The alarm went off at five, and Nadia hit it before it could wake Theo, who had stayed up until one finishing a report. She made coffee in the dark kitchen, listening to the refrigerator hum, and by the time the pot sputtered he was in the doorway, hair flattened on one side, holding the duffel bag they'd bought together two summers ago.

"Did you pack the phone chargers?" he asked.

"They're in the side pocket. Did you pack socks, or are we doing that thing again where you wear mine?"

He didn't answer, which meant no. She poured him a cup while he went back upstairs.

They had two days. Friday and Saturday, a rented cabin ninety minutes north, back Sunday morning because Theo's mother was coming for lunch. Nadia had made a list on the back of an envelope: snacks, the good pillow, the book she'd been pretending to read since March. Theo had made no list and would remember, at the state line, that he'd forgotten his toothbrush.

By six-fifteen they were loading the car. He took the cooler; she took the tote bags. He arranged everything twice because he liked things to fit exactly, and she leaned against the driver's side door and let him, sipping her coffee, watching the sky go from gray to a thin, hopeful pink over the neighbor's maple.

Inside, they did the last round: thermostat down, coffee maker off, back door locked. She left food out for the cat and texted their neighbor, Denise, a reminder about the litter box.

"Anything else?" Theo said.

"Probably. We'll find out."

She drove the first leg. He put on a playlist he'd made without telling her, mostly songs from the year they met, and pretended it was random. She noticed. She didn't say anything, just turned it up, and they merged onto the highway with the windows cracked and the whole weekend still ahead of them.


The alarm went off at five, which Dana had insisted on and Marcus had grumbled about for a week. She was up first, moving through the dark kitchen in socks, filling the thermos while the coffee maker sputtered. Marcus came out ten minutes later with his hair flattened on one side, holding two phone chargers and asking whether they'd need both.

"Bring both," she said. "You always lose one."

They had packed the night before, mostly. Dana's duffel sat by the door, zipped and tidy. Marcus's was open on the couch, still missing socks, and he stood over it doing the mental arithmetic of two days: one extra shirt, or two? He chose two, then took one back out.

The cabin was three hours north, rented for Friday and Saturday. They'd been talking about it since February and had almost canceled twice — once for her sister's surgery, once because his manager scheduled him and then unscheduled him. Now it was actually happening, which made them both a little superstitious, as if saying so out loud would summon a flat tire.

Dana watered the pothos and left a note for the neighbor about the mail. Marcus took out the trash so it wouldn't sit in the kitchen for two days smelling like Thursday's fish. He checked the stove twice. She checked the door twice. They met in the driveway in the gray light, breath visible, and loaded the trunk in silence because neither was fully awake.

"Snacks," he said, remembering.

"Back seat. Pretzels and those weird gummy things you like."

He backed out slowly, the way he always did, and at the stop sign at the end of their street he reached over and squeezed her knee. She put her hand on top of his. Then she turned on the radio, found something with a beat, and they merged onto the highway heading north with the sun coming up behind them.


The alarm went off at five-thirty, which Dana had insisted on and now regretted. She lay still for a moment listening to the radiator tick, then nudged Marcus with her foot until he groaned and rolled toward the wall.

"You said you'd load the car last night," she said.

"I said I'd think about loading the car."

By six they were both up, moving around each other in the narrow kitchen of the apartment they'd shared for three years. Marcus made coffee in the French press because the drip machine had died in October and neither of them had gotten around to replacing it. Dana went through the refrigerator, throwing out a container of lo mein and a half bag of spinach that had gone to slime.

"Do we need to stop the mail?"

"It's two days," Marcus said. "It's Friday and Saturday."

"Someone could steal a package."

"Nobody's stealing anything."

She put the trash bag by the door anyway, to remind him.

They packed light. Dana rolled her clothes into a canvas duffel, added a paperback she probably wouldn't open, and stood in the bathroom doorway sorting travel-sized bottles into a plastic bag. Marcus threw things in a backpack without folding them. He found the phone charger behind the couch, where it had been for a week.

At seven he carried the bags down two flights while Dana went through the apartment turning off power strips and checking the stove knobs twice. She left the hall light on. She always left the hall light on.

The car was cold. Marcus scraped a thin skin of frost off the windshield with a library card while Dana sat inside with the heat blowing on her hands, holding both coffees. When he got in he took his cup, drank, and made a face because it was still too hot.

"Two hours forty," she said, looking at her phone.

"Three, with a stop."

She reached over and put her hand on his knee. He put the car in gear.


The alarm went off at five, which Dana thought was cruel and Marcus thought was optimistic. They had agreed the night before to leave by six, and they both knew that meant six-thirty.

She packed while he made coffee. The duffel bag they shared had a broken zipper pull he kept meaning to replace, so she looped a shoelace through it and called it fixed. Two changes of clothes each, the good hiking socks, her book, his phone charger, the sunscreen from last summer that was probably still fine.

"Did you cancel the grocery delivery?" he called from the kitchen.

"You said you'd do that."

There was a pause, then the sound of him setting down the carafe and picking up his phone. She let him have the silence. He rescheduled it for Monday and reported this like a man returning from war.

They loaded the car in the gray light. The apartment was on the second floor of a building with no elevator, which they had accepted three years ago as a fair trade for the rent and had resented every day since. He carried the bag; she carried the cooler with the sandwiches and the two seltzers and the peaches that would be bruised by lunch.

Upstairs one last time. She checked the stove twice. He unplugged the toaster, which was his ritual, unexplained and non-negotiable. They stood a moment in the quiet living room, and she said, "Feels weird leaving," and he said, "It's two days," and she said, "I know," and turned off the lamp.

Traffic was already thickening on the highway, but it was moving. He drove first. She held the coffee cups until he was ready for his and read the exits aloud, though he knew the way.

Somewhere past the second toll, the sun came up behind them and lit the whole road ahead.


The suitcase lay open on the bed like a mouth waiting to be fed, and Dana kept walking past it, adding things.

"Two days," Marcus said from the doorway. "Two. You've packed four sweaters."

"Three. The gray one is a cardigan, which is different." She held up a paperback, considered it, set it down, picked it up again. "What if it rains and we're stuck inside?"

"Then we read the same book out loud in stupid voices, like last time."

He went to check the coffee maker for the third time, then the stove, then the back door. She heard him rattling the knob and called out that she'd already locked it, and he called back that he knew, he just liked hearing it click.

The cat, Ozymandias, had arranged himself directly on top of Dana's folded jeans. She lifted him off with both hands, the way you'd move a sandbag, and he yowled his usual betrayal. Marcus wrote the last note for their neighbor Priya — *scoop twice, he lies about the second scoop* — and stuck it to the fridge under a magnet from a wedding neither of them remembered attending.

By nine-forty they were in the driveway, and Marcus was rearranging the trunk to make the cooler fit, and Dana was insisting there was room, there had always been room, and then he closed the hatch and it fit.

"Phone charger," she said.

"Console."

"Reservation?"

"Emailed. Screenshotted. Printed, which you mocked me for."

She reached over and put her hand flat on his knee, briefly, the way she did instead of saying things. He pulled out slowly, watching the house shrink in the mirror, its porch light still burning because neither of them had remembered.

Two blocks down, Dana said, "Porch light."

"Let it burn," Marcus said, and turned onto the highway.


The alarm went off at five-thirty, and Dana slapped it quiet before Marcus could complain. He complained anyway, into the pillow, then dragged himself up and started the coffee while she pulled the duffel bag from the closet shelf.

"Did you charge the camera?" she called.

"It's in the glove box. Charged." He measured grounds by eye, the way he always did, and she always said was too much, and it always was.

They had been sharing the apartment for two years now — long enough that the packing had a rhythm to it. She handled clothes, because he'd once brought only shorts to Vermont in October. He handled everything else: the cooler, the ice, the paper bag of granola bars and pretzels and the good salami he'd bought Thursday without mentioning it, so she'd find it later and be pleased.

At six-fifteen she stood in the doorway of the bedroom with her hands on her hips.

"Two days," she said. "Two nights. Why does your bag look like you're emigrating?"

"Books."

"How many books?"

"Four. Three. It's four."

She let it go. He carried the bags down the two flights while she went through the apartment doing the things she couldn't leave undone — unplugging the toaster, checking the stove knobs twice, leaving the bathroom light on for the cat, who watched all of it from the arm of the couch with visible contempt. Dana crouched and scratched the cat's chin and told her Ellie would come by at noon, which the cat did not appear to find reassuring.

The car smelled like coffee and sunscreen. Marcus had the map open on his phone, already ignoring it.

"Diner at the exit for gas," he said, "or push through?"

"Push through. Eat at nine."

He pulled out onto the still-empty street, and she put her bare feet on the dashboard, and neither of them said anything for a while, which was fine.


Maya found the duffel bag in the back of the hall closet, still smelling faintly of the lake trip they'd taken two summers ago. She hauled it to the bed and started making piles: two shirts, one sweater, socks, the paperback she'd been failing to finish since March.

"Do we need towels?" Daniel called from the kitchen.

"The place has towels. I checked the listing twice."

He came in with two travel mugs, set one on her nightstand, and began rooting through his dresser with the particular helplessness he reserved for packing. She watched him hold up the same gray t-shirt he'd worn three days that week.

"Take the blue one," she said.

"The blue one has a stain."

"Then take neither and buy a shirt in Asheville. That's the whole point of a town."

By nine-fifteen they had the bag zipped, the thermostat nudged down, and the plants clustered in the tub with an inch of water, which Maya insisted worked and Daniel privately doubted. He carried the bag out to the car while she went room to room unplugging things, checking the stove knobs twice, then a third time, because she always did.

The neighbor's dog barked at them from behind a screen door. Daniel backed the car out crooked and had to correct. Maya plugged her phone in and pulled up the playlist she'd been building all week, forty minutes of songs she was mildly embarrassed about.

"Coffee's still hot," he said.

"I know. I made it strong."

At the end of the street she asked if he'd locked the front door, and he said yes, and she said are you sure, and he said no, and they sat at the stop sign for a second before he laughed and turned the corner anyway. The morning was cool and the highway was three miles off, and neither of them said anything for a while, which was fine.


