Chapter 7

 Chapter Seven: One Room At A Time

Life In The Real Lane

Smoke Alarm Science

The morning he burned the toast, Kimmy knew they’d crossed into something new.  It was the first weekday after New Year’s, the kind that felt like the world had put its holiday sparkle away and was back to being itself again. Snow still clung to the trees out back, but the lights on the tree in the living room were unplugged, and the house had settled into a quieter sort of breath. Kimmy padded into the kitchen in The Shirt, hair in a loose knot, rubbing sleep from her eyes. She stopped in the doorway when she saw Mark standing at the stove, his back to her, shoulders set in a posture that looked suspiciously like determination.  He had a dish towel over one shoulder.  That, she decided, was adorable.  The toaster popped. A second later, the smell hit.  “Please tell me that’s a new kind of gourmet roast,” she said.

Mark winced before he even turned. “Define gourmet.”  She came up beside him and peered into the toaster slots. “Ah. Charcoal briquettes. Bold choice.”  He fished the slices out with the caution of a man diffusing a bomb, dropping them onto a plate already bearing two earlier casualties. “I’m experimenting,” he said. “Science requires failure.”

She leaned against the counter, crossing her arms, watching him with a soft smile. He’s trying, she thought. Not just to help. To belong.  “Was this one of the labs from when you taught Mickonomics?” she asked. “Price elasticity of incinerated toast?”  He laughed, the sound still a little surprised, like he was getting used to how often she could pull it out of him. “You mock, but this was going to be my grand gesture. Breakfast in bed. Start the new year with a man who can make you toast that doesn’t crunch like gravel.”

“Well,” she said, nudging his hip with hers, “you got the ‘man in my kitchen in the morning’ part right. Honestly, that’s my favorite bit.”  He looked at her then, really looked, and something in his chest loosened. She isn’t disappointed, he realized. She’s delighted I’m here at all.  “Sit,” she said. “You’ve done your scientific duty. I’ll take it from here before we have to call the fire department.”  They moved around each other easily: her cracking eggs and sliding them into the pan, him starting over with fresh bread and eyeing the dial on the toaster like it owed him money. When the toast popped this time, golden instead of black, he lifted his hands in mock triumph.  “Behold,” he said. “Growth.”

She bumped her shoulder into his. “I’m proud of you.”  They ate at the small kitchen table, legs brushing under the wood like an old rhythm rediscovered. At one point, a crumb clung to the corner of his mouth; without thinking, she reached across and wiped it away with her thumb. His eyes softened, and for a moment, the burnt toast and the snow and the ordinary morning dissolved into one clear thought in both their heads:  I just love being here with you.

Peanut Butter Economics

The grocery list was the first thing that made the house look like it belonged to both of them.  It started as a scrap of paper Kimmy kept on the counter near the fridge. At first, it was just her neat teacher handwriting: milk, coffee, pasta, Clementines, cocoa. Then, one afternoon, while she was on a video call with a student in the front room, Mark wandered through the kitchen, opened the pantry, and frowned.  No peanut butter.  He found the list and added it, his script more angular, the letters larger. Then, almost as an afterthought, he added: chips (the good kind) and wrote a question mark next to cereal like he was negotiating with himself.  That evening, Kimmy noticed the additions and smiled. She didn’t say anything; she just grabbed a magnet and pinned the list to the refrigerator door instead of leaving it loose. His handwriting up there beside hers did something to her that no cruise or fireworks display had. It made the space feel shared.

When they finally went to the store, it was snow-flurried and quiet, the kind of afternoon when most people stayed home. They didn’t hurry. They pushed the cart together, bodies angled slightly in, shoulders occasionally brushing when they reached for the same thing.  Mark held up two jars. “All right, here’s the first real compatibility test. Smooth or crunchy?”  “Crunchy,” she said instantly. “Obviously.”  He grinned. “Excellent. I can stay.”  Down the cereal aisle, she watched him study the price tags like they were exam questions. “You’re doing the unit price thing, aren’t you?” she asked.  “I taught my students to be savvy consumers,” he said. “I can’t stop now.”  She slipped her arm through his and leaned her head briefly against his shoulder as they walked. This, she thought, is love. Not the grand gestures. This. Arguing over cereal in public and feeling like the luckiest woman alive.  At the checkout, the cashier glanced from one to the other, taking in the interplay, the two different handwritings on the crumpled list, the way they naturally split the unloading of the cart. “Y’all are cute,” she said, scanning the peanut butter. “Team effort.”  “Trying to be,” Kimmy replied, cheeks warm.  Mark caught Kimmy’s eye and gently bumped her knee with the cart. Team, he thought. Yeah. That’s exactly what this feels like.  When they got home, they unpacked the bags side by side, falling into an easy rhythm of cupboard and pantry and fridge. The list went back on the refigerator, still bearing both their scripts.

