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I frankly couldn’t wait to get Emma’s room set up. It just felt right to have her at home with me and having her stream setup at my place meant she would probably stay at my place for longer and find an apartment closer to me, when she did find one.
Back at the apartment, we unloaded the car and brought everything inside. The living room was soon filled with boxes and packing materials. I couldn’t bring in everything up the stairs by myself, especially the desk, so I reluctantly let Emma help me with it even though I really wanted to do it myself.
Once we were ready to start assembling, I took charge of the instructions. As we got the shelves installed, we hit a minor snag over which step came next in the instructions.
“I’m telling you, we need to attach the side panels first,” Emma said, holding up the instruction manual and pointing to a diagram.
I squinted at the tiny images. “No, look, we need to secure the back panel first. See? It’s right here.”
Emma frowned, flipping the manual aroundto her side. “Alex, that’s not right. We should follow the order exactly as it says. The side panels come first, then the back.”
I sighed, trying to keep my patience. “Em, I’ve built these before. Trust me, if we do the back panel first it’ll be sturdier and easier to handle.”
She huffed, crossing her arms for a second before giving in.
We got to work, and sure enough, as we secured the back panel first the shelves held firm. Emma watched, her frown slowly dissolving into reluctant acceptance.
“Okay I admit it,” she said, holding up her hands in surrender. “You were right. Are you happy now?”
“It’s not about being happy that I was right…” I trailed off and took a step closer to her and cupped her face. “Em, these are just shelves, no need to get worked up over it.”
She rolled her eyes but nodded. “I know, I just hate being wrong. Why are you so good at everything? It’s annoying.”
I chuckled at that and kissed her. Her lips were soft and I swore I could almost feel her annoyance melt as she opened up for me to taste her. Her arms wrapped around my neck as she got on the tips of her toes and pulled me even closer to her.
After pulling back, we continued with assembling the rest and by the end Emma ended up sitting in my lap on the floor as she screwed in the bolts of her chair. “You know we do make a pretty good team,” Emma said, getting up and putting the chair right side up.
“Yeah, we do.” I got up after her. She sat in the chair to test it and I pushed it behind the desk so she could check if the height on everything was right.
Her chair was too high so she found the lever and shuffled in her seat to lower it. When that was done, I brought herlaptop from the other room and she took the rest of her electronics—headphones, mouse, keyboard.
“We should really build you a proper PC. The laptop won’t do for much longer,” I told her as we set up the space. I crawled under the desk in order to arrange all the cables so they wouldn’t be hanging in mid air or getting tangled between Emma’s legs.
“Yeah, that’s next on my list. I’ll need to read up and make a list of what I need, though,” she sighed.
“I know a guy who builds custom ones, he even streams how he builds them. His name is Henry. His username is something like Tergrashot. He even paints the boxes and stuff. My PC was built by him and he installed those neon lights inside the box. I was blown away when I first saw it, he knows his stuff,” I told her.
“Hm, I don’t know. I’ll think about it,” she said and busied herself with wiping all the shelves down with disinfectant.
With everything set up, Emma insisted on putting up the fairy lights herself. I held the ladder while she climbed up and hung them off the top shelves. Once ready, I turned on the lights and she stepped back to admire our work. The joy that filled her eyes as she circled the room made me grin like a fool.
“It looks amazing,” Emma said finally.
“Yeah and you’re pretty amazing yourself,” I replied, wrapping my hands around her waist from behind and pulling her into a hug.
As the evening wore on, we ordered pizza once again and opened another bottle of wine. I knew I should’ve stepped it up with the cooking by now but I was too tired to care at that point and Emma didn’t seem to mind eating pizza for the second night in a row.
We talked about her stream tomorrow and she admitted she was still nervous to do it by herself. I reassured her that she’d dogreat and promised I would be watching the stream from the other room and if I saw her stressing, I would pop into the chat or message her privately to cheer her on.
Later that night, we finally made our way back to the bedroom. We were exhausted and Emma was out like a light the moment her head touched the pillow. But I couldn’t say the same thing about myself.
My heart pounded so loudly I could hear it in the silence of the room. Emma’s soft breathing next to me was a comforting sound that made the world outside my bedroom fade away. She had moved into my apartment, into my life. She was going to sleep in my bed every night. She was everything I had ever wanted and more.
But did she love me? Because I knew that I loved her.
Desperately. Completely.
I wanted to show her, to tell her. I wanted to offer her my heart on a silver platter just to see what she would do with it. I wanted everyone to know that I was madly in love with this woman, but every time I thought about telling her, fear would swoop in and steal the words from my lips. Despite that, the beating of my heart chanted the same plea over and over again.