Marguerite found the duffel bag in the back of the closet, still holding sand from a beach trip two summers ago. She shook it out over the trash can while Desmond argued with the coffee maker in the kitchen, tapping the side of it the way he always did, as if the machine responded to encouragement.

"It's just two days," she called. "Do you need three shirts?"

"I need options."

"You wear the gray one every day of your life."

He appeared in the doorway with two mugs, handed her one, and dropped a rolled pair of jeans into the bag. "The gray one is a good shirt."

They had rented a cabin four hours north, one bedroom, a woodstove, no cell service according to the listing, which Marguerite had read aloud twice in a tone of suspicion. Desmond had booked it anyway. He liked the idea of her being unreachable, mostly by her sister.

By nine they were carrying things to the car. Marguerite took the cooler; Desmond took the bag and a paper sack of groceries he had assembled from the pantry with no discernible plan — crackers, a jar of olives, half a loaf of bread.

"Did you turn the thermostat down?"

"I did. Did you unplug the space heater?"

She went back inside. She unplugged it, checked the stove knobs, filled the cat's water bowl to the brim, and stood a moment in the quiet hallway of the small house they had shared for three years, the lease in both their names, the mail arriving addressed to each of them separately.

Outside, Desmond was scraping frost off the windshield with a credit card.

"There's a scraper in the trunk," she said.

"Is there."

She got in and put her feet on the dash, then took them down. He climbed in, breathing on his hands, and backed out of the driveway, and she found the exit on the map and told him which way to go.


The alarm went off at five, which Dana had insisted on and now regretted. She lay still for a minute, listening to Marcus breathing beside her, then nudged his shoulder.

"You said you'd get the coffee going," she said.

"I said I'd think about it."

He got up anyway. By the time she came downstairs with her duffel bag, he was standing at the counter in yesterday's t-shirt, watching the drip. The kitchen smelled like burnt toast, which meant he'd already tried and failed at breakfast.

"Did you pack the charger?" she asked.

"Which one?"

"The car one. The one that actually works."

He patted his pockets, went back upstairs, came down with it dangling from his fingers like a fish he'd caught. Dana was going through the fridge, pulling out the things that would go bad — half a bag of spinach, a carton of blueberries she dumped into a Ziploc for the road.

They'd rented a cabin two hours north, nothing fancy, a place with a woodstove and a lake you could see if you leaned off the porch. Two nights. Dana had booked it in February when the winter felt endless and she needed something to point at.

Marcus took the bags out while she watered the plants and left a note for the neighbor about the cat. She checked the stove twice. She checked the door.

In the driveway he had the trunk open and was rearranging things that didn't need rearranging.

"You're going to want the blanket on top," she said.

"I know where the blanket is."

She got in the passenger seat and put the blueberries in the cupholder. He slid in beside her, adjusted the mirror, and sat there a second with his hands on the wheel.

"Anything else?" he said.

"Nope."

"You sure?"

"Drive," she said, and he backed out onto the empty street.


The suitcase lay open on the bed like a mouth waiting to be fed, and Dana kept putting things in and taking them out again.

"You don't need three sweaters," Marcus said from the doorway. He had a coffee mug in one hand and his phone in the other, checking the weather app for the fourth time that morning. "Fifty-eight and sunny. Fifty-two overnight."

"It's the coast. It'll be windy." She folded the gray one anyway and set it aside, then put it back in. Two years of living together had taught her that he was usually right about weather and never right about how long a drive would take.

He went to unplug the coffee maker and the toaster, a habit inherited from his mother, and stood in the kitchen doing a slow inventory. Trash out. Thermostat down to sixty. He wrote *Feed Winnie 6pm* on a sticky note for the neighbor's kid and left the spare key under the ceramic frog on the porch, then took it out again because Dana had said, more than once, that the frog was the first place a burglar would look. He put the key in an envelope in the mailbox instead and texted the kid.

Dana carried the bag out at ten-forty, only forty minutes past when they'd said they'd leave, which felt like a personal victory. Marcus was already in the car with the seat pushed back, aux cord in hand.

"Did you lock the back door?"

"Yes."

"Did you actually check, or—"

He got out and checked. It was locked. He came back and did not say anything about it, which she noticed and appreciated.

Then they were on the road, windows down for the first mile until it got too cold, arguing amiably about whether to stop for real breakfast or just get gas station burritos, the house behind them going quiet and dim and waiting.


Maya found the duffel bag in the hall closet, behind the winter coats, and dragged it out with the smell of cedar still on it. "Two days," she called toward the kitchen. "Do I need more than two shirts?"

"You always bring five," Devon said. He was pouring coffee into travel mugs, one black, one with too much oatmilk. "And you always wear the same one."

"That's called having options."

They'd been in the apartment three years now, long enough that the lease renewal came as a formality and long enough that his mother had stopped asking about rings. The plan was simple: drive up to the lake, stay at a cabin his coworker's family rented out for cheap in the off-season, come back Sunday night in time to do laundry.

Devon checked the oil while Maya stood in the driveway with the cooler, waiting for him to finish so she could load it into the trunk. A neighbor's sprinkler ticked over the sidewalk. She'd packed cheese and grapes and a bag of pretzels, plus the good crackers, because she knew he'd eat half of them before they hit the highway.

"Did you unplug the toaster?" she asked.

"Why would I unplug the toaster?"

"Because of fires."

He went back inside anyway. When he came out he had her sunglasses in his hand, the ones she'd been looking for since Tuesday. She took them without comment, which was its own kind of thank you.

They pulled out at 9:40, forty minutes behind schedule, which Maya announced like a weather report. Devon put on the playlist she'd made and pretended he hadn't already listened to it twice. Two blocks from the on-ramp, he reached over and put his hand on her knee, and she covered it with hers, and neither of them said anything about it.


Maya found the duffel bag in the back of the closet, still holding a Ziploc of hotel soaps from their trip to Asheville two years ago. She tossed the bag on the bed and started making piles: shirts, socks, the good sweater in case the cabin's woodstove didn't work as advertised.

"Do we need towels?" Daniel called from the bathroom.

"It said linens provided."

"It also said 'rustic charm,' which could mean anything."

He came out with a plastic grocery bag of toiletries, which was how he always packed, no matter how many times she'd offered him the small zippered case her mother had given her. He set it by the door and went to deal with the cooler.

They had learned, over three years of sharing the apartment, how to move around each other during these small departures. Daniel handled the car and the food. Maya handled the reservations and the things they would regret forgetting. She checked the coffee filters, added a deck of cards, texted their neighbor about the mail. He carried the cooler down two flights and came back sweating, asking if she'd seen his sunglasses, which were on his head.

By ten they were closing the trunk. Maya went back up once for the phone charger, then again because she wasn't sure she'd unplugged the iron. Daniel waited in the driver's seat with the engine running, scrolling his phone, entirely unbothered. He'd stopped teasing her about it a long time ago.

"Ready?" he said when she got in.

"Ready."

She pulled up the directions. Two hours and forty minutes, one stop for gas and whatever fried thing looked best. He backed out of the space carefully, the way he did everything, and she put her hand on his knee as they turned onto the main road, the city thinning out behind them into strip malls and then trees.


The suitcase lay open on the bed like a mouth that wouldn't stop asking for more.

"Do I need two sweaters?" Delia held them up, one navy, one the color of oatmeal. "It's supposed to be fifty-eight."

"Fifty-eight and raining," Marcus said. He was on the floor beside the bed, sorting phone chargers into a Ziploc bag, an organizational habit she used to mock and had quietly adopted. "Bring both. You'll wear the gray one and complain about it."

She threw the navy at his head. He caught it without looking up.

The cabin was two hours north, booked in a moment of February desperation, and now that the weekend had actually arrived they were both surprised to find they still wanted to go. Delia went through the house doing the things she always did: unplugging the toaster, checking the back door twice, filling the cat's second bowl even though Rosalind next door had promised to come by. Marcus carried the bags to the car and discovered the trunk still held a folding chair from a barbecue in September.

"We're leaving in five minutes," he called from the driveway.

"You said that eleven minutes ago."

"I'm establishing a rhythm."

She came out finally with her tote and a paper bag of snacks — pretzels, two apples, the good almonds — and locked the door behind her, testing the knob the way her mother always had. Marcus had the passenger seat pushed back for her already, the way he always did without mentioning it.

They pulled out at 3:40, later than planned, which they'd both predicted separately and neither had said out loud. At the stop sign at the end of their street, Delia put her hand on his knee.

"Did you turn off the coffee maker?"

Marcus paused. Then he put the car in park, left the engine running, and walked back up the driveway while she laughed at him from the passenger seat.


Maya found the duffel bag in the back of the closet, still smelling faintly of the lake trip they'd taken two summers ago. She set it on the bed and started making piles: shirts, a pair of jeans, the swimsuit she wasn't sure she'd use in October.

"Do you know where my phone charger went?" Devon called from the hallway.

"Kitchen counter. Behind the fruit bowl."

He appeared in the doorway a minute later holding it up like evidence. "You always know."

"I always put it there. That's different."

They had rented a cabin ninety minutes north, two nights, a wood stove and no television. Devon had booked it in August when work was grinding him down, and now the weekend had arrived faster than either of them expected. He carried the cooler out to the car while Maya emptied the milk down the drain and moved the plant from the windowsill to the sink so the cat wouldn't knock it over. The cat, Arthur, watched all of it from the top of the bookshelf with an expression of deep suspicion.

"Rachel's coming Saturday morning to feed him," Maya said. "I left the key under the mat."

"Under the mat." Devon shook his head. "Very secure."

"She's not going to rob us. She has a dog and a mortgage."

They locked the door at ten past nine. Devon backed the car out while Maya scrolled through the playlist she'd built the night before, forty-one songs, most of them older than they were. The sun came through the windshield at a low angle and she pulled the visor down.

"Coffee first?" he asked at the end of the block.

"Obviously coffee first."

He turned left instead of right, toward the place with the good scones, and Maya reached over and rested her hand on his knee, and neither of them said anything for a while, which was fine.


The alarm went off at five-thirty, and Danielle hit it before the second beep. Marcus was already awake, staring at the ceiling fan, calculating whether they'd beat the Friday traffic out of the city.