Later that night, as Kimmy passed through the kitchen on the way to bed, she paused in front of it, running a fingertip over his crooked P in peanut butter. It shouldn’t have made her chest feel full.  But it did.

The Great Sweatshirt Heist

The sweatshirt theft happened on a Thursday.  Kimmy was teaching from the dining room table, laptop open, notes scattered around her. Outside, the sky was low and white, threatening more snow. The house was warm, but there was a draft near the window that made her arms break out in goosebumps.  She thought about getting a blanket. Instead, she went hunting.  She found the sweatshirt draped over the back of the couch — navy blue, with a Florida Panthers logo on the front. It still carried a faint trace of his cologne, the undefinable scent she was starting to associate with comfort.  She pulled it over her head, the sleeves too long, the hem swallowing the bottom of The Shirt. When she pushed her hands through the cuffs, she smiled, feeling almost unfairly cozy.  She was in the middle of explaining a complex concept to a student when Mark wandered in, drying his hands on a dishtowel. He stopped in the doorway and blinked.  “Well, that’s… new,” he said.  She muted herself and looked up, eyes wide with faux innocence. “What?”  He gestured. “That is… Panthers property.”  She glanced down at herself. “I don’t know what to tell you, sir. It appears to have migrated.”  He crossed his arms, trying for stern and landing somewhere closer to amused. “I wore that to playoff games.”  She tilted her head. “And now you’re wearing it… by proxy.”  He opened his mouth, then closed it again, watching the way the sweatshirt hung on her, the way she hugged it a little closer as she spoke. She looks like home, he thought, the realization hitting him all over again.  “Just don’t let any Hurricanes fans see you in that,” he said softly. “I’d hate for this relationship to end in tragedy.”  She grinned and winked. “Relax. I’m loyal.”  He chuckled and shook his head, backing toward the kitchen. “I’ll allow it,” he said. “For educational purposes.”  After he left, she unmuted herself and finished the lesson, but every now and then her hand would drift to the logo, fingers curling into the fabric. It feels like him, she thought. Like us.

Later that day, she caught him sitting on the couch, reading, in one of her softest throw blankets. She stopped in the doorway, folded her arms, and copied his tone from earlier.  “Well, that’s new.”  He didn’t look up from his book. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. This blanket came with me from Florida.”  It was such a ridiculous lie they both started laughing, unable to stop.  The line between his things and her things was blurring, and neither of them seemed interested in drawing it clearly again.

Love Actually, in a spiral notebook

They picked the room almost by accident.  It was a small bedroom at the back of the house, the one Kimmy had been using as a catch-all: books she hadn’t unpacked, a chair she meant to reupholster, a box of pictures she hadn’t found frames for yet. The walls were a nondescript beige, the kind of color that came with houses and never quite left until someone made the effort.  Mark stood in the doorway one afternoon, hands in his pockets, shoulder against the frame.  Mark found the room before Kimmy did.  It was mid-morning, a slow Sunday, the kind where coffee cooled half-finished on end tables and the snow outside seemed content to simply exist. He’d wandered down the hall, hands in the pockets of his jeans, following a thread of curiosity rather than intention.  The door stood open.  The room felt paused — like a held breath.  Stacks of books, a chair with fabric fraying at the edges, an unopened frame leaning against the wall. A half-boxed life waiting for permission to continue.  He stepped inside.  There was a shelf along one wall, cluttered with old binders and notebooks. Something about the spiral spine of one — red, faded, the cover peeling — caught his eye. He recognized it before he even touched it.  It was a folder he'd sent her years ago with his Budget Project when she'd asked for help figuring her budget in her first apartment.  The pages were messy in a way that felt like memory — highlighted sections, doodles in the margins, vocabulary words underlined three times. And then the assignments — budgets, projections, mock household expenses, all based on the course curriculum he once created.  He smiled at a page titled:

“Our First Year Budget.”

