They moved in together a month ago. It was as natural, as inevitable as the turn of seasons. Zack couldn’t even remember any discussion about it. Certainly no brooding about it, no listing the pros and cons, no weighing it or thinking what friends or parents would say. They were in their own little world, had been from the moment they set eyes on each other, and it made perfect sense to formalize that world, to establish its beautiful but exclusive boundaries and borders, to respect and formalize their feelings for one another, to seize all the joy, all the hours with one another that life was offering them. Given what they’d been through together, everyone around them—parents, close friends, Emily’s coworkers—were willing to grant them their privacy and space.

And now, lying here in the morning light, he squints against the brightness. They need to get curtains or shutters, although this way, it’s always a light-flooded reminder of how lucky they are to be alive each day. Alive and with each other, and for now, there isn’t anything more to ask of life than that.

As Emily does a few wake-up stretches, fingertips to toes, and starts to dress for work, the little note of darkness in their lives tolls lightly in the background once more.

“How’s the job search going?” she says into the mirror, putting on makeup in quick, expert dabs and touches. Smiling—with affection, yes, but with sarcasm and annoyance too. Because she knows—they both know—it’s not going anywhere.

He has no answer. He’s paralyzed. His arms and legs stiffen up as he lies there. His pleasurable morning hard-on deflates.

It’s the little wedge between them. Their first hurdle. Such an absurd hurdle, of course, such a small, nagging thing, compared to outwitting and surviving a professional assassin. But it’s there in the room with them, in the bed with them, at the back of both their brains, acting in different but complementary ways inside each of them. For her, frustration. For him, embarrassment.

A small thing, but not a small thing, they both know. Drive, ambition, direction in life. Responsibility. Willingness to go forward, leave childhood behind. Their discussions are oblique. Dancing around it. But the issue is ever-present. Lying in bed with them like an infant, quiet now but ready at any moment to wail and scream.

This morning she digs in a little more. It may be easier for her when she’s heading out the door, he surmises. “Got your interviews lined up? Got your spreadsheets going?” She is smiling now because she knows, they both know, he doesn’t. “You’ll probably have a job by the time I get home,” she says.

Jamming the eyeliner into its holder with a little too much force, Zack notices.

She turns to him and looks at him, awaiting some kind of answer. Any kind of answer.