"You packed the charger?" he asked.

"Which one."

"The one that isn't the one you always forget."

She threw a pillow at him and got up.

Their apartment—one bedroom above a laundromat, four years of shared rent and shared arguments about the thermostat—was quiet except for the coffee maker gurgling. Danielle moved through it barefoot, pulling a hoodie from the closet, checking the weather on her phone. Fifty-eight and rain in the mountains. She swapped the sandals for boots.

Marcus loaded the car in three trips. The duffel bag, the cooler with sandwiches he'd made the night before, and the bag of things Danielle insisted they'd need: a paperback she wouldn't read, two extra sweatshirts, a first-aid kit still in its plastic wrap. He didn't argue. He'd learned.

"Did you turn off the space heater?" he called up the stairs.

"Yes."

"Actually turn it off, or—"

"Marcus."

He went up and checked anyway. It was off. He came back down and she was leaning against the passenger door with her arms crossed, unimpressed, holding two travel mugs.

"You're insufferable," she said, handing him one.

"You'd be sad if I burned down."

They got in. He backed out of the space too fast, like always, and she gripped the door handle, like always. At the corner she made him stop so she could run into the bodega for gum and a bag of pretzels, and he waited with the engine running, watching her through the glass, gesturing something to the guy behind the counter.

She got back in, out of breath, smelling like rain.

"Okay," she said. "Now."

He pulled onto the empty street, and the city let them go.


The alarm went off at five, and Dana slapped it quiet before it could wake the whole street. Marcus was already in the kitchen, standing barefoot on the cold tile, watching the coffee maker sputter.

"I put the cooler by the door," he said. "You want the good thermos or the one that leaks?"

"The one that leaks is for you."

They had been in the house on Delaney Street for two years, long enough to have a system. Dana packed while Marcus loaded. She rolled shirts instead of folding them, tucked their toothbrushes into a plastic bag, and stood in the closet doorway trying to decide whether the mountains in October required a real jacket or just a fleece. She brought both. Marcus carried the duffel out to the car, then came back for the cooler, then went back again because he'd forgotten the phone chargers on the counter, which Dana pointed out with the particular satisfaction of someone who had reminded him twice.

They took Dana's car because the check-engine light in Marcus's truck had been on since August and neither of them trusted it past the county line. He backed out of the driveway while she balanced two mugs and typed the cabin's address into her phone. Halfway down the block she made him stop so she could run back and make sure she'd unplugged the space heater. She had.

By six-fifteen they were on the highway with the sun coming up pink behind the water tower. Marcus found a station playing old country and left it. Dana put her feet on the dash, which he hated, and he said nothing about it, which she noticed.

"Two whole days," she said.

"No phones after we get there."

"You'll last an hour."

"Forty minutes," he admitted, and she laughed, and the exit signs slid past one after another.


The alarm went off at five-thirty, and Deb slapped it quiet before it could wake Terrence, which was pointless, because he was already sitting up, scrolling weather.

"Sixty-eight and sunny," he said. "Both days."

"Don't jinx it."

They'd been sharing the little house on Pryor Street for four years now, long enough that packing had become a kind of choreography. Deb handled the cooler—turkey sandwiches, two apples, a bag of pretzels, four seltzers—while Terrence carried the duffel out to the Subaru and rearranged the trunk three times. He always did that. She had learned to let him.

"Did you get the charger?" she called from the kitchen.

"Which one?"

"The one that actually works."

He came back in, opened the drawer by the toaster, and held it up like a trophy. Deb wrote a note for the neighbor about the mail and stuck it to the storm door with a magnet, then went back inside because she'd forgotten to check the coffee maker was off. It was off. She checked the stove too.

Terrence stood by the car, keys looped on his finger, watching her lock the front door and then test the knob twice.

"It's locked," he said.

"I know it's locked."

They pulled out at six-forty, only ten minutes behind, which Deb declared a personal record. Terrence drove the first stretch, past the Sunoco and the shuttered furniture outlet, out to where the highway opened up and the fog was still lying in the low fields like something spilled.

Deb propped her feet on the dash and found a station playing something with a pedal steel in it.

"Two days," she said. "No email."

"No email," he agreed, though they both knew he'd check.

She reached over and put her hand on the back of his neck, and he leaned into it slightly, and neither of them said anything for the next twenty miles.


The suitcase lay open on the bed like a mouth waiting to be fed, and Dana kept walking past it, adding things.

"Two days," Marcus called from the bathroom. "Two. You've packed four shirts."

"Three shirts and a cardigan, because the forecast says fifty-one at night and you'll say you're cold and I'll give you mine."

He didn't argue with that, because it was true and had been true for six years. He came out with his toothbrush still in his hand, considered the suitcase, and dropped it in.

They moved through the house the way people do when they've learned each other's rhythms. Dana emptied the coffee grounds and wiped the counter she'd wiped an hour earlier. Marcus unplugged the toaster, the space heater, the lamp with the frayed cord he kept promising to fix. He filled the cat's bowl and then filled it again, higher, though the neighbor's daughter was coming twice a day.

"She'll be fine, Marcus."

"She's dramatic."

"She learned it somewhere."

The thermostat went down to sixty. The porch light went on. Dana stood in the hallway with her hand on the switch and did the thing she always did, the mental walk-through: stove off, water off, back door locked. Marcus carried the bag out to the car and came back for the cooler with the sandwiches and the bad gas station candy she'd bought in advance so they wouldn't have to stop.

The car smelled like cold vinyl. He backed out slowly because the mailbox had suffered before. At the corner she looked at the printed directions in her lap, then at the phone in the cupholder, then out the window at their house, small and dark, getting smaller.

"Left on Pike," she said.

"I know."

"I know you know."

He put his hand on her knee, and they went.


The suitcase lay open on the bed like a mouth waiting to be fed.

"Two nights," Dana said, holding up a fourth shirt. "That's three shirts, max."

"Unless something happens to one of them." Marcus took the shirt from her and folded it into the case anyway. "Remember Asheville."

"You spilled that coffee on purpose. You hated that shirt."

He didn't deny it. He was already moving to the bathroom, sweeping toothbrushes and her contact solution into a zippered pouch. Through the doorway he could hear her muttering the list she'd been reciting all week: chargers, sunscreen, the paperback she'd been fifty pages into since March.

Downstairs, she pulled the last of the milk from the fridge and poured it down the drain, then wedged a note into the cat's automatic feeder for the neighbor's teenager: *Two scoops, morning and night. She'll lie about the night one.* Marcus came down with the bag over his shoulder and set it by the door, then went back up for the pillows, because Dana couldn't sleep on hotel pillows and they'd stopped pretending otherwise.

By seven-forty the thermostat was set, the coffee maker unplugged, the back door checked twice. He locked the front while she got into the passenger seat and started scrolling for directions.

"Ninety minutes if we go now. Two hours if we stop for breakfast."

"We're stopping for breakfast."

"I know. I just wanted you to hear the number."

He backed out of the driveway, then paused at the bottom, and they both looked at the house — porch light off, curtains drawn, the small ordinary shape of their life sitting there patiently. Dana rolled her window down an inch. The morning smelled like cut grass and somebody's dryer sheets.

"Did you—"

"Yes," he said. "The stove's off."

She put her hand on his knee, and he drove.


The alarm went off at five-thirty, and Delia hit it before the second chirp. Marcus was already awake, staring at the ceiling fan.

"We said six," he said.

"We said six *out the door*." She was up, pulling her hair into a knot. "Which means five-thirty now, and you still haven't found the cooler."

He found the cooler in the garage, behind the folding chairs, with a dead spider in it. He rinsed it in the driveway while the sky went from charcoal to gray. Inside, Delia was making a stack on the kitchen table: two towels, sunscreen, the paperback she'd been failing to finish since March, her charger, his charger, because he would forget his charger.

"Did you feed the cat?"

"I fed the cat." Marcus came in dripping. "I also texted Renee about the key. She'll come by tonight and tomorrow."

"You told her about the water bowl?"

"I told her about the water bowl."

They packed the car badly, then repacked it. The duffel went behind the passenger seat, the cooler on the floor with ice from the gas station on the way. Delia found the reservation email and read the address aloud twice while Marcus typed it into his phone with his thumb.

At six-forty, she stood on the porch and did the thing she always did—checked the stove, checked the lock, checked the stove again.

"It's off," he called from the driver's seat.

"I know it's off. I'm looking at it being off."

She locked the door. The neighborhood was quiet, a sprinkler going somewhere, one dog barking at nothing. She got in and buckled her seatbelt and put her hand on his knee.

"Two whole days," she said.

Marcus backed out of the driveway. At the corner he turned left, toward the highway, and Delia opened the paperback and didn't read a word of it for the first forty miles.


The alarm went off at five, which Nadia thought was insane for a trip that only lasted two days. Ellis was already up, standing in the kitchen in yesterday's t-shirt, pouring coffee into the dented steel thermos they'd bought at a hardware store in Bishop three summers ago.

"You packed the good sleeping bag?" she asked, hair still flattened on one side.

"I packed both. The cabin has a heater, but the reviews said it's temperamental." He handed her a mug. "The reviews also said there's a raccoon."

"A specific raccoron? With a name?"

"Reginald, apparently."

They moved around each other in the small apartment the way people do after four years of sharing one — Nadia rolling clothes into her duffel while Ellis hunted for the car charger under the couch cushions, both of them reaching for the same drawer and neither of them apologizing. She filled a grocery bag with what was in the fridge that would spoil: half a rotisserie chicken, a bag of spinach, three eggs in a carton meant for a dozen.

Ellis carried things down to the Corolla in two trips. Nadia watered the pothos, unplugged the toaster, and stood in the doorway for a second doing the mental inventory she always did, the one that never caught anything.

"Keys?" he called from the stairwell.

"On me."

The car smelled like coffee and the pine air freshener that had stopped smelling like pine sometime in the spring. Nadia took the aux cord and did not offer it back. Ellis backed out of the space, waited for a man walking a beagle, and turned onto the empty street. The sky over the strip mall was going the color of a peach.

"Two hours to the halfway diner," he said.

