The Wall of Winnipeg and Me - Mariana Zapata Page 0,59

exhaustion. My desktop computer followed. The fact that he could have carried it on his own didn’t escape me at all, but I wasn’t going to complain, so I kept my mouth shut. In the back of my Explorer, we put my bookcase, desk, and chair. The rest of the boxes were split up into both of our vehicles.

Aiden was in his SUV when I closed my apartment door one last time, nostalgia hitting me dead center in the chest. I always thought about moving on with my life and taking the next step toward whatever upcoming goal I had. Like when I left Aiden, a part of me missed him or some weird variation when you’re so used to doing things a certain way for a long time and suddenly you don’t, but I’d known I was going to move on. I was doing something better for myself, and doing this for him, no matter what my conscience said, was a smart step. A weird one, but a smart one.

It was a giant leap for my future, and I was going to hold on to that reminder with both hands.

I dropped off a check for the last two months of my lease, signed a few papers with the office manager, and I was out of there.

* * *

It took an hour just to get to Aiden’s house from my apartment thanks to a ten-car pile-up on the highway. Between being a little overwhelmed with moving, especially since I wasn’t feeling exactly stoked to have to move in with another person—that person being my ex-boss of all people—and trying my best to convince myself that I wasn’t going to go to jail if or when officials found out the truth; I was trying not to become paranoid.

I smiled at the security guard when we got to the gated community, and ignored the curious expression on his face when he saw my car loaded up. Aiden backed into the garage, and I parked in the driveway for the first time ever.

When I got out and spotted him toting boxes inside, I grabbed the most I could carry on my own from my Explorer. I followed after him, nervous, anxious, and a little bit scared.

Everything looked familiar, but it felt foreign at the same time. I made myself march on up those stairs I’d climbed a thousand other times and kept on going when all I wanted to do was turn around, and head back to my apartment.

I was moving in with Aiden and Zac, signing some papers that would unite us in paper matrimony, and this would be my reality for the next five years. When I thought about it in bits and pieces… yeah, it didn’t help. It still seemed like a huge, white elephant I couldn’t ignore.

The door to the empty guest room was open as I approached it, and I could hear Aiden inside setting things down. I’d been in there many, many other times in the past to dust or wash the sheets. I was pretty familiar with the layout.

But it wasn’t the same as it had been the last time I’d seen it.

Aiden didn’t have a bunch of crap all over the house. Every room except the gym was pretty sparse and utilitarian. He didn’t have artwork or knickknacks. He hadn’t even bothered painting any of the rooms. There wasn’t a single trophy or jersey hanging around anywhere. The boxes of that kind of stuff were hidden in his closet, something I couldn’t completely understand. If I had the kind of trophies he did, they would be up so everyone could see them.

In his bedroom, he had a bed and two dressers. He didn’t even have a mirror in there, much less a single picture of anything or anyone. The guest bedroom had been even more barren with only a bed and a nightstand in a relatively large-sized room—it was twice the size of the room at my apartment.

But when I walked into the room that would now be mine, I didn’t just find a bed. There was a large matching dresser with a big vanity mirror mounted to it, and a new small-ish bookshelf that also seemed to match the rest of the dark brown, contemporary furniture. It didn’t hit me until much later that it was all the exact same furniture I’d had in my bedroom at my apartment… just nicer and matching.

“Your bookshelf from home would look better in the office,” Aiden casually