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I bit my lip and said nothing. I pressed my face into her neck and breathed her in and said absolutely nothing at all, because it was hers, and she'd do it when she was ready.

Whenever that was, I'd be ready too. I'd been ready since the closet floor. Okay, since before that. Maybe since three seconds at halftime, or a dark kitchen with one light on, or a concrete tunnel on a night I'd been too busy captioning a latte to know my whole life was standing in front of me with her arms crossed.

There was a knock on the door.

"Are you two decent?" Gianna whispered through it.

"No," Cam said.

"Gross. Okay. I just wanted to say Dani and I are taking bets."

"On what?" I asked.

"On when you two officially move in together," Gianna said. "Dani says Christmas. I say you've basically already U-Hauled it, and you just don't know yet."

I looked at Cam.

Cam looked at me.

"Gianna," I said. "My entire coffee setup has been on her kitchen counter for a month. My satin pillowcase lives on her bed. My toothbrush, my bonnet, two of my best pairs of shoes, my good hair products, and my succulent, which is no longer dying, by the way, it's thriving— live at her house. I haven't slept in my own apartment in eleven days."

Silence on the other side of the door.

"So that's a yes," Gianna said.

"We're sapphics," Cam said, with great dignity, into the dark. "One anxious lesbian and one chaotic bisexual. It's the law."

"I'm telling Dani she owes me twenty dollars."

"Goodnight, Gianna."

"Goodnight! I love you both! Use protection!"

"That's not..." Cam started.

But Gianna was already gone, and we could hear her shrieking I WON down the hall, and Dani shouting it doesn't count if they tell you, and Anthony bellowing at all of them to go to sleep, and Maria shouting at Anthony not to yell at the girls.

Cam put both hands over her face.

I laughed so hard that the bed creaked.

"I'm so sorry," Cam said through her fingers. "I'm so sorry. This is my family. I'm so sorry."

I pulled her hands away from her face. Even in the dark, I could see her, the outline of her and the shine of her eyes, and the three rings on the chain around her neck that she hadn't taken off since the parade.

"Don't you ever apologize for them," I said. "Not ever. Do you know how many years I've spent wishing I had a family that would yell down a hallway about whether or not I was moving in with somebody?"

She went very quiet.

"Your mother bought an organizer to document me," I said. "Your father cried into a dish towel. Your brother asked my intentions. Your sister bet twenty dollars on our love life." My voice broke. "They're the best gift I've ever been given, Cam. After you. And it isn't even close."

She didn't say anything for a long moment.

Then she pulled me in, all the way in, as close as that ridiculous bed would let her, and held me against her chest so tightly I could feel her heartbeat. It was fast. It was always fast, when she held me like this. Like she still couldn't quite believe she was allowed.

"You're the best part of my whole life," she said into my bonnet. "And it isn't even close."

Somewhere downstairs, the house went quiet, a little at a time. The clatter of the last dishes. A door. Anthony's laugh, then Maria's. The creak of the stairs Cam had run up and down a thousand times as a girl. Then nothing but the old house settling around us, and the wind off the bay, and her breathing.