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Jonah got a new place before Garrett could completely run out of reasons not to watch the new Ken Burns Vietnam documentary with him. He’d had lots of excuses ready when it premiered and had thought he was off the hook once the final episode aired, but somehow PBS kept replaying it, and Jonah kept rewatching it, ‘just in case he missed something the first time through.’ The day he sat down at breakfast and Jonah cheerfully informed him it was streaming online ‘so you could still catch up if you wanted to,’ was the day Garrett pulled up the real estate listings and ordered his roommate to start looking for someplace else to live.
The place Jonah eventually picked was an older apartment, a little grimey around the edges, but nothing a bottle of Cloud 9 brand bleach and some scrubbing couldn’t handle. Jonah signed the lease because of the big windows in the front and the fact that the old tenants had left a little framed portrait of President Obama hanging in the kitchen. It’d made him smile and so seemed like a sign. Of what, he wasn’t sure. And, if asked, he’d swear it was a complete coincidence that this apartment was so much closer to Amy’s than his storm-wrecked apartment had been.
It only took a few trips back and forth from Garrett’s to get all his stuff moved in. Jonah ordered some furniture online and turned over the newly empty moving boxes to serve as table and chairs until the new things arrived. It should have all felt sad and empty, but something about it actually made him feel settled. Like it meant something important that he’d chosen this dusty, empty place over letting the tornado chase him back to Chicago. But it was only the next day at work when Cheyenne, hearing the news, squealed about how, ‘Oh my god, you definitely need to have a housewarming party because Harmonica has eight clubbing outfits she doesn’t ever get to wear,’ that he really thought seriously about doing something to celebrate the occasion.
It was another three weeks before they all managed to get the same night off of work, which meant there was time for the couch to get delivered, and the kitchen table, and for Jonah to get a couple of things up on the walls. He left Obama where he was beside the fridge.
That first free night was a random Tuesday, and half of them were on the schedule for the morning shift early the next day, but everyone knew it was the best they were going to get. Garrett and Dina assigned themselves to alcohol duty and promised to pick up enough to, in Dina’s words, ‘sedate an entire Ukrainian army unit.’ Jonah picked up a bag of plastic cups on his lunch break.
Mateo and Cheyenne threw themselves into crafting the perfect playlist. From the bits he caught in the breakroom and whenever he walked by the two of them in electronics, Jonah suspected it would be mostly Beyonce in the end. He was fine with that.
Amy asked Adam to keep Emma for the night, ‘because I’m going to Jonah’s,’ then blushed at the implication of what she’d said then blushed harder that those implications had even occurred to her in the first place. ‘Going for a housewarming party. A work party, I mean, just more time with work friends, work colleagues. It probably won’t be a big thing, but just in case…’ She was babbling, and Adam cut her off with a confused half laugh and an, ‘Of course, she’s my kid,’ and they left it at that. She hung up the phone and stress-baked four dozen chocolate chip cookies before spending too long standing in front of her closet, Adam’s side still starkly empty, picking out what to wear. She tried on three different dresses before rolling her eyes and pulling on her favorite jeans and a sweater she’d splurged on the first weekend after they’d separated. Emma had told her it made her look ‘less mom-like,’ whatever that meant.
It’d been raining all day, and it was still going when Amy pulled up at Jonah’s new address a full ten minutes before they’d all agreed to meet. She threw the car in park and rolled her eyes at herself again. ‘Less mom-like’ sweater or not, she’d just showed up for a party ten minutes early and with baked goods. She sat in the dark for a second and listened to the rain on the roof of her car and debated whether or not she could get away with driving around the block a few times until someone else got there. Debated whether she should just go home, put in a frozen pizza, and go to bed.
She’d closed her eyes and almost convinced herself that she didn’t really care if Jonah noticed her sweater or not when something tapped on her window. She opened her eyes at the noise, and it was Jonah, standing in the street with an umbrella, looking hopeful and sort of embarrassed. Which, really, just meant looking like Jonah. Amy had to smile as she opened the door.
‘I, uh, saw your headlights from the window,’ he said, bouncing a little on his feet and gesturing towards what Amy guessed was his apartment. ‘Thought maybe you forgot an umbrella.’ Amy had a perfectly good umbrella in the back seat, but he was here now, and he was looking at her like maybe he knew she had her own umbrella, like maybe they both needed to pretend she hadn’t been avoiding being alone with him, so she smiled, picked up the cookies in their tupperware from the passenger seat, and moved to join him.
‘All this rain, I kind of wish it would just snow, you know?’
‘Sure, then we’d just be buried under twelve feet of the stuff.’
‘You lived in Chicago, you don’t like snow?’
‘I like looking at the snow. I wouldn’t say I actively enjoy being in it, no.’
‘Good to know. Won’t be asking you to be on my team next time Dina calls an all-staff, score-settling snowball fight.’ It was a small umbrella, and they walked close together, heads bent, to fit beneath it. His free hand was somewhere behind her, hovering just above her back without quite touching her.
‘Score-settling snowball fight?’ He laughed. ‘What are we, fourth graders? Or characters in some sort of dystopian novel where there are no laws anymore?’
‘The dystopian part is up for debate these days, but you’ll just have to wait and see. It’s not every year we get a storm worthy of such an occasion.’ He laughed again, and they both shuffled into the building, wiping wet shoes on the rug and shaking the water from the umbrella.
Amy looked around at the apartment and was surprised at how cozy it all seemed. She had thought, when she’d thought about it at all, that maybe Jonah was the type of single guy who favored the bare minimum in decor, or at least the sort of things that were simple and utilitarian. But Jonah had plants. He had a blanket over the back of the couch that looked incredibly soft and a shelf full of the books he’d been able to salvage from the storm. ‘The place looks good,’ she said.
