14. Chapter 14
JO
"This one has good bones," Charlotte said.
Four months. Four months of waking up next to Charlotte, and Jo still reached for her first thing every morning just to confirm she was real.
They were standing in an empty apartment in Park Slope. Their fourth viewing of the day, and the first one that had made Charlotte's eyes light up.
Jo looked around. Dusty hardwood floors, a kitchen with avocado-green tile from the seventies, tall windows striped with afternoon sun through the fire escape. Charlotte saw potential, her architect brain already redesigning, reimagining, reconstructing.
"The layout is wrong," Charlotte continued, walking through the space. "This wall shouldn't be here. But it's not load-bearing, so we could take it down. Open up the whole area."
"We?"
"We." Charlotte turned to look at her. "This is a we decision. If you hate it..."
"I don't hate it." Jo walked to the window, looked out at the street below. "I just want to make sure you like it. You're the one with opinions about architecture."
"I have opinions about everything."
"True." Jo grinned. "But your architecture opinions are the ones that matter here."
Charlotte joined her at the window. Their shoulders touched.
"I can see it," Charlotte said quietly. "What it could be. With work."
"How much work?"
"Enough. The kitchen needs to be gutted. The bathroom is questionable. But the bones are good. Pre-war building, original details under all the bad renovations. It's worth saving."
Jo watched Charlotte pace off the living room, that little crease appearing between her brows as she measured with her eyes. This was Charlotte happy: problem in front of her, sleeves already metaphorically rolled up.
"You like it," Jo said.
Charlotte looked at her. "I like what it could be."
"Then I like it too." Jo shrugged. "You made that face at the windows."
"That is not how buying property works." Charlotte's mouth twitched.
"I trust your eye." Jo bumped her shoulder against Charlotte's. "And I like the idea of making something ours."
Charlotte's hand found hers. "Ours," she repeated, softer.
Jo pulled her close. Kissed her in the empty apartment, afternoon light streaming through the windows.
"I like it," Jo said against her mouth. "The apartment."
"Yeah?"
"It needs work." Jo grinned. "I think we can handle it."
Charlotte's smile was everything. "We can handle anything."
They put in an offer that afternoon. Charlotte had been watching the listing for months, long before they were together, long before Jo understood why Charlotte kept mentioning a pre-war two-bedroom in Park Slope. Now Jo understood.
"We're insane," Charlotte said in the car afterward. "You know that, right? Four months together and we're buying property."
"Completely insane," Jo agreed. "Worth it."
By evening, they were celebrating at Charlotte's place with champagne (the good kind, because Charlotte had opinions) and takeout and the giddy feeling of having just bet on their future together.
Except Charlotte wasn't celebrating.
She was sitting at the kitchen table with her champagne untouched, staring at the offer paperwork like it might bite her.
"Hey." Jo set down her glass. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing."
"Charlotte."
"I signed a mortgage application today." Charlotte's voice was flat. Controlled. The voice she used when she was trying very hard not to feel something. "I put my name next to yours on a legal document that ties us together financially for thirty years."
"Yes. That's what buying an apartment means."
"And if this doesn't work?" Charlotte looked up.
Her eyes were dry, but something behind them was fracturing.
"If in a year, or two years, or five, you wake up and realize this was just excitement?
Novelty? What then? We're tangled up in a mortgage and a shared life and I have to watch another person decide I'm not worth keeping, except this time I can't even leave cleanly because our names are on the same deed. "
The words hung between them. Jo set down her champagne.
"Is that what you think is going to happen?"
"It's what always happens." Charlotte's jaw tightened. "My parents promised me a home. My college girlfriend promised me forever. They all meant it when they said it. And then they didn't."
Jo pulled a chair next to her. Sat down. Didn't touch her, because Charlotte's spine was rigid, her shoulders drawn up, and Jo had learned that reaching for Charlotte when she was like this only made her flinch.
"I can't promise I won't hurt you," Jo said. "I'm not going to pretend I'm perfect or that we'll never fight or that this will always be easy."
"Then what are you promising?"
"That I'm not going anywhere. That if it gets hard, I'll stay and be honest about it instead of disappearing.
And that if you need to hear that every single day for the next thirty years, I will say it every single day.
" Jo held her gaze. "I'm not your parents, Charlotte.
I'm not Sophie. I'm the person who's been showing up to your life since we met without anyone asking me to. "
Charlotte's composure cracked. Her chin trembled, and she blinked away the gloss of tears.
