Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the entryway of the apartment with her keys still in her hand, taking stock: the sink was empty, the couch cushions were straight, and the light coming through the west window had gone gold and slanted. Four years ago tonight she and Marcus had sat on a curb outside a bar in Cincinnati and agreed, awkwardly, to stop pretending they were just friends.

She put the grocery bags on the counter and started the rice. Marcus texted at 5:40: *Traffic. Ten minutes. Don't do the chicken without me.*

*Wasn't going to*, she wrote back, and then, because it was true, *I don't know what you do to it.*

He came in at 5:55 with his tie loose and a paper bag under one arm. "Okay," he said, "close your eyes."

"That's a bottle. I can see it's a bottle."

"Close them anyway." He set it down and she opened her eyes to a bottle of the cheap Riesling they'd bought the first weekend she stayed over at his old place, the one with the radiator that clanked all night. She laughed hard enough that she had to put a hand on the counter.

"They still make this?"

"Gas station on Fifth. Two ninety-nine." He was already rolling up his sleeves, moving her out of the way of the stove with a hand on her hip.

They ate at the actual table instead of the coffee table. Marcus had gotten better at the chicken. Dana told him about the woman at work who had started bringing a parrot to Zoom meetings; he told her his brother might be moving closer. Neither of them said anything about rings or leases or five years, and neither of them needed to, particularly.

Afterward they did the dishes together, badly, and watched half a movie before falling asleep on the couch.


The rain started around four, which meant Daniel had to change the plan.

He'd wanted to grill the steaks on the little concrete slab behind their apartment, the one the landlord called a patio. Instead he moved everything inside, dragging the cast-iron pan out from under the sink and setting it on the stove to heat while he trimmed the fat.

Nora came home at five-thirty, shaking water off her umbrella in the doorway. "It's biblical out there," she said. "Someone's going to build an ark on Delaney Street."

"I know. No grilling."

"I brought wine." She held up the bottle, a cheap Rioja she'd picked from the shelf at the corner store because it had a bull on the label and they'd once spent an evening arguing about whether bullfighting counted as a sport. "Do you remember this?"

He did. That was four years ago, at Marcus's party, when she'd been holding a plastic cup and telling a stranger he was wrong about something, and Daniel had listened for ten minutes before saying anything at all.

She put the bottle down and started slicing potatoes without being asked, thin, the way he liked them, while he seared the steaks. The kitchen filled with smoke and they had to open the window despite the rain, and cold wet air came in and made the candle she'd lit gutter and go out.

"Very romantic," she said.

"It's atmospheric."

They ate at the kitchen table because the dining table had become a place where mail went to die. She told him about her sister's engagement, and the fifteen-minute phone call about napkin colors. He told her about the argument at work over the new scheduling software.

"Four years," she said, refilling his glass.

"Four years."

Afterward they washed dishes together, badly, and watched half a movie, and fell asleep on the couch before it ended.


Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, looking at the counter where they'd left the breakfast dishes, and decided that dealing with them counted as a gift.

By the time Marcus came in at six-forty, the dishes were done and there was a pan of chicken thighs in the oven, the recipe he'd clipped from somewhere and stuck to the fridge in August and never made.

"You cooked," he said.

"I assembled. There's a difference." She took the paper bag out of his hands and looked inside: a bottle of the cheap Portuguese wine they'd liked in Lisbon, and a smaller bag with a bakery logo.

"Don't shake it."

"I wasn't going to shake it."

He hung his coat on the back of a chair instead of the hook, which she let go, because it was their anniversary — four years since the night they'd stayed up talking in his awful apartment on Weld Street until the sun came up and neither of them had gone to work. They had never quite agreed on whether that was the actual date, but they'd settled on it, the way you settle on a name for a cat.

They ate at the coffee table because the dining table had his tax documents on it. Marcus put on a record; Dana made him turn it down twice. The chicken was slightly underdone in the middle, and they ate around that part and laughed about it.

Later, she opened the bakery bag: two éclairs, a little smashed.

"I carried them on the train," he said. "I did my best."

"They're perfect," she said, and meant it, and pressed her sock foot against his ankle while the record spun down toward its quiet, scratching end.


The Fourth of March

Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the entryway of the apartment with her keys still in her hand, taking in the particular silence of rooms that had been empty all day, and then she started moving.

By the time Theo's key turned in the lock, she had the kitchen window cracked open to let out the smell of scorched garlic and had rescued most of the shrimp.

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

"I'm attempting. The recipe assumed I own a garlic press."

"You do. It's behind the colander." He was already washing his hands, already reaching past her for the pan, and she let him, the way she'd learned to over four years — not surrender, exactly. Division of labor.

"What's in the bag?"

"Cake. The lemon one from Bergen's. And a bottle of the cheap Portuguese stuff you like."

"It's five dollars, Theo. It's not cheap, it's affordable."

They ate at the coffee table because the kitchen table had a laptop and two weeks of mail on it and neither of them wanted to deal with that tonight. Rain started around eight, tapping the fire escape. Theo put on the playlist he'd been building since January, which he'd sworn was for the gym.

"Four years," Dana said. "Do you remember what you said to me? On the walk back from the diner?"

"I said I'd probably be bad at this."

"You said you'd try not to be boring."

"That's worse." He refilled her glass. "I've failed. We just spent twenty minutes discussing the garlic press."

"For eleven minutes of that I was extremely happy," she said.

He laughed. She leaned into his shoulder, and they stayed there while the rain went on, not talking, the cake still in its box on the counter, waiting.


The bus was late, so Dana got home first, which almyou meant she had time to hide the evidence of her failure. The cake had cracked down the middle when she'd turned it out of the pan. She'd tried to spackle it with frosting. It looked like a geological event.

By the time Marcus came through the door, shaking rain off his jacket, she'd covered the whole thing with a dish towel like a body at a crime scene.

"It smells incredible in here," he said.

"It smells like burnt sugar."

"Same thing." He kissed her hair, then noticed the towel. "What's under there?"

"Nothing. A tragedy. Don't look."

He looked. He laughed hard enough that she hit him with the towel, and then he said, honestly, "I would eat that entire thing right now," which was the correct answer, and they agreed to eat it later, after the actual food.

The actual food was his contribution: two ribeyes he'd bought on the way home, a splurge, and a bag of green beans he'd forgotten he was supposed to trim. Dana trimmed them while he heated the cast iron until the kitchen filled with smoke and the smoke detector went off, and he stood on a chair fanning it with a magazine while she opened the window and yelled encouragement.

Three years. They'd met at a wedding neither of them wanted to attend, stationed at the same bad table.

They ate on the couch because the table was covered in his tax documents. She put on the playlist she'd made in the second month of knowing him, the one that was embarrassing now. He didn't say anything about it except, once, "God, this song."

Later, forks straight into the ruined cake, she said, "Next year we should go somewhere."

"We say that every year."

"I know," she said, and leaned into him, and neither of them moved for a while.


Marisol 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 they had. Half a bag of arborio rice. A shallot going soft. Two chicken thighs she'd defrosted that morning on a hunch.

Six years. Not a wedding anniversary, nothing official, just the night in a friend's crowded apartment when Dev had asked if she wanted to step out onto the fire escape, and she'd said yes, and neither of them had gone back inside.

He texted at five forty: *stopping at the place on Warren. don't cook.*

She texted back: *already started.*

*ok. then I'm getting the cake.*

*not the coconut one*

*it's the only good one*

*get whatever you want*

He came in at six thirty with a white box, a bottle of wine, and rain in his hair. He set everything down and looked at the stove, where she was standing over the risotto with a wooden spoon, adding stock a ladle at a time.

"You hate making risotto," he said.

"I hate making it badly." She held out the spoon. He tasted it and made a face he'd made for six years, the one that meant *good, but I'm not going to say so immediately*.

They ate at the coffee table because the dining table had his laptop and a spread of tax documents on it, and neither of them wanted to move any of it. She put on the record he'd bought her in Philadelphia. He refilled her glass without asking. She told him about the woman at work who'd cried in the supply closet; he told her about the bus driver who had waited for him.

The cake was coconut. She ate a slice anyway.

Later, on the couch, his hand found her ankle. "Six," he said.

"Six," she said, and left it there.


The rain started around four, which meant Delia had to reroute her plans. She'd wanted to walk to the Vietnamese place on Kirby, the one with the plastic stools and the broth that tasted like someone's grandmother had opinions about it. Instead she texted Marcus: *raincheck on pho? literally?*

He wrote back a photo of their kitchen counter — two grocery bags, a bundle of cilantro sticking out like a bouquet.

"You're making it," she said when she got home, shaking water off her jacket.

"I'm attempting it." He had the laptop propped against the toaster, a recipe open, three tabs of conflicting advice. "Apparently you're supposed to char the ginger. Over an open flame. In a rental."

"Six years and you're going to burn the place down."

"Six years," he agreed. He handed her a knife and the onion, because he knew she liked having something to do with her hands.

They worked mostly in silence, which was the thing Delia had stopped apologizing for around year two — that they didn't need to fill it. The window over the sink fogged. Marcus put on the playlist he'd made her when they were still texting like idiots, and neither of them commented on it, though she smiled at the onion.

The broth came out thin. They ate it anyway, on the couch, bowls balanced on knees, and she told him about the woman at work who'd asked if they were ever going to make it official, and how she'd said *we did, we signed a lease*, and how the woman had laughed uncertainly.

"Do you mind?" Marcus asked. "When people ask."

"No." She thought about it. "I mind that they think it's the interesting question."

He nodded slowly, and reached over, and put his cold hand on her ankle, and left it there.


The rain started around four, which meant Danny had to change his plan about grilling. He stood in the kitchen of their second-floor apartment, looking at the two ribeyes he'd bought at the good butcher on Whitman, the one that charged too much and made you feel like you were doing something important.

"Cast iron," Nadia said, coming in with her hair still damp from the walk from the bus stop. "It's better anyway. You get the crust."

