Page 93 of When the Walls Come Down
It was moving day, and while I was excited about our next adventure, there was an undeniable sadness about everything we were leaving behind. Let me just come right out and admit that emotional, micromanaging, sentimental Maggie was not attractive or conducive to speeding up the movers we were paying by the hour. Hence why, after my flip-out over the hollow teal balls while they loaded my gray adult sofa onto the truck for Goodwill, Shane had sentenced me to wrap the spoons in the kitchen. Did spoons need to be individually bubble-wrapped? Nope. Had I spent two hours wrapping the safest spoons Atlanta would ever see? Yep.
But it wasn’t like Shane didn’t already know I got edgy when we moved. Change was hard. Even when it was changing for the better.
About a year into our relationship, Shane and I outgrew his apartment. And it was still his apartment, because we weren’t yet living together—not officially anyway. By that point, my place next door was nothing but a glorified closet and a second refrigerator when we hit the farmers market a little too hard. I’d been adamant about keeping my own place, and with me in his bed every night, Shane never made a peep about us moving in together again.
It was all fine and good until one day, I got a cold. It wasn’t a big deal, but I called out of work just in case. And that’s when it happened. I got bored and made the mistake of looking up local real estate online.
I’d fallen in love with Shane fast.
I’d fallen in love with that three-bedroom, two-bath midcentury remodel even faster.
It was time. Warren Consulting had taken off as I had known it would, and I’d gotten a substantial raise on my one-year anniversary at Bay Brewing. Shane and I were happier than ever with no signs of slowing down.
That afternoon, when Shane came home from work, a takeout bowl of chicken noodle soup in his hands, he was greeted by a dozen printouts the real estate agent had dropped off. I sat on the counter, nervously chewing my nail as he picked up the stack.
“You trying to tell me something?” he asked.
“I haven’t seen it in person, but it looks incredible.”
Grinning, he walked over and stood between my legs. “Just to be clear. You’re gonna live there with me and not just suggesting I move because I stole all the blankets last night.”
“Well, we’d have separate bedrooms of course.”
He barked a laugh and tossed the papers onto the counter. “Call and schedule a walk-through for when you’re feeling better.”
“Don’t you want to look at the rest of the pictures first?”
“Nope. I’m already looking at the only thing that will matter in that house.”
He went in for a kiss, which I dodged. “Don’t kiss me. You’ll get sick.”
“Maggie, you just said you want to buy a house together and move in with me. I’m about to do far more than kiss you.”
Two weeks later, when our offer on that house was accepted, Shane was sick as a dog—real nasty case of the man flu—so we celebrated with takeout from Two Ships, a box of tissues, and an old-fashioned, “I told you so.”
But, because we had been moving on our timeline together, it was easily one of the best nights of my life.
“Uh, Peach,” Shane said, snapping me back to the present. “Can we have a word?”
“Any specific word, or are you just testing my vocabulary?”
He curled a hand around the back of my neck and drew me in close. “You know these guys aren’t robbing us, right?”
“You don’t know that for sure.”
He laughed. “Right. Okay. I’ll go give everyone a pat-down. But in the meantime, how about you take that crazy of yours to our bedroom and pack up anything you don’t want the movers to handle?”
“You mean all the gold and riches I have hidden in the mattress?”
“Psh, I already stole that. I mean your panties and that toy you don’t think I know about in your nightstand.”
I bit my bottom lip. “I have no murder secrets from you.”
He chuckled. “And the one in the closet too.”
Damn, he knew all my homicidal secrets.
“On it,” I chirped, hurrying off down the hall to our room.
The nostalgia hit me as soon as I opened that door. Shane and I had fallen in love back at our old apartments, but we grew in love in that house.
So, obviously, I did none of the packing he’d asked me to, instead opting to sit in the middle of our bedroom floor and go through the small chest with his name carved in the top. It had been empty when I’d given it to him, but now, it was overflowing with memories we’d collected along the way.
He was going to kill me, and not in the fun, sexy way. But for this trip down memory lane, I wanted to start at the beginning. Flipping his box over, I dumped it out on the carpet.
