I felt immediately guilty, instantly at a disadvantage. “Of course. I only—”
“So you can see why I can’t do high school drama right now.”
I did see. But “high school drama”?
Chris got up to put our plates in the dishwasher, everything clean and in order.
I felt a flash of longing for my apartment, drunken piles of books and drifts of scribbled notes everywhere. The mismatched chairs from the flea market I swore I’d get around to painting one day. The dying plants obscuring my view of the fire escape.
“Sorry, but that sounds awfully dismissive,” I said.
Chris rubbed his face with one hand. “I’m sorry, too. I was hoping we could talk about something else tonight, that’s all. I’m exhausted. You have no idea what it’s like, having the responsibility for a child’s life in your hands.”
I flicked a glance at him to see if the irony was intentional. Nope.
“When?” I asked.
“What?”
“When can you talk about…”Me.“Us?”
“Actually, that’s what I was trying to do.”
I eyed him uncertainly. Was that what he was doing?
“Now that I’m going to be a fellow, I think we should live together,” Chris said.
My mouth fell open. “Seriously?”
He sat back, obviously satisfied with my reaction. “While you were gone, I looked at apartment listings.”
He wanted us to move in together! My heart expanded.
It’s not that I was in a rush to get married. I’d barely even looked at wedding dresses recently (bingeingSay Yes to the Dressdidn’t count). But moving in together felt like a milestone accomplishment, like buying a house or having an actual career path or publishing a book, a sign that at least part of my life was following a preordained path.See?I could say.Someone loves me.
My mind darted in a thousand directions like a dog let loose on a flock of seagulls, picturing bright paint and bold prints and real bookshelves…
“We could get a dog.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Chris said.
I leashed my wandering thoughts and beamed at him. “I’m just saying we’ll have the space.” For all his things and mine.
“But not the time. My schedule—”
“I’d take care of it,” I said eagerly. “The dog. I could walk it after work.”
“When you remembered.”
I breathed through an unexpected pulse of irritation. He was coping with the loss of a patient. A child. Now was not the time to argue about my occasional absentmindedness. “We could get a cat,” I offered. I was gone all day, too, during the school year. And I liked cats. I wondered where the nearest shelter was. Should we choose a kitten or an adult? Would he want to come with me to pick it out?
“Aren’t you going to ask where we’re going?” Chris asked.
“I don’t care.” What mattered was that he was choosing us. Choosing me.
He smiled. “The Decatur neighborhood is supposed to benice. It’s close to the hospital, about six miles from downtown Atlanta.”
My brain stuttered. There was a Decatur Street, wasn’t there? A town, Decatur, in downstate Illinois. But…“Atlanta,Georgia?”
