César handed me yet another paper towel. “Thank you,” I told him, and blew my nose. “I’ll just try to be practical, too, and take on one thing at a time. I guess there’s nothing else to do in this situation.”
“Here’s a practical question. Why do you have to move out of where you live, and where are you going to go?”
I explained about Kaya’s house, about having to leave because she was getting married to Denny. “I’ll find somewhere else to rent.”
“You could live here.”
“Yeah, right. Us living together,” I said, but he just nodded. “What, are you being serious? Us, living together?”
“I have this big house, and it’s empty except for me,” he answered. “That way we won’t need the questionnaires to get to know each other.”
It wasn’t a good idea, but I looked around the house and briefly considered it. I would need a place to go, and soon, because I wanted to move rather than giving Kaya that rent check. Maybe I had internally mocked the overload of crystals hanging from every light fixture in César’s house, but I couldn’t argue that it would be nice to live somewhere so big and new. And warm.
“Me here, with you?” I speculated aloud, but I answered myself. “No. I mean, thank you, but no, that wouldn’t work.” I had never, ever lived with a guy—I hadn’t even left a toothbrush anywhere. I didn’t count my current roommate, Morgan, because he and I were only friends. There was no sex involved to muddle things up, like there was in this situation. Of course, César didn’t even remember sleeping with me.
He flipped through my questionnaire, frowning. I could see that he had circled some of my answers like he really was grading it. “The more I think about it, the better I like the idea,” he told me. “You could live here and we’d be able to, you know, keep an eye on things.”
“An eye on what, exactly?”
“I’d be able to help you,” he said. “Don’t you think you’ll want help?”
I opened my mouth to answer, but I yawned before I spoke, because this day had just been way, way too long.
“Go home now, and consider it,” César told me. I saw him glance again at my scribbled answers to his questions. “It’s the best way to handle this.”
The big gate swung open and I drove slowly out, considering a lot of different topics. In fact, my thoughts raced around in circles without solving anything. I had put the ultrasound pictures in a file folder and they were still sitting on the passenger seat. I knew that I had to come up with some solutions, because I only had to glance over at that folder and this shit got real, very fast.
Morgan was in the living room when I came in, curled in the nasty easy chair. He had on his big headphones, and he was rocking, eyes closed.
“Morgan?” I tapped his shoulder. “Everything ok?”
He took off the headphones. He looked, frankly, traumatized. “Their engaged sex is even louder than before. It’s horrifying,” he whispered.
“Denny! Oh, Denny!” Kaya called and both of our heads swiveled toward the bedrooms.
“No! It’s starting again!” Morgan yanked on his headphones and also put two pillows over his ears. He curled into a ball in the chair and closed his eyes.
I shrugged. How bad could it be? We had been through it before, and in the past, Denny had been pretty quick. Not a lot of staying power, unfortunately for her.
A crash shook the house and almost bounced Morgan off the cushion. I grabbed the wall to steady myself as Kaya shrieked, “Yes! Give me the Eiffel Tower, now!”
“They’ve been going for hours,” Morgan whispered, rocking back and forth, eyes closed again. “With my bike broken, I can’t escape. It’s slowly killing me.”
“Your rod is the great giver of pleasure!” Kaya howled.
Jesus and Mary. It was that bad.
Morgan and I traded off pounding on the door and yelling at them to be quiet, but I decided that either Kaya was incapable of expressing her satisfaction in a moderate way, or she really, really wanted us to get the hell out of the house and this was their way to make that happen. In either case, I had to go, immediately, and luckily for me, I had gotten that invitation from César.
Around five in the morning, after a mostly sleepless night which I spent bagging up most of my belongings, I texted him that I would be happy to move into his house, and that I would be arriving the next day. He was already up, working out, and he started shooting back questions about carrying boxes and saying that this was a good decision. I hoped so.
I fell soundly asleep for a little while before my alarm sounded, and by pinching myself and taking a very cold nap in my car at lunch, I managed to stay awake for the entire day at my desk at the winery. Euna narrowed her nose as I left, but I had put in the required hours, pretending to work. At least she didn’t verbally criticize me, which was progress.
A big SUV with dark-tinted windows pulled up to my house just as I turned off my engine. César got out and nodded in my direction as he opened the back gate of his car.
“What are you doing here?” I asked him.
“I told you that I would help you move. Are you packed?”
I nodded. “Yes, but I told you that I would do it myself.”
“Let me help,” he said, and held out his hand