"You always say that."

"Because it's always true." She set down a paper bag. "I got the wine. And the terrible cake."

The terrible cake was a running thing—four years ago, on the night they'd decided they were something, they'd shared a slice of grocery-store sheet cake from a coworker's baby shower, stale, with frosting like spackle. Nadia had said it was the best cake she'd ever had, and then had laughed at herself for saying something so absurd, and Danny had thought: oh.

She found the vanilla one with the blue roses. He heated the pan until it smoked and set off the alarm, which he waved down with a dish towel while she opened windows and complained about the smell in her sweaters.

They ate at the little table by the window with the rain going. She told him about a woman at work who'd started bringing a parrot to Zoom calls. He told her he'd finally called about the car.

"Four years," she said.

"Four years." He turned his glass by the stem. "Feels like a normal amount."

"That's romantic."

"I mean it in a good way. Like—it's not remarkable that we're still here. That's the good part."

Nadia considered this, then reached over and took his hand, sticky with frosting, and held it on the table between the plates.


Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen still wearing her coat, taking inventory: the good olive oil, half a box of orzo, two chicken thighs she'd defrosted that morning before her shift. Four years. It didn't feel like four years, except in the way the apartment had accumulated evidence—his running shoes by the door, her books on his side of the bed because his side got better light.

She was browning the chicken when Marcus came in with a paper bag and a look of mild triumph.

"You said no gifts," she said.

"It's not a gift. It's a bottle of wine, which is a household expense." He set it on the counter and leaned over the pan. "That smells illegal."

"Don't touch it."

"I wasn't going to touch it."

He touched it. She smacked his hand with the wooden spoon and he retreated to the small table by the window, clearing off the mail and her charger and the sunglasses that had been sitting there since August. He found the candles in the drawer where they'd been since a power outage two winters ago, wedged them into a pair of juice glasses, and lit them. The effect was less romantic than expected, but he left them.

They ate slowly. Marcus told the story of the night they met, which he told wrong every year, and she corrected him every year, and this had become part of the story.

"You were not wearing a green shirt."

"I have a photograph."

"You have a photograph of a different night."

Later they sat on the floor with the wine because the couch was too far from the record player. He put on the album from that first apartment, the one with the skip in the third track. When it skipped, they both waited for it, and then Dana laughed, and he pulled her closer without saying anything about it.


Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, looking at the counter where she'd left the good cutting board out that morning like a note to herself.

Four years. Not a wedding anniversary — they'd never gotten around to that conversation in any serious way — but the anniversary of a Tuesday in October when Marcus had walked her back to her apartment after a work thing and neither of them had wanted the walk to end, so they'd gone around the block twice more.

She had the sauce started when he came in, carrying a paper bag that clinked.

"You said no gifts," she said.

"It's not a gift, it's wine. Wine is groceries." He set it down and kissed the side of her head, then looked at the stove. "You're doing the thing with the fennel."

"I'm doing the thing with the fennel."

He washed his hands and started on the salad without being asked, which was, she thought, most of what four years came to. He knew where the colander was. He knew she liked the radishes sliced thin enough to see through.

They ate at the coffee table with the TV off, which was their one rule for the night. Marcus told her about the argument he'd had with his brother. Dana told him she'd been thinking about applying for the position in Denver, and watched his face while she said it, and saw him decide to be careful rather than quick.

"Okay," he said. "Tell me about it."

They talked until the candle Dana had bought in a hurry burned down past the label. Later, doing the dishes together, Marcus bumped her hip with his and she flicked water at him, and neither of them said anything about forever, because it seemed unnecessary and also like a lot to promise on a Tuesday.


Dana got home first and found the apartment exactly as they'd left it that morning—coffee mugs in the sink, one of Theo's socks orphaned by the radiator. She had thirty minutes before he finished his shift at the bike shop, and she'd promised herself she wouldn't do anything elaborate. Four years ago tonight they'd eaten dumplings out of a paper carton on the floor of her old studio, and every anniversary since had tried to honor that: low ceremony, high attention.

She washed the mugs. She put on the record he'd bought her in March, the one with the scratch in the third track that they both pretended not to hear. From the freezer she pulled the good vodka and two glasses, then thought better of the glasses and left them in the cupboard, because he liked to pick them out himself.

Theo came in at seven with his helmet under one arm and a paper bag under the other.

"Don't look," he said.

"I'm looking."

"It's not a surprise, it's just a thing." He set the bag down and produced two containers of dumplings from the place on Grand, the one that had replaced the place they used to go. "They're not the same. I want to say that up front. The wrappers are thicker."

"We'll adjust our expectations."

They ate on the floor because that was the tradition, backs against the couch, containers balanced on their knees. Theo asked whether she'd called the landlord about the window. She had not. He said he would, and she said she knew he would, and neither of them said anything about the lease renewal sitting on the counter, or the question that came with it, which they had agreed months ago to leave alone until spring.

The record hit the scratch. Dana reached over and turned it up.


The rain started around four, which meant Dana's plan to grill was finished before it began.

"We could still do it," Marcus said, standing at the sliding door with a spatula in his hand, looking out at the small concrete patio behind their duplex. "I'll hold an umbrella."

"You'll electrocute yourself."

"Charcoal doesn't conduct electricity."

"Marcus."

He turned around, grinning, and set the spatula on the counter. "Fine. Cast iron?"

They had been together three years, which they counted from a Tuesday in October when Dana had agreed to get a beer with him after their shift at the restaurant where they'd both worked then. Neither of them worked there now. She did payroll for a landscaping company; he taught eighth grade science and coached JV soccer, badly, by his own admission.

Dana got the pan hot while Marcus salted the steaks, two ribeyes he'd bought that morning at the good butcher on Fremont instead of the grocery store, which she'd noticed and hadn't mentioned. The kitchen filled with smoke. He opened a window and the rain sound came in with the cold.

"Do you want to do the thing where we say what we're grateful for?" she asked.

"We did that last year and you cried."

"I had a lot going on last year."

"I liked it," he said. "We can do it."

They ate at the coffee table because the dining table had become where the mail lived. Marcus had made a playlist, mostly songs from the restaurant's kitchen radio, and Dana had bought a cheap bottle of Côtes du Rhône and a box of cannoli from the Italian place. She put a candle in one of them.

"That's a birthday thing," he said.

"It's a candle thing."

He blew it out anyway. Later they argued mildly about whether to watch a movie, decided against it, and sat instead listening to the rain, her feet in his lap, the dishes waiting.


Marisol got home first, which meant she had twenty minutes before Devin's bus turned onto Ashland. She'd planned this badly and knew it — the good pan was still soaking in the sink from Tuesday's failed attempt at something ambitious, and the candles she'd bought were the wrong kind, the tall tapered sort that belonged in a movie about a different couple. She lit them anyway and set them on the crate they still used as a coffee table, four years into the apartment, three years into each other.

Devin came in shaking rain off his jacket. "I got the wine," he said. "I also got the wrong wine. They didn't have the one you like, so I asked a guy, and he had opinions."

"Was he right?"

"He was confident."

They cooked together, which was the actual tradition, the thing neither of them had ever proposed out loud. Devin handled the onions because Marisol's eyes were useless against them; Marisol handled the timing because Devin's sense of it was aspirational. He put on the playlist he'd made in the first year, back when he was still trying to impress her, and she made fun of two songs and let the rest go.

"Three years," she said, over the pasta. "Do you remember what you said to me that night, at Ellie's thing?"

"I said something about the Cubs."

"You said, 'I don't actually like parties, but I'd stay at this one.'"

He winced. "That's terrible."

"It worked."

Later they sat on the floor with the wine, which was fine, actually, and the rain kept up against the window. Neither of them brought up the other conversation, the one about rings and paperwork and what her mother kept asking. It could wait. It had waited three years and the evening was too good to spend on the future.


Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, calculating: forty minutes before Theo's train, and the sauce needed at least that long to reduce.

She had the onions going when he texted a photo of the platform sign — *DELAYED 15 MIN* — followed by *don't panic.*

*not panicking,* she wrote back, and then turned the burner down anyway.

Three years. It surprised her that she remembered the date at all, since the beginning had been so unofficial — a Tuesday, a bar on Cortland with terrible lighting, a conversation that ran until the bartender started stacking chairs. Neither of them had called it anything for months afterward. But Theo had written the date in his phone calendar, and now it recurred annually, and now they cooked.

He came in at 7:40 with a paper bag and cold hands. "The bread guy was closing. I begged."

"Did it work?"

He held up a baguette, slightly crushed at one end. "Partially."

She let him take over the sauce, which was his recipe anyway, and she opened the wine — a Chianti they'd bought in September with no occasion attached, saving it the way people save things. Theo tasted the sauce, made a face, added salt, made a better face.

They ate at the coffee table because the actual table had become a repository for his sister's wedding invitations, which they were addressing as a favor and resenting quietly. Dana pushed a stack aside with her foot.

"Do you want to do the thing?" Theo asked.

The thing was: each of them named one moment from the year. She always found it slightly embarrassing and always did it.

"You go first," she said.

He thought about it longer than she expected. Outside, someone's car alarm started and stopped.

"August," he said. "When your mom was in the hospital. You called me from the parking garage."

Dana set down her fork. "That's a terrible moment."

"You called me, though."

She looked at him. "Yeah," she said. "I did."


Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, taking inventory: the good pan, the bag of arborio rice she'd bought on the way home, a bottle of wine that had cost more than she usually allowed herself. Four years. Four years since the night they'd sat on the fire escape of her old apartment in Somerville and admitted they'd both been waiting for the other one to say something.

Ben came in at six-forty, snow on his shoulders, holding a paper bag against his chest like a football.

"You're cooking," he said, delighted and suspicious.

"I'm attempting."

"Because I brought food." He set the bag down. "From the Portuguese place. The one with the sad lighting."

