Page 144 of Trust Me

He stroked my arm, but he stayed silent. Usually, he was the one who was trying to plan things out with me, even if it was years in the future. His uncharacteristic hesitation made my stomach flip.

“It was just an idea,” I said quickly. “It’d be years down the road anyway. I don’t know why I was thinking about it.”

“It’s just—”

The car pulled up, and he stopped talking with an annoyed sound. I tried to ignore the way the driver seemed impatient while both of us loaded the bags into the car.

Once we settled in the backseat, I turned to Oli. “It’s just what?”

“I have a hard time seeing the future.”

“Nobody can see the future,” I teased.

His lips quirked just a little. Enough for me to feel better. Not enough for me to drop it.

“You talk about the future all the time,” I pointed out.

“Things I want, yeah. I’m not saying I don’t want a boxer with you. Obviously, I do.”

“That’s a relief.”

“I was just trying to picture it. When I try to do that, no matter what I want to see, it’s just this blank space. There’s me, then there’s Remi, but if I try to add a dog or a house, I can’t get them to stay solid. They’re . . . dreams, but not the kind that become real. No matter how much I want them, they just won’t stick.”

He looked down at his hands. I took one of them and squeezed it. “Want me to describe it to you?”

He met my eyes. “You’d do that?”

Keeping hold of his hand, I put an arm around his shoulders and pulled him in close. I dropped my lips closer to his ear so the driver couldn’t listen to us.

“Here’s what I see,” I said. “A house with brick on the outside. It’s old but has good bones. We have to replace the floors immediately because there’s water damage, which means we have to patch up the roof. It’s too expensive to do the whole thing at once, obviously. Once it’s safe to walk in, we start making it ours. Real wood cabinets with brass handles.”

“Soft close because you get pissed when I close ours too hard.”

“It’s so goddamn loud. Same goes for the toilet lid.”

“Maybe we add a urinal.”

“That’s unnecessary.”

He harrumphed. “We can talk about it.”

“Fine. After it’s not a literal hazard to live in, we get a puppy. It’ll be practice.” Realizing what I’d said, I rolled my lips inward.

Oli tucked his face into my neck and breathed me in. “Practice, huh?”

“I mean . . . It’s just an imaginary future.”

“If we can’t handle a dog, we can’t handle a baby.”

My heart fluttered. This was so ridiculous, but if nobody else was around to judge us, who fucking cared?

“Kevin is a menace and ruins some of our new carpet.”

“Kevin?” He laughed so hard that he snorted.

“Anyway, we deal with the messed-up carpet until he’s fully-grown, then we get real wood floors because we’re moving up in the world.”

“Oh yeah? I’m betting that’s because I’m a dope psychologist by this point.”

“Exactly. You have to fund your lavish lifestyle. You’ll have a whole office to yourself with all the shelving you want for your weird collections. Manga as far as the eye can see.”

“I want it connected to your office.”

“If you say so, but your nerd shit stays on your side of the aisle.”

“Mm. I’ll get you a Female Titan figurine. I saw how you looked at her.”

I shrugged. “What can I say? She’s just screwed up enough to do it for me.”

“Is that why you like me?”

“That’s a question for the psychologist in the room.”

“We’ll circle back when I graduate.”

Smiling, I stroked my fingers through his hair. “I’ll be right here waiting, baby.”

By the time we carried the bags inside, Oli was humming some off-key anime theme and bumping his shoulder against mine. It was ridiculous and ordinary and perfect, and for a moment, I let myself believe that slice of the future might not be so far off, after all.