“This one should go in our apartment.”

The lid to the trunk is halfway up when Elliot says this, and I lower it back down without looking. Warmth spreads so quickly through my limbs that I grow light-headed. “ ‘Our apartment’?”

He looks up from the picture. “I was thinking we should move in somewhere together. In the city.”

It’s only been ten days since we got back together, but even in that time, the commute between us is a beast. Renting a room from Nancy means that having “company” stay over is awkward enough to be impossible. And Elliot is simply too far away from the hospital for me to stay with him, either. Most nights, he meets me for a late dinner in the city and then drives home, and I fall into bed.

The one day off I had in that time—two days ago—we didn’t ever leave his apartment. We made love in his bed, on the floor, in the kitchen. For a brief pulse I imagine having access to him—to his voice and hands and laugh and weight over me every time I come home—and the desire for it becomes a second pulse in my chest.

“You’d move to the city?” I ask.

Elliot sets the picture down and sits beside me on the worn Persian rug. “Do you really question that?” Behind his glasses, his eyes seem nearly amber in the sunlight coming in the window. His lashes are so long.

I want to kiss him so much right now my mouth waters. I know we have work to do, but I’m distracted by the stubble on his jaw, and how easy it would be to climb into his lap and make love to him right now.

“Macy?” he says, grinning under the force of my attention.

I blink up to his face. “It’s a big commute for you.”

“My hours are more flexible than yours,” he says, and then a wicked light fills his eyes. “And having you in bed every night might help inspire ideas for my dragon porn.”

I laugh. “I knew it.”

We move in together on March 1. It’s pouring rain, and our apartment is a tiny one-bedroom, but it has a huge bay window and is only a half block away from the bus line that takes me directly to work. Elliot and his three brothers build a wall of bookcases, and—maybe a little awkwardly—Mr. Nick and Miss Dina bring us a new bed. I would have protested, but it’s a beautiful four-poster frame, handmade by one of Mr. Nick’s longtime patients. Alex, Else, and Liz drive to Nest Bedding to buy all manner of bed dressings—because neither Elliot nor I care what our sheets look like—and Miss Dina makes dinner while we all unpack, crammed into the small space.

By seven, the whole apartment smells like bay leaves and roasting chicken, and the rain outside turns from a downpour into a rare, violent thunderstorm, lightning cracking in bright flashes of light outside. Alex dances as she slips books onto the shelves, and we all watch her covertly, awestruck that something so profoundly graceful could have emerged from this gene pool. Out of a moment of quiet, Liz and George announce that they’re having a baby, and the room erupts into noise and motion. Else cranks the music—and the energy whips into a frenzy of laughter and dancing.