"The one where the waiter always asks if we're on our honeymoon."

"That's the one." He was already unbuttoning his cuffs, already reaching past her for the corkscrew, moving through the small kitchen with the ease of a man who had learned exactly where everything was. "We can do both. Rice tomorrow. Tonight we eat like people who don't have jobs."

They ate on the floor of the living room because the coffee table was the right height and the dining chairs were not. Dana put on the playlist she'd been building all week, a joke about their taste in music and also not a joke. Ben told her about the argument he'd had with his brother; she told him about the woman at work who kept saying *synergize*.

Around ten he leaned back against the couch and said, "So. Four years."

"Four years."

"You ever think about—" He stopped, made a vague gesture that could have meant marriage or could have meant the rest of everything.

"Sometimes," Dana said. "Not tonight."

"No," he agreed, and refilled her glass. "Not tonight."


Marisol got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, considering the counter: two bags of groceries, a bottle of red she'd overpaid for at the place on Delancey, and the small dent in the linoleum where Theo had dropped a cast iron pan last February.

Four years. Not a wedding anniversary, nothing anybody sent cards for, but they'd agreed early on that October ninth counted.

She was searing the chicken thighs when he came in, hair damp from the rain, holding a paper sleeve of flowers that had clearly been rescued from a bodega bucket.

"They were the last ones," Theo said. "I'm choosing to find that romantic."

"Scarcity increases value."

"That's what I said to the guy." He kissed the back of her neck, then went to change out of his work clothes, and she heard him talking to the cat through the wall.

They ate at the coffee table because the actual table had become a repository for mail and a half-built bookshelf. Theo poured the wine badly, sloshing some onto the coaster she'd bought precisely for that reason.

"Okay," he said. "The tradition."

"You go first."

He thought about it. "Best thing this year — when your mom finally called me by my name instead of 'your friend.'"

Marisol laughed so hard she had to set down her glass. "She's coming around. Give her a decade."

"And you?"

She considered lying, saying something soft. Instead: "The night the power went out in August and we played gin rummy for six hours and you cheated."

"I did not cheat."

"You absolutely cheated."

Later they watched half a movie neither of them followed and fell asleep on the couch, the cat wedged between them, the flowers already drooping in a water glass on the windowsill.


Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, doing math: two hours until Marcus finished his shift, one pot of water, the good olive oil somewhere behind the peanut butter.

Four years. Four years since a bad karaoke bar in Bloomington and a conversation that had gone until three in the morning.

She had the sauce simmering when he texted: *pharmacy line out the door, might be 7:30.* She wrote back *fine* and then, because *fine* looked cold on the screen, added *I'm not starting without you.*

He came in at 7:41 with a grocery bag and rain on his shoulders. "They were out of the cake you like," he said. "I got the lemon one. It looked less sad."

"Lemon's good."

"Also I got candles, but they're birthday candles, so."

"So we'll pretend the relationship is turning four." She took the bag from him. He kissed the side of her head and went to change out of his work clothes, and she heard him talking to the cat through the wall.

They ate at the coffee table because the kitchen table had become a place where mail went to die. He told her about a woman who'd tried to argue him down on the price of insulin, and how he'd stood there wanting to explain that he was twenty-six and did not set the prices of anything.

"You want to hear something," Dana said. "My mother asked me again."

Marcus set down his fork. "And?"

"I said we're happy."

"We are."

"That's what I said."

He looked at her for a second longer than the conversation required, then reached over and refilled her glass. Later they watched half of a movie neither of them had chosen carefully, and she fell asleep against his arm before the lemon cake was cut.


The rain started around four, which meant Daniel's plan to grill was finished. He stood at the kitchen window of their apartment in Providence, watching water sheet down the fire escape, and considered his options.

"We could order from that Thai place," Nora said, coming in with her hair still damp from the walk from the bus stop. She dropped her bag by the door and kicked off her shoes, which was a thing she did that he'd stopped minding sometime in year two.

"I bought steaks."

"Cast iron them, then." She was already looking in the cabinet for the pan. "Three years and you still act like the broiler is a rumor."

Daniel took the pan from her and set it on the stove. She got the wine, a bottle they'd been saving since a trip to the Finger Lakes in August, and the corkscrew that only worked if you held it at an angle. The steaks hissed. Nora chopped a shallot badly and he didn't say anything about it.

They ate on the couch because the table had become a place where mail lived. Nora had brought home a small chocolate cake from the bakery near her office, and it sat in its white box on the coffee table, sweating slightly.

"Do you remember what I wore?" she asked.

"The green thing. With the buttons."

"It was blue."

"It was green in the bar light."

She let it go. Outside, a car alarm went off and then stopped. Daniel refilled her glass and she pulled her feet up under her, and they talked about her sister's divorce, and about whether they could afford a place with a second bedroom in the spring, and eventually about nothing much at all, until the cake was mostly gone and the rain had softened to something you had to listen for.


The rain started around four, which meant Diane's plan to grill on the balcony was finished before she got home from the clinic. She stood in the kitchen doorway with her hair dripping and announced this like a death in the family.

"So we improvise," Marcus said. He had already changed out of his work clothes and was doing something ambitious with a cast-iron skillet. "Chicken thighs. Indoors. Nobody has to know."

"Six years and you're pan-searing."

"Six years and you married a man who can pan-sear." He caught himself. "Figuratively."

Diane laughed and went to change. When she came back in a sweatshirt and the wool socks he'd given her two Christmases ago, she found the good plates out—the ones from his grandmother that lived on the top shelf and came down maybe three times a year. She set the table while he worked. There was a bottle of Malbec breathing on the counter, which meant he'd stopped at the place on Halsted, which meant he'd left work early.

"I got you something stupid," she said.

"How stupid?"

She handed him a small box. Inside was a keychain shaped like a tiny bicycle, because his had been stolen in April and he still complained about it weekly. He turned it over in his palm for a long moment.

"This is the least stupid thing anyone has given me."

"It's a two-dollar keychain, Marcus."

"I'm aware." He kissed her temple and went back to the stove.

They ate at the table instead of the couch, which felt formal enough to count. Afterward they argued mildly about whether their anniversary should be the night of the party or the following Tuesday, when he'd actually called her. Then they put on the show they were three seasons behind on, and the rain kept going, and neither of them got up to close the window.


The rain started around four, which meant their plan to eat on the balcony was finished. Dana stood at the sliding door with a dish towel over her shoulder, watching water pool in the seat of the folding chair they'd bought at a yard sale in Sacramento.

"We could put a tarp up," Miguel said from the kitchen.

"We could eat inside like people with sense."

He came over and looked out with her. Four years ago tonight they'd been at a work party neither of them wanted to attend, standing near the drinks table, and she had said something unkind about the host's shoes, and he had laughed harder than the joke deserved. That was the whole beginning. They still argued about who spoke first.

They moved the candles to the coffee table instead. Miguel had made the mushroom thing he made, the one that took two hours and dirtied every pan in the apartment, and Dana had picked up a bottle of wine and a small chocolate cake from the bakery on Twelfth, and neither of them had bought a card, because they'd agreed years ago that cards were a scam.

"Sit down," she said. "You've been standing since noon."

"I'm plating."

"You're hovering over the plating."

They ate on the floor with their backs against the couch, the TV off, the rain steady on the windows. He told her about his sister's new job. She told him she'd finally emailed the woman about the ceramics class. Around nine they got out the shoebox of photos they never got around to organizing, and they laughed at his haircut from 2021, and Dana found the receipt from their first real dinner out and read the total aloud in disbelief.

Later, doing dishes side by side, he flicked water at her. She said his name like a warning and didn't mean it.

The cake sat half-eaten on the counter until morning.


Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, looking at the counter where they'd left the breakfast dishes, and decided that washing them counted as a gesture.

By the time Marcus came through the door at six-forty, she had the sink emptied and a pot of water heating.

"Four years," he said, holding up a paper bag. "I got the bread from the place on Cedar. They were out of the sourdough, so it's the olive one."

"I like the olive one."

"You tolerate the olive one."

She took the bag from him and set it down, then put her hands flat against his chest, which was cold from outside. "How was the meeting?"

"Long. Pointless. I thought about you being annoyed on my behalf and it got me through."

They cooked together badly, the way they always did, negotiating for space at the stove. Marcus wanted the pasta water saltier. Dana said he'd been reading too many food blogs. He conceded, then salted it again when she turned around, and she saw him do it in the reflection of the window and let it go.

They ate at the small table with the wobbling leg. Marcus had brought home a bottle of wine that cost eleven dollars, and they agreed it was better than a bottle they'd had in September that cost thirty.

"Do you remember what you said, that first night?" Dana asked. "At the bus stop?"

"I said I'd call you."

"You said you'd probably call me."

"I was managing expectations."

"You called me the next morning. At seven-fifteen."

"I have never," Marcus said, "been good at managing expectations."

Afterward they moved to the couch. Dana put her feet in his lap and he held them absently, thumb working at her arch, while they argued about what to watch and then watched 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 where they'd stacked mail for three weeks, and decided that was the gift: clearing it. Bills into one pile, catalogs into the recycling, a save-the-date from Marcus and Priya that she propped against the sugar jar.

Eli came in at six-forty with a paper bag from the Italian place on Cortelyou and a bunch of ranunculus wrapped in newsprint. "They were out of the good ones," he said. "These are the sad off-brand ones."

"They're orange. You know I like orange."

"I know. That's why I got the sad ones."

They'd agreed: no restaurant, no gifts over twenty dollars. Four years since the night at Ana's birthday party when they'd stayed on the fire escape until three in the morning talking about their fathers. They'd both agreed that counted as the start, though Eli maintained the real start was six days later, in the laundromat.

He found a candle in the drawer of miscellany and lit it. Dana put on the record they'd bought at a stoop sale in Ditmas Park, the one with the skip in track four they'd stopped noticing. They ate on the couch because the table was small and pushed against the wall and neither of them had ever moved it.

