Page 75 of Honeyfires

"I'm taking it in. Processing it emotionally." He looked around my apartment at the stacked boxes. "Also, you have so few possessions. It's almost philosophical. Like a monk."

"A monk with a motorcycle," Stevens offered helpfully, appearing behind him with his sleeves already rolled up.

"Stevens, take the books."

"On it." He picked up the box, immediately staggered under the weight. "Oh. Oh, these are—how do you have this many books?"

"They're Vera's."

"Vera's books are in your apartment?"

"That's generally what happens when you're in a relationship, Stevens."

"I'm just saying, this is already a lot of—" He attempted a step and had to start over. "She work here? This is like a whole library, Alves."

Miller arrived last, as he always did, precisely when he intended to, with the kind of competent silence that made everyone else feel slightly ashamed of their noise. He surveyed my apartment, surveyed the boxes, and picked up my couch in a single motion that suggested he had done this before and found it unimpressive.

"Down the hall?" he said.

"Down the hall," I confirmed.

"Mm." He walked out with the couch. That was it. That was the whole interaction.

"I want to be Miller when I grow up," Stevens said worshipfully.

"You want to be a sixty-year-old man with a thirty-year fire career and strong opinions about vanilla extract?"

"The couch thing. Just specifically the couch thing."

Vera appeared in the doorway of what was now our apartment wearing denim cutoff shorts and a tied-up vintage blouse, her hair in a high ponytail. She looked like a photograph someone had taken of summer, personified.

God, I was so lucky.

"Pizza's here!" she announced. "Come eat before you do any heavy lifting."

The crew's transformation was immediate and total. Stevens put down his box. Jackson untied his apron strings and then retied them, for reasons, I guess. Miller set down the couch in the hallway and made a beeline toward the smell of cheese and pepperoni, which was the fastest I had ever seen him move voluntarily. It was almost comical.

"You didn't have to do this," I murmured, walking over and pressing a kiss to Vera's temple.

"They're helping us build our life together," she said simply. "Least I can do is feed them."

"Our life together," I repeated thoughtfully.

"Ours." She leaned back against me for half a second, her body warm against mine. "Go eat. Miller looks like he's about to pick up something else."

He was, in fact, eyeing my weightlifting equipment with the expression of a man considering his options.

"Miller!" I called. "Pizza first."

He set down the weights. "I wasn't going to drop them."

"I know. Eat first."

We settled on the floor of what was now our living room, my things stacked around us, pizza boxes open in the middle, my crew sprawled in various configurations of mild exhaustion and maximum comfort.

"So," Jackson said, gesturing between me and Vera with his pizza slice, "how does this work? Logistically. Do you have assigned sides of the bed?"

"Jackson—"