“Hey, it had to go somewhere.” He squeezes me tighter and I can feel his laugh directly from his lungs to my chest.
I have no idea what time it is. How long we’ve been in hisroom. I don’t know where my phone is and I don’t care. I’m happy.
“I don’t wanna leave.” I’m not sure how I mean that. Yes, I don’t want to leave this bed, this room, this apartment.
But all those things are in this place where I was never planning to stay.
“So don’t. Stay right here.” He reaches down and pulls the covers over both of us. “I’m not letting you go anyway.”
And I wonder how he meansthat.At what point we decide whatgoandleaveactually mean. We’ve crossed some kind of boundary beyond “casual” and into an unknown territory, even though the future hasn’t changed at all.
But I snuggle deeper into him because we aren’t there now. We can put it off. So I tell him I’ll stay. And he can take it in whatever way he wants.
The last thing I hear before I drift off to sleep is “I feel like you’ve always been mine.”
29
“Can you watch Kira fora few hours?”
I open my eyes. Nick is standing over my pool lounger with his backpack slung over his shoulder. I hear Kira cannonball into the formerly placid pool.
“Right now?”
“You don’t work on Mondays, right?”
“Um—”
“I hate myself for asking and I swear, this is not something I do. My assistant manager has a personal emergency and there’s no one to cover until five. Kira might even stay at the pool the entire time. You can keep reading. Or napping. Or, maybe don’t nap while watching her, but I’ll tell her not to bother you.” I hesitate. “Shit. You have plans. Do you have plans? You know what? Never mind. It’s okay, I’ll just—”
“I was supposed to go with my mom and Perry to measure the wedding gazebo.”
“You should do that. It sounds important.”
Again, Romily’s voice mocks me in my head, and all her stupid data about stepmothering and axels of complication or whatever it was.It will come up.It’s a statistical certainty.But this is a different situation. An emergency.Right?
“You know what? It’s fine. I can watch her.”
“You’re amazing.” He waits until Kira puts her goggles on and goes underwater and then kisses me. “You’re my savior.”
For the next ten minutes, I really do feel amazing.
I am the best girlfriend. Understanding, flexible, responsible.
And then, Kira says, “I’mbo-ored.”
“Do you recognizethis room?” I ask.
Kira looks around the office and shakes her head.
“It’s the same as yours. Kinda weird, right? Same layout, totally different stuff.”
“This is your bed?” she asks, immediately jumping onto the daybed in a way that seems likely to collapse it. I try not to let it bother me that she’s still a little damp from the pool and rolling around on my quilt and putting her wet hair on my pillows. “It’s small!”
“I know. But my mom wants to be able to use this room, too, so it’s hard to fit a big bed in here and still have space for everything else.”
Is it my imagination, or does she pity me for living in my mom’s office? Kira takes another look around the room before returning her full attention to her tablet.
“Can I have your Wi-Fi password?”