"Do you want the last of the bread?" she asked.

"Split it."

Around nine her sister called and Dana let it go to voicemail, which felt like a small act of devotion. Eli fell asleep before the record ended, his head against the arm of the couch, one hand still resting on her knee. She sat there a while longer, listening to the skip, then woke him gently and they went to bed.


The rain started around four, which Dana took as a good sign. Weather like this made the apartment feel smaller in the way she liked, the windows fogging, the radiator clanking its uneven rhythm.

Miles got home at five-forty with a paper bag from the Italian place on Third and his hair flattened to his forehead. "They were out of the mushroom ravioli," he said, shaking off his jacket. "I got the butternut squash. I know you have opinions about squash."

"I have one opinion about squash."

"Which you've shared."

"I'll eat it." She had the table cleared already, which took effort—it had been holding her laptop, a stack of unopened mail, and a half-finished puzzle since October. She'd found the candles in the box under the bed, the ones from their old place in Bakersfield, stubs now, but they'd burn.

Three years. They'd argued mildly, a week ago, about which day counted: the night of the party where they'd talked until two in the morning on somebody's back steps, or the following Thursday when he'd actually asked her out. They'd settled on the party. It seemed more honest.

Miles plated the food while Dana put on the record he'd given her last Christmas, the one neither of them had gotten around to playing much. He poured wine into the two glasses that matched.

"I have something," she said, "but it's stupid."

"Good. I have something and it's also stupid."

Hers was a photograph she'd found in a box, printed at a drugstore kiosk—the two of them at the party, caught accidentally in the background of someone else's picture. His was a key ring shaped like a squash.

They ate slowly. The rain kept up. Around nine, Dana put her feet in his lap and they finished the puzzle, arguing companionably about where the sky went.


Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, looking at the counter where she'd left the good cutting board that morning, and decided she was going to actually do it this time — make the mushroom thing from the cookbook Theo's sister had given them, the one with the cracked spine they never opened.

Three years. It seemed both enormous and like nothing at all. Three years ago they'd been sitting on a curb outside a bar on Cherokee Street, and she'd said something about how she didn't want to date anyone, and he'd said okay, and then neither of them had left.

Theo came in at six-forty with a bottle of wine and a paper bag of bread that was clearly still warm.

"You cooked," he said, delighted and a little suspicious.

"I'm cooking. Present tense. It's going badly."

He set down the bag and looked over her shoulder. The mushrooms had released more water than the recipe seemed to anticipate; the pan was a small gray swamp.

"Turn the heat up," he said. "Let it boil off."

"That's your answer to everything."

"It works for most things."

It did work, eventually. They ate at the coffee table because the actual table had become a repository for mail and a bicycle wheel. Theo poured the wine into a mug for himself because there was only one clean glass and he gave it to her without commenting on it.

"I got you something," Dana said, "but it's stupid."

It was a keychain shaped like a tiny cast-iron skillet, because he'd broken his last one in June and complained about it for a week.

He held it in his palm for a moment. "This is not stupid."

"It's a little stupid."

"It's a little stupid," he agreed, and put it in his pocket.


Nadia got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the doorway of their apartment with her keys still in her hand, looking at the living room like a stranger might: the sagging blue couch they'd bought off a stoop in Somerville, the plant she kept nearly killing, the stack of Dev's library books on the radiator. Four years. It seemed like both a long time and nothing at all.

She put the wine in the freezer to chill fast and started chopping garlic. Dev came in at six-thirty, hair damp from the rain, carrying a paper bag that he set on the counter with exaggerated care.

"Don't look."

"I'm not looking."

"You're looking."

"I'm cooking," she said, and looked. It was a small white box from the Portuguese bakery two neighborhoods over, the one that made the custard tarts she'd talked about for a week after they'd gone in September.

"You took the bus in the rain for those."

"I took two buses." He kissed the back of her neck and reached around her to steal a slice of pepper. "How's the sauce?"

"Needs twenty minutes. Set the table?"

He did, and then he found the candles she'd forgotten they owned in the drawer with the batteries and the extra phone chargers, and lit them with the long lighter from the grill. They ate at the table instead of on the couch, which felt formal in a way that made them both a little shy, and then a little silly, and then they were laughing about the terrible first date — the wrong bar, the forty minutes she'd waited, the apology text with three typos.

Later they did the dishes together, him washing, her drying, the rain still going.

"Same time next year," Dev said.

"Same time next year," she said, and put the last plate away.


Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, looking at the counter where they usually dumped mail and keys, and decided to clear it. Four years. It seemed like a number that deserved a cleared counter.

She put the chicken in at five-fifteen and texted Marcus: *don't stop for anything, I already got wine.*

He stopped anyway. Not for wine — for the small bakery on Third that closed at six, where he bought two slices of the almond cake she'd mentioned once in February and then never again. He'd remembered because he'd written it down in his phone under a note titled "ideas," which contained nine items, six of them useless.

"You're wet," she said when he came in.

"It's raining sideways." He set the bakery box down and shook out his jacket. "You cleaned."

"I moved things."

They ate at the table instead of the couch, which felt formal enough to be funny. Marcus had lit a candle that turned out to be pumpkin-scented, left over from October, and the smell fought with the rosemary until Dana blew it out and they both laughed.

"Do you remember what we did that first night?" she asked.

"We watched half of a documentary about volcanoes."

"You were so nervous."

"I was not nervous. I was hot. Your radiator was broken."

Afterward they carried the cake to the living room and put on the volcano documentary, the same one, and got twenty minutes in before Dana muted it and asked what he thought about the apartment on Delancey, the one with the second bedroom. Marcus said he'd been thinking about it too. They talked about rent, and whether they'd need a car, and how her mother would react, and eventually the cake was gone and the rain had stopped and neither of them had turned the sound back on.


Dana got home first, which almost never happened. The bus had come early, the grocery store had been mercifully empty, and now she stood in the kitchen of their apartment with two bags of ingredients and forty minutes before Theo's shift ended.

Six years. Not a wedding anniversary — they'd stopped fielding questions about that around year three — but the anniversary of a Tuesday in October when Theo had asked, in the parking lot of a laundromat, whether she'd want to do this on purpose.

She started the sauce. She had a plan involving candles, but she'd left the candles at the store, so the plan became a table lamp turned to face the wall, which was, she decided, basically ambience.

Theo texted: *running 15 late, sorry. bringing something.*

He came in at seven with rain on his jacket and a paper bag from the bakery on Delaney, the one that closed at six. "I begged," he said. "I stood there and I begged a nineteen-year-old for a chocolate cake and she took pity on me."

"You smell like rain."

"That's a compliment?"

"It's an observation." She kissed him anyway, one hand still holding the wooden spoon.

They ate at the table with the lamp facing the wall. Theo asked about the paperwork she'd been dreading; she asked about his coworker's custody situation. Between them the conversation moved the way it did now, easily, without much need for punctuation.

"I got you something," Theo said afterward, and produced a small flat box. Inside was a keychain, a brass rectangle stamped with the laundromat's address.

Dana laughed and then didn't. "That's very good," she said. "That's annoyingly good. I got you socks."

"I need socks."

"You do need socks."

They ate the cake standing up in the kitchen, sharing one fork, the rain going steadily against the window.


Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She toed off her boots by the door and stood in the quiet kitchen, considering the counter: three days of mail, a bowl with two bananas gone spotty, the receipt from the hardware store still curled where Marcus had left it Sunday.

Six years. Not a wedding date, nothing anybody else would circle. Just the night they'd sat on the concrete steps outside her old apartment in Cleveland Heights until two in the morning, and she'd finally said the thing she'd been not-saying for a month.

She cleared the counter. Put the water on for pasta, because they'd agreed—texted about it that morning, actually, a little negotiation between meetings—no restaurant, no reservation, no waiting forty minutes for a table on a Thursday.

Marcus came in at six-forty with a paper bag under one arm and rain in his hair.

"There's a thing about the bread," he said.

"What kind of thing."

"They were out of the good one. So I got the other one. And then I felt bad about it, so." He set a small bunch of ranunculus on the table, the pink-orange kind she liked, wrapped in damp newspaper.

"You didn't have to."

"I know. That's sort of the point of it."

She let him take over the sauce, because he was better at it and both of them knew it. She sliced the not-good bread. He asked about her sister; she asked whether he'd heard back about the interview, and he hadn't, and they let that sit for a minute without making it into anything.

They ate at the table instead of on the couch. Afterward Marcus put on the record that had been playing that first night, mostly as a joke, and it was a joke, and it also wasn't. Dana leaned back in her chair.

"Six," she said.

"Six," he agreed, and started the dishes.


Dana got home first, which almost never happened. The bus had been early, and the pharmacy where she worked had let her cut out at four because the register system went down. She stood in the kitchen of their apartment holding her keys, recalculating.

The plan had been simple: takeout from the Vietnamese place on Ellis, the good bottle of wine they'd been saving since Christmas, and the couch. Four years. Not a wedding anniversary — they didn't have one of those, and Dana had stopped explaining that to her mother — but the anniversary of the night Marcus had walked her home from a mutual friend's cramped birthday party and neither of them had wanted the walk to end.

She decided to cook instead. It was a small betrayal of the plan, but she had time and the fridge had chicken thighs.

Marcus texted at five: *stuck at the shop, one more brake job, sorry.* Then, a minute later: *don't order yet.*

*Not ordering,* she wrote back. *Come hungry.*

He came in at six-forty smelling like solvent and cold air, and stopped in the doorway when he registered the smell of garlic. "You cooked."

"You're surprised."

"I'm suspicious." He kissed the side of her head, then held up a paper bag. "I got the spring rolls anyway. Insurance."

They ate at the small table, which they mostly used for mail. Marcus opened the wine and poured too much into Dana's glass, the way he always did. She told him about the register system. He told her about a customer who insisted the noise was coming from the engine and not, as it turned out, from a plastic bag caught under the car.