"I'm sorry," Charlotte said. "I know this isn't fair to you. You put in an offer on an apartment and I'm having a meltdown."
"You're not having a meltdown. You're being honest." Jo reached for her hand then, slow enough for Charlotte to pull away if she needed to. Charlotte didn't pull away. "This is what we promised each other. The real stuff. Even when it's ugly."
Charlotte stared at their joined hands. Then she exhaled, long and shaky, and some of the rigidity left her shoulders.
"I'm terrified," Charlotte said. Her thumb worried the wet ring her champagne glass had left on the table.
"I know."
"I'm not scared of you. I'm scared of putting my whole life in one place and finding out I was stupid to trust it."
Jo turned Charlotte's hand over and kissed the center of her palm. "Then we make sure you never have to trust it all at once."
Charlotte stood. Picked up the paperwork and set it on the counter, face-down.
"I need to not talk about this right now." She grabbed her coat from the hook by the door. "I'm not leaving. I'm walking around the block. I just need to breathe."
The door closed behind her. Jo sat at the kitchen table with two glasses of champagne and a silence that pressed against her chest.
She didn't follow. She wanted to, wanted to chase Charlotte down the stairs and say all the right things until the fear went away. But Charlotte had asked for space, and Jo was learning that loving someone meant giving them the room to be scared without rushing to fix it.
Twenty minutes passed. Jo washed the dishes, dried them, put them away, and checked her phone twice without texting.
The door opened.
Charlotte came back in with cold air on her coat and red around her eyes. She hung up her coat, walked to the table, and sat back down.
"I called Ruth," she said.
"Yeah?"
"She told me to stop being an idiot and drink my champagne."
Jo's laugh came out wet. "That sounds like her."
"She also said that the difference between people who leave and people who stay isn't that people who stay never want to run. It's that they come back."
Charlotte picked up her champagne, took a sip, and set it down.
"Okay," she said. "We're buying an apartment."
"We're buying an apartment."
"If you ever decide to leave, I'm keeping the apartment."
"Deal." It was easy to agree, since she was never going to leave.
Charlotte's mouth twitched into something close to a smile, and Jo squeezed her hand.
"We're going to own an apartment," Jo said, slightly stunned. "Together. We're going to be homeowners."
"If the offer is accepted."
"It'll be accepted. You dazzled them with architect-talk about the building's bones."
"I stated facts about structural integrity."
"Dazzled them." Jo poured more champagne. "The real estate agent looked like she wanted to marry you."
"She was being professional."
"She gave you her personal card."
"That's just networking."
"Charlotte." Jo laughed. "She wanted to network her way into your pants."
Charlotte's cheeks went pink. "That's ridiculous. And speaking of networking, I need to email the Whitfield team. We finally got the sign-off on the corbels last week."
"I still don't know what corbels are."
"And yet you love me anyway."
"You're terrible at knowing when someone's flirting with you, you know."
"I am not—"
Jo kissed her quiet.
The champagne went warm on the table. Jo didn't care. Charlotte was laughing into her mouth again, and the offer paperwork sat facedown on the counter where they could deal with it together in the morning.
"I've been thinking," Jo said, pulling back just enough to speak.
"You've been doing a lot of thinking lately."
"I'm making up for lost time." Jo's hands found the hem of Charlotte's shirt. "Specifically, I've been thinking about christening."
"Christening?"
"The apartment. When we get it." Jo's grin was wicked. "I want to christen every room."
"That's a lot of rooms."
"I'm very thorough."
"Josephina."
"We could practice." Jo pulled Charlotte toward the bedroom. "Perfect our technique."
"Our technique is fine."
"Fine?" Jo pressed Charlotte against the wall outside the bedroom, kissed her neck. "I was aiming for spectacular."
"It's spectacular." Charlotte's voice went unsteady as Jo's teeth found her pulse point. "Very spectacular. World-class."
"That's better." Jo's hands worked Charlotte's buttons, slow and deliberate. "But there's always room for improvement."
"Perfectionist."
"Learned from the best."
They didn't make it to the bedroom. The hallway worked fine.
Charlotte's back against the wall, still half-buttoned, Jo's mouth everywhere at once. Jo loved this, loved watching Charlotte's composure crack. Charlotte, who was always so controlled, so precise, coming undone under Jo's hands.
"I love you," Jo said against her collarbone, pushing Charlotte's shirt off her shoulders.