Chapter 45

The lift is broken.

Of course it is.

Third floor, new building, moving day, and the elevator has decided that today is the day it needs maintenance and the little handwritten sign on the door says out of order, apologies for the inconvenience and Alysa stands in front of it with a box in her arms and reads it and says nothing for a full five seconds.

“Stairs,” you say.

“Stairs,” she agrees, with great composure.

It takes four hours.

Four hours of boxes and bags and the particular chaos of two lives being consolidated into one space — her things and your things arriving together in a third-floor apartment that is neither of yours yet and is about to be both of yours forever, stacked and jumbled and completely overwhelming in the way of all moving days that have ever happened.

Phillip and Massimo help.

Of course they do.

Massimo arrives first with coffee and entirely too much energy for nine in the morning and immediately takes charge of the box labelling system in a way that nobody asked for but that turns out to be extremely useful. Phillip arrives twelve minutes later, looks at the situation, and begins carrying boxes with the quiet efficiency of someone who has decided the most useful thing he can do is just do the thing.

You carry. Alysa carries. Phillip carries. Massimo carries and also narrates, which slows him down slightly but improves the atmosphere considerably.

“This one says books — heavy,” Massimo says, on the stairs, slightly breathless. “Who has this many books.”

“Me,” you say, behind him.

“All of these are yours?”

“And some of hers.”

“How many books do two people need—”

“Massimo,” Phillip says, ahead of him, not breathless at all.

“I’m just asking—”

“Less talking,” Phillip says.

Massimo talks for the rest of the stairs.

By one o’clock the boxes are up.

By two the furniture is arranged — or a version of it, the first attempt, which will be rearranged twice more over the next week before it finds its right configuration but which for now is close enough to function.

The sofa against the wall that gets the afternoon light.

The bookshelf — a new one, bigger, because between the two of them they needed bigger — against the opposite wall.

The kitchen table by the window.

And in the hallway, just inside the front door, exactly where you planned it —

A bench.

Small and wooden, with a shelf underneath for shoes and hooks above for bags. For lacing skates. For the particular ritual of sitting together and threading laces through eyelets and talking about nothing and everything before the ice.

Alysa sees it go in.

Stands in the hallway and looks at it.

Says nothing for a moment.

“Hi Gerald,” she says, which takes you a second and then — the bench. She’s named the bench Gerald. After your ceiling crack at your old apartment. Your Gerald.

You feel something bloom in your chest so warm and so specific that you have to go and kiss her immediately, right there in the hallway in front of Phillip and Massimo who are carrying a lamp past you, which Massimo narrates with great enthusiasm.

Phillip and Massimo leave at four.

Massimo with a hug that lasts slightly longer than usual — the hug of someone who understands what today is and wants you to know he does — and Phillip with his hand on Alysa’s shoulder and then, briefly, on yours, which says everything it needs to say.

The door closes.

And it is just you.

Just the two of you in your apartment.

Your apartment.

You stand in the middle of the living room and look at it.

At the boxes still to unpack. At the furniture in its first-attempt arrangement. At the afternoon light coming through windows that are yours now, that will know you now, that will watch you move through mornings and evenings and ordinary days for as long as you’re here.

At the bookshelf with both your books on it, mixed together, hers and yours interleaved without any separation because that’s how you did it and it felt right and it is right.

At the bench in the hallway.

At the fairy lights she insisted on, already strung along the top of the bookshelf because some things are non-negotiable and fairy lights are one of them.

At her, standing beside you, looking at the same things.

“Hi,” she says.

“Hi,” you say.

“We live here,” she says.

“We live here,” you confirm.

She takes your hand.

You stand together in the afternoon light of your living room and just — look at it. At the beginning of something that is also the continuation of something, that started on a bench in a rink and has arrived here, in this third floor apartment with a broken elevator and a bookshelf and a bench named Gerald and fairy lights that are already doing their warm particular thing.

“I love you,” she says.

Simply. The way she says everything that is true.

“I love you,” you say back.

She squeezes your hand.

You squeeze back.

You order takeout for dinner.

Sitting on the floor because the sofa isn’t quite where it needs to be yet and the floor has a good view of the window and the evening coming in through it, boxes around you, containers between you, chopsticks and the particular comfortable chaos of a first night in a new place.

Her playlist on her phone, low.

The fairy lights on.

Your backs against the sofa that will eventually move slightly left, neither of you knowing that yet.

“We need more shelves,” she says, looking at the books.

“We need a rug,” you say.

“We need curtains that actually meet in the middle,” she says.

“We need a plant,” you say.

She looks at you.

“A plant.”

“For the windowsill. Something that will thrive.”

She looks at the windowsill. At the evening light that falls across it. At the particular quality of it that says — yes. Something would grow there. Something would be happy there.

“Okay,” she says. “A plant.”

You eat your takeout.

The evening goes on outside.

The fairy lights do what they do.

And at some point — not dramatically, not in a way either of you could mark exactly — the apartment stops being a new place and starts being home.

Not because anything changes.

Because you’re both in it.

Later.

The bedroom.

Your bed — hers, technically, the one that came from her old apartment but that has been yours to sleep in for long enough that the distinction stopped meaning anything — in a room that has two sides to it now, properly, visibly. Her nightstand and yours. Her things and yours. The silver ring on her side. The crescent moon necklace on yours, unclasped before sleep, set carefully where it lives now.

The lamp on.

Of course.

You’re lying facing each other in the dark of your first night and the city outside is doing its thing and the boxes are unpacked enough and the plant doesn’t exist yet but it will and the lift is still broken and Gerald the bench is in the hallway and—

“Alysa,” you say.

“Mm,” she says.

“You already—”

She opens her eyes.

Looks at you.

You look back.

And you smile.

Slowly. Deliberately. With everything you know and everything you’re pretending not to know and the full warmth of being someone who is loved by this specific person in this specific apartment on this specific first night.

“Goodnight,” you say.

She stares at you.

“That’s not—” she starts.

“Goodnight,” you say again, closing your eyes.

A pause.

“You heard that,” she says.

“Goodnight Alysa.”

“[y/n]—”

“Sleep well.”

The longest pause.

“I hate you,” she says.

“You love me,” you say.

“Unfortunately,” she says.

You smile at the inside of your eyelids.

She shifts closer.

Her arm finds you in the dark, pulling you in, and you go, and her chin finds the top of your head and her heartbeat is right there under your ear, steady and certain and entirely familiar, and outside the city breathes its night breath and inside your flat the fairy lights are off now and the lamp is off now and everything is quiet and warm and completely right.

“Goodnight,” she says softly. Into your hair.

“Goodnight,” you say. Into her chest.

Her arms tighten slightly.

You stay.