"Four years," he said.

"Feels shorter."

"Feels right," he said, and refilled his own glass, and after a while they left the dishes and moved to the couch.


The rain started around four, which meant Delia came home from the clinic with her hair plastered flat and her scrubs damp at the shoulders. Nate was already in the kitchen, sleeves pushed up, standing over a pot of something that smelled like garlic and burnt butter.

"Don't panic," he said. "The butter was intentional."

"It absolutely was not."

"It's browned. It's a technique." He held up the wooden spoon like evidence.

She kissed him on the jaw, which was the only clean part of him, and went to change. When she came back in sweatpants and one of his old flannel shirts, he had moved the pot off the heat and was scraping the pan with a spatula, frowning.

"Three years," he said.

"Three years since you spilled beer on me at Marcy's thing."

"Two years and eleven months since I apologized properly."

Delia found the wine in the back of the cupboard where they'd hidden it from themselves in January, when they were both trying to be disciplined about money and about drinking and about a lot of things that hadn't stuck. She opened it with the corkscrew that only worked if you held it at an angle.

They ate at the coffee table because the kitchen table had become a place where mail went to die. She'd made a playlist of songs from the year they met, and it was worse than she remembered, and they let it play anyway. Nate told a long story about a coworker's disastrous fantasy football trade. Delia told him about a four-year-old who had named every one of his stitches.

Around nine she put her feet in his lap and he pressed his thumb into her arch without being asked.

"We should do something real next year," he said. "Somewhere with a beach."

"Sure," she said, meaning maybe, meaning this.

Outside, the rain kept going. Neither of them got up to close the window.


The rain started around four, which Dana took as a sign they'd made the right call. No restaurant reservation, no drive across town in traffic — just the apartment, the good pan, and the bottle of wine they'd been saving since Nick's sister brought it back from Sonoma in March.

"Six years," Nick said, dumping shallots onto the cutting board. "That's longer than I lived in Chicago."

"That's longer than my parents' first marriage." Dana was on the floor by the bookshelf, untangling a string of café lights she'd bought on sale in July and never hung. "Do you remember what we did for the first one?"

"Bowling. You wore that sweater with the hole in the sleeve."

"I still have that sweater."

"I know. It has more holes now."

She got the lights strung along the window frame, plugged them in, and stood back. Half the strand didn't work. She left it anyway; it looked deliberate enough in the dark. Outside, brake lights smeared red across the wet street.

Nick had learned to make the mushroom thing from a video, and it mostly worked, though he over-salted the pasta water and Dana pretended not to notice. She poured the wine into the mismatched glasses — the nice ones had gone to a party at Marisol's and never come back. They ate at the coffee table because the kitchen table had bills on it and neither of them wanted to move the bills.

"I got you something," Dana said. "It's stupid."

It was a bowling pin, keychain-sized, ordered from a novelty site. Nick laughed for a long time.

"I got you nothing," he said. "I thought we said no gifts."

"We did. I broke the rule."

"Then next year I'll break it worse."

She leaned into his shoulder. The rain kept on, and neither of them got up for a while.


Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, considering the counter: a bag of shallots, a bottle of wine she'd overpaid for, the paper-wrapped fish she'd been assured was fresh that morning. Three years. Not a wedding anniversary — the anniversary of a Tuesday in October when Marcus had walked her to the train and then, instead of leaving, gotten on it with her.

She'd started the risotto when the door opened.

"You're cooking," Marcus said, suspicious.

"I'm attempting."

He set down a grocery bag and looked into her pot. "That's a lot of liquid."

"I'm adding it gradually, like the internet said."

"You dumped it."

"I gradually dumped it." She handed him the spoon. "Fix it. What's in the bag?"

He pulled out a small cake in a plastic clamshell, the kind from the bakery counter with too much frosting. "I panicked at the store. Also, this." A flat square, badly wrapped in newspaper.

She unwrapped it while he stirred. It was a framed photo, printed from her phone: the two of them on the fire escape of the old apartment, her holding a beer, him mid-sentence with his eyes closed.

"That's a terrible picture of you," she said.

"It's a great picture of you."

They ate at the coffee table because the kitchen table had a jigsaw puzzle on it that neither of them wanted to admit they'd abandoned. The risotto was salvageable. The fish was good. The wine was fine, maybe not worth what she paid.

Marcus put his feet up. "Do you ever think about the—"

"Sometimes."

"I wasn't going to say it."

"I know." She leaned against his shoulder. "Not tonight."

"Not tonight," he agreed, and cut into the cake with the wrong fork, and she let him.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to hide the good scissors before Mateo could use them on packing tape. Four years ago tonight they'd sat on the curb outside a bar in Providence arguing about whether a hot dog was a sandwich, and somehow that had turned into a lease, a cat, and a shared understanding that neither of them wanted a wedding, thanks.

"I bought the wrong pasta," Mateo announced, coming through the door with two grocery bags and rain in his hair. "They were out of the bucatini. I got linguine and I'm not sorry."

"You should be a little sorry."

"I'm a little sorry."

They worked around each other in the narrow kitchen the way they'd learned to over three apartments — Dana at the stove, Mateo at the counter, both of them stepping sideways without looking. He'd promised no gifts. He'd bought a gift anyway, a small thing wrapped in the comics page, and set it by her water glass while her back was turned.

"That's cheating," she said.

"It's four dollars. It's not even a real present."

It was a refrigerator magnet shaped like a hot dog. She laughed so hard she had to put down the spoon.

Dana's contribution was the record player, which she'd hauled up from the basement storage unit and cleaned with a dish towel. They ate at the coffee table because the dining table had become a place where mail went to die, and the cat sat on the arm of the couch, judging.

Around ten, Mateo said, "Same time next year?"

"I'll pencil you in."

He put his feet up on the table, which she hated, and she let him, which he noticed. Outside, the rain kept going. Neither of them got up to close the window.


Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen still wearing her coat, looking at the counter where she'd left the grocery bag that morning — mushrooms, cream, a baguette that had gone slightly stale in eight hours. Four years. It seemed like a number that should feel bigger than it did, or maybe smaller.

She had the mushrooms sliced by the time Marcus came through the door, and he stopped in the entryway with his keys still in his hand.

"You cooked."

"I'm cooking. Present tense. It might not work out."

He set a paper bag on the table and started shrugging out of his jacket. "I got wine. And I got the cake from the place on Ninth, the one you like, but I want to say up front that the guy behind the counter talked me into a lemon thing instead of chocolate, and I'm not sure I made the right call."

"Lemon's fine."

"You're being generous."

"I'm being efficient. Come stir this."

He came. He was better at the stove than she was and they both knew it, so she handed off the pan and started on the salad, and for a while there was just the sound of the burner and the knife on the board. Their apartment was small enough that they had learned to move around each other without thinking.

"Do you remember what we did last year?" he asked.

"We ordered Thai and watched most of a movie."

"That was two years ago. Last year I had that thing in Denver."

"Right." She thought about it. "So we didn't do anything."

"We talked on the phone for an hour." He tasted the sauce, added salt. "It counted."

They ate at the small table with the overhead light off, because Dana had found candles in the drawer with the batteries and the takeout menus. The lemon cake, it turned out, was excellent. Marcus said so twice.


The Sixth of October

Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the doorway of their apartment with her keys still in her hand, taking in the mess: two coffee mugs on the counter, Ben's running shoes tipped over by the radiator, the mail she'd been meaning to sort since Tuesday. Four years ago tonight they'd been strangers eating bad tacos at a work thing in Somerville. Now this.

She started with the dishes. Then she found the candles they'd bought for a blackout two winters ago and put them on the table, which required moving Ben's laptop, three library books, and a half-assembled bike pedal she decided not to ask about.

He texted at 5:40: *train's stuck at Porter. don't panic.*

*not panicking,* she wrote. *bringing wine?*

*obviously.*

He came in at 6:20, coat damp, holding a bottle of the Portuguese red they liked and a paper bag from the Italian place on Highland. "I know we said we'd cook," he said. "But I also know neither of us wanted to cook."

"I already made the salad."

"Then we have a salad and lasagna. That's a real meal." He kissed her, then noticed the candles and the cleared table and stood there a second longer than he needed to. "You cleaned."

"I moved things. There's a difference."

They ate slowly. Ben told her about the woman on the platform who had opinions about the MBTA and shared them generously. Dana told him she'd almost bought him a gift and then remembered they'd agreed not to, and he admitted he'd almost done the same, and they laughed about being the kind of people who followed rules they'd made up themselves.

Later, on the couch, the candles burned down uneven. She put her feet in his lap. Outside, someone's car alarm went off and stopped.

"Four years," he said.

"Four years," she said, and neither of them added anything to it, because nothing needed adding.


The apartment smelled like garlic and burnt butter, which meant Dana had gotten distracted again.

"It's fine," she said, scraping the pan into the sink. "The second batch will be better. I bought extra shallots because I knew this would happen."

Marcus leaned in the kitchen doorway, still in his work clothes, tie loosened. "Four years and you've never once made a sauce without a casualty."

"Four years and you've never once offered to help before the crisis stage."

He took off his tie, hung it on the back of a chair, and rolled up his sleeves. "Give me the shallots."

They worked around each other in the narrow galley kitchen, a choreography learned over three apartments and one difficult winter. Dana handled the pasta water. Marcus minced. He asked about her sister's phone call; she told him the short version, saving the longer one for later, when they'd be on the couch.

"Did you get the cake?" she asked.

"I got the pie. The bakery was out of the lemon thing you like."

"Pie's better anyway."

They ate at the small table by the window, the one they'd bought used and sanded down themselves. Marcus had put on the record Dana gave him their first Christmas, the one with the scratch in the third track that they both now considered part of the song. Outside, someone was arguing about a parking space.

"I was thinking," Dana said, "about the lease renewal."

