I measure the coffee beans and put them in the grinder. When the noise is over I say, “You seem awfully happy about the bad weather.”

Richard shrugs, adding a delicious mix of nuts and fresh fruit to our oatmeal. The boyfriend still eats meat, but he’s being surprisingly open-minded about my dietary habits.

“At least one of us is excited about the rain.” I pour the heated water and ground coffee into the press, stir, and set the microwave timer to five minutes. “Can you drive us to Manhattan tonight?”

“Tired of Brooklyn?”

“No, but it’s been raining for three days… I’ve run out of clean clothes.” I sit at the kitchen bar opposite Richard. “I need to go home and pick up some fresh outfits.”

Richard smiles a goofy smile. “I’ll let you in on a secret. There’s a mystical object with the magical power of turning dirty clothes into clean ones. It’s called a washing machine.”

I chuckle. “Most of my things are dry-clean.”

“There are dry cleaners in Brooklyn.”

“Yeah, I’m aware. I’d still prefer to go home and get a fresh change. Come on, I can’t show up at work with the same outfit two times in a week.”

“Why don’t you bring some of your stuff here?”

“Nah, I wouldn’t want my wardrobe spread around two places. I’d get confused about where everything is.”

Richard seems disappointed by my answer, but the timer interrupts him before he can express his mind. I plunge the press, pour the coffee, and we eat in silence. The mood has shifted from cozy-homey to awkward, and I don’t know what I did wrong.

Surely, Richard isn’t touchy over my choice of dry cleaners, and I was positive he’d be eager for an evening on his own.

Two spoonfuls of oatmeal, and Richard stops midway through the third to not-so-casually say, “So move everything here.”

I choke on a sip of coffee. “Move in with you?”

Whoa! I thought I’d have to rope the boyfriend into this new commitment very slowly. And now he’s just asking me out of the blue over breakfast on a Thursday in December.

“I mean.” His lips twitch. “If you can stomach the idea of living in Brooklyn.”

“It’s not that. It’s just… are you sure?”

“I am, but you don’t seem too excited.”

“No, I am. But I don’t want you to rush into a commitment that might be too quick and backfire on us.”

“Think this is rushed? I’ll give you rushed.” Richard sits taller on his stool. “With my ex, I proposed after six months and pushed her to set the wedding date in another six months without having spent a single day under the same roof.”

Richard never talks about his past so I listen without interrupting.