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I press a hand against my stomach — visible now, unmistakable, the specific solid weight of two lives that have stopped being an abstraction and started being simply, undeniably real — and I let myself have five more minutes of quiet before the chaos starts.
Then I hear a truck pull up outside, and Cash’s voice carrying through the window before he’s even out of the vehicle, and I know the quiet part of the day is officially over.
“THE PENALTY BOX MOVING COMPANY HAS ARRIVED,” Cash announces to the entire street, apparently, based on volume alone. “We specialize in heavy lifting, bad puns, and moderate property damage.”
“That’s not reassuring,” June says, appearing on the porch with a box of her own.
“It’s honest marketing. I respect that.” Cash claps his hands together, surveying the assembled truck, the boxes, the general chaos of moving day. “Okay. Who’s driving the truck. Wyatt, you’re driving the truck.”
“I’m not driving the truck.”
“You have the most trustworthy face. It’s a compliment.”
“I’m still not driving the truck.”
Theo appears from around the side of the house, already sweating slightly from whatever he’s been hauling, and finds me on the porch steps with the specific warmth that’s become entirely unguarded now, no more careful distance, no more managed glances. He kisses me, quick, easy, in front of God and Cash and the entire street.
“Morning,” he says. “Big day.”
“Big day.” I lean into him for a second, just breathing him in. “Thank you for doing this.”
“I’d carry every box in this house myself if it meant getting you into that apartment faster.” He squeezes my hand. “Ready?”
“Ready.”
The move itself is loud and chaotic and exactly the kind of found-family production I should have expected.
Theo, Cash, Wyatt, and Beau handle the heavy lifting — boxes of books, my desk, the specific negotiation required to get it down the Sailmaker’s narrow staircase without anyone losing a finger. None of it’s furniture, not really. My dad had the apartment fully furnished before we even saw it — a new bed, new leather couches, everything already in place, one more piece of generosity delivered without asking first. What’s left to move is just mine. Clothes, books, the small accumulated evidence of three years of a life. Sloane, Wren, and June handle the delicate stuff, wrapping picture frames and the few breakable things I’ve accumulated over three years, while Priya, Kara, and Delaney arrive an hour in with coffee and donuts for everyone, because apparently a moving crew this size requires actual catering.
Cash narrates the entire thing like it’s a nationally televised sporting event.
“And here we see Mercer, attempting the notoriously difficult staircase-to-truck maneuver with a box labeled fragile in handwriting that suggests the labeler did not, in fact, believe it was fragile —”
“It’s fine, Cash.”
“— aaaand he sticks the landing. The crowd goes wild.” Cash mimes a roaring crowd, alone, to absolutely nobody’s amusement except his own. “This is peak content. Somebody should be filming this.”
“Somebody is filming this,” Delaney says, holding up her phone. “For posterity.”
“Excellent. My legacy is secure.”
By early afternoon, the truck’s mostly loaded, my room stripped down to bare walls and a mattress that isn’t mine to take, and I stand in the middle of it for a moment just looking at the empty space where three years of my life used to hang.
Sloane finds me there, alone, the rest of the crew taking a break out front.
“Weird, right?” she says, coming to stand beside me. “Watching a place go empty.”
“Very weird.” I look around the room — the kitchen where I cried on my birthday and the Theo knock changed everything, the couch where six girls once talked me through the hardest secret I’ve ever carried, the whole physical container of a year I’ll never fully be able to explain to anyone who wasn’t there for it. “I didn’t expect to feel this much about a house.”
“It’s not really about the house.” Sloane bumps my shoulder. “It’s about who you were in it. Who we all were.”
“Speaking of,” I say, glancing at her sideways. “You and Beau.”
She goes slightly pink anyway, which is rare for Sloane, who’s usually far too composed to blush about anything. “It’s official now. The lease, I mean. Beau and I are putting both our names on the room at Raven House. As of this weekend.”
“Sloane.” I bump her shoulder, warm, unsurprised but delighted anyway. “I know you two have basically been living together since Christmas. But it’s still huge, making it official.”
“It is.” She smiles, the real one, the one that only comes out for things that actually matter to her. “It felt right. Once Theo’s room actually opened up, it just — made sense to stop pretending we needed two addresses. We’ve been in and out of each other’s spaces so long the lease was basically a formality at this point. This just makes it real on paper too.”
