“I really like Finn, but he’s definitely the hardest of them to get a read on.”
I closed the trunk, and we headed back upstairs to get more boxes.
“Have you met Andrew?” I asked.
Silas shook his head. “You?”
“Today will be the first time.” I grimaced, walking back into the apartment and testing the weight of the boxes to see if I could get more than one on the next trip. “That’s wild, though, isn’t it? About their dad.”
“About their moms,” Silas whispered, like anyone was around to hear. “No wonder Finn plays his emotions close to the chest.”
“Yeah.”
I found two boxes of a tolerable weight and stacked them. Silas grabbed one, and we were back on our walk. It took three more trips to get everything, boxes stacked in the trunk and the back seat by the time we were finished. There were still plenty of things in my apartment, but none of them really mattered. I didn’t need my bed when Hunter’s was so soft, didn’t need my TV or my nightstand when they were secondhand buys in the first place. But still, the thought of unloading them when they’d been mine for so many years had me feeling some kind of way. Like I’d told Hunter earlier in the morning, I had four months left on my lease and while I appreciated his offer to pay any early termination fees, that was a bridge I would cross when we got to it.
“What else?” Silas asked, following my stare around the apartment.
“Just Feeny,” I said.
Silas frowned at the fish. “How are you going to get him there without the water sloshing everywhere?”
I frowned too. “I don’t know.”
“I’ll hold him,” Silas offered. “Then you can just bring me back here for my car.”
“Are you sure?”
“Very,” he assured me.
With the utmost care, Silas picked Feeny up from his home on my dresser, cooing down into the water like my fish was an actual, human baby. I rolled my eyes at them while I gathered up Feeny’s food. I didn’t bother giving my apartment one last look. It wasn’t like I was leaving forever, and the things I was leaving behind weren’t important. I locked the deadbolt and carefully trailed behind Silas, appreciating how slowly he walked so as to not splash any water over the edge of Feeny’s bowl.
The whole way to the car, he whispered sweet nothings down to the fish, only handing him off to me to hold when he needed to get into the passenger seat. Once he was buckled, I passed Feeny back to him, smiling at the way Silas clutched the bowl securely in his lap.
“Do you and Marshall want to have kids?” I asked, sinking down in the driver’s seat and turning the car on.
He looked at me with a horrified expression. “No.”
“Okay,” I chuckled.
“I don’t have good role model in the parenting department, and neither does he,” Silas reminded me.
“Isn’t that a bonus, though? Like you know hownotto act?”
That question landed a little differently, and Silas knitted his brows together in thought while I carefully pulled out of my parking spot and into the street.
“I don’t think Marshall wants to have kids,” he finally said.
“Do you?”
“I haven’t thought much about it,” he said, turning his attention back to Feeny and effectively ending the conversation.
I hadn’t put much thought into the whole thing either, but the way Silas had acted with my fish was so easily paternal, it was really simple to imagine him acting that way with an actual child. I couldn’t quite imagine what it would be like to integrate kids into the lifestyle we chose to live, but it had certainly been done before. No matter, if Silas said no, it was a no.
He didn’t say another word to me until we reached Hunter’s apartment. “Is it okay if I come up?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“You said Finn was over. He was upset. I don’t want to intrude.”