"Two hours and fifteen. You always forget the bridge."

He didn't argue. He reached over and put his hand on her knee, and she left it there, and the city thinned out into highway behind them.


The alarm went off at five-thirty, and Nadia hit it with her palm before it could wake the whole street. Ben was already sitting up, scratching the back of his neck, squinting at the gray window.

"I told you we should've packed last night," he said.

"You said that last night. Then you fell asleep on the couch."

They moved around each other in the small kitchen with the ease of three years shared in a rented house on Ashland Avenue. She filled travel mugs; he stood at the counter making sandwiches, wrapping them in wax paper because Nadia hated the taste of plastic bags. The cooler took the sandwiches, two apples, a bag of pretzels, and the last of the sparkling water from the door of the fridge.

Upstairs, Nadia rolled shirts into her duffel while Ben hunted for the phone charger, finally finding it behind the nightstand, still plugged in. He held it up like a trophy. She threw a pair of socks at him.

By six-forty they were loading the car. Ben checked the tire he'd been worried about all week, pressing his thumb against the tread; it seemed fine. Nadia went back inside twice — once for her sunglasses, once because she couldn't remember whether she'd turned off the coffee maker. She had. She unplugged it anyway.

Their neighbor Mr. Cabral was out with his hose, watering a hydrangea that didn't need it. "Where to?"

"Two days at her cousin's cabin," Ben said. "Up by the lake."

"Take a jacket. Gets cold at night."

"We have jackets," Nadia said, and they did, folded on the back seat.

She drove first. Ben handled the radio, then the map on his phone, then gave up and just watched the exits go by. Somewhere past the second toll, the sun came up over the treeline and Nadia rolled her window down two inches, and neither of them said anything for a while, which was fine.


The alarm went off at five-thirty, which was Maya's idea, and Dev groaned into his pillow, which was predictable.

"We said early," she reminded him, already pulling a sweatshirt over her head. "Traffic on the 5 gets ugly by eight."

He sat up, hair flattened on one side, and squinted at the window. Still dark. "Coffee first. Then I'll believe in this trip."

They moved around each other in the small kitchen with the ease of three years of shared square footage. She started the kettle; he pulled the cooler out from behind the recycling bin and wiped a layer of dust off the lid. Into it went the hummus, the leftover roast chicken she'd insisted on packing, two cans of seltzer, and the string cheese Dev bought without admitting it was for himself.

"Did you text your mom about the plants?" he asked.

"She's coming Saturday. I left the watering can on the counter and a note in caps." Maya paused. "Do we have the confirmation for the cabin?"

Dev held up his phone, showing an email he'd screenshotted the night before. "And I printed it, because I know you."

Upstairs, the packing turned into a familiar negotiation. She wanted the good hiking boots; he pointed out it was supposed to rain both days. They compromised—boots and the cheap rain shells from the hall closet, one of which was missing a zipper pull and got fixed with a paperclip.

By six-forty they were carrying bags down the front steps. Dev backed the car out while Maya checked the stove, then the front door, then the stove again.

"Locked?" he asked when she got in.

"Twice."

She queued up a playlist she'd been building for two weeks and put her bare feet on the dashboard, which he pretended to mind. The sky was going gray-blue over the rooftops. He turned left at the corner, and the house shrank behind them.


Maya found the duffel bag in the back of the hall closet, wedged behind a box of Christmas lights they'd never gotten around to putting up. She dragged it into the bedroom and unzipped it on the bed, where Dev was already folding shirts into precise rectangles.

"Two days," she said. "You're bringing four shirts."

"Three. This one's for the drive." He held it up, then reconsidered and put it in the bag anyway.

She packed the way she always did, which was to say she carried things from the dresser to the bag in armfuls and pressed them down. Socks, a sweater in case the coast was cold, the paperback she'd been failing to finish since March. Dev went to check the coffee maker was off, then came back and checked it again twenty minutes later.

They'd rented a cabin ninety miles north, a place with a woodstove and a mattress the reviews described as "firm." Maya had booked it in a fit of restlessness on a Tuesday night in February. Now it was almost April, and the trip had arrived the way things do, suddenly and on schedule.

Dev watered the pothos and the fern. Maya took the trash out and texted her sister the address, just in case. They stood in the kitchen for a moment, doing the mental inventory.

"Chargers," she said.

"In the side pocket."

"Toothbrushes."

He winced and went to get them.

By nine-forty they were in the car, the bag in the trunk beside a canvas tote of groceries — coffee, eggs, a bag of pretzels Dev had insisted on. Maya reversed out of the driveway and paused at the mouth of the street, both of them looking back at the dark front windows of the house.

"Did we lock the—"

"I locked it."

She pulled out. He found the exit on his phone, then put the phone away and rolled the window down two inches instead.


Maya found the duffel bag in the back of the hall closet, still smelling faintly of the lake trip they'd taken in August. She dropped it on the bed and started counting out socks.

"Two nights or one?" she called.

"One night, two days." Daniel appeared in the doorway holding two flannel shirts on hangers, one green, one gray. "Which of these says 'I own a cabin' without saying 'I'm trying to look like I own a cabin'?"

"Neither. Bring both."

He brought both. He also brought the wrong charging cable, which Maya caught and swapped without comment, the way she'd been doing for three years now. They packed around each other in the small bedroom of the duplex they'd been renting since their old leases ran out within a month of each other—a practical decision at the time, or so they'd told their parents.

Downstairs, Daniel emptied the coffee grounds and unplugged the toaster. Maya wrote a note for the neighbor who'd agreed to feed the cat: *Mochi gets half a can, morning and night. She will lie about this.*

They loaded the car in the gray November drizzle. Daniel took the driver's seat first, since Maya had driven the last three trips, and she navigated with her phone propped against the cupholder. Twenty minutes out of town, she made him pull into a gas station because she'd forgotten her contact solution.

"You always forget the contact solution."

"That's why I brought you," she said, and went inside.

Back on the highway, the wipers kept a steady rhythm. Maya put on the playlist she'd been building for two weeks and pretended it was casual. Daniel recognized three songs from their first apartment and didn't say anything, just reached over and rested his hand on her knee while the exits counted down toward the mountains.


The suitcase lay open on the bed like an accusation. Maya stared at it, then at the three sundresses she'd laid out, none of which seemed right for a place she'd never been.

"Two days," Devin called from the bathroom. "You've packed for two weeks."

"I've packed for two days *of options*." She folded the yellow one and set the others aside, then reconsidered and put the blue one back in. Compromise.

Devin came out with his toothbrush still in his mouth, his duffel bag already zipped and sitting by the door since last night. He was the kind of person who kept a travel-sized shampoo permanently stocked. Maya found this both admirable and slightly infuriating.

"Did you cancel the grocery delivery?"

"Yesterday." He spat, rinsed, reappeared. "Did you email your mom the address of the rental? She'll call at nine and panic if you don't pick up."

Maya paused. "I forgot."

"I know. I did it for you."

She threw a rolled pair of socks at him. He caught it and put it in her suitcase.

They moved through the apartment doing the small rituals of leaving — unplugging the toaster, setting the thermostat, checking the back window twice because Devin never believed the first check. Maya watered the fern that had survived three years past its expected lifespan. Devin took out the trash so it wouldn't sour.

In the car, she plugged in her phone before he could plug in his, which they both understood to be a declaration of the first hour's playlist. He didn't fight it. He backed out of the space, one hand on her headrest, and then they were on Fulton Street heading toward the interstate, coffee sweating in the cupholders.

"We forgot the phone charger," she said, ten minutes in.

"Bought a second one last month. Glove box."

She looked at him a while, then out the window at the traffic thinning. "Show-off."


The alarm went off at five-thirty, which Marisol had insisted on and Dev had complained about for three days straight. Now he was the one already dressed, standing in the kitchen with the coffee maker gurgling, while she hunted through the closet for the fleece she swore she'd folded on the shelf.

"It's in the dryer," he called.

"Why is it in the dryer?"

"Because you spilled soup on it Tuesday."

She came out holding it, still faintly warm, and gave him a look that was half gratitude and half accusation. They'd been in the apartment together fourteen months now, long enough that she knew he'd already checked the oil in the car, and he knew she'd repack whatever he loaded into the trunk.

She did. He carried out the duffel and the cooler, and she rearranged both, wedging the cooler behind the driver's seat so it wouldn't slide. He didn't argue. He went back inside for the phone chargers and the paper map his father had given him, the one he never used but always brought.

The cabin was three hours north, a Friday-to-Sunday rental with a woodstove and, according to the listing, unreliable cell service. Marisol had booked it in January when the winter felt endless. Dev had agreed mostly to stop her from talking about it.

At six-fifteen they stood in the doorway doing the ritual: stove off, coffee maker unplugged, thermostat down to sixty, litter box scooped, neighbor texted about the cat. Marisol locked the deadbolt and pulled the handle twice.

The car smelled like the breakfast sandwiches they'd picked up at the gas station on Route 9. Dev drove the first leg. Marisol put her feet on the dash, which he hated, and he said nothing about it, which she noticed.

By seven the sun was up behind them, and the highway had opened out into farmland, and neither of them had said anything for twenty minutes, and it was fine.


The suitcase lay open on the bed like a question neither of them wanted to answer first.

"Two days," Marisol said, holding up a fourth shirt. "You're going to say something."

"I didn't say anything." Dev was on his knees by the closet, digging for the hiking boots he'd worn exactly twice since they moved in. "I was thinking it loudly, though."

She threw the shirt at him. He caught it and folded it better than she had, which annoyed her, so she took it back and refolded it worse.

They had been talking about the cabin since February. Now it was October, and the reservation confirmation was printed and stuck to the refrigerator under a magnet from her sister's wedding. Two nights in the Poconos, a wood stove, no cell service according to at least three reviews.

Dev went through the apartment doing what he called the sweep: coffee maker unplugged, thermostat down to sixty, the bathroom window latched. Marisol filled the cat's automatic feeder and then filled a second bowl anyway, because she didn't trust machinery with living things. The cat, Beans, watched from the top of the bookshelf with the flat contempt of an animal who understood luggage.

"Snacks," Dev said.

"In the tote by the door."

