Chapter 26
Chapter twenty-six
Unbound
Catalina
Moving day is a street fight conducted in cardboard and neon packing tape.
I’ve already got the first tower of boxes balanced against my hip, elevator chugging up the twenty-four floors, before Aiden can finish his opening statement about the statistical risks of amateur moving.
His case is airtight but irrelevant, as are most of his cases when I’ve already made up my mind.
The building’s freight elevator is barely bigger than a walk-in closet, and I’ve filled it with a fractal of Target bins and lopsided U-Haul relics.
My labels, in fat Sharpie: KITCHEN, NIGHTMARE DRAWER, SHOES (!!
!), BOOKS—READ, BOOKS—LIED. The edges dig into my forearms as the elevator creaks upward, a bruise blooming already under the tape on my left wrist.
He’s waiting for me at the penthouse vestibule, holding a box cutter in one hand and a wireless drill in the other, like he’s prepping for a hostage extraction. His expression when the doors open, mixed horror and awe.
“That’s…all you?” he says, as if I’m smuggling in a body count.
“Statistically, ninety percent me, ten percent ‘joint assets,’” I say, tapping the top bin for emphasis. “Unless you want to count the artisanal bath salts you keep using and then denying.”
He shakes his head, the beginnings of an argument curling on his lips. “We could have—”
“Hired movers, I know,” I cut in, pivoting the stack into the hallway. “But then we’d owe some minimum-wage stranger for knowing about your military-grade encryption server and my body pillow collection, and I’d rather die.”
He does the mouth-closed exhale that says I’ve won. We both know it’s not the last round.
He grabs the next load, heavier than mine, and hauls it with the ease of a man who does everything as if being scored on form.
He’s ditched the suit jacket, rolled the cuffs of his blue Oxford shirt up to mid-forearm, and swapped his shoes for battered sneakers.
The incongruity of it is almost pornographic. At least it is to me.
We settle into a rhythm. I shuttle boxes from the elevator, he intercepts them at the threshold, and together we angle each new stack around the corners of the entryway.
My tape colors, pink, orange, a green so loud it hurts, pop against the monochrome of his space.
Everything here is stone, glass, or brushed steel.
It’s all sharp lines and controlled negative space, like the floor plan was dictated by an algorithm that doesn’t believe in leisure.
The only softness is the view, a horizon-wide sprawl of city skyline, the windows so clean they seem to erase the air itself.
Each time I ferry another load in, the contrast slaps me fresh.
My boxes are loud and ugly, each one a micro-disaster of thrift store finds and post-college clutter.
I keep waiting for Aiden to wince, or to direct me to a corner, or to quietly ask if we “really need” all of this.
Instead, he just keeps clearing space on the counters, emptying drawers, methodically making room.
He works without commentary, which is itself commentary, and for that I’m grateful.
After forty minutes, we’ve filled the foyer with a low wall of my life’s detritus. He pauses, hands on hips, sweat blooming at his temples. I take the moment to scope the main room, imagining the future fights we’ll have over throw pillows and shelf real estate.
He follows my gaze, then nods toward the kitchen. “Food break?”
“God, yes,” I say, and flop onto the barstool like I’m being decommissioned.
He’s already got the protein bars and cold brew on the counter, uncannily predicting my needs. I open the bar and take a savage bite.
He leans against the counter, looking at me over the rim of his glass. “You didn’t have to move everything today,” he says. His tone is light, but there’s a splinter of concern under it.
I finish chewing before answering. “You gave me a key. You know what happens when you give a raccoon access to a shiny new habitat?”
He almost laughs. “You move in with maximal chaos and minimum warning.”
“Exactly.” I tip the bar in a toast. “Besides, I’ve moved myself a dozen times. I like it. It’s the only time you get to see your whole life in one place, ugly and honest.”
He considers this, then shrugs. “I respect it.”
“Good,” I say. “Because I’m about to test your limit for ugly and honest.”
