to the third story if you want a small half-bathroom up there.”
“Where would it go again?”
“There’s a closet to the left when you walk up the stairs,” Lucas reminds me. “It would go there. You’re the one who will use it.”
“It might be handy to have a bathroom up there. How long will it take to put it in?”
“About a week. Faster if we don’t have to special order any material.”
I shake my head. “I don’t want to order anything fancy. I’m good with whatever we can get locally. And a week isn’t bad.”
“No,” he agrees. “It’s not. And we can start moving some of our possessions over now. I’ve already contacted a moving company to come this afternoon and load up a truck full of your storage bins. They’ll take them into the basement of the new house for us.”
“A moving company?” I raise my eyebrows. “To go a mile down the road?”
“They’ll be able to load up the truck in the daylight,” Lucas says, and I feel a twinge of guilt. Things feel almost normal while we’re in the house together, sitting in the light of day at the kitchen island.
It’s easy to forget we’re far from normal, and Lucas is housebound during the day. For now. I’m still not ready to accept the fact that I can’t figure out a way to let him day walk.
“I will bring the bins up into the foyer. The movers will be here at two PM to put everything into the truck. I will have them take my stuff from the guest room as well. Would you like to meet with the interior designer tomorrow? She’s free.”
I take another bite of pasta and nod enthusiastically. It’s exciting to move forward with the new house and go all out shopping and decorating. It’s our house, and everything for it has been done together. We live together, but this house very much feels like mine. Yet it’s a little bittersweet to leave.
Not selling helps, and Betty will be over the moon when I tell her she’ll be able to move in by the end of the month. I’m leaving most of the furniture here—assuming she wants it, which reminds me that I should text her and go over things so I can make arrangements to have a charity company come and pick up what Betty doesn’t want.
Lucas and I spend the rest of the day packing and sorting, and I never realized how much stuff I own until it came time to box it all up and carry it into the foyer. We go to the new house after sunset, double-checking things were moved where they were supposed to. Some of our new furniture we ordered a while ago will be arriving this week, and I’m stupid excited for the white barstools for the large kitchen island.
They were crazy expensive, something I’d never even give a second look to before. I’m going to put a towel down on the seat before I go to eat out of fear of staining them.
“You’re good with me putting up Christmas decorations like as soon as we’re in, right?” I ask Lucas, stopping at the top of the stairs overlooking the foyer. It’s two stories tall and is perfect for a fifteen-foot Christmas tree.
“It’s the first week of November,” he deadpans.
“So, you’re saying I better get a move on, then, right?”
“Wait until Thanksgiving?”
“The day before?” I ask, batting my eyelashes. “But for real, I’d like to have the house all done up before everyone comes over for Thanksgiving.”
Lucas narrows his eyes. “You want to decorate the house for Christmas before your friends and family come over for Thanksgiving.”
“Yeah.”
“Why don’t you just wait?”
“I get impatient, and it takes me hours to get everything up. I want to enjoy it as long as I can. Last year my tree went up on November sixteenth. It was a record for me. Usually I do wait until a few days before Thanksgiving, but it was a, ah, stressful month.”
Lucas moves behind me, arms snaking around my waist. Christmas is a weird reprieve for me, and would probably confuse the hell out of therapists. I was treated like shit and it all came to a screeching, fake-as-fuck halt when the tree went up in my childhood home. The house was full of guests and reporters, and we had to play the part of a big happy family.
That sense of safety never went away, and the more decorations I put up, the stronger