"Real snacks or your snacks?"

"There's a bag of those pretzel things you like. Don't make it a whole thing."

They carried everything down two flights in one trip, which was a mistake, and Dev's duffel strap slid off his shoulder twice. In the parking lot the morning was cold enough to see their breath. He wedged the bags into the trunk while she scraped a film of frost off the windshield with a library card.

She drove first. He handled the aux cord and the tolls. At the on-ramp she reached over without looking and put her hand on his knee, and he put his hand on top of it, and neither of them said anything for eleven miles.


Maya found the duffel bag in the hall closet, behind the vacuum and a box of Christmas lights they'd never gotten around to putting away. It smelled faintly of the beach trip they'd taken in June.

"Do we need the cooler?" she called.

Devon was in the kitchen, standing in front of the open refrigerator with a look of mild betrayal. "There's half a rotisserie chicken in here from Tuesday. Do we eat it or throw it out?"

"It's Friday."

"So, eat it."

"Throw it out."

He threw it out, then packed the cooler anyway—two waters, the good cheese, a bag of grapes—because the drive to the cabin was four hours and the last stretch had nothing but gas stations selling roller-grill hot dogs.

Maya folded two sweaters into the duffel, then unfolded one and put it back in the drawer. The forecast said sixty-two and sunny. She added her hiking boots, the paperback she'd been failing to finish since August, and, after a moment's deliberation, the nicer of her two pairs of jeans.

"Did you text your mom?" Devon asked from the doorway.

"About the plants? Yeah. She's coming Saturday morning." Maya zipped the bag. "Did you get the reservation confirmation?"

He held up his phone. "Screenshotted it. No service up there."

They did the last loop together, the one they always did: thermostat down to sixty-two, coffee maker unplugged, back door checked twice because Devon never believed it the first time. Maya set a light on a timer in the living room. Devon carried the duffel and the cooler out to the car and wedged them into the trunk beside the jumper cables.

She locked the front door. He started the engine, and the radio came on too loud from the last time he'd driven alone.

"Sorry," he said, turning it down.

"Leave it," she said, and they pulled out.


The suitcase lay open on the bed like an accusation. Dana had been packing since Thursday, adding and subtracting items in a slow ritual, while Marcus had waited until Saturday morning, when the coffee was already going cold in the pot.

"You're bringing three books," he said, holding one up. "It's two days."

"I don't know what I'll be in the mood for." She took the book back and set it on the pile. "You're bringing one pair of socks."

"I'm wearing a pair. That's two."

They moved around each other in the bedroom with the easy choreography of four years in the same eight hundred square feet. She found his phone charger in the couch cushions; he found her sunglasses on top of the refrigerator, where she'd set them down while arguing with her sister on the phone last Tuesday.

The cabin was in the Poconos, three hours if the traffic behaved. Dana's coworker had offered it for the weekend, and Dana had said yes before consulting Marcus, and Marcus had pretended to be annoyed for approximately ninety seconds.

At ten-fifteen, they carried everything down to the car. Marcus rearranged the trunk twice. Dana went back upstairs for the tote bag of groceries she'd forgotten, then again to make sure she'd unplugged the iron, which she had, which she'd known she had.

"Anything else?" he asked, hand on the driver's door.

"Give me a second." She stood on the sidewalk with her eyes closed, running the mental inventory. Their neighbor's dog barked twice from a second-floor window. "Okay. No. Let's go."

He backed out of the space with one arm across her headrest. At the corner, she plugged her phone into the aux cord and started a playlist she'd made and hadn't told him about, and he glanced over, and neither of them said anything, and they drove.


The suitcase lay open on the bed like a question neither of them wanted to answer first.

"Two days," Marisol said, holding up a third sweater. "Two days, Dev."

"It's Vermont in October. You'll be cold." He was pulling socks from the dryer, still warm, and dumping them into a canvas tote because he'd never once used a proper bag in the four years they'd lived in the duplex on Alder Street.

She put the sweater in anyway. Then she took out the second pair of boots, which felt like a fair trade.

Downstairs, the coffee maker gurgled. Dev went through the checklist he kept in his head every time they left: thermostat down to sixty, dishwasher run, the little lamp in the front window on a timer so the house looked occupied. Marisol texted their neighbor Bev about the mail and left a key under the ceramic frog, which Dev thought was the first place a burglar would look, and which he'd stopped arguing about in year two.

"Did you eat something?" she called.

"I'll eat on the road."

"That means a gas station burrito at eleven."

"That means a gas station burrito at eleven," he agreed.

They loaded the car in the gray early light, breath showing. He took the driver's seat because she'd drive the second half; that was the arrangement, unspoken, worn smooth. She had a paper bag of clementines and a playlist she'd been building for a week and refused to let him preview.

At the corner he braked. "Did I lock the back door?"

Marisol was already unbuckling. "I'll check."

She jogged up the walk, tried the knob, found it locked, and jogged back. She got in, buckled, and pointed at the windshield.

"Okay," Dev said, and turned onto the main road, and the house got small behind them.


The alarm went off at five, and Nadia slapped it silent before it could wake Theo. It didn't work. He groaned into the pillow and said, "Two more minutes," which she knew from four years of shared mornings meant twelve.

She made coffee in the dark kitchen of the rental they'd been in since the lease started in March. The travel mugs were still in the dishwasher from the last trip, so she hand-washed them while the machine gurgled. Theo appeared at six-fifteen, hair flat on one side, carrying the duffel he'd packed the night before and the one he'd packed for her, which she immediately opened to check.

"You forgot my hiking socks."

"They're in the side pocket."

They were. She zipped it back up without apologizing, and he grinned at the back of her head.

The list on the fridge got worked through: thermostat down to sixty, plants watered, the back door checked twice because Theo could never remember whether he'd locked it. Nadia texted their neighbor Mrs. Alvarez about the mail. Theo carried the bags out to the Corolla and discovered the trunk still held a bag of potting soil from May.

"You said you'd deal with that."

"I said I'd deal with it eventually."

The soil went onto the porch. The bags went into the trunk. Nadia stood on the sidewalk in the gray light, doing the mental inventory she always did — wallet, phone, charger, the cabin's address written on paper because the cell service up there was a rumor.

They stopped at the gas station on Elm. Theo pumped, Nadia went inside and came back with two bad breakfast sandwiches and a bag of sour candy she knew he'd pretend not to want.

By seven they were on the highway with the sun coming up behind them, and neither of them said much for the first hour, which was fine.


The suitcase lay open on the bed like an accusation. Marcus had packed his side in eleven minutes—two shirts, jeans, the good socks, a book he wouldn't read. Delia was still deliberating over cardigans.

"It's Vermont," he said from the doorway. "In October. Take the wool one."

"The wool one makes me look like a substitute teacher."

"You are a substitute teacher."

She threw the cardigan at him, and he caught it, folded it badly, and set it in the suitcase anyway. Downstairs, the coffee maker gurgled through its last cycle. They had lived in the house on Ashcroft Street for three years, ever since Delia's lease ran out and Marcus said, reasonably, that he had a spare room she could fill with her records. She had never used the spare room.

At seven-forty she was watering the ficus while he checked the back door twice. They had a system now, worn smooth: he handled locks and tire pressure, she handled snacks and directions and the question of whether the neighbor's kid had been asked to bring in the mail. He had. Delia had left him twenty dollars and a note in her looping hand.

"Thermostat," she said.

"Sixty-two."

"Sixty."

He adjusted it. She carried the tote bag with the apples and the pretzels and the thermos out to the driveway while he hauled the suitcase down, one stair-thud at a time. The morning was cold enough to see their breath. Frost had glazed the windshield, and he scraped it while she sat in the passenger seat with the heater roaring, holding both their coffees.

He got in, rubbing his hands. She passed him the cup.

"Ready?"

"Two days," she said. "No email."

"No email."

He backed out slowly, checking the mirror, and they turned north onto the empty street, the house shrinking behind them, its porch light still burning because neither had remembered it.


The suitcase lay open on the bed like an accusation. Maya stood over it, holding two sweaters, calculating.

"It's forty degrees in Asheville," Ben called from the bathroom, where he was rolling up a toothbrush in a hand towel because he'd lost the travel case again. "Not forty below."

"It's forty degrees *at night*." She packed both sweaters anyway, then pulled one back out, then put it back in. Two days. Somehow two days required more deliberation than two weeks.

Ben appeared in the doorway with the toothbrush bundle and a bottle of shampoo he'd owned since college. "Do we need to stop the mail?"

"For two days?"

"Fair." He dropped his things into the suitcase, and she immediately rearranged them.

They had lived together for three years in a rented duplex with a sticking front door, and this was the sum of their domestic choreography: her lists, his shrugging, both of them meeting somewhere in the middle around eleven at night.

She watered the pothos. He checked the back door twice. She checked it a third time. He unplugged the toaster, which felt excessive but had become tradition after a documentary neither of them wanted to discuss.

In the driveway, Ben loaded the suitcase while Maya scraped a light frost off the windshield with a library card, because the ice scraper had migrated to the garage sometime last spring and no one had gone looking.

"Coffee?" he said.

"Obviously coffee."

He backed out too fast, as always. She reached over and turned down the radio, then, after a moment, turned it back up.

Half a mile down the road, Maya said, "Did you lock the front door?"

Ben was quiet for exactly three seconds. Then he made a U-turn at the light, and she laughed, and neither of them said anything else about it, and the whole weekend still lay ahead of them, unspent.


The suitcase lay open on the bed like a question neither of them wanted to answer first.

"Two days," Marisol said. "Two. You don't need four pairs of shoes."

Dev held up a sneaker in each hand, considering. "What if we hike?"

"We're going to a bed and breakfast in Asheville. There's a fireplace and a hot tub. We're going to eat too much bread."

"There could be trails."

She took the sneakers from him and put one back in the closet. He didn't argue, which she counted as a win, and started rolling his shirts the way she'd shown him a year ago, when they'd first started sharing a dresser and discovering how differently two people could fold.

