Giving a huff of exasperation, she whacked his arm, which startled him. Sara had never been playful with him, and he liked it. So he laughed, his pleasure that she was standing next to him, that she loved him, full and rich and overflowing.

Sara watched Gabriel laugh as a grin spread huge and wide across his face, the deep timbre of his voice loud in the quiet room, and she was overwhelmed. She didn’t think she had ever actually heard him laugh before, and God, it was a sexy thing. Not pretty, and maybe even mildly obnoxious, but sexy as hell because there was joy on his face. A happiness that she had never seen there before, and she realized she hadn’t been aware of its absence until she saw and heard it. She burst out with her own laugh.

“It’s not funny,” she told him, and it wasn’t. Yet somehow it was. And it felt amazing to laugh with him. “Now clean this apartment up. I’m not moving into this filth.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, reaching for the nearest empty soft drink can, but then ruining the effect by sticking his tongue out at her.

Which was so casual, so free, so out of character yet somehow so Gabriel that she laughed even harder. It was right, it was good, it was so hopeful, the sound of their laughter intermingling, that the questions didn’t matter. The ambiguity, the mysteries, the unknown, didn’t really matter as much as it did to just be together, to share this moment, this day, this life with each other.

Sara spotted Angel lying in the sun spot on the floor, and went to greet her kitten. The cat purred as she scooped her up, and with Angel in her arms, she stepped back out into the hall and pulled in the suitcase she’d left outside the door. Rolling it inside the apartment, she let go of the cat and the handle and picked up another empty pizza box. It boggled the mind to consider how many pizzas he could have possibly consumed in five weeks, and she grabbed a napkin stuck to the box and wiped at the grease spot it had left on the table. It was then she saw the sketchbook shoved to the back of the table, opened to a drawing in pencil of her chewing her lip, studying a paper in her hand. Sara flipped the page and found another of her lying in bed on her side, back visible, wearing a T-shirt, the sheet up to her waist. Then another of her dancing in her miniskirt, legs bent, arms out, a sassy smile on her face. And one of her naked, sitting with her knees to her chest, her eyes shiny and filled with love, lust.

Sara glanced over at Gabriel, unable to speak.