Chapter 42 #2
I watch his face. This is what I’ve been waiting three weeks for. This exact expression — his lips parted, his eyes moving over the stone facade, the timber, the porch, the chimney. Taking it in.
“Come on,” I say. “It’s cold.”
I grab both bags from the truck bed — his duffle and mine — and walk up the porch steps.
The key is in my pocket. My key. My name on the deed, two signatures, a cashier’s check that represented a very specific chunk of the money Diego has made us over the past year.
I unlock the front door and push it open and reach inside for the lights.
The living room appears. The stone fireplace. The timber beams overhead. The big sectional, the wood floors, the wall of windows looking out into dark trees.
Aaron steps in behind me. Stops in the doorway.
The house smells like cold fireplace and wood polish.
The heat is on — I had it turned up yesterday — but there’s still that edge of chill in a house that hasn’t been lived in.
The floors creak under our boots. The ceilings are high, the beams heavy and dark above us, and the fireplace takes up most of the far wall.
Fieldstone, floor to ceiling. A timber mantel that’s just one thick slab of wood.
Aaron turns in a slow circle. Kitchen to the right — the island, the dark cabinets, the farmhouse sink. Dining table in reclaimed wood between the two spaces. The wall of windows behind the couch, black with night, reflecting the room back at us.
“Sasha.” His voice is careful. “Did you borrow this place too?”
“No.” My heart is going fast. I don’t care. “I didn’t borrow it.”
He looks at me. Waiting.
“I bought it.” I set the bags down by the door. “For us.”
He doesn’t say anything. His eyes go wide and green and very still.
“It’s halfway between Albany and the city,” I say.
“Ninety minutes for you, two hours for me. There’s a ski mountain fifteen minutes up the road.
Four bedrooms — your family can come, my — people can visit.
There’s a mudroom with a place for our gear and a fireplace that burns real wood and the kitchen has a stove I don’t know how to use yet.
” I’m talking too fast. I know I’m talking too fast. “I wanted somewhere that’s ours.
Not my apartment, not your place in Albany.
A place that belongs to both of us. Somewhere we come to together. ”
His jaw is tight. He’s not talking.
“We spent two years sneaking in and out of hotel rooms,” I say.
“And don't get me wrong-I love it each time. But this is not temporary. This is not a weekend or a booking or a room that someone else cleans and gives to strangers after we leave.” I put my hand on the doorframe.
“This is ours. No checkout time. I bought this place for us. A permanent escape from TV cameras and the sports world and everything but each other.”
Aaron swallows. Hard. His eyes are bright.
“I can’t believe you bought us a house,” he says. His voice cracks on it.
“Do you want to see the rest?” I say, already pulling him toward the kitchen.
He nods, overwhelmed.
I take him through the kitchen — the empty cabinets, the pot rack with nothing on it, the countertops that match the fireplace stone.
He runs his hand along the butcher block island and doesn’t say anything.
I show him the mudroom off the back door — the cubbies, the bench, the boot tray.
“For our gear,” I say, and he almost smiles.
“Sasha, this place is incredible.” His voice is soft. Awed. “I love it. I love every room.”
He smiles. It’s shaky around the edges.
Back upstairs. Up the wooden staircase to the loft. The railing is iron, the stairs open on one side so you can look down into the living room below.
The master bedroom is the whole top floor. A-frame ceiling, the exposed beams following the pitch of the roof. A king bed on a low platform frame. White bedding, a new quilt folded at the foot — I bought it last week, and I’m pretty sure I left the tags on.
But that’s not the thing. The thing is above the bed.
The skylight.
A wide pane of glass set into the slope of the roof, and through it — sky.
Dark sky. No streetlights, no city glow, no light pollution.
Just the actual night, the kind you can’t see from Manhattan or Albany or anywhere that has a population density higher than a handful of deer.
Stars. Faint clouds. The faintest dusting of snow on the glass.
Aaron looks up. His lips part. He stands at the foot of the bed looking straight up through the skylight and I watch his throat move when he swallows.
“You can see the stars from the bed,” I say. Unnecessary. He can see that.
He looks at the triangular window at the far end — treetops and sky. At the nightstands, matching, empty. At the dresser with its empty drawers. At the bathroom doorway where I know he can see the edge of the claw-foot tub.
Then he looks at me.
“What do you think?” I say.
He crosses the room. His hands come up to my face — both of them, palms on my jaw, fingers curving behind my ears. He kisses me. Slow. Not hungry. Something bigger than that.
I pull him closer. My hands on his waist, his jacket cold from outside, his body warm underneath it. He kisses me until I can’t think, and then he pulls back just enough to rest his forehead against mine.
“I think I still can’t believe I got this lucky,” he says.
My throat goes tight. My eyes sting. I don’t blink.
Lucky. The boy from West Roxbury who gave up his scholarship and hauled rocks for his father’s business thinks he’s the lucky one.
“Wait until you see the bathtub,” I say.
He laughs. His forehead still against mine, his hands still on my face, his breath warm between us. Outside the skylight, snow is starting to fall — light, barely there, just enough to see against the dark sky.
“We don’t have any food,” he says.
“I have a plan for that.”
“We don’t have sheets.”
“We have sheets. I bought sheets. I learned from last time.”
He laughs again. Harder. His thumbs brush my cheekbones and I close my eyes. His hands on my face. This room. This house. My whole body is buzzing and I don’t want to open my eyes yet.
“Sasha,” he says.
“Aaron Kelly.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. Just help me figure out the fireplace. I think there’s a damper and I don’t know what that is.”
He kisses me one more time. Quick, firm, a punctuation mark. Then he pulls back and looks up through the skylight again. Snow falling toward the glass. Stars behind it.
“I’ll handle the fireplace,” he says.
“You know how to work a damper?”
“Of course I do. I know how to build a fire in a fireplace.”
“My hero.”
He shakes his head. But he’s smiling — the real one, the one that’s crooked and a little smug and completely unguarded. The one that’s mine.
We go downstairs. He crouches in front of the fireplace and starts working on the damper while I bring the bags in from the porch and lock the front door. The house is warming up. The floors creak. Outside, the snow is falling thicker now.
I lean against the kitchen counter and watch him.
Old position, new room. He gets the damper open, stacks kindling, strikes a match.
The flame catches. He feeds it carefully, adjusting the logs with his bare hands like he’s done this a hundred times, and I want him so much it’s hard to stay on this side of the room.
The fire pops. He sits back on his heels and looks at it. Then looks at me over his shoulder.
“Stop staring,” he says.
“No.”
He grins. Firelight on his teeth.
The house is empty. The fridge, the closets, the walls — all of it, bare. We’ll deal with that later. Right now there’s a fire, and there’s Aaron, and upstairs I bought sheets this time.
That’s enough for tonight.