He handled the logistics he always handled: printing the reservation confirmation because he didn't trust his phone battery, texting their neighbor Ruth about the cat, checking the oil in the Subaru even though he'd checked it Tuesday. Marisol packed the cooler—string cheese, two apples, a bag of pretzels, the almonds he liked and she pretended not to. She poured coffee into travel mugs and set them by the door.

At nine-forty they were in the driveway, twenty minutes behind the schedule he'd made and forty minutes ahead of what she'd privately predicted.

"Did you lock the back door?"

"You watched me lock it."

"I watched you touch it."

He went back and checked. It was locked. He came out grinning anyway, holding up the key like a trophy, and she rolled down the window to tell him to hurry.

The car smelled like coffee and the vanilla thing hanging from the mirror. Marisol found the playlist she'd made and didn't tell him it was called *Dev, Reluctantly*. He backed out slowly, one hand on the seat behind her, and turned toward the highway, and neither of them said anything for the first three miles, which was fine.


Maya found the duffel bag in the back of the hall closet, still holding a receipt from a hotel in Asheville two summers ago. She shook it out over the trash can and carried it into the bedroom, where Dev was folding shirts with the excessive care he applied to nothing else in his life.

"Two days," she said. "You don't need four button-downs."

"One for dinner, one for the hike in case it's cold, one spare, one because I'll spill something." He set them in the bag anyway. She let it go and started counting socks.

The cabin was three hours north, booked in a fit of optimism back in February when the winter had felt endless. Now it was late September and the whole thing felt slightly absurd, two people who lived together driving somewhere to be together, but Maya had circled the dates on the kitchen calendar in red marker and neither of them had crossed them out.

They argued mildly about the cooler. Dev wanted to bring food; Maya said there was a grocery store eleven minutes from the cabin, she'd checked. They compromised on coffee, half-and-half, and a bag of pretzels for the drive.

The last twenty minutes were the usual scramble. She watered the pothos and texted their neighbor about the mail. He unplugged the toaster, checked the back door twice, and stood in the kitchen with his hand on the light switch, doing a mental inventory that turned up nothing.

"Phone charger," Maya said from the doorway.

"Got it."

"Yours. Not mine."

He went back for hers.

The car smelled like sun-warmed upholstery. Dev backed down the driveway while Maya scrolled for a playlist, and at the stop sign at the end of their street she reached over and put her hand on his knee, and he covered it with his, and then he had to take it back to turn.


Maya found the duffel bag in the hall closet, behind the winter coats they hadn't touched since March. She dragged it out and dropped it on the bed, where Devon was already folding a flannel shirt with more care than a two-day trip required.

"You know it's just Asheville," she said.

"I like being prepared." He set the shirt down and reached for another. "Did you check the weather?"

"Rain Saturday afternoon. Clear Sunday." She was pulling clothes off hangers by the armful, not folding anything. "So bring the jacket, not the umbrella. Umbrellas are for people with plans."

They'd been in the house on Pearson Street for three years. Neither of them had proposed anything, and neither seemed to mind. The mortgage was in Devon's name; the cat was in Maya's. They'd worked out most of the rest by trial and error.

He went downstairs to deal with the cooler—two waters, the sandwiches Maya had made at eleven the night before, a bag of pretzels he'd hidden from her twice. She came down twenty minutes later with the duffel over one shoulder and her hair still wet.

"Did you unplug the space heater?"

"Yes." He paused. "Did you?"

"I'm asking because I don't remember unplugging it."

She went back up. It was unplugged. She stood in the bedroom for a second anyway, looking at the unmade bed, then came down and locked the front door behind her.

The car was a nine-year-old Civic with a cracked taillight lens they'd been meaning to fix. Devon backed out of the driveway while Maya scrolled through her phone for the playlist she'd made, which she would abandon by exit 40 in favor of talk radio, which he would complain about for eight miles and then stop noticing.

At the stop sign she put her hand on his knee. He turned left toward the interstate.


The suitcase had been open on the bed since Thursday, which was Maya's system: leave it out, add things as you remember them. Daniel's system was to throw everything in twenty minutes before leaving, and he was not going to be talked out of it.

"You have socks?" she asked from the closet.

"I have socks."

"Enough socks?"

He held up two pairs. She held up her hand with three fingers raised, and he sighed and went back to the dresser.

They'd rented a cabin two hours north, one of those places with a wood stove and spotty cell service, for Friday and Saturday nights. It had been Maya's idea in February and Daniel's idea to actually book it in April, after the third weekend in a row that neither of them had left the apartment except to buy groceries.

She emptied the vegetable drawer into a paper bag for the neighbor, wrote a note about the mail, and watered the pothos twice as much as usual, which she suspected was not how plants worked. Daniel checked the back door, then checked it again while she watched him do it.

"You already did that."

"I know. I'm sealing it in memory so I don't ask you about it at nine tonight."

They loaded the car in the gray light of six-forty in the evening: her bag, his bag, a canvas tote of coffee and a French press because the cabin listing had mentioned only instant, a grocery sack of pasta and a bottle of wine, and two pillows, because they'd learned that lesson the hard way in Vermont.

Maya drove first. Daniel handled the aux cord and the toll app and, four minutes in, discovered he'd left his phone charger on the kitchen counter.

She turned around at the next light without saying anything, and he said thank you, and she said don't get used to it.


Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, looking at the counter as if it had insulted her. Four years ago tonight, she and Marcus had walked out of a terrible open mic at a bar on Cherokee Street and kept walking, twenty-two blocks, until the sun came up over the Mississippi.

She texted him: *don't pick up food. i'm making the thing.*

*the thing?* he wrote back. *the shrimp thing?*

*the shrimp thing.*

By the time his key turned in the lock, she had rice going and had opened the wine they'd been saving since Christmas without any particular occasion in mind. Marcus set a paper bag on the table and pulled out a cheap bouquet from the corner store, carnations dyed an aggressive blue.

"They were the ugliest ones," he said. "I thought you'd appreciate that."

"I do." She kissed him, tasting cold air on his mouth. "There's garlic everywhere. Don't touch anything."

He didn't listen. He stood behind her at the stove, chin on her shoulder, until she elbowed him toward the cabinet for plates. Then he found the speaker and put on the album they'd argued about for the first three months they knew each other, and she groaned, and he turned it up.

They ate at the table instead of the couch, which felt formal enough to count as an occasion. Marcus told her about the guy at work who'd cried during a budget meeting. Dana admitted she'd almost bought a cake and then decided she'd rather have the wine.

Later, dishes stacked and lights low, she pulled her feet up under her and leaned into him.

"Four years," she said. "Longer than college."

"Better than college."

"Marginally."

He laughed and pulled the blanket over both of them, and outside a bus sighed to a stop, and neither of them moved for a long time.


Mara got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, looking at the counter where the mail had accumulated into a small geological formation, and decided that tonight she would not be the kind of person who cleaned instead of cooking.

She put water on to boil. Six years ago tonight, in a bar on Cortland Avenue that had since become a poke restaurant, Devon had told her he thought he was probably going to fall in love with her, which she had found presumptuous and correct.

He came in at six-forty with a paper bag and stopped when he saw the stove going.

"You said we weren't doing anything," he said.

"We're not. It's pasta."

"I got the good bread." He set the bag down and pulled out a baguette, and then, more slowly, a small waxed-paper package. "And the cheese you like. The stinky one."

"Taleggio."

"The stinky one."

They ate at the table instead of on the couch, which felt formal enough to be funny. Devon lit the candle that had been in the drawer since a power outage in February and smelled faintly of vanilla and emergency.

"Six years," Mara said.

"Six years." He turned his glass by the stem. "My mother asked me about it."

"About what?"

"You know what."

Mara tore off a piece of bread. She had known this was coming, in the way you know weather is coming, and she found she wasn't dreading it. "What did you tell her?"

"That we're happy. That we'd figure it out on our own schedule." He looked up. "Was that right?"

"That was right." She reached across and took his hand, sauce on her fingers and all. "Ask me again in the spring."

"Ask you what?"

"Whatever you're going to ask."

Devon laughed and didn't let go of her hand, and outside the window a neighbor's dog started barking at nothing at all.


Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, looking at the counter and calculating. Three years ago tonight they'd sat on the floor of Theo's old apartment eating cold pad thai out of the container, and she had said, out loud, that she wanted this to be a thing, and he had said okay, like it was obvious.

She texted him: *don't stop anywhere. I'm cooking.*

Three dots. Then: *define cooking.*

*Rude.*

What she meant was that she was making the chicken thing with the lemon and too much garlic, the only recipe she'd ever memorized, which she had made for him in year one and burned, and in year two perfectly, and now made annually like a small stubborn ritual. She got the oven going and put on the playlist they fought about — he thought it was too much Fleetwood Mac; she thought there was no such thing.

Theo came in at six-forty with grocery bags anyway.

"You said don't stop."

"I bought ice cream. That's not stopping, that's arriving prepared." He kissed the side of her head, hung his coat on the chair instead of the hook, and she let it go. He found the bottle of wine they'd been saving since a wedding in June and started working the cork.

They ate at the actual table, which they'd been meaning to do more. He told her about the thing with his sister. She told him she'd finally emailed the woman about the studio space. Neither of them mentioned that his lease renewal was coming, or the argument from Sunday, though both were in the room with them, patient.

"Three years," Theo said, tipping his glass toward her.

"Three years," Dana said. "The chicken's better."

"The chicken's incredible."

Later they ate the ice cream out of the carton on the couch, arguing pleasantly about a movie neither of them wanted to watch.


Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the entryway with her keys still in her hand, looking at the apartment the way a stranger might: the couch with the sagging left cushion, the philodendron they'd nearly killed twice, the crooked stack of Ethan's records by the window. Four years. She set down the grocery bag and started pulling things out.

Ethan came in at six-forty, apologizing before the door was fully open. "The 14 was rerouted, I had to walk from Pine—" He stopped. There were candles on the table, the mismatched ones from the junk drawer, and a bowl of clementines because he liked them and she never bought them.

"You said no gifts," he said.

"Clementines aren't a gift. They're produce."

He held up a paper bag. "This is also produce." Inside was a bottle of the Portuguese wine they'd had on their first real trip together, the one where they'd argued about directions for three hours and then laughed about it for four years.

"That's cheating."

"You made a whole table."