We kill the next hour on the logistics of merging our stuff.
He takes the heavier boxes without comment, makes room in the closets for my “hoodie hoard,” and doesn’t blink at the number of half-used candles I own.
The only moment he hesitates is over a bin labeled MISC SENTIMENTAL, which contains, among other things, every birthday card my grandmother ever sent, a six-year-old perfume bottle shaped like a stiletto, and a VHS tape of me at age nine singing “Como la flor” at a talent show.
He lifts the tape, squints at it, then slides it back into the bin. “We don’t own a VHS player.”
“I know,” I say, “but I keep it so I can threaten people with it.”
He nods. “Effective deterrent.”
The way we move around each other is efficient, almost elegant.
There’s no tripping, no raised voices, only the dull thud of boxes and the rustle of packing paper.
Every few minutes, I look up and catch him watching me with a look that isn’t evaluative, but grateful, like he can’t believe I showed up and am actually staying.
I finish emptying the BOOKS—LIED box and start slotting my paperbacks onto the lowest shelf of his library wall.
The built-ins are already full of philosophy texts, cryptography journals, and a single shelf of vintage hardbacks with library platelets.
I squeeze my battered paperbacks into the bottom, no system at all, covers out and sideways, a deliberate act of rebellion.
He notices. “You know that’s going to drive me insane.”
“That’s the fun,” I say. “You have to be a little bit in love with a person to tolerate their shelf logic.”
He grins, and it’s the kind of grin you only get from someone who’s spent years rationing their expressions and finally, for once, is letting go.
By four p.m. we’ve conquered most of the boxes, the penthouse now a war zone of packing debris and joint custody.
I drape my mango-colored throw over the back of the sofa, wedge another cactus onto the windowsill next to his espresso machine, and hang my favorite mug on the rack even though it doesn’t match the rest. He says nothing, just watches me do it.
The last box to tackle is the one I’m most anxious about.
It’s labeled WALL ART (!!!) in a scrawl that’s two drinks into the night I packed it.
Inside: a framed print, 18x24, a swirling mess of burnt orange, blue, and black.
I found it at a street fair my first year in the city, and it’s the only thing I ever spent more than fifty dollars on that wasn’t rent or therapy.
I unbox it and hold it up to the wall, trying to imagine where it could possibly go.
Every wall in here is already curated, a giant black-and-white photo of the city at dusk, an abstract in grayscale with a title so pretentious I forgot it instantly, a set of architectural blueprints that I suspect are the actual floor plans for this very penthouse.
My print doesn’t fit any of it. It’s too loud, too messy, too obviously not expensive.
I stand in the middle of the living room, the print held out in front of me, turning it left, then right, then straight on. I hear Aiden’s footsteps behind me, deliberate and unhurried.
He walks up, takes the frame from my hands without asking, and holds it against the largest blank wall. He steps back, holding it steady at eye level. “Here?”
I squint. “Too high.”
He lowers it four inches. “Now?”
I nod, surprised. “Yeah.”
He glances at the picture, then at the wall, then at the frame, and finally at me. “I’ll hang it.”
“You don’t have to,” I start, but he’s already moving, setting the frame aside and heading to the utility drawer.
He comes back with a level, a tape measure, and a tiny pencil.
I watch him work, he measures, marks, checks the level twice, and hangs the print with the same care I’ve seen him use with servers and code, and even with my body.
He steps back, arms crossed, assessing. “It’s good,” he says.
I look at the wall, the frame, the colors blazing out against the neutral background. “Yeah,” I say. “It is.”
He looks at me then, and something in his face softens, the last ice floe melting out.
“Thank you,” I say, but what I mean is thank you for making space.
He just smiles, small and private, and picks up the next box.
I file the moment away, in the folder where I keep all the reasons I love him.
By seven, the place is no longer his or mine but a patchwork.