‘Thanks. It’s been fun actually, getting to start from scratch and really put it all together.’ He reached out a hand to take her coat, and she slid it off and gave it to him. Amy thought there was maybe a fraction of a second during the transaction where his eyes lingered on all the exposed skin across her collarbones, but then he turned away to hang her coat on a hook by the door, and she tried to bite back any disappointment. This was Jonah after all. He was never going to be the kind of guy who openly ogled a girl. She looked around again. ‘I, uh, I made cookies.’ She held up the tupperware container in her hand.
‘Chocolate chip?’
‘Obviously.’ She rolled her eyes, and he grinned.
‘You can put them with the other snacks if you want, on the counter over there. Though we’ve got one less person to feed.’ Amy looked at him questioningly as she set the container down next to the bowls of chips and popcorn already out. ‘Yeah, Cheyenne texted a little while ago that she can’t make it. Harmonica caught a cold or something at daycare. And Bo is Bo, so she thought she should stay home with her.’
‘That sucks. She was so excited.’
‘We’ll save her some cookies.’
‘Speak for yourself. I was planning on eating all of these.’
‘As is your prerogative as the baker of said cookies, of course.’ Amy laughed.
‘Well, what I could really go for is a drink. It’s been a long week for only Tuesday.’
‘Garrett sent a picture earlier of everything they’ve bought, so that can be arranged as soon as those two get here.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Which I’m sure will be fashionably late.’
‘Give me a tour while we wait? I should probably see the house if we’re celebrating it.’
‘You’re looking at most of it already,’ he said, amused and waving his arms at the expanse of kitchen and living room in front of them. ‘But, if you’ll follow me this way, you’ll find the ever essential bathroom to your right.’ He moved down the hall in front of her, and she followed, stopping up short when he reached to turn on the bathroom light.
‘Yep, bathroom.’ It was small and simple, but clean, she was pleased to see. She wasn’t sure Adam had cleaned the bathroom once their entire marriage. She had just enough time to note the presence of a purple toothbrush and more hair products than she owned before he turned off the light again.
‘Then it’s just my room, and that’s the extent of it,’ he said, but made no move to keep going further down the hall.
‘I don’t get to see your room?’ She was genuinely just curious, but the question came out more flirtatious than she’d intended, and so she went with it, smiling up at him through her lashes. She liked to make him blush, after all. He turned a fun shade of pink.
‘Bed, dresser. I promise it’s not exciting. Not that it couldn’t be exciting, I mean, in the right circumstances or whatever. Not that these are the right circumstances, just, you know what I mean.’ She gave an exasperated sigh and brushed passed him to walk the five steps to the end of the hall and push open the bedroom door that was already slightly ajar. She found the light switch and blinked at what really was just a perfectly ordinary bedroom, only made that much more interesting by the fact that this was Jonah’s bedroom, of all people. It was as tidy as the rest of the apartment, no laundry on the floor, bed all neatly made in blue and beige linens. She spotted his Cloud 9 vest on the closet door knob. There was no sign of a Naomi or a Kristen. Or a Kelly, though Amy tried to keep her imagination from going there. She turned back to look at him where he still stood in the bathroom doorway.
‘You’re right, it’s boring.’
‘I tried to tell you.’ The pink had faded only slightly from his cheeks.
‘Okay, I really need a drink now. Text Garrett and find out what their ETA is,’ she said and walked back towards the living room and dropped heavily onto the the couch. At which point her phone buzzed in her pocket.
It was Mateo, and the message read, ‘Ames, tell Jonah I can’t make it tonight. Beautiful Tinder man alert, he can only hang tonight. And I’ve realllly got to get over Jeff.’
‘Mateo’s ditching us for sex!’ Amy yelled and threw her phone down on the couch.
‘So are Dina and Garrett, it would seem,’ Jonah said, coming down the hall with his phone in his hand.
‘What? No!’
‘Garrett says, “We decided to taste test what we bought, and things may have gotten out of hand. I don’t know where my pants are.” And none of that is spelled right.’ Amy sighed.
‘Please tell me you have some sort of alcohol in this place.’
‘I can’t believe all our friends are terrible.’
‘Terrible or Cheyenne.’
‘They literally couldn’t keep their pants on for one night. My night. The night of my housewarming party. The one night we had to all hang out.’ He was getting worked up, though his anger was tinged considerably with amusement.
‘Agreed, they’re the worst. Is this going to be what finally makes you yell? Because as much as I do want to see that at some point, I’d rather you stop talking and find me a drink.’ She looked up at him from her spot on the couch, and he watched as she slid her shoes off one at a time with her toes.
‘I think I have a few beers in the fridge.’
‘A few beers will work.’ He nodded and went to the kitchen. When he returned Amy had pulled her feet up onto the couch beside her and was flipping through the channels on tv. ‘You don’t have cable.’ He shook his head.
‘I have Netflix?’ He handed her a beer and set the rest down on the floor in front of the couch. He hadn’t had time to find the perfect coffee table yet. He opened his own beer but stayed standing, hovering somewhat awkwardly beside her. Amy gave him a look and picked her feet up.
‘Sit,’ she said, and promptly set them back down in his lap once he had. He squeaked a little as she did which made her smile. ‘Anything in particular you want to watch?’
‘Anything you want is fine.’ The blush was back in his cheeks.
‘No weird foreign films or something black and white starring a bunch of men in identical suits with identical haircuts?’
‘Well, I have been trying to get Garrett to watch the new Ken