But that was a problem for later. For now, the couch was survivable.
Two days later, Vance came home and tossed a shopping bag at me without comment.
I caught it, confused. The bag was from a home goods store I didn't recognize. Inside was a cushion. Dark blue, memory foam, exactly the right size for the gap between the couch back and where a normal human spine would be.
"You bought a cushion."
"It was on sale."
I looked at the cushion. Then at him. His expression gave nothing away, but his ears were slightly pink around the edges.
"Thank you," I said carefully.
"Don't make a big deal out of it."
He walked to the kitchen and started pulling items from the refrigerator, effectively ending the conversation. I held the cushion in my lap, running my fingers over the soft fabric. Dark blue. My favorite color. I wondered if he knew that or if it was just a coincidence.
Later, when he was in the shower, I checked the tag still attached to the cushion.
Thirty-seven dollars. Full price. No sale sticker. No discount code. Just a plain white tag with the original price printed in bold.
He'd lied about the sale. He'd bought me a full-price cushion and pretended it was nothing.
I tucked the tag in my pocket and said nothing.
That night, sitting on the couch with the cushion behind my lower back, I felt something warm unfurl in my chest. Something that felt like being cared for. Being thought of.
Being wanted.
That evening, I discovered Vance kept his coffee mugs in three different cabinets.
"Why?" I asked, standing in the kitchen, holding a mug wedged behind a stack of plates. "You have six mugs. Why are they in three separate locations?"
"They fit where they fit."
"That's not a system. That's chaos."
"It's efficient." He sprawled on the couch, flipping through channels. "I know where they are."
"Do you? Because this one was behind your plates, which, by the way, are also in two different cabinets."
"The big plates don't fit with the small plates."
"They would if you stacked them properly."
He turned to look at me, amusement and challenge in his expression. "Are you reorganizing my kitchen?"
"I'm considering it."
"It's been working fine for three years."
"It's been workingadequatelyfor three years. There's a difference."
He snorted, which I was learning was his version of a laugh. "You sound like a management consultant."
"Architecture degree. We're trained to optimize spatial flow."
"Spatial flow." He said it like it was a foreign language. "In a kitchen the size of a closet."
