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“Yes. But that wasn’t all of it.” His fingers move along the edge of the box. “I want her when she’s happy. When she’s angry. When she talks too much because she’s nervous. Even when she makes my life harder.”

“That sounds inconvenient.”

“It can be.”

“Then what changes?”

Locke runs his thumb along the edge of the box. “You stop asking whether they’re worth the trouble.”

That makes more sense than most definitions I’ve heard. I lean against the opposite side of the workbench. “How did you know?”

“I didn’t, at first.”

“What changed?”

“Nothing all at once.”

When he doesn’t continue immediately, I wait instead of asking again. Locke turns the box in his hands. “I wanted a life. Work. Friends. To read. To go places. Rachel was part of what I wanted, but she wasn’t all of it. Then I started having those things, and I still wanted Rachel. Not because she gave them to me. Because I wanted her in the life I was making.”

My palms flatten against the workbench. The wood is smooth and cool beneath my hands, but my fingers tighten around the edge as thoughts of Laura come all at once.

Her pushing the horchata toward me as she laughed when the taco was too hot. Her sitting ten yards away while I painted, close enough if I needed her and far enough away that the painting stayed mine. Then I remember that first Wednesday morning, the warmth of her body still beside mine and the strange discovery that wanting sex with her hadn’t made the rest of the day smaller. I could want Laura and still want paint, music, food, Locke, and everything I hadn’t found yet.

“What if you want someone even when you’re doing something that has nothing to do with them?”

Locke pauses with the sandpaper in his hand. “That sounds familiar.”

Every new part of my life gives me something else I want her to know.

Locke starts sanding again, and the scrape of paper against wood fills the silence between us.

Later, when I open the door to Laura’s condo, the rooms are quiet. She won’t be home for another two hours.

I set my phone on the kitchen counter. The coffee maker she taught me to use sits near the sink. An unreasonable number of creamers fill one section of her refrigerator, paint marks the dining-room chair, and the finished mat lies near the sofa.

A little over two weeks ago, none of my things were here. Now my boots sit by the door, my jacket hangs beside hers, and one kitchen drawer holds things I use more often than she does. She has been making room for me without either of us talking about it.

I rest both hands on the counter and listen to the refrigerator hum. The condo is too quiet.

After a while, I move into the living room, then back toward the kitchen without needing anything from either place. When a car passes outside, my attention shifts toward the sound.

Not hers.

I open the refrigerator. Laura will be home in two hours, and most nights she comes through the door, changes out of her work clothes, and then starts deciding what we’re going to eat.

I can decide tonight. There’s chicken, vegetables, and a container of something Laura said needs to be used soon. I take out the chicken and set it on the counter, then find the phone.

Rachel knows how to cook. I call her.

By the time Laura’s key turns in the lock, I’ve learned three things. Garlic burns faster than I expected, Rachel says “medium heat” as though that explains everything, and dinner takes longer when you have to ask what every step means. Laura comes into the kitchen and stops.

“What are you doing?”

“Making dinner.”

She sets her purse down slowly. “You cook now?”

“I’m learning.”