Page 108 of Returned Mail

He’s exhausted by the time we reach the door.

“Ready?” I ask quietly.

He stares at the door, at the number on top of it, at the familiar scuff near the bottom where the previous version of him probably kicked it a hundred times.

“I don’t know,” he admits.

I unlock the door and push it open. The apartment breathes around us. The warm light, wood floors, and the big window spilling the late afternoon across everything. He steps inside, and his shoulders tense. For a second, I see something flicker over his face. Grief, nostalgia, regret, all folded into one sharp flash. Then it passes. He looks around slowly.

“You changed the rug,” he says.

“I spilled an entire pot of coffee on the old one,” I confess. “Accidentally.”

He huffs out a tiny laugh. His gaze moves to the window. He walks toward it, slower than he used to, I suppose, but steady. He stops where he always did—where I do now—and rests his hand on the frame.

“It’s smaller than I remember,” he says.

“Or maybe you’re just bigger,” I say.

His mouth curves as he turns back to me. “This feels… different,” he murmurs.

“Is that a good different or a ‘there’s a stranger living in my old home’ different?” I ask.

He studies me for a second. “You are not a stranger.” He says.

My heart trips over itself. “Well,” I say lightly, because if I don’t, I’ll cry, “We have been ‘talking’ for a few months now. That has to count for something.”

His eyes warm at that. Then he sets his bag down by the couch. “So.” He says, clearing his throat. “House rules?”

“House rules?” I echo, relieved for the shift. “Okay. Erm, one: I make terrible experimental dinners at least once a week. Complaining is allowed, but you still have to try them.”

“Cruel,” he says. “But fair.”

“Two: Sometimes I stand in the kitchen and eat cereal out of the box. That is not a cry for help.”

“That absolutely is a cry for help.”

“Three,” I continue, ignoring him, “If you see me sitting on the floor staring at my laptop, assume I am having a life crisis and just offer me snacks.”

“Snacks as emotional intervention.” He says. “Got it.”

He hesitates.

“And you?” I ask. “Any rules?”

He looks around again. Then at me. “Just one,” he says.

“Yeah?”

“Don’t disappear on me.” He says softly.

I feel like I just stopped breathing. “I won’t,” I whisper.

We stand there in the middle of the living room, surrounded by the ordinary, and the weight of everything that’s shifting between us settles in.

Domestic intimacy sneaks in quickly.

He starts making coffee in the morning because I always forget to schedule the coffee machine, and he is always awake before me. I put his meds on full display on the kitchen counter, so he doesn’t have to remember alone. He washes dishes more slowly than I do, but more thoroughly. I reorganize the pantry, and he pretends not to notice that I alphabetized the spices.