no milk; even the idea of mismatching cups drives him insane; he uses two different types of toothpaste, one in the morning and one at night, and he doesn’t know why, he just does; and he would rather mop the floor a hundred times before having to load a dishwasher. We agree that I will always do the dishes as long as he mops the floor.
We bicker back and forth in front of the cashier when it comes time to pay. I know he had to put a deposit down for the apartment, so I want to cover our Target haul. But he refuses to let me pay for anything except cable and groceries. At first, he offered to let me pay for the electricity, which he declined to tell me was already included in the rent until I found the proof on the lease. The lease. I have a lease, with a man that I’m moving in with my freshman year of college. That’s not crazy, right?
Hardin glares at the woman when she takes my debit card and I give her props because she swipes my card without even acknowledging his attitude. I want to laugh in victory, but he is already irritated and I don’t want the night to be ruined.
Hardin sulks until we get back to the apartment, and I stay quiet because I find it amusing. “We might have to make two trips down here to get all the stuff,” I tell him.
“That’s another thing: I would rather carry one hundred bags than make two trips,” he says and finally smiles.
We still end up having to take two trips because the dishes are just too heavy. Hardin’s irritation grows, but so does my humor.
We put all the dishes away into the cabinets and Hardin orders a pizza. The polite person in me can’t help but offer to pay for it, which earns me a glare and a middle finger. I laugh and put all the trash into the box the dishes came in. They weren’t joking when they said the apartment came furnished—it has everything we could need, a trash can, even a shower curtain.
“The pizza will be here in thirty minutes. I am going to go down and get your stuff,” he says.
“I’ll come, too,” I say and follow him out.
He has put my things into two boxes and a trash bag, which makes me cringe but I stay quiet. Grabbing a handful of T-shirts and a pair of jeans out of his trunk, he shoves them into the trash bag with my clothes.
“Good thing we have an iron,” I finally say. When I look into his trunk, something catches my eye. “You never got rid of those sheets?” I ask.
“Oh . . . yeah. No, I was going to, but I forgot,” he says and looks away.
“Okay . . .” I feel a little uneasy about his reaction.
We haul a load of stuff up the stairs, and right when we reach the top, the pizza guy rings our bell. Hardin goes back down to meet him, and when he comes back up the aroma coming from the box is heavenly. I didn’t realize how hungry I’d gotten.
We eat at the table, and it’s strange but nice to be eating dinner with Hardin in our place. We’re quiet as we devour the delicious pizza, but it’s the good kind of silence. The kind that tells me we’re home.
“I love you,” he says as I put our plates into the dishwasher.
I turn and respond, “I love you,” just as my phone vibrates loudly on the wood table. Hardin looks over and taps the screen. “Who is it?” I ask him.
“Noah?” he says as both a declaration and a question at the same time.
“Oh.” I know this isn’t going to go well.
“He says it was ‘nice talking to you today’?” His jaw clenches.
I walk back over and grab the phone, practically wrestling it out of his grip. I could have sworn he was going to crush it in his hand.
“Yeah, he called me today,” I tell him with false confidence. I was going to mention it to him. I just haven’t found the right time.
“And . . .” He raises his eyebrow.
“He was just telling me that he saw my mother and he was just seeing how I am doing.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know . . . just to check on me, I guess.” I shrug and sit down in the chair next to him at the table.
“He doesn’t