out soft.
He pulls back just enough to look at me. “I know. Still missed you.”
That’s the thing about this phase of our life.
It’s not weeks apart anymore, not like before.
We see each other more often. He comes home some weekends.
I drive up others. But the distance feels different now that we’re married.
It’s less “boyfriend and girlfriend trying to make it work” and more “husband and wife building a life with miles in between.”
He takes my bag, sets it by the couch, and glances past me toward the hallway like he’s expecting a small whirlwind to come barreling in.
“Liam?” he asks.
“With my mom,” I say. “She practically shoved us out the door. Said something about ‘newlyweds needing actual newlywed time.’”
His mouth curves. “I might send her flowers.”
“You should. She threatened not to give him back if you screw this up, so stay on her good side.”
He laughs, but there’s a flicker in his eyes. “Noted.”
We eat takeout at his tiny table, knees brushing under the surface, talking about normal things.
His labs. My latest sprint. The new kid in Liam’s class who apparently bites when he’s excited.
On the surface it’s easy. Comfortable. Underneath, something hums—my constant low-grade anxiety, his constant low-grade exhaustion.
We both feel it. Neither of us names it.
When the food is gone and the containers are stacked by the sink, I lean back in my chair and let my head fall against the wall.
“I feel like I’ve been running all week,” I say. “Like if I sit still too long, everything I’m juggling is going to fall on my head.”
“Come here,” he says quietly.
He stands and reaches for my hand, tugging me up and over to the small couch. We sit sideways, knees touching. He slides his arm along the back and pulls me in until I’m curled against his chest, my cheek pressed to the soft cotton of his t-shirt.
“Talk to me,” he says. “And don’t say ‘I’m fine.’”
I huff out a breath that isn’t quite a laugh. “Who taught you to read minds?”
“Marriage perk,” he says. “You’re doing that thing where your shoulders are up by your ears and your jaw is tight. That’s your ‘everything is too much’ look.”
I stare at his hand resting on my thigh, thumb rubbing absent circles. The words sit heavy in my chest.
“I feel like I’m failing,” I admit.
His thumb pauses. “At what?”
“Everything,” I say. “Work, Liam, us. I’m supposed to be balancing it all, right? That’s the whole dream. Good mom, good wife, good career. Lately it just feels like I’m scraping by in every category and hoping nobody notices.”
He’s quiet for a second. Not because he doesn’t have anything to say. Because he’s actually thinking about it.
“I notice,” he says finally. “But not the way you think.”
I lift my head enough to see his face. “What does that mean?”
“It means I see how hard you’re trying,” he says.
“I see you answering emails at ten at night because you want to be good at your job. I see you sitting on the floor with Liam even when you’re dead on your feet.
I see you making time for me when it would be easier to just pass out the second he falls asleep.
That’s not failing, Ames. That’s… impossible expectations. ”
A knot forms in my throat. “Sometimes I feel like I’m letting you down. Like I’m always choosing something over you. Work. Bedtime. Groceries. Whatever. Like you’re getting the leftover version of me.”
His jaw flexes, but his voice stays gentle. “And you think I’m not bringing you leftovers too? You think you’re getting some perfect, rested version of me? I’m half-cooked at best most days.”
Despite myself, I smile a little. “Half-cooked, huh?”
“At least,” he says. “Maybe three-quarters if I’ve had coffee.”
The smile fades as fast as it came. “I just… I don’t want you to regret this. Us. The timing. The marriage. Sometimes I wonder if you’d be better off focusing on school and… I don’t know. Not being tied to someone who has to leave early because daycare closes at six.”
Something shifts in his expression. Not anger. Something sharper. Hurt, maybe.
“Don’t do that,” he says quietly.
“Do what?”
“Talk about yourself like you’re some burden I agreed to carry,” he says. “You and Liam are not what’s holding me back. You’re what keeps me going when school makes me want to walk into the ocean.”
“Reid—”
“I mean it,” he cuts in, eyes steady on mine.
“If I didn’t have you, I’d be some idiot drifting through classes, pretending I have all the time in the world.
You make me actually think about the future.
About what kind of man I want to be. Husband.
Dad. That’s not dead weight, Amelia. That’s anchor-in-a-good-way. ”
His words land heavier than I expect. Warm. Solid. Dangerous, because I want so badly to believe them.
“I just don’t know how to do this,” I say, voice smaller than I like. “Be everything.”
His hand slides up to the side of my neck, thumb brushing my jaw. “Then don’t,” he says. “Stop trying to be everything. Just be you. That’s who I married. That’s who I want.”
My eyes sting. “You make it sound so simple.”
“It’s not,” he admits. “But we don’t have to figure it out tonight. Tonight we can just… be us. No titles. No job descriptions. Just Amelia and Reid.”
I stare at him for a long moment, taking in the lines of his face, the familiar curve of his mouth, the stupid cowlick that never behaves. He looks older than when we started this whole mess. So do I. But there’s a steadiness in his gaze that wasn’t there before.
“You really still want this?” I ask, needing to hear it out loud.