The line items made him laugh softly — far too optimistic about groceries, utterly naïve about insurance, romantic about the “date night” fund. He flipped to the next page — and froze.  At the bottom, in a neat but slightly rushed scrawl:  This project makes me realize how I can be an adult, building a life. I wonder what kind of person I’ll marry someday. Someone patient, I hope. Someone who sees me. Someone like Coach Love.  There was a heart.  Small.  Not dramatic.  Just honest.  Mark sat back, breath caught between ribs and memory.  She was just starting out, he reminded himself.  It wasn’t romantic. It was a seed — one neither of them knew would ever sprout.  He closed the notebook halfway, thumb holding the place.  Behind him, the floor creaked.  Kimmy leaned in the doorway — barefoot, hair still damp from the shower, wrapped in the Panthers sweatshirt like she’d always belonged in it.  “What are you doing in here?” she asked, voice light.  He held up the notebook. “Exploring.”  She entered, scanned the room with fond embarrassment. “Oh God. The storage room of misfit projects. I keep meaning to get rid of half of this.”  He smiled. “I think this room has potential.”  She laughed. “It has clutter.”  He opened the notebook fully then, letting the page with the heart fall open.  Her eyes dropped to it, brow crinkling.  “Oh,” she said softly. “The budget project I asked for when I got my first apartment”  There was no alarm in her voice — just nostalgia. She took the notebook gently from his hands with her right and held his left with her left. Her thumb brushed his knuckle as she read.  Her cheeks flushed.  When she looked back up, her eyes were glossy with something not quite tears — recognition, maybe.  “Wow,” she breathed. “I… I didn’t even remember writing that.”  He smiled, not teasing, not triumphant — just present.  “It’s sweet,” he said. “It’s innocent. You were just starting out.”  She swallowed, eyes not leaving his.  “And who would have thought,” she murmured, voice barely above a whisper, “that all these years later, I’d be standing here… with you… in a room we’re about to make ours?”  He exhaled — slowly, reverently — as though releasing fifteen years of time.  “Who would have thought,” he echoed.  Their hands tightened together, the notebook still between them like a bridge — past to present.  A moment later, she tucked the notebook into a drawer, not hiding it, just… placing it.  “Come on,” she said, tugging his hand. “If you’re going to be in here, you’re helping me pick paint colors.”  And with that, they stepped fully into their next room.

The Room With No Color Yet

“What’s the story in here?” he asked.  Kimmy followed his gaze. “This is my ‘I’ll get to it someday’ room,” she said. “Someday never called back.”  He walked inside, toeing a stack of books. “We could make it a study,” he said. “Or a reading room. Or… I don’t know. A place for all the things we keep saying we’ll do someday.”  She watched him move around, touching the back of the chair, picking up a photograph and smiling at the younger version of her it held. He’s picturing himself here, she realized. Picturing us.  “What color would you paint it?” she asked.   He looked at the dull walls and considered. “Not beige.”  She laughed. “Bold.”  He shrugged. “Very specific.”  They went to the hardware store that weekend, bickering good-naturedly in the paint aisle. She gravitated toward warm blues; he pointed to a soft green.  “Green?” she said. “What are we, a dentist’s office?”  He rolled his eyes. “First of all, rude. Second, it’s sage. It’s sophisticated.”  “It’s sleepy.”  “It’s calming,” he insisted.  She held up a paint chip beside his sweater. “It makes you look washed out.”

He frowned. “Low blow, mister.”  In the end, they compromised on a pale blue with a hint of gray, something that felt like sky and river and quiet mornings. It was, as Mark put it, “the Switzerland of paint colors.”  They spent an entire Saturday moving furniture, spreading drop cloths, taping edges. Mark’s back protested halfway through the first wall; Kimmy’s shoulders ached by the second. They took breaks, leaning against the window seat, sipping water and laughing at the streaks of paint in each other’s hair.  “This is our first room,” he said, eyeliner-thin stripe of blue across his cheekbone.  “Our first official one,” she corrected. “The kitchen counts. The deck. The bedroom.”  He smiled, but there was a different weight behind it now. “I mean the first one we’ve changed together,” he said. “The first thing that wouldn’t look like this if I hadn’t come. If we hadn’t decided.”  He was right. When they finally stepped back, arms around each other’s waists, studying the freshly painted walls, it wasn’t just about color.  It was about intention.  “One room at a time,” Kimmy said softly.  He squeezed her side. “And this one,” he replied, “looks pretty good on us.”

Florida…..Just In Cases

The days began to unspool in small, gentle ways.  There were little frictions — toothpaste caps forgotten on the sink, towels hung in ways that made the other wince, the eternal debate over whether the thermostat should favor warmth or thrift. There were nights one of them stayed up later than the other, reading or answering emails, and the other fell asleep to the comforting sound of pages turning or keys tapping.