"Not tonight."

"No. Not tonight." She refilled his glass. "I just meant I'm glad it's this place. I'm glad it's still this."

Marcus reached across and held her wrist, briefly, the way he did instead of saying certain things out loud.

Later they ate pie straight from the tin, watching half a movie neither of them followed. She fell asleep first. He turned off the lamp and stayed where he was.


The rain started around four, which turned out to be a small mercy. Neither Dana nor Marcus had wanted to leave the apartment anyway.

"Six years," Marcus said, holding up the bottle of wine he'd hidden behind the flour canister for three days. "You didn't find it."

"I found it Tuesday." Dana was slicing shallots with the slow care of someone who'd learned knife skills from YouTube. "I just let you have it."

He kissed the back of her neck and took over the cutting board, because he was faster and she always let him think it was chivalry rather than efficiency. She moved to the record player instead, flipping through the milk crate they'd been meaning to replace with actual shelving since 2021.

"Not the Sade," Marcus said.

"You love the Sade."

"I love it in October. It's May."

She put on the Sade. He didn't complain.

They'd talked about going out—there was a place on Delaware with good pasta and a waiter who remembered them—but the reservation had felt like an obligation, and obligation was the opposite of what six years had earned them. So instead: chicken thighs, too much butter, the good plates that had been Dana's grandmother's and which they used maybe four times a year.

Over dinner they argued amiably about whether their anniversary was the night of the party or the following Thursday, when Marcus had finally called. Dana held that the party counted. Marcus insisted on the phone call, since that was when he'd had to be brave.

"You were not brave. You said, and I quote, 'so anyway.'"

"'So anyway' took me four days to draft."

Afterward they left the dishes and lay on the couch with the window cracked, listening to the rain move down the street. Dana fell asleep first. Marcus stayed awake a while longer, doing nothing in particular, feeling lucky about it.


The rain started around four, which meant Delia's plan to grill on the balcony was finished. She stood in the kitchen doorway with a package of chicken thighs in her hand and considered the situation.

"We could order," Marcus said from the couch, where he was pretending not to watch her think.

"It's seven years. I'm not celebrating seven years with a delivery app."

"Eight."

She turned. "It's seven."

"You moved into the apartment on Ferndale in April. That was 2018." He held up his phone as though it contained proof, though the screen was dark. "We started dating the January before."

Delia set the chicken on the counter. She remembered the apartment on Ferndale — the radiator that clanked, the neighbor who played trumpet badly. She remembered meeting Marcus at his cousin's terrible New Year's party, and how they had talked in the stairwell until three in the morning about nothing at all.

"Seven years since we moved in together," she said. "Eight since the stairwell. We can celebrate both."

"So two dinners."

"So one dinner and you help me."

He got up. They worked around each other in the narrow kitchen, a choreography neither of them noticed anymore — he reached over her for the oregano, she stepped aside without looking. He seared the chicken in the cast iron. She put on the record his mother had given them, the one with the scratch in the second track, and opened the wine they'd been saving since Christmas without any occasion in mind.

They ate at the small table by the window. The rain kept up. Marcus told her about a coworker's divorce and then wished he hadn't, on tonight of all nights.

"It's fine," Delia said. She reached across and put her hand over his. "We're not them."

"No," he said. "We're not."


The rain started around four, which meant Dana's plan to grill fell apart before she'd even left work. She texted Marcus from the parking garage: *change of plans, don't stop at the store.*

He was already home when she got there, shoes off, sleeves rolled, standing in front of the open refrigerator like it might negotiate with him.

"There's half a pound of ground beef," he said. "And that jar of gochujang you bought in April and never opened."

"So, something."

"So, something."

Four years ago tonight they'd been at a wedding neither of them wanted to attend, seated together at the singles table, and she'd told him his tie looked like a placemat. He'd agreed. They'd left before the cake.

Now she changed out of her work clothes while he browned the beef, and when she came back in leggings and one of his college sweatshirts, he handed her a knife and pointed at the scallions. They worked without much talking. The rain moved against the kitchen window in gusts. Somebody's car alarm went off down the block and stopped.

"I got you something," Marcus said, "but it's stupid."

"How stupid."

"Moderately." He wiped his hands and pulled a small paper bag from behind the toaster. Inside was a tie, hideous, wide, printed with what appeared to be autumn gourds.

Dana laughed hard enough that she had to set the knife down. "You're going to wear this."

"To your sister's thing. In November."

"She'll hate it."

"That's the gift."

They ate on the couch out of mismatched bowls, the TV off, because Dana said she wanted to hear the rain. Marcus put his feet up on the coffee table, which she normally objected to, and tonight didn't.

Later she leaned against his shoulder and said, "Four years."

"Four years," he said, and neither of them added anything else, because there wasn't anything that needed adding.


Dana got home first, which never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, considering the sink full of dishes from that morning, and decided the dishes could wait. Four years. Four years since a Tuesday in a bar on Cortland Avenue where Micah had explained, at length and with real conviction, why the Dodgers were a morally compromised franchise.

She was pulling the good plates down when he came in carrying a paper bag.

"You bought bread," she said.

"I bought the bread. You said you'd do the pasta."

"I'm doing the pasta. I'm just noting the bread."

He kissed the side of her head and set the bag on the counter, then started opening drawers, looking for the corkscrew that lived, as it always had, in the drawer by the stove. She handed it to him without comment. He'd lived here two and a half years and still checked three drawers first.

They cooked mostly in silence, the radio on low, the window over the sink fogging. Dana burned the garlic a little and Micah scraped it out of the pan and started over without being asked, which she chose to interpret as romance. He told her about a coworker's divorce. She told him her mother had called twice that week and hadn't mentioned marriage once, which felt like an event worth marking.

"You want to talk about that?" he asked.

"Not tonight."

"Okay."

They ate at the table instead of the couch. Afterward Micah produced a small paper sack of the almond cookies from the Chinese bakery on Twenty-Second, slightly crushed, and Dana laughed at him and ate three.

Later she found him on the fire escape with the last of the wine, and she climbed out and sat with her back against his shoulder, and neither of them said anything much for a long time.


The rain started around four, which Nadia decided was a good omen. It meant neither of them would feel guilty about staying in.

She got home first and found that Theo had already been there — the good cutting board was out, and a bag of shallots sat on the counter next to a receipt he hadn't bothered to throw away. Seven years. She still couldn't get him to throw away receipts.

He came in at five-thirty, shaking water off his jacket in the doorway of their apartment, which was the top half of a house in Somerville that they'd rented for four years and complained about for three.

"I got the fish," he said. "The guy tried to sell me swordfish. I held firm."

"Cod," she said. "As foretold."

"Cod."

They cooked the way they'd learned to cook together, which was inefficiently and with a lot of narration. Theo dredged the fillets while Nadia stood at the stove making the sauce her mother had never once made correctly, tasting it off a wooden spoon and then handing the spoon to him.

"More lemon," he said.

"That's what I thought." She squeezed the half he'd already used, then the fresh one.

They ate at the small table by the window with the rain coming sideways against the glass. There was a bottle of Beaujolais that neither of them knew anything about, and a candle in a jar that smelled faintly of pine because it was the only one they had.

"Seven years ago tonight," Theo said, "you told me you were probably moving to Chicago."

"I was probably moving to Chicago."

"You were not."

"I was open to it." She reached over and took a piece of potato off his plate. "Then you made me that terrible omelet."

"It was a good omelet."

"It was an omelet," she said, "and I stayed."


Nine years ago tonight, Dana had spilled beer on Marcus's shoe at a friend's cramped apartment party and then, mortified, offered to buy him a new pair. He'd said a drink would do.

Now she stood in their kitchen in Sacramento, cutting mushrooms into slices thicker than the recipe wanted, because Marcus liked them that way. The window over the sink had gone dark and thrown her own reflection back at her — hair up, one earring in, the other lost somewhere between the bedroom and here.

"Found it." Marcus came in holding the earring between two fingers like something excavated. "Under the dresser. There was also a receipt from 2019 and a cough drop."

"Don't tell me any more about under the dresser."

He put the earring on the counter and reached past her for the wine, an eleven-dollar bottle they'd both agreed was suspiciously good. He poured two glasses, then took over the mushrooms while she went to fix her ear.

They had discussed going out. There was a place downtown with white tablecloths, and Dana had looked at the menu twice before admitting she'd rather be home. Marcus had been relieved in a way he tried not to show, since he'd already made the reservation and would have to cancel it.

They ate at the coffee table because the dining table had become a place where mail went to die. Marcus told her about his brother's ridiculous new truck. Dana described a coworker's slow, public unraveling over a spreadsheet. Around ten they put on the second half of a movie they'd started in April and never finished, and Marcus fell asleep against her shoulder before the plot resolved.

Dana didn't wake him right away. She sat there with the wine finished and the mushrooms gone and the television light moving over the walls, thinking that this was the whole thing, really — nine years of ordinary Tuesdays, and one of them tonight.


Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the entryway of the apartment they'd shared for two years, holding a grocery bag and considering the kitchen. Seven years since a bad party in Bushwick where Marcus had spent forty minutes explaining the merits of a band she'd never heard of. She'd gone home with him anyway.

She was searing the scallops when he came in, still in his work coat, snow melting on the shoulders.

"You're cooking," he said. "I was going to cook."

"You cooked last year and set off the smoke detector."

"That was the year before." He hung up his coat, came around behind her, kissed the side of her neck. "I got something."

"We said no presents."

"We said no *big* presents." He set a paper bag on the counter and pulled out a bottle of the cheap Portuguese wine they used to buy when they were broke, back when they lived in the place with the slanted floors. Six dollars a bottle. It had probably gone up.

Dana laughed. "That's actually perfect."

"I know."

They ate at the coffee table because the dining table had become a repository for mail and a printer neither of them used. Marcus put on the band from the party, as a joke, then let it play because it was actually fine. Dana told him her sister had asked, again, at Thanksgiving, whether they were ever going to make it official. Marcus said he figured it was official when they signed a lease.