They cooked together, badly, the way they always did—Dana chopping too slowly, Ethan salting too much, both of them reaching for the same wooden spoon. They ate on the couch with plates on their knees because the candles had made the table feel too formal, too much like a performance. Outside, someone's car alarm went off and stopped.

"Four years," Ethan said. "My mother asked again."

"I know. Mine too." Dana pulled her feet up under her. "What did you say?"

"I said we're happy." He looked over at her. "Was that right?"

She thought about it honestly, the way she wanted to be able to do with him for a long time.

"Yeah," she said. "That's right."

They finished the wine and left the dishes until morning.


Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the entryway of their apartment holding a paper bag of groceries, listening to the radiator tick, and felt briefly like a stranger in her own life. Four years ago tonight she had been sitting on a curb outside a bar in Somerville, telling Miguel she didn't usually do this, and he had said, "Do what?" and she had said, "Like someone this fast."

She put the pasta water on. She was terrible at cooking and good at buying things, so she'd bought good bread, a wedge of cheese the guy at the counter recommended, and a bottle of wine that cost more than she'd meant to spend.

Miguel came in at six-forty, snow melting on his shoulders, carrying a bakery box that he set on the counter with exaggerated care.

"You didn't," she said.

"I absolutely did." He opened it: a small chocolate cake, the kind with too much frosting. "They only had 'Happy Birthday' or blank. I went blank."

"Wise."

They ate at the coffee table because the kitchen table had become a place where mail went to die. Miguel had queued up a movie neither of them intended to finish. Dana asked him if he remembered what she'd been wearing that first night, and he described the green jacket in such specific detail — the missing button, the cigarette burn on the cuff — that she had to look away for a second.

"People keep asking us," he said, later, refilling her glass.

"I know."

"I'm not asking."

"I know that too." She leaned into his shoulder. "Ask me in a year."

"That's what you said last year."

"And here we are," she said, "still here," which was, they both understood, the whole point of the evening.


The rain started around four, which meant Daniel abandoned his plan to grill.

"We could still do it," Priya said, peering out the kitchen window at the gray sheets coming down on their patio. "You have that umbrella."

"The one that broke in March?"

"Details." She turned back to the counter, where she was slicing tomatoes with more concentration than the task required. Three years. It felt both longer and shorter than that — longer because she couldn't quite remember what her apartment in Somerville had looked like, shorter because she still sometimes woke up mildly surprised to find him there, taking up two-thirds of the mattress.

Daniel moved the chicken to a pan on the stove. "Cast iron's fine. Better, honestly. I've been reading about the crust you get."

"You've been reading about crust."

"I contain multitudes."

She laughed and handed him the cutting board. He'd bought a bottle of wine on his way home — not expensive, but from the small shop on Warren Street instead of the grocery store, which for him constituted a gesture. She'd made the salad dressing from scratch, whisking the mustard in the way his mother had shown her last Thanksgiving.

They ate at the actual table instead of on the couch. Halfway through, Priya put down her fork.

"Do you remember what you said to me? That first night, outside the bar?"

"I said I'd text you."

"You said you *hoped* you'd text me. Which I thought was strange."

"I was managing expectations."

"You texted me at seven the next morning."

"Expectations were exceeded." He refilled her glass. Outside, the rain kept going, steady and unhurried, and neither of them suggested turning on the television. They stayed at the table long after the plates were empty, arguing pleasantly about whether the chicken had, in fact, achieved a superior crust.


The rain started around four, which meant Dana came home from the clinic with her hair flattened and her shoes making small complaints on the hallway tile. Miguel was already in the kitchen, sleeves pushed up, arguing with a recipe on his phone.

"It says to reduce the wine by half," he said. "How am I supposed to know when it's half?"

"Look at the pot." She kissed the back of his neck and dropped her bag on a chair. "Four years ago tonight you told me you didn't cook."

"Four years ago tonight I was trying to seem mysterious."

They had agreed on no gifts, which meant they had both broken the agreement in small ways. Dana had bought a bottle of the Rioja they drank at that terrible tapas place near her old apartment, the one with the accordion player who wouldn't leave their table. Miguel had ordered a print of the Metro-North timetable from the year they spent taking turns riding an hour each way, and had it framed badly, the mat slightly crooked, which she would notice and not mention.

He burned the garlic. She fished the black bits out with a spoon while he started over, and they ate at seven-thirty at the small table by the window, watching the rain come down orange under the streetlight.

"My mother asked again," Miguel said.

"I know. Mine too. Easter."

"What did you tell her?"

"That we're happy." Dana turned her glass by the stem. "That we'll figure it out when we figure it out."

He nodded. It was an old conversation, worn smooth, not painful anymore, just there, like a stone in a pocket.

Afterward they left the dishes and watched half of a movie neither of them had chosen carefully. She fell asleep against his shoulder before the second act. He didn't wake her. He turned the volume down instead, and sat there a while, listening to the rain.


The rain started around four, which meant Daniel got home early — the crew had packed up the scaffolding and called it a day. He found Nora already in the kitchen of their apartment, sleeves shoved to her elbows, arguing with a recipe on her phone.

"You're supposed to be at work," she said, not looking up.

"Rained out. You're supposed to be at work too."

"Took a half day." She held up a bulb of fennel like evidence. "I was going to have this finished before you got here."

Four years. They'd started counting from a Tuesday in October, a bad first date at a bar on Cedar that had somehow lasted until two in the morning. Neither of them could remember what they'd talked about, only that the bartender had eventually stopped asking if they wanted anything else.

Daniel took off his boots by the door and washed his hands. "Give me something to do."

"Slice these thin. Not like last time."

"Last time was rustic."

"Last time was a hazard."

They worked in the narrow galley, bumping hips, trading the one good knife back and forth. Nora put on the record her brother had given them, the one with the scratch in the third song. Daniel opened the wine they'd been saving since August, which was really just a twelve-dollar bottle they kept forgetting about.

They ate at the coffee table because the kitchen table had become a place where mail lived. The fennel was good. The chicken was slightly overdone and they agreed not to mention it, then mentioned it.

"Next year we should go somewhere," Nora said.

"You said that last year."

"I know. I mean it more this time."

He refilled her glass. Outside, the rain kept on, steady against the window, and neither of them got up to close the blinds.


The rain started around four, which meant Daniel had to abandon the idea of grilling. He stood at the kitchen window with a beer, watching water pool in the low spot of the patio where he kept meaning to fix the drainage, and then he turned around and started pulling things out of the refrigerator instead.

Priya came home at five-thirty with her hair flattened and a paper bag from the Italian place on Warren Street.

"You bought food," Daniel said.

"You said you were cooking."

"I was going to grill."

"It's been raining since three." She set the bag down and looked at the counter, where he'd assembled chicken thighs, a lemon, a head of garlic he hadn't peeled yet. "Okay. So we have two dinners."

"We have dinner and we have tomorrow's lunch." He took the bag from her and put it in the fridge, and she let him, and then she went to change out of her work clothes.

Four years. They had agreed, sometime in the second year, that it counted from the night in October when she had stayed over and then simply not gone home for three days. There had been no conversation about it. Her toothbrush had appeared in the cup by his sink and neither of them had mentioned it, which Daniel still considered the most romantic thing that had ever happened to him.

She came back in sweatpants and put on a record, something with horns. He browned the chicken. She sat on the counter beside the stove, which he had asked her many times not to do, and drank his beer, and told him about a coworker who had cried in a meeting.

They ate at the table with the overhead light off. Around nine the rain let up. Priya suggested a walk; Daniel said he'd get his shoes, and did.


The rain started around four, which Dana took as a good sign. Nothing forced them inside like weather did.

She got home first and put the chicken in to roast, then stood in the kitchen doorway looking at the living room — the coffee table with its rings, the couch with the blanket thrown over the arm where the cat had shredded it. Six years ago tonight, in a bar on Delmar that had since become a vape shop, Miguel had asked if she wanted to split an order of fries. That was the whole origin story. They'd agreed years ago it was too small a thing to make a fuss over, and then made a small fuss over it every October anyway.

Miguel came in at six-fifteen shaking water off his jacket. "There's a downed limb on Sutter," he said. "Whole street's blocked." He set a paper bag on the counter — a bottle of the Portuguese red they liked, and, because he could never help himself, a bag of the sour candy she kept in her desk at work.

"You didn't have to."

"It was on the way." He looked at the oven. "How long?"

"Twenty minutes. Set the table?"

He did, badly, forks on the wrong side, and she didn't correct him. They ate at the table instead of on the couch, which was the extent of the ceremony. Miguel told her about the limb again, in more detail. Dana told him her sister had called about Thanksgiving and she hadn't called back.

Afterward he washed and she dried, and then they took the wine to the couch and put on the second half of a movie they'd started Tuesday. The cat came and sat between them, which she did most nights.

"Six years," Miguel said, at some point.

"Six years," Dana said. Outside, the rain kept on, and neither of them got up to close the window.


The rain started around four, which meant Dana came home from the clinic with her scrubs damp at the shoulders and her hair sticking to her neck. Miguel was already in the kitchen, sleeves shoved up, arguing quietly with a pan.

"You said seven," she said, dropping her bag by the radiator.

"I said seven so you'd be surprised at six-forty." He tilted his head toward the counter, where two glasses waited beside a bottle of the cheap Malbec they'd been drinking since the first year. "It's the risotto. I keep adding broth and it keeps refusing to become anything."

Dana came over and looked into the pan. "You're stirring like you're afraid of it."

"I am afraid of it."

She took the wooden spoon out of his hand, and he let her, and stood behind her with his chin near her shoulder while she worked the rice against the sides of the pan. Four years ago they had met at a friend's cramped birthday party in Somerville, both of them hiding in the kitchen from a man who wanted to explain cryptocurrency. Every year since, they'd agreed no restaurants, no gifts over twenty dollars. Some years they'd broken the gift rule. Never the restaurant one.

"I got you something," Miguel said.

"Under twenty?"

"Fourteen ninety-nine." He produced a paperback from behind the toaster — the sequel she'd been complaining about waiting for. She laughed, and set the spoon down, and kissed him with one hand still on the pan handle.

