Page 95 of We Can Stay
But she’s already opening it, and I remember too late what’s in there. Boxes. At least a dozen of them, stacked against one wall. All the things from my marriage that I couldn’t throw away but couldn’t stand to look at either.
Flick glances back at me, reading something in my expression. “We don’t have to?—”
“It’s fine.” The words come out rougher than intended. “Just... storage.”
She closes the door without asking questions, and I love her even more for it. Instead, she leads me back downstairs, past the kitchen, to the sliding door that opens onto the deck.
“Now this,” she says, stepping outside, “this has potential.”
The deck overlooks a small backyard that’s more weeds than grass. The previous owners left behind a garden bed that’s nowjust dirt and the skeletal remains of some climbing plant on a trellis.
“I keep meaning to do something with it,” I admit, joining her at the railing.
“What would you plant?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never had a garden. My parents did all that at their place.” I wrap my arms around her from behind, resting my chin on her shoulder. “What would you plant?”
“Herbs, definitely. Basil, rosemary, thyme. Maybe some flowers for Cat to destroy.” She leans back against me. “We could put a little table out here. String up some lights.”
“We?”
She tenses slightly. “I mean, if you wanted help. I didn’t mean to assume?—”
“Flick.” I turn her in my arms so she’s facing me. “I want you to assume. I want you to plan gardens and grocery lists and whatever else comes to mind.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I cup her face gently. “I want you to make this place feel less like a house and more like?—”
The doorbell rings, cutting me off.
“Pizza’s here,” Flick says, but she’s smiling like she knows exactly what I was about to say.
We eat sitting on the living room floor, the coffee table between us, because it feels less formal than the dining room and more us than the kitchen island. Flick tells me about a custom order that’s driving her crazy—someone wants yarn that looks like a sunset but “not too orange, not too pink, with hints of purple but not actually purple.”
“So basically impossible?”
“Basically.” She steals a piece of pepperoni from my slice. “But I’ll figure it out. I always do.”
We finish eating in comfortable silence, then clear the boxes away together. Flick hums while she washes the plates—something she does without thinking, these little melodies that follow her around. I dry and put away, marveling at how natural this feels. How right.
“We should probably go check on Cat,” I say once the kitchen is clean.
“Probably wise. No telling what the little terror has destroyed in my absence.”
We grab our things, and I lock up the house that already feels less empty than it did this morning. As we drive to Flick’s place, she slips her hand into mine and smiles across the console and a feeling of rightness settles over me in the silence of the drive.
“Hey,” she says as we reach her condo. “What were you going to say earlier? Before the pizza came?”
I stop on her doorstep, turning to face her under the glow of the porch light. “I was going to say I want you to make my place feel less like a house and more like home. Because that’s what you do, Flick. You make everywhere feel like home.”
Her eyes glisten. “You do the same for me.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” She leans up and kisses me, then pulls me inside.
And as the door closes, the sound of Cat’s indignant meowing greets us from the kitchen. As I watch the little gray blur rush towards us, I realize how badly I’ve missed this. And I realize home isn’t a place at all.
