Page 69 of Autumn on My Mind

He doesn’t answer my question. “Get your stuff,” he says wearily.

I blink at him. “What?”

“Get your stuff,” he says again. When I stare blankly, he goes on in a tight voice, “You can’t live in the storage room of a hardware store, Berkeley.”

Then he brushes past me, except he’s sopping, so it’s less of a brush and more of a squelch. He trudges wetly down the aisle, his shoes squeaking, and I hurry behind him.

“What are you doing?” I call. “Hang on. What are you—wait!”

He’s barged into the storage room and flipped on the light, revealing my current living space in all its pathetic glory: a squashy sleeping bag, an open duffle bag with jeans and underwear hanging out, and my phone plugged into a dusty extension cord.

I lunge for the underwear as Dominic stares at the setup.

“We said boundaries, Dom,” I say loudly as I tackle my duffle bag and shove everything back inside, pushing my cardboard box of memories to the bottom so he won’t see. “Boundaries! We made a big deal about it—there were rules! Stay out of⁠—”

But my words turn into a yelp of protest when Dominic steps further into the room and grabs the plastic bag I’ve been using as a laundry hamper.

“Leave my clothes alone!” I say.

“Then get them yourself, unless you want to go naked,” he says, tossing the bag to me. I miss, and my dirty clothes go flying.

“This is not boundaries!” I all but wail. “What are you doing?”

“Helping you move,” Dominic says calmly, and I freeze.

“What?”

He sighs, and even that simple motion sends a few extra water droplets onto the floor as he continues to drip. “Do you or do you not want to live here?” he says.

I snatch a dirty shirt from off my sleeping bag. “It’s obviously not ideal⁠—”

“And do you want to go back and room with Alvina Berkeley?” he goes on.

“Clearly not,” I say stiffly as I ball the shirt up and stuff it in the plastic bag. “She wears too much perfume⁠—”

“Which gives you headaches.”

“And she won’t let me turn on white noise⁠—”

“So you have to listen to the snoring.”

“And I felt like I couldn’t breathe.”

The words explode out of me, louder than I expected. My heart thuds in my chest as my hand tightens around the blue jeans I’ve just yanked off the floor.

In the resulting silence, accompanied only by the steady drip, drip, drip of Dominic’s water-logged clothes, a flash of raw understanding passes between us.

Then Dom nods, picks up my duffle bag, and shoves it into my arms. “Take this to the truck,” he says.

I continue to stare at him.

“It’s not like we have all night,” he goes on when I don’t move. “Pick up the pace or I’ll throw you over my shoulder and take you myself.”

“Take me where, exactly?”

A violent crash of thunder sounds overhead, so loud the shop itself seems to quake, and Dom looks around before muttering under his breath—something about Don’t have time for this.

Then, without any more warning, he hauls me into his arms, bridal style. I gasp and clutch the duffle bag hanging from one hand, slinging my other arm around his neck so I don’t fall.