Later they ate on the living room floor because the table was covered in her recertification paperwork. The risotto was slightly gluey and they ate all of it. Rain moved across the windows in sheets. Dana talked about a patient's dog; Miguel talked about his sister's move to Denver, and whether they'd ever leave this apartment, and neither of them said the other thing they'd both been thinking about lately, though it sat comfortably between them, unhurried.


The rain started around four, which meant Dana had to reroute her plans. She'd wanted to eat on the fire escape—their fire escape, the one they'd claimed the first summer in the Bushwick apartment—but the metal was slick and the sky had that flat gray look that meant it wasn't going to let up.

Marcus came in at six-fifteen, shaking water off his jacket, and found her arranging candles on the coffee table in a way that suggested she'd rearranged them several times already.

"Fire escape's out," she said.

"Figured." He held up a paper bag, damp at the bottom. "I got the good bread. The place on Knickerbocker."

"You went out of your way."

"It's four blocks."

"In the rain."

He shrugged and went to the kitchen, where the pot of sauce she'd started at five was doing its slow work. He tasted it, added nothing, which she took as the compliment he meant it to be.

They ate on the floor because the table was covered in Dana's grading, and neither of them wanted to move it. Three years. They'd counted from the night of Priya's terrible birthday party, where they'd both hidden in the kitchen and discovered a shared and specific hatred of a certain podcast.

"I have a thing," Marcus said, after. He produced a small flat envelope. Inside was a photograph, printed on real paper: the two of them on the fire escape, taken by a neighbor from across the alley, the shot slightly crooked, Dana laughing at something out of frame.

She looked at it for a long moment. "Deborah took this?"

"She texted it to me in July. I've been sitting on it."

Dana got up, found a nail, and hung it in the hallway where they'd see it every day. Then she came back and sat down beside him, and outside the rain kept going, and neither of them minded.


The rain started around four, which meant Dana got home from the clinic soaking, her scrubs stuck to her back. Ben had already put the water on. He'd been home since two, having traded shifts with Marcus specifically so he wouldn't be walking through the door at eight and ruining everything.

"Three years," Dana said, kicking off her shoes by the radiator. "Three years since you spilled beer on my jacket."

"I bought you a new jacket."

"You bought me a *worse* jacket."

He handed her a mug of tea and went back to the stove. She'd asked for the mushroom pasta, the one from the recipe card his aunt had sent, the one he'd finally stopped burning last winter. Dana leaned against the counter and watched him hesitate over the wine bottle.

"Half a cup," she said. "Then the rest goes in glasses."

"That's what I was thinking."

She went to change, came back in his old sweatshirt, and pulled the small cardboard box out of her bag. Not a ring — they'd talked about that, sort of, in the noncommittal way people talk about things they're not ready to decide. Inside were two keys on a split ring, cut that morning at the hardware store on Ninth.

"For the storage unit," she said. "I put your name on the lease. So if I die, you get my grandmother's dishes and eleven boxes of nursing textbooks."

Ben laughed, then didn't. He turned the keys over in his palm.

"That's the most romantic thing anyone's ever said to me."

"I know. I workshopped it."

They ate on the couch with plates on their knees because the table was covered in his half-assembled bike wheel. Outside, the rain kept on. Around ten Dana fell asleep against his shoulder, and Ben stayed still, letting the movie run, thinking about grandmother's dishes.


Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the entryway with her keys still in her hand, listening to the apartment's particular silence—the refrigerator's hum, the radiator ticking, a neighbor's television bleeding through the wall. Four years ago tonight she had sat across from Michael at a Thai place on Dearborn and decided, somewhere between the soup and the check, that she wanted to keep talking to him.

She put the wine in the freezer to chill fast and started chopping garlic.

Michael came in at six-forty, shaking rain off his coat. "You're cooking."

"I'm attempting."

He looked at the counter—the garlic, the shrimp thawing in a bowl, the cookbook propped open with a coffee mug. "I picked up dessert," he said, holding up a white box. "That place on Halsted. The one with the—"

"The chocolate thing."

"The chocolate thing."

They had agreed on no gifts, which they both understood loosely. Dana had bought him socks, good ones, the kind he never bought himself. Michael had a card in his bag that he'd spent twenty minutes choosing and would probably hand over sheepishly at the end of the night.

He took over the shrimp because she always overcooked shrimp. She poured the wine, which was still too warm, and they drank it anyway. The rain got heavier. They ate at the small table by the window with the overhead light off, just the two candles Dana had found in a drawer, mismatched, one of them a leftover from someone's birthday.

"Four years," Michael said.

"Four years." She turned her glass by the stem. "You want to do a fifth?"

"I was going to ask you the same thing." He reached across and put his hand over hers, still holding the glass, and left it there while the rain kept coming down.


Maya got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, looking at the counter and trying to remember what Dev had said about the sauce—something about letting it sit, something about not stirring it too much. Four years ago tonight they'd eaten cold pad thai out of the container on the floor of his old apartment because he hadn't owned a table yet.

She was chopping garlic badly when he came in.

"You're early," he said, setting down a paper bag.

"You're late."

"I'm exactly on time. I went to the place on Grand." He pulled out a bottle of wine, then a smaller bag, which he set behind the toaster without explanation. Maya watched him do it and decided not to ask.

He took over the garlic. She poured the wine into the two mismatched glasses they'd never gotten around to replacing, and they moved around each other in the small kitchen the way they had learned to over three apartments, one bad year, and a cat who had died in March.

"I keep thinking we should do something bigger," Maya said. "Go somewhere."

"We went somewhere. We went to Duluth."

"That was for your cousin's thing."

"It still counts geographically." He tasted the sauce, made a face, added salt. "Do you want to do something bigger?"

She thought about it honestly, which was the only way he ever accepted an answer. "No. I want to eat at the table."

"We have a table now."

"That's what I mean."

They ate slowly. Afterward he retrieved the small bag: a jar of the sour cherry preserves she'd complained about not finding since her grandmother died, tracked down at some Polish deli in Northeast.

Maya turned the jar in her hands and didn't say anything for a moment.

"Four years," Dev said.

"Four years," she agreed, and got two spoons.


Marisol got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen still holding her keys, looking at the counter where they'd stacked the mail for three days, and decided the mail could wait one more.

Six years. Six years since a bad karaoke night in Sacramento, since Dev had sung "Islands in the Stream" alone because his friend bailed, and she'd walked up and taken the second mic without asking.

She put the chicken thighs in the marinade he liked, garlic and lemon and too much pepper. Then she found the string lights in the hall closet, the ones from two apartments ago, and spent twenty minutes untangling them before draping them along the balcony railing.

Dev texted at 5:40: *stuck behind an accident on 50, don't panic, I have the thing.*

*What thing,* she wrote.

*The thing.*

He came in at 6:15 carrying a grocery bag and a small paper sack from the bakery on N Street. "They only had one slice of the tres leches left," he said. "I bribed a woman for it. I gave her my parking spot."

"You didn't."

"I did not. She was already leaving." He kissed the side of her head, then noticed the balcony. "You found them."

"Behind the camping stuff."

They ate outside because the evening had finally cooled off, plates on their knees, the neighbor's TV murmuring through the wall. Dev talked about a coworker's disastrous presentation. Marisol told him about a client who'd cried, then apologized, then cried again about apologizing.

Later, splitting the one slice of cake with two forks, Dev said, "Six years."

"Are you going to ask me something?"

"Not tonight." He scraped up a bit of soaked sponge. "Tonight I just wanted to sit out here with you."

She took the last bite. "Good answer."


Maya got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the doorway of their apartment holding a grocery bag, considering the sink full of breakfast dishes and the laundry heaped on the armchair, and decided the dishes mattered more.

By the time Devon's key turned in the lock, the kitchen was clean and something was happening on the stove that involved more garlic than strictly necessary.

"You're early," he said.

"I left at four. Told Priya I had a thing."

"Do we have a thing?"

She pointed the wooden spoon at him. "Seven years ago tonight."

Devon set down his backpack. He'd remembered — he'd been thinking about it on the train, in fact, turning over the memory of that terrible bar with the sticky floors where she'd told him his taste in music was embarrassing and then given him her number anyway. But he'd assumed they'd let it pass, the way they'd let his birthday pass in March, both of them too tired from the move.

"I got wine," he said. "It's in the bag. I was going to be casual about it."

"You were going to be casual about it."

"I was going to put it on the counter and see if you noticed."

She laughed. He came over and looked into the pot, and she let him take the spoon, because he was better at the last part, the tasting and adjusting.

They ate on the couch because the table had become a place where mail lived. Devon poured the wine into the two mismatched glasses that had survived four apartments. Outside, a bus sighed at the corner.

"Seven," Maya said.

"Seven."

She tucked her feet under his leg. Neither of them said anything about rings or dates or what came next; there was time, and there was tonight, and the garlic had been exactly enough.


Maya got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the doorway of their apartment for a second, holding the grocery bag, taking in the particular mess of their life together—Dev's running shoes by the radiator, her library books stacked on the arm of the couch, the plant they'd both forgotten to water and then both overcompensated for, which was somehow still alive.

Three years. She set the bag down and started pulling things out: the good pasta, a lemon, a head of garlic, the bottle of wine she'd overpaid for because the label had a bird on it.

Dev came in at six-forty with flour on his sleeve.

"You went to the bakery," she said.

"I went to the bakery." He held up a white box. "They didn't have the almond thing. I got the other one."

"The one you like."

"The one I like," he admitted. "But you like it second-best, so it's fine."

She laughed and took the box, and he leaned past her to steal a piece of garlic, which he ate raw, which he always did, which she'd stopped finding alarming sometime in year two.

They cooked without much of a plan. He handled the pasta water and she did the sauce, and they collided twice at the stove and once on purpose. Dev put on the playlist they'd made during the first winter, when they'd been snowed in for four days and had learned more about each other than they'd meant to.

"Do you remember what I said to you?" she asked. "That night at the bar?"

"You said my coat was ugly."

"It *was* ugly."

"You kept it," he said. "It's in the closet."

Maya looked at him over the rim of her glass and didn't say anything, because he already knew.

They ate on the floor by the window. The pastry got soggy. Neither of them minded.