Chapter Eleven – What Home Looks Like #2
Jo looks livid, her scent so sharp and sour I can taste it like lemon on my tongue. I’ve only ever seen her warm with people, but now her voice is clipped as she cuts the agent off mid-sentence. “We’d like to look around by ourselves.”
She nudges Shane forward and takes me and Jay by the hand, leading us upstairs.
The second floor has two bedrooms, one big enough for a nest, the other smaller, but still functional. The upstairs bathroom has a clawfoot tub that Jo instantly falls in love with.
The place is a blank slate, but I can already picture it. Jo studying in the small room — we can turn it into an office for her. A big nest in the main bedroom. The front porch covered in flowers come summer, just like she said.
We finish the tour and step back out onto the front lawn. The agent is lingering nearby now, keeping her distance and watching Jo warily. But Jo doesn’t even glance at her. She turns to us instead, her expression serious. “I want this house.”
Shane nods immediately. “Me too.”
Jay grins, eyes still on the porch. “It’s perfect.”
Yeah. I want it too.
We’re all smiling as Jo grabs Shane’s phone and pulls up the lease application online.
On the way back to her apartment, she’s so giddy talking about the place, I figure she’s completely forgotten about the agent. But as soon as we step inside and close the door, she turns to the three of us.
“Next time another woman touches you like that,” she says, voice calm but deadly, “you don’t just let her.”
That night, she doesn’t even pretend she’s going to her bed, she slips into Jay’s sleeping bag when we go to her room to sleep.
The next morning we wait nervously until the agent calls Jo to tell her our lease has been approved. We all smile watching her do a little happy dance right after hanging up the phone.
We’re kind of drunk with happiness, but the days that follow are pure mayhem. We’re racing against the clock to move in before our time off runs out, and suddenly there’s a mountain of things to do in very little time.
That same day, we hit the furniture store to buy everything we need. Before we go, Jo calls ahead and pleads our case, explains how urgent everything is, and somehow manages to get them to promise delivery within two days.
We buy the exact kind of nest I’ve been dreaming of for her: big, with a thick, soft mattress and a platform made of solid oak.
Jo spends over an hour picking out sheets, blankets, and pillows. She touches everything, brushing some fabrics against her cheek before deciding. I could watch her do that forever.
Shane likes this huge red couch with all sorts of features: cup holders, fold-out tables, built-in USB ports. But Jo vetoes it immediately, saying there’s no way that thing is going anywhere near her living room. Shane just chuckles when she calls it “more monstrous than the truck.”
The three of us end up agreeing on a beige couch, soft as hell and big enough for all of us to fit. Jo approves this one with a smile.
“I already have a plush blue throw that’ll look perfect over it,” she says, excited.
We also pick out a light wooden dining table with eight chairs, and a carved chest that catches Jo’s eye. I’m not sure what it’s for, but it’s beautiful, polished wood with little flowers cut into the surface.
Jo also leads us to a handful of other shops for household stuff: kitchen appliances, curtains, lamps, cleaning supplies.
She asks for our opinions, but we pretty much like everything she picks, so our real job is carrying everything from the stores to the truck, and from the truck to her already overcrowded apartment.
She tries to carry the smaller bags herself, but we don’t let her; her ribs still aren’t supposed to handle any weight.
She wants to bring all her books, kitchen gear, decorations, and what looks like a lifetime of personal stuff to the new house, so the next day, we help her pack up her things while she makes phone calls, renting the moving truck, and setting up the utilities: electricity, gas, internet, cable.
By the time we’ve packed less than half of it, the apartment can’t hold another box.
There’s no space left to walk. Jo has to step over boxes to get across the living room, and when she has to climb over the half-wall because the kitchen doorway is completely blocked, my brothers and I call it.
We load our truck with boxes and make back-and-forth trips to the new house, just to make enough room for her to move through the apartment again.
She’s so overwhelmed, she decides to keep the apartment for a few more weeks and deal with the lease and final clean-up later.
It’s chaos, with all the things to do and all the making out we sneak in between tasks, but we manage to finish everything by our last day off. We leave early in the morning: Shane drives the rental truck; Jay and I follow in ours; and Jo drives her Corolla.
By lunchtime, we’re still so busy unloading both trucks, sorting boxes, and trying to figure out where everything should go that Jo just orders pizza so we don’t have to stop for long.
When night falls, we’re all exhausted, but it’s worth it. All of it. There are still sealed boxes scattered around the house, but it already feels more like home than anywhere else I’ve ever lived.
It’s just past eight, but on top of being bone-tired, we are so damn eager to be in a nest with her again that the three of us have already showered and stretched out on the soft new nest, waiting for her to come out of the bathroom.
By now, I’m used to the sharp spice that sneaks into her scent when she’s aroused. It’s been happening all week, every night when we change into shorts to sleep, every time we are messing around and even at random moments that catch us completely off guard.
She never says anything, so we don’t either. We don’t want to pressure her. But holy fuck, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about finally having her.
When the bathroom door clicks open, I brace myself.
It’s always the worst right after she bathes.
All those days we stayed with her in her apartment, she never changed in front of us, but she always came back into the bedroom in nothing but a towel, with bare skin, dripping hair, and steam still clinging to her body, just to grab clothes before ducking back into the bathroom to change.
Every single time, my shorts swelled and I embarrassed myself. Jay and Shane weren’t much better. We all scrambled to cover up with whatever was nearby while she pretended not to notice.
So now, we already know the drill. The second we hear her steps in the hallway, we pull the covers up, pretending we’re just relaxing.
I expect her to head straight for her clothes, but this time, she doesn’t.