"That's what I said."

"What'd she say?"

"She said a lease has a term."

He thought about it, chewing. "Ours renews automatically."

Dana leaned back against the couch and let her foot rest against his leg. Outside, snow kept coming down over the parked cars. Neither of them suggested going anywhere.


The apartment smelled like garlic and burnt butter, which meant Danny had gotten distracted again.

"It's fine," he said, scraping the pan into the trash. "I bought a backup."

Priya set down her bag and saw the second package of scallops on the counter, still cold. "You bought two?"

"I know myself." He kissed her cheek, which was cold from the walk up from the bus stop. Four years ago tonight they'd met at his roommate's birthday party, where she'd spent twenty minutes explaining why the roommate's taste in music was indefensible, and Danny had agreed with everything she said, and later admitted he owned three of the albums.

She took over the pan while he opened the wine — a bottle they'd been saving since Thanksgiving, when they'd decided it was too nice for turkey. The kitchen was too small for two people, so they moved around each other the way they'd learned to, a choreography of hips and elbows.

"I have something," she said.

"We said no gifts."

"It's not a gift, it's a document." She pulled an envelope from her bag: printouts from three apartments in Somerville, all with second bedrooms, all forty dollars a month more than what they paid now. "For the studio. If you're still serious about the pottery thing."

Danny looked at the listings for a long time. "You circled the one with the bay window."

"I circled the one with the good light."

They ate on the couch because the table had become a repository for mail. Halfway through the bottle, Priya put her feet in his lap and said the scallops were slightly overcooked, and Danny said he knew, and she said she liked them that way, which was a lie he decided to let stand.

Outside, someone's car alarm went off and stopped. Neither of them got up.


The rain started around four, which meant Delia had to change plans. She'd wanted to eat on the fire escape, the way they had two years ago when the apartment was so new they still ate off paper plates.

"We could do the floor," Marcus said, coming in with his hair damp and his work bag dripping on the mat. "Blanket, candles. Indoor picnic."

"That's very sixth grade."

"Sixth grade was a great year for me."

So they moved the coffee table and spread out the quilt his grandmother had made, the one with the loose stitching along one edge that Delia kept meaning to fix. Marcus put on the record they'd bought at the flea market in Asheville, the Bill Withers with the scratch that made "Grandma's Hands" skip in the same place every time. Neither of them wanted to replace it anymore.

Delia had gotten the good bread from the bakery on Pearl, and olives, and a wedge of cheese the woman behind the counter had insisted on. Marcus contributed a bottle of wine he'd been hiding behind the cereal boxes for three weeks, plus a card he'd clearly bought that afternoon, the envelope still warm from his pocket.

"You said no gifts," she said.

"A card isn't a gift. A card is stationery."

She read it while he opened the wine, and she didn't say anything for a second, just pressed her thumb against the corner of it.

They ate on the floor with their backs against the couch. Outside, someone's car alarm went off and stopped. Marcus told her about the argument he'd had with his sister; Delia told him she'd finally scheduled the dentist. Ordinary things, laid down between them like the plates.

Later, when the candles had gone soft and lopsided, she leaned against his shoulder and he put his hand on her knee, and the record skipped in its usual place, and neither of them got up to fix it.


Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen of their apartment in Fort Collins, still in her work fleece, and considered the counter: a bag of shallots, a chicken, the good olive oil they'd bought in October and rationed since. Four years ago tonight they had eaten gas station burritos in his car outside the trailhead and decided, without much ceremony, that this was a thing now.

She started the chicken. She was not a confident cook, but she had watched enough of Marcus to know that heat came first and patience came second.

He texted at 5:40: *stuck behind a train. do we have butter*

*we have butter*, she wrote. *don't buy anything.*

He came in at six with a bottle of wine anyway, and a paper cone of tulips that had clearly been grabbed at the King Soopers by the register, half of them already bruised. He looked at the stove and made a small approving noise.

"You seared it."

"I seared it aggressively."

They cooked the rest together, which was the part Dana had actually been looking forward to — Marcus salting things she'd forgotten to salt, her reaching around him for the tongs, the radio doing its low murmur. They ate at the coffee table because the kitchen table had become a place where mail went to die. The chicken was slightly dry. The potatoes were excellent.

Afterward he washed and she dried, and she told him about the woman at work who had asked, again, when they were going to make it official.

"What'd you say?"

"I said we're pretty official."

Marcus handed her a wet plate. "We could get a dog," he said. "That's official."

"That's a whole conversation."

"Not tonight," he agreed, and let the water out of the sink.


The Fourth of March

Nina got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen still wearing her coat, looking at the counter where she'd left the note that morning — *don't eat, I'm cooking* — and realized she had exactly forty minutes before Dev walked in.

She'd planned this badly. The recipe was one his mother had taught her over speakerphone in October, and it required a patience Nina did not currently possess. She got the onions going anyway, then went to change out of her work clothes, then came back because she could smell them starting to catch.

Dev came in at six-twenty with a paper bag from the wine shop on Wexford and a bunch of ranunculus, which he'd chosen because they were not roses and because they were orange, which was the color of the dress she'd worn the night they met at Kelsey's terrible birthday party four years ago.

"You're burning it," he said.

"I'm developing it."

He took over the pan without being asked, the way he did, and she let him, the way she did. She poured the wine into the two mismatched glasses they'd never gotten around to replacing. They ate at the small table by the window instead of on the couch, which was the entire extent of the formality either of them wanted.

"Four years," Dev said. "That's longer than I lived in Pittsburgh."

"That's longer than my parents' first marriage."

They talked about the apartment lease, which came up in July, and about whether the upstairs neighbor was running some kind of business. Around ten they moved to the couch after all. Nina fell asleep against his shoulder during the second episode, and Dev stayed where he was, letting his arm go numb, watching the credits roll twice before he woke her.


The rain started around four, which meant Delia had to reroute her whole plan. She'd wanted to eat on the fire escape, the way they had two years ago when the apartment still smelled like the previous tenant's cigarettes and they'd owned exactly one fork between them.

Instead she moved the folding table into the living room, under the window, so the rain would at least be audible. She lit the candle Marcus's sister had given them at Christmas, the one that smelled aggressively of fig.

He came in at five-forty, shaking water off his jacket, holding a paper bag against his chest like something wounded.

"Don't look," he said.

"I'm looking."

"It's cannoli. From the place on Adams." He set the bag down and kissed the top of her head. "They only had four left. I got all four."

"That's not a gift, that's a lifestyle."

"You said no gifts."

"I said no *big* gifts." She turned the burner down under the pot. She'd been braising short ribs since two, mostly because the recipe took four hours and she'd wanted something to do with her hands. "Wine's open. It needs to breathe or whatever."

Marcus poured two glasses and stood behind her, looking over her shoulder into the pot. "That looks illegal."

"It's supposed to fall apart."

"Everything good does."

"That's very grim for an anniversary."

"It was supposed to be romantic." He tasted the sauce off her spoon and made a sound she'd been hearing for two years and still liked.

They ate slowly. The rain got louder, then softer. Around nine they moved to the couch, and he put on the movie they'd watched the first night she slept over, and neither of them made it past the first forty minutes awake. The candle burned down to nothing. The dishes waited.


The forecast said rain, which was fine with Dana. She'd been picturing the evening as an indoor thing anyway: the good pan out, the cheap Chianti she and Marcus had grown fond of during the year they'd shared the apartment on Third.

"Four years," Marcus said, coming in from the balcony with the herbs he refused to admit were mostly dead. "Do we do gifts for four? Is there a metal?"

"That's weddings." Dana was slicing shallots badly. "We agreed. No gifts."

"I know we agreed." He set the basil down and washed his hands, standing close enough that she had to lean around him for the cutting board. "I just want to note, for the record, that I honored an agreement I secretly opposed."

"Noted."

He took over the shallots. He was better at it and they both knew it, and neither of them said so. Dana poured the wine into the two glasses that didn't match, because the matching one had broken in the move, and they'd never replaced it.

"Remember Yelena's party?" she said. "You told me you were a structural engineer."

"I was a structural engineering *student*."

"You said it in the present tense."

"I was twenty-four and you were wearing that green thing." He scraped the shallots into the pan and the kitchen filled with that smell, which was, she thought, maybe the actual smell of her adult life. "I'd have said anything."

They ate at the coffee table with the TV off, which was their one concession to the occasion. The rain started around nine. Marcus put his feet up on the ottoman and Dana leaned into the side of him and they talked about nothing much — his sister's new job, whether the landlord would ever fix the radiator, a trip to Maine they'd been discussing for two years and would probably discuss for two more.

"Same time next year?" he said.

"Obviously," she said.


Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, considering the counter: the cutting board Marcus had left out that morning, the mail she'd forgotten to sort on Saturday. Three years ago tonight they'd sat on the floor of his old apartment eating cold lo mein, and she had said, out loud, that she wanted this to be a real thing.

She put water on for pasta and texted him: *don't stop for anything, I've got it covered.*

He stopped for something anyway. She heard him fumbling with the door, and when he came in he had a bakery box balanced on one hand and a bottle of the cheap Lambrusco they'd drunk that first year, when neither of them had money.

"You said you had it covered."

"You said that last year and we ate crackers at eleven." He set the box down and kissed the side of her head, then took off his tie and hung it on the back of a chair, which was as close as he came to changing clothes.

They ate at the table instead of the couch. Dana had made the pasta with too much garlic, the way he liked it, and he told her about the guy at work who'd tried to take credit for the Halvorsen account, and she laughed in the right places and then stopped laughing and said she'd been thinking about the lease.

"Renewing?"

"Or not renewing. Looking at something with a second bedroom."

Marcus turned his glass slowly on the table. "For an office, or—"

"I don't know yet. Either."

