Page 65 of Never Alone
I came around the corner of the bed when he was making it—which he had insisted on, said it would feel weirder if it wasn't made, saidthe floor is fine for me, but you're not sleeping on a bare mattress—and he was bent over tucking the corner of the sheet under. I came up to help with the other side, and we tucked corners on opposite sides of the bed, and our hands almost met in the middle when we both went for the comforter at the same time.
I stepped back.
He kept his eyes on the comforter.
"Got it," he said.
"Yeah."
I went back to the closet.
By two in the afternoon, the rooms were done. Noah's small room had his bed, his dresser, his shelf, his lamp, his picture, and his sleeping bag on the high shelf. The bigger room had Cole's clothes in the closet and mine on the other side of the closet, his bathroom things on the left of the bathroom counter and mine on the right, his side of the bed and my side of the bed already declared by the way the pillows had ended up. The bed itself looked like a bed two people slept in. The room looked like a room two people slept in.
I stood in the doorway and looked at it.
It looked exactly like what it needed to look like.
Cole came up behind me with two empty boxes under his arm.
"Looks right," he said.
"It does."
He set the boxes down by the door.
"Pickup's in an hour."
"I'll go."
He nodded. Left the room. Went to the kitchen.
I stood there for another minute.
The closet was open. My clothes were hanging next to his clothes. His shirt cuff was almost touching the sleeve of one of my dresses. His belts were on the same hook as my scarves. His shoes were lined up on the floor next to mine.
This was what a married woman's closet looked like.
I had not had one since I'd left.
I closed the closet door.
Noah went down at nine-fifteen, the way he had every night since we'd been here. Cole read with him in the new room—the lamp on the new bedside table, the new bedside table the only piece of furniture we'd actually bought new, the rest borrowed from the old configuration—and Noah fell asleep. Cole eased the door shut behind him, and the apartment got quiet.
We brushed our teeth at the bathroom sink at the same time, not looking at each other in the mirror, which was a thing I had not done with another person since I'd left Nicholas. He spat. I spat. He held the door for me.
The bedroom looked the same as it had at two in the afternoon.
Cole had set up his bedroll already—sleeping bag unzipped and laid flat as a sheet on the carpet on his side of the bed, a pillow, a folded blanket. He had done it before he'd come into the bathroom. I hadn't seen him do it. He'd just done it.
He went to it now. Sat down on it. Started untying his shoes.
I stood at the foot of the bed with my hand on the comforter.
"Cole."
"Yeah."
"Are you sure?"