There were inside jokes born of nothing important: the way the smoke alarm chirped once when Mark opened the oven too fast; the way the neighbor’s dog insisted on trotting up to their porch and sitting like a sentry whenever they were out back; the way Kimmy always stole the last Clementine from the fruit bowl and pretended not to know how it happened.

One evening, they folded laundry together on the couch. It wasn’t glamorous. The TV murmured in the background, some movie neither of them was really watching. Kimmy paired socks with the focus of a surgeon; Mark attempted to fold fitted sheets, failing spectacularly. “This is a scam,” he declared, holding up the lumpy result. “No one truly knows how to do this. There’s a secret society somewhere hoarding the knowledge.”  “Your hubris is showing,” she said. “Give it here.”  She showed him the trick she’d learned from a video years ago, corners tucked into corners, lines straightening into something almost dignified. He held the effort with a kind of awe.  “Okay,” he admitted. “This might be the sexiest thing I’ve seen all week.”  She laughed so hard she lost her grip on a pillowcase.  Later, when the baskets were empty and the movie had ended without either of them really noticing how, they sat with their feet tangled, her head on his shoulder, his fingers tracing circles on her wrist.  Not fireworks, he thought, listening to her breathing even out as she drifted toward sleep. Not a terrace. Not a river cruise. This. This is what I signed up for and didn’t know how to ask for.  She shifted slightly, pressing closer. I didn’t just fall in love with him, she realized. I fell in like with him too. That might be the better miracle.

It was on a quiet Sunday afternoon, the kind that smelled like coffee and sawdust and snow, that Mark brought up Florida.  They were on the porch, wrapped in blankets, a small fire going in the firepit. The river moved steadily past, unconcerned with human timelines. Kimmy’s feet were tucked under his leg; his arm rested along the back of the bench behind her, fingers occasionally twisting a loose strand of her hair.  “Can I ask you something?” he said.  “You can ask me anything,” she replied, not taking her eyes off the water.  He took a breath, feeling the weight of what he wanted to say and the lightness of how he hoped it would land. “I need to go back in the spring,” he said. “To Florida. To deal with the house.”  She nodded. This wasn’t new information; they’d talked around it, the way you talk around the edges of a letter you haven’t opened yet.  “Okay,” she said. “Of course. You’ll need time to sort things out there.”  He let his hand slip from the back of the bench to her shoulder, thumb rubbing slow circles. “I don’t want to go alone,” he said.  She turned her head then, eyes searching his.  “I know it’s my home,” he went on. “I know you have roots there. History. And I… want you to see it. Not as a tourist. As someone who’s going to help me close that chapter the right way.”  She held his gaze, her own eyes softening. He’s not just inviting me to a trip, she realized. He’s inviting me into his before.  “You’re asking me to come with you?” she asked, just to hear it out loud.  He smiled, small and earnest. “I’m asking if you’d come up in the spring,” he said, “to South Florida. Walk through the house with me while I decide what stays and what goes. Meet a few people who think of me as more than a guy who burns toast. Maybe go to the Florida Derby, if you’re up for horse racing on home turf. A Panthers game, so you can justify keeping the sweatshirt.”  She laughed, a surprised burst of joy that fogged the cold air. “You had me at Florida Derby,” she said. “The rest is just incentives.”  “So that’s a yes?”  “Yes,” she said, no hesitation. “Of course it’s a yes. You really thought I’d let you do all that without me?”

He exhaled, some tension he hadn’t admitted to himself easing out of his shoulders. “I didn’t want to assume,” he said.  “You moved states for me,” she replied. “I can manage a few hours on a plane.”  They sat in companionable silence for a few minutes, watching the river. Plans began to tick quietly in the back of their minds: booking flights, arranging schedules, deciding what clothes to bring, what stories to tell.  “In all seriousness,” she added, leaning her head against his shoulder, “thank you for asking. It feels… important. That you want me there for the closing of the old before the opening of the new.”  He kissed the top of her head. “It is important,” he said. “You’re the one I want standing next to me when I hand over the keys.”  She swallowed, emotion rising unexpectedly. He doesn’t say these things lightly, she thought. This is him telling me I’m part of every room, not just the ones we repaint here.  “Okay,” she murmured. “Spring in Florida. Then back here. Then… whatever comes next.”  “Whatever comes next,” he echoed.

They didn’t map it out in detail. Not yet. They didn’t need to.  For now, it was enough to know that they would face it the same way they’d faced burnt toast and paint chips and folded sheets:  Together.

One room at a time.