"Okay," he said. "We can look."

Later they ate the cake standing up, out of the box, arguing pleasantly about whether the frosting was too sweet. The dishes stayed in the sink until morning.


Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She hung her coat on the hook by the door, and stood a moment in the quiet of the apartment, listening to the radiator tick. Three years. Three years since the night Marcus had walked her home from Ottilie's birthday party and neither of them had wanted the walk to end, so they'd circled the block twice.

She started the sauce. She wasn't a good cook, but she could make this one thing—her mother's recipe, with the anchovies mashed in so fine you couldn't see them, only taste the salt and depth.

Marcus came in at six-forty, carrying a paper bag and looking sheepish. "I got a cake," he said. "I know we said no gifts. A cake isn't a gift, it's a food group."

"You bought a cake and I made dinner. That's a real anniversary."

"That's a functional household." He set the bag on the counter and kissed the back of her neck, then leaned over the pot. "Did you put the fish in?"

"You'll never know."

"I always know."

They ate at the coffee table because the kitchen table had become a place where mail went to die. Marcus lit two candles that didn't match—one taper left from Hanukkah, one squat citronella from the fire escape—and Dana laughed at him for it, and then admitted the light was nice.

They talked about Ottilie, who was pregnant. About Marcus's brother, who wasn't speaking to their father. About whether they should get a dog, which was the conversation they always had instead of the other conversation, the one about rings and paperwork and what his mother kept asking.

"Next year," Dana said, meaning the dog, meaning maybe everything.

Marcus cut the cake. "Next year," he agreed, and gave her the corner piece with the most frosting, which was how she knew he meant it.


Marisol got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the doorway of their apartment with her coat still on, considering the sink full of breakfast dishes, and decided that four years earned them one night of not pretending the place was cleaner than it was. She washed the dishes anyway, because otherwise Dev would do it at eleven at night, humming, and she'd feel guilty listening from bed.

He came in at six-forty with a paper bag and snow melting in his hair. "The good bakery was out of the almond thing," he said. "I got the pistachio thing. I'm told it's superior."

"By who?"

"A woman in line. She was very confident."

They cooked together, which they were bad at — the kitchen was too narrow, and they kept reaching for the same spoon — but they'd agreed years ago that going out on the anniversary felt like performing for an audience. Marisol seared the chicken. Dev cut the ends off the green beans with more precision than the task required, telling her about a coworker who had started an argument in a meeting about the definition of the word *quarterly*.

"You didn't get me anything," she said, not accusing. "We said no gifts."

"We did say that." He reached into his coat, hanging on the back of a chair, and set a small brass key on the counter. "Storage unit. Your grandmother's sewing machine. I picked it up from your mom in November. I've been paying eleven dollars a month to keep it a secret."

Marisol looked at the key for a while. Then she put down the tongs and kissed him, and the chicken got closer to done than either of them wanted.

Later they ate on the couch, plates on their knees, the pistachio thing split unevenly between them. Outside the snow kept coming. Neither of them said anything about next year. They didn't need to.


The rain started around four, which meant Dana's plan for grilling was dead. She stood in the kitchen doorway of their rented half-house in Cleveland Heights, watching water sheet down the window over the sink, and recalculated.

"We could still do it," Marcus said from the couch, where he was pretending to grade papers. "I'll hold an umbrella."

"You'll set the umbrella on fire."

"Probably." He set the stack of essays on the coffee table. "Skillet, then. I'll do the steaks in the cast iron, you do the potatoes."

Four years ago tonight they had eaten pad thai out of containers on the floor of his apartment because neither of them had wanted the night to end and neither of them had wanted to say so. They had marked the date every year since, always at home, always without much announcement. Once with a bottle of wine that turned out to be terrible. Once with a pizza and a power outage, which Dana still maintained was the best one.

She peeled the potatoes while he salted the meat, both of them working in the narrow galley kitchen, doing the small sidestepping dance of two people who had learned each other's habits in tight spaces. He put on the record she'd given him in year two, the Bill Withers, and she rolled her eyes and didn't ask him to change it.

"I got you something," he said, over the sound of the skillet coming up to heat.

"We said no gifts."

"You said no gifts. I nodded, which is different."

It was a small brass key, cut to fit the shed lock she'd been complaining about all summer. She laughed so hard she had to set down the peeler.

They ate at the table, not the floor, with the rain still going. Around nine he refilled her glass, and neither of them said anything about next year, because there wasn't any need to.


Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the entryway of the apartment for a moment with her keys still in her hand, taking stock: two weeks of mail on the counter, a coffee mug on the windowsill growing something. Six years ago tonight she had told Marcus, in the parking lot of a Applebee's in Dayton, that she thought she wanted to try this for real.

She cleared the mail into a drawer. She took the mug to the sink and decided not to look inside it.

Marcus came in at six-forty with a paper grocery bag and a bunch of grocery-store carnations, which he held up apologetically. "The roses were nineteen dollars. Nineteen."

"They're fine. They're good." She took them and put them in the water pitcher because she couldn't remember where the vase had gone in the last move.

He made the pasta. She was better at most cooking but he was better at this one sauce, which he'd learned from his aunt and which required standing over the pan and paying attention, and she liked watching him do it. She sat on the counter, which he had asked her not to do a hundred times, and told him about the woman at work who'd cried in the supply closet. He said that was rough. He asked if she'd said anything to her. Dana said she'd handed her a paper towel and left, and he laughed and said that was probably right.

They ate at the table instead of on the couch. Afterward they put on the show they were three seasons into and got about eleven minutes in before Marcus paused it.

"Six years," he said.

"Six years."

"You want to say something?"

Dana thought about it. "No," she said, and leaned into his shoulder. "Let's just watch it."

He unpaused it.


Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She'd left the office at four-thirty, claiming a dentist appointment, and spent the extra hour at the Korean market on Halsted buying short ribs and the good sesame oil, the kind in the glass bottle. Six years. Not a wedding anniversary — neither of them wanted one of those, or at least neither of them had brought it up in a way that required an answer — but the anniversary of a Tuesday in October when Marcus had walked her to the Blue Line and then, instead of saying goodnight, gotten on the train with her.

He came in at six with a bakery box and a bottle of wine he'd clearly asked someone about, because it wasn't the eleven-dollar Malbec he usually grabbed.

"You cooked," he said, accusatory.

"You brought cake."

"It's a tart." He set the box down and looked at the counter, the marinade, the scallions in a neat pile. "I was going to make the short ribs."

"I know. That's why I made them."

He laughed and put his hand on the back of her neck, briefly, the way he did. Then he took over the rice because she always let it scorch, and she opened the wine and put on the record he'd bought her two Christmases ago, the one with the scratch in the third song.

They ate at the actual table instead of the couch. Marcus told her about a coworker's disastrous divorce, and Dana said, "Sounds like a good argument for the status quo," and he said, "Is that what we're calling it," and she said, "For now," and neither of them pushed, because it was a good night and there'd be others.

Later she fell asleep against his shoulder during the movie. He didn't wake her until the credits.


Dana got home first, which almost never happened. The bus had come early, the office had let out at four-thirty because half the department was already gone for the long weekend, and she found herself standing in the kitchen at five-fifteen with two hours of unexpected time.

She texted Miguel: *don't pick up anything on the way.*

*?????* he wrote back.

*just trust me*

What she had planned was not elaborate. Four years ago they'd met at a friend's cramped birthday party in Somerville, where the only food left had been a bag of tortilla chips and a jar of salsa, and they had stood by the radiator eating it and talking about nothing until two in the morning. Every year since, they marked the date with chips and salsa, though the salsa had gotten better. This year she made it herself, seeding tomatoes at the counter, burning her thumb on a charred jalapeño.

Miguel came in at six-forty carrying a paper bag anyway.

"You said not to."

"I said trust you. I didn't agree to anything." He set the bag down and pulled out a bottle of the cheap Spanish red they always drank, plus a votive candle in a glass jar, the kind sold at the bodega on Warren Street. "For ambiance. Very romantic. Saint Jude on the side."

"Patron saint of lost causes."

"He's been very good to us."

They ate on the couch with the plates on the coffee table, because the kitchen table had become a place where mail lived. Miguel put on the playlist he'd made two years ago and never updated. Around nine, Dana pulled her feet under her and said, not for the first time, that they should really talk about the lease renewal, and Miguel said, not for the first time, that they should, and neither of them moved.

The candle burned down to a puddle. Outside, somebody's car alarm went off and stopped.


The rain had started around four, which meant Devin got home early; the site foreman sent everyone off when the concrete wouldn't set. He stood in the kitchen of their apartment in Fort Collins, still in his damp jacket, looking at the counter where he'd left the grocery list that morning.

Priya came in twenty minutes later, shaking water from her hair, laptop bag slung across her chest. "Did you get the bread?"

"I got the bread. I also got the wrong olives."

"There's no wrong olives."

"There are when you specifically said Castelvetrano."

She laughed and set her bag down, and he saw the tension go out of her shoulders the way it always did about ninety seconds after she came through the door. Four years ago tonight they'd shared a plate of nachos at a bar on College Avenue and argued about whether *The Big Lebowski* was overrated. She'd been the one to text first the next morning.

They had decided against going out. Reservations meant waiting, and waiting meant looking at their phones, and Priya had a deposition to prep for Monday anyway. So instead she chopped tomatoes while he browned the sausage, and they got in each other's way in the narrow galley kitchen, and he kept reaching around her for the salt.

"Move your elbow."

"You move your elbow. It's my elbow's kitchen too."

They ate on the couch with the good plates, the ones her mother had sent from Ohio. Devin had bought a bottle of Malbec that cost eighteen dollars, which felt reckless. Priya put on a record — the Emmylou Harris he pretended not to like — and told him about a witness who'd cried, and he told her about the foreman's dog.

Later she fell asleep against his shoulder before the second side finished. He let the needle run out. The rain kept going.