Chapter 14

The moving truck isn't a moving truck. It's Jordan's beat-up Honda, packed with boxes and a disassembled drafting table and three garbage bags full of clothes. She's been bringing things over in waves all week—her favorite mugs, her incense holder, the fairy lights she insisted on keeping—but today is the big push. Today, the studio empties out. Today, she's officially mine. Ours.

"You're sure your mom won't walk in and have a heart attack?" Jordan asks, hefting a box labeled KITCHEN STUFF (FRAGILE MAYBE) up the grand staircase.

"My mom is at a showing until four," I say. "And even if she wasn't, this is my suite. My life. She doesn't get a vote."

"That's a very sexy thing to say."

"Carrying my girlfriend's boxes up four flights of stairs is a very sexy thing to do."

"I'm not your girlfriend anymore." Jordan sets the box down on the landing and grins at me. Her pink bob is escaping its elastic, and there's a smudge of dust on her cheek, and she's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. "I'm your live-in partner. Very different. Much more official."

"Official," I repeat. "We need paperwork. A certificate. A tiny housewarming gift we give ourselves."

"We need wine. Later. After the boxes."

"After the boxes," I agree.

---

Ava arrives at noon with pastries and an opinion.

"You're putting the drafting table there?" She stands in the doorway of what used to be my sitting area and is now becoming Jordan's workspace, a croissant in one hand and her camera bag slung over her shoulder. "The light is terrible. She'll be squinting by three o'clock."

"The light is fine," Jordan says from the floor, where she's assembling the table legs. "I like diffused light. It's softer."

"It's dim. You'll go blind."

"Ava." I take the croissant out of her hand. "You're here to help, not critique."

"I'm here to do both. It's called multitasking. Madison, you do it every day at work."

"At work I get paid."

Jordan laughs from the floor—that low, unhurried sound. "She's got you there."

I throw a balled-up piece of packing paper at Ava. She catches it and tucks it into her camera bag. "For the gallery," she says. "I'm doing a series on domesticity. This is gold."

"You're doing a series on procrastination," I say. "How's the show prep going?"

Ava groans. "Don't ask. I framed twelve pieces yesterday and hated all of them. I'm considering burning the gallery down and fleeing the country."

"That seems extreme."

"Extreme times." She takes her croissant back and takes a bite. "Anyway, I'm not here to talk about my existential crisis. I'm here to celebrate your domestic bliss. Where do you want these throw pillows? They were in a box labeled SOFT THINGS and I felt personally addressed."

---

By late afternoon, the suite is transformed.

Jordan's drafting table stands near the big window in what used to be the sitting area, her laptop open, her incense holder—a carved wooden lotus—already sending up a thin ribbon of sandalwood smoke. The fairy lights are re-strung around the window frame, mingling with my blush curtains. Her combat boots are lined up beside my nude heels in the walk-in closet. Her silk camisoles hang next to my wrap dresses.

The closet is the part that gets me. Not the bed—we've been sharing that for months. Not the bathroom—her toothbrush has been in my holder since the third week. But the closet. Her clothes and my clothes. Her charcoal and olive next to my blush and gold. Her oversized denim jacket—the one with the mural Madison painted, I painted, on our first anniversary—hanging beside my tailored black blazer.

I stand in the doorway of the walk-in and just look at it. Two wardrobes. Two women. Two lives that are now one life.

My eyes catch on a sweater folded on the shelf—the charcoal one Jordan left here months ago, the one I wore to the beach, the one that still smells faintly of her studio. It's not borrowed anymore. It's just... ours. In our closet. In our home.

The memory surfaces without warning—salt wind and cold foam rushing over my ankles, Jordan's hand in mine, the cottage on the bluff shrinking behind us. She asked about the future that day. Ours, she said. Not mine, not yours. Ours. I said yes then, and I'm saying yes now, standing in a closet full of our combined lives.

Jordan comes up behind me. Her arms wrap around my waist. Her chin rests on my shoulder. "You're staring at the closet," she murmurs.

"It's a good closet."

"It's our closet."

"Yeah." I lean back into her. The sandalwood and the Jo Malone and the faint trace of packing dust. "It really is."

---

The first bicker happens on a Tuesday morning, two weeks in.

"You used the last of the oat milk."

"I did not."

"You absolutely did. The carton is empty. I was going to make coffee."

"I was going to make coffee and there was no oat milk, so I made coffee without oat milk. There's a difference."

"That's not a difference. That's the same outcome with extra steps."

Jordan is standing in the kitchen in her silk camisole and the sweatpants she stole from my drawer, her pink hair a catastrophe of bedhead. I'm in my robe, the monogrammed M.B. one, my arms crossed over my chest. The espresso machine hums behind me. The empty oat milk carton sits on the counter between us like evidence at a trial.

"You're very cute when you're annoyed," Jordan says.

"I'm not annoyed. I'm making a factual observation about oat milk distribution."

"You're annoyed." She crosses the kitchen and puts her hands on my waist. "And you're cute."

"I'm a marketing professional. I am not cute."

"You're adorable. And I'll buy more oat milk on my way home."

"You don't know which brand I like."

"The one with the blue carton. You've told me six times."

The irritation dissolves before I can hold onto it. Her hands are warm through the silk of my robe. Her grey-blue eyes are soft with morning sleepiness. She's here. She's staying. This is our kitchen, our oat milk crisis, our life.

"Fine," I say. "You're forgiven."

"I haven't apologized."

"You're forgiven anyway."

She kisses me. It tastes like coffee without oat milk—bitter and perfect. The espresso machine beeps behind us. Somewhere in the walk-in closet, her combat boots and my nude heels sit side by side.

---

The ordinary days accumulate.

Mornings: Jordan at her drafting table, me at my laptop on the couch. The incense and the coffee and the quiet hum of two people working in parallel. She'll glance up sometimes and catch me looking at her, and the smile that spreads across her face is slow and private and just for me.

Evenings: cooking together in the kitchen—Thai curry, her specialty, the one she learned from a YouTube video and perfected over months. The way she hums while she chops vegetables. The way I've learned the rhythm of her cooking, when to step in and when to stay out of her way.

Nights: her body against mine in the four-poster bed. The fairy lights glowing overhead. The familiar warmth of her, the sandalwood and the soft sounds she makes when she's falling asleep. The way her hand finds mine in the dark—automatic now, a reflex built over months of sharing a bed.

One night, lying in the dark, her breathing slow and even beside me, I catch myself thinking: this is my life. fully. permanently. The boy who wanted this is dead. The body on the couch is cold. The theft is absolute. And what I've built here—this closet, this kitchen, this woman sleeping beside me—is real. The guilt hums, distant and quiet. It will always hum. But the melody is louder now. The melody is the sound of Jordan's breathing. The smell of incense and Jo Malone. The feel of the gold bangle warm on my wrist. The body is my home. The life is my home. The woman beside me is my home.

I close my eyes and let the ordinary dark carry me toward sleep.