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“I’m always hungry,” I admit grudgingly. “You want a burger?”
Pleasure humming in the back of his throat, he beeps the locks open and swings the passenger door wide. But before I can climb in, he pins me against the frame and presses a kiss to my lips. “How attached are you to our apartment?”
His question immediately flings thoughts of Cato and food from my mind, and replaces them with confusion that rolls in like a fog and distracts me from everything happening around us: the crowd as it dissipates, and the mourners who cry. The media vans pulling away, now thattheshowis over. And the fact that the few vans who stay point their cameras straight toward us.
“Wh-what do you mean?” I stammer. “Our apartment?”
“Yeah. Do you want to stay there forever? Are you emotionally invested in that place, or do you have plans for something more one day?”
I narrow my eyes and study the specks of gold in his green. “I like my place.”
“Youlikeit?”
“I mean, it’s right near work, so I can walk every day. And it’s next door to Tim’s, so I have the mafia right there if I need coffee.”
He leans closer and snickers. “Point taken. Mafia and coffee are important.”
“And our apartment has a Steve.” I don’t pout—I’m not a pouter. But I’d be lying if I said the thought of leaving my landlord doesn’t make me a little sad. “Nowhere else has a Steve, Archer.”
“What if—”
“Besides,” I cut in. “Houses cost lots of money. More space means more cleaning. And lawns to mow.” I widen my eyes. “Are you gonna mow the lawn?”
“Well—”
“Because I don’t want to mow the lawn! In fact…” I mentally replay my entire life in just a single second. “I’ve never mowed a lawn. Ever. I’ve never even lived somewhere that had a lawn.”
“You need to stop worrying about the lawn,” he sniggers.
“I can’t! The lawn is a big consideration. It’s not just mowing, there’s weed whacking, and edge cutting, and watering, and fertilizing. And what about the grubs that get in your soil and kill your grass? Then you’ve gotta start all over again!”
“Grubs?” he coughs out. “You know a fuck of a lot about lawns, for a woman who’s never had one.”
“I took forensic entomology classes while in college,” I bite out. “Not a lot stuck, but some did. And married people who upsize from an apartment to a house become busier and bitter. We shouldbothmow the lawn, Archer. To make it fair. But I don’t want to. And you won’t want to after a while. We’ll have less time to just be together, then we’ll be angry a lot, and then our marriage will suffer, and—”
“No lawn.” He darts forward and presses a kiss to the center of my lips to shut me up. “No lawn, I promise.” Another kiss. “Stop worrying about something that isn’t a reality for us.”
“But you want to leave our apartment.”
“I want to know what you want,” he counters. “I wanna know how ten years from now looks for you. Twenty years. Thirty.”
“All I see isus,” I pout.I don’t pout!“I see you and me on our shitty couch, bickering over the TV remote, and telling your brothers to shut the door on their way out.”
Humored, his lips curl higher.
“I just see you and me, Archer. I don’t care where we live.”
