Page 167 of Whipped!

Wasabi escaped the foster room (the latch, despite my reinforcements, remained a vulnerability that the kittens exploited with increasing sophistication) and climbed Benji’s leg and settled on his shoulder while he shelved books. He was little more than a small orange smudge perched on a green T-shirt—inside out, because some things about Benji Kwon would never change and theinside-out shirt was one of them and I didn’t want it to change,not ever, not any of it.

The stove light was on.

It had been on for ten months, longer if one bothered measuring the time before Benji.

It was going to stay on.

I pulled a Post-it from the pad.

It was the last one on the pad, the final yellow square, which felt strangely significant.

I wrote on it, walked to the fridge, and stuck it in the spot,ourspot, the three-inch territory where two people had conducted the most important conversations of their lives in handwriting that had started as strangers’ and had become as familiar as breath.

Welcome home. — P

I went back to the island, drank my tea, and waited.

Benji found the note twenty minutes later when he ventured into the kitchen for a glass of water.

I watched him see it.

I watched him read it.

I watched his face do every single thing it knew how to do, all at once. It was the full Benji Kwon spectrum from performance to real, then back again. It settled, finally, on the one expression that wasmine alone.

Then he pulled a pen from the drawer and scribbled something beneath my words.

He capped the pen, returned it to its rightful place, and walked back to the bookshelf without looking at me. But he was smiling, the one that now existed, as far as I could tell, only for me.

I went to the fridge and read what he had written.

I’ve been home for months. You just finally gave me a key.

— B

Below that, he added a postscript in smaller writing.

P.S. We need more Post-its. We just used the last one. Buy the yellow ones. The yellow ones are ours.

— B

I stood in the kitchen of an apartment that was now officially ours, and I looked at the Post-it note and the stove light and the curtains that were green instead of my off-white blinds. I looked at the whiteboard with his name in green andthe cat on the refrigerator and the dog at my feet and the kittens in the foster room and the man at the bookshelf who had arrived ten months earlier with a suitcase and a screaming cat and who had stayed and stayed and stayed until staying became permanent and permanent became the only word that mattered.

And I added one item to the grocery list on the whiteboard:

Post-it notes (yellow)

General Tso jumped down from the refrigerator, crossed the kitchen, and passed my legs without stopping, which was standard. He continued to the living room where Benji had settled on the couch with a book in one hand and Princess Consuela in his lap. General Tso assessed the available surfaces, then jumped onto the couch. He walked across Benji’s legs and settled on Benji’s lap beside Princess Consuela in a configuration that required both cats to adjust their positions. Neither cat seemed to mind.

General Tso was on Benji’s lap.

Not mine.

Benji’s.

“Thermoregulation. That’s all it is,” I said, from the kitchen.

From the couch, Benji said, “Divine blessing. Tso be praised!”