I eat standing up, hip against the counter, watching him.
"Good eggs, Baptiste."
"Shut up."
"I mean it."
"You'd eat cardboard right now."
"Yeah, but these aren't cardboard."
I sit on the stool next to him. Our knees touch under the counter. He reaches over and puts his hand on my thigh. Doesn't squeeze. Just rests.
"Talk to me about logistics."
"Right now?"
"Right now while I have you and I'm not going to spook."
"I'm not going to spook, Gray."
"Humor me."
I breathe out. Set my fork down.
"The follow-up is five thousand words. I have three weeks. I can file it from anywhere. My editor doesn't care where my laptop lives. I need to be in Toronto maybe twice a month for editorial meetings and for sources who won't take a call. I have a lease on this apartment through October. I can sublet. Or keep it if I want a landing pad on this end for a while. Marcus lives in Vancouver. I'd be closer to him than I am now."
"Okay."
"The Globe wants me on contract for the long form stuff. They'll take me remote. They already said so when I asked yesterday."
"You asked yesterday."
"I asked yesterday."
"Simone."
"I know."
"You were already planning."
"I was already planning. I just wasn't ready to say it out loud yet because I didn't want to say it over the phone and I didn't want to say it on your porch and not mean it. I wanted to say it tomorrow. In the apartment. With my notes in front of me. Like a proposal."
"You were going to propose me."
"Don't be cute."
"I'm being cute."
"Gray."
"Yeah."
"I'm saying it now instead. I want to come home with you. To the cabin. To Crimson Hollow. To the Saturday breakfast crew you told me about on the ridge. To the vineyard that smells like iron and the bookstore with the woman in band tees and the café with the honey cinnamon latte. All of it. I want all of it."
His hand tightens on my thigh.
"Okay."