The mango throw bright against the dark sofa, my second cactus (technically a succulent, but I refuse to yield the point) sunbathing in the kitchen window, our books jostling for dominance on the lowest shelf like rival street gangs.
There are still boxes, but they’re mostly empty, collapsed and stacked in the vestibule, cardboard skeletons waiting for recycling day.
We don’t order in. Instead, we hunt through the fridge and turn up pasta, garlic, a shockingly expensive wedge of cheese, and half a bag of spinach that died a day ago but isn’t yet aware of its fate.
I let Aiden cook. He’s methodical, like he’s executing a firmware update, but tonight he lets me interfere, handing me the olive oil when I reach, letting me sample the sauce and not pretending my “suggestions” are anything less than sabotage.
We eat at the counter, perched on the stools, feet knocking together underneath.
After, we migrate to the sofa, glasses of wine in hand, the last traces of sunset leaking down the windows.
Aiden picks a movie at random, some moody noir with subtitles, and I don’t even pretend I’m going to pay attention.
I stretch out, legs across his lap, my toes hooked behind his knee.
His hand lands absentmindedly on my ankle, fingers tracing circles, not possessive but anchoring.
The wine makes me sentimental. Not the kind that spirals into drama, just the kind that wants to catalog and name every small comfort. I watch the screen for a while, then the reflection of us in the glass. The TV light paints his skin, makes the angles of his face gentler, less bulletproof.
He doesn’t say anything for a long time. When he does, it’s out of nowhere: “Marcus texted.”
I grunt. “Still alive, then?”
He nods. “He wants us to meet him and…” He hesitates, the rare tell. “His new partner. This Friday.”
“Partner as in girlfriend, or as in accomplice?”
Aiden shrugs. “He was deliberately vague. Their name is Harper. I have no data beyond that, except he seemed pleased with himself.”
I consider this. “Pleased, or smug?”
“Both,” Aiden says, and we share a laugh.
We riff on Marcus for a while, inventing elaborate scenarios.
Harper is an international arms dealer, or a polyamorous data scientist, or the actual ex-wife he’s never mentioned.
Aiden’s dry one-liners make me wheeze-laugh, the kind that comes out in bursts and leaves my face hot.
We have a contest to see who can come up with the worst possible dinner conversation, and I win with “So how do you two know each other?” delivered in my best polite midwestern mom voice.
He grins and squeezes my ankle. “You’re a menace,” he says, and for some reason this hits me sideways, almost tender.
The movie ends and neither of us notices. The wine is gone, my head pleasantly swimming, and the only light is the soft glow of the city and the TV’s silent credits.
I think about saying it. Not just “I love you,” because that feels insufficient, a platitude.
I want to say: I’ve built whole fortresses to keep people from knowing me, and now I’m building them out of your books and my laundry and our dumb in-jokes.
I want to say, I used to believe that belonging was a trap, a way to get yourself marked for erasure, and now I am terrified of not belonging here, in this exact air, with you.
But instead I just lie there, my feet tangled in his lap, his thumb making lazy circles on my skin, and let it settle into the air between us.
There’s no panic, no “what if” contingency plan running in the background. Just this, wine-warm, ankle in hand, the night thick with the certainty that I have never, ever been so completely in the right place.
We stay there, quiet and inert, the city blinking through the window and the clock advancing unnoticed.
I know eventually I will say the words out loud, and it will matter, and it will be a new kind of fight to see who can admit it first. But for now, I just let myself be in love, and trust that it’s enough.
When I wake in the gray pre-dawn, I’m in bed.
The mango throw is tucked around my shoulders and my shoes are on the floor, placed side by side, and Aiden is asleep beside me with one arm thrown over his eyes.
I don’t remember any of this happening. I lie still for a moment, listening to him breathe, and think about a man who carries you to bed and takes your shoes off and doesn’t make it a thing.
Outside, the city is just beginning to suggest itself. I close my eyes again and let it.