Chapter 25: The Long Way Home

They moved into the apartment in December. It was bigger than either of theirs had been — three floors up in a building on a street with trees, with a kitchen that had actual counter space and windows that faced east so the mornings were always full of light. They chose it together, which meant it took longer than either of them would have taken alone and ended in exactly the right place. The bookshelves were the project of an entire Saturday, a system negotiated with the same thoroughness as the first time but with an accumulated vocabulary — they both knew now where the other person's thinking went, where the compromises came quickly and where they needed more time. By evening the books were shelved and the Colorado print was up on the wall — it had survived two apartments to arrive here — and the kitchen had coffee and tea and the specific mix of two people's cooking supplies that together made something more functional than either had been alone. Jess stood in the kitchen and looked at the space they had made. Danny came to stand beside her. 'How does it feel?' he asked. She thought about a parking lot in O'Hare and a road trip planned by accident and twelve states and a coast and a year and a half of building toward this. She thought about the huckleberry pie and the mountain light and the Pacific on their feet. She thought about a playlist kept and remade and kept again, and a man who had almost moved to Portland and hadn't because something had felt specific and true. 'Like home,' she said. 'Finally.' He put his arm around her and they stood in the kitchen of their apartment on their first night there and outside the trees on their street were bare with December but the light inside was warm and everything they had needed to say had been said, somewhere across twelve states and two years and the long, particular way around. Sometimes the indirect route is the only one that takes you where you need to go. Sometimes the long way home is the one that makes arriving what it should be. They stayed in the kitchen for a long time, not needing to go anywhere, having, at last, arrived.