Benji crossed his arms and batted his lashes. “You measured the distance to my apartment incidentally.”
“Are we discussing the move or my measurement practices?”
“Both. I’m definitely discussing both, because both are telling me you don’t want me to go.”
“I don’t want you to go,” flew out before I could stop it. I sucked in a breath, held it, then let it out as slowly as humanly possible. Thankfully, Benji waited patiently while I rebooted my internal operating systems. “But I also agree that you should go. Both things are true, and that they’re both true is why this is the right decision.”
He looked at me across the island with a face containing at least four simultaneous emotions: affection, sadness, determination, and a humor that was holding the other three together.
“Twenty-two feet,” he said.
“Twenty-two feet. That’s nothing, just a hallway,” I confirmed, though I wasn’t sure whether I was offering him reassurance—or myself.
“It’s a separate dwelling unit with independent plumbing and its own lease agreement.”
“It’s twenty-two feet, Benj.”
“Twenty-two feet is a meaningful distance when it includes a door that closes.”
I was fairly certain the sentence came out heavier than he’d intended.
A door that closes.
My door had been open for months, the three inches expanding into a full opening. Now, the opening was going to close, and the closing was the right thing, and the right thing was indistinguishablefrom the hard thing.
Benji reached across the island and put his hand over mine.
“The door doesn’t close,” he said. “The doornevercloses. The door is permanently, structurally, irreversibly open, and I’m going to be walking through it so often that you’re going to tire of me and install a revolving door. I’m going to personalize the revolving door with Post-it notes, possibly even glitter or rhinestones, and you’re going to hate it.”
“I won’t hate it.”
“You’ll probably reorganize the Post-it notes by date.”
“Someone should. Maybe subcategorized by subject or header, too.”
He squeezed my hand. I squeezed back and didn’t let go. Instead, I drew a heart on his palm with my thumb, a gesture so small he might not have felt it, except that his breath caught, which meant he felt it.
“Saturday,” he said. “I’ll move Saturday.”
“I’ll help.”
“It’s twenty-two feet. I don’t need help.”
“I’ll help.”
He moved on Saturday. The physical relocation took approximately forty-five minutes, because Benji’s possessions had expanded during three months of cohabitation to include items that were mine. A few he’d absorbed through gradual annexation included a hoodie, two books, a spatula he’d claimed as “his” based on the argument that he’d used it more, and a throw pillow that he insisted had been a gift, but that I was fairly certain he’d stolen during movie night.
“The pillow is mine,” he said, carrying it across the hallway.
“The pillow was on my couch.”
“The pillow was onmy lapon your couch. Possession is nine-tenths of the law.”
“That’s not how property law works.”
“It’s how pillow law works.”
Princess Consuela’s carrier went last.
