Audrey took my hand and pulled me into the tent.
The inside of the tent was green and warm and smaller than the living room had any right to be. The string lights came through the fabric in a muted glow, making the walls look like late afternoon through a canopy. The sleeping bags were soft underneath us. The bassinet was at the foot, Nova inside it, her breathing the steady rhythm I could pick out of any room now.
We lay on the sleeping bags. Audrey against my side, her head on my shoulder, my arm around her. The fake fireplace crackled on the TV. A car went past outside, headlights sweeping across the window above us and disappearing.
"She'll be old enough to take camping for real next summer," Audrey said.
"The Catskills. There's a spot near Slide Mountain with a creek."
"I should tell you something."
"What?"
"I'm not actually a camping person."
I laughed. She laughed against my shoulder, and the laugh vibrated through my chest.
"You staked a tent into your rug, Aud."
"For you. I staked a tent into my rug for you. There's a difference."
"Noted."
The conversation slowed. The sounds of the apartment settled in around us: the TV, Nova's breathing, the building making its nighttime sounds through the walls. I looked at the top of the tent, the green fabric lit gold from the outside, and Audrey was warm against my shoulder, her hand on my chest.
She spoke. Soft. Decided.
"Move in with me."
My chest caught. The words landed a half second before the rest of me caught up to them. Recognition. I'd been waiting for this without knowing I was waiting, the same way I'd been waiting for her to plan something for me, and the not-knowing was part of what made it land.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
She turned her face up to look at me, her chin against my chest, her eyes bright in the green light.
"Aud. Yes. Of course, yes." I kissed her, small and unhurried, her mouth against mine in the green light of a tent in her living room with our daughter asleep three feet away. Then I pulled back. "But shouldn't you be moving in with me? I do have a house."
She looked at me. "You have a house with one bathroom and a pinball machine in the basement."
"That's a selling point."
"Duke."
"I'm just saying. A house. With a yard. Nova could have a real room."
She was quiet for a beat. I watched her run it, the same quick calculation she ran on everything, the logistics sorting themselves behind her eyes. The apartment was hers. She'd built it, paid for it, filled it with everything she chose. But it was a one-bedroom with a nursery she'd carved out of a home office, and the closet space was already a negotiation, and a house on Elm with a basement and a second bedroom and a yard was not a small thing to put on the table.
"Are you serious?" she said.
"Aud. I have a house. You have an apartment with tent stakes in the rug."
She laughed. The real one. The full-body one that tipped her head back and shook against my chest.
"Okay," she said. "Okay. The house."
She settled back against my shoulder. "But it's our house. Not your house I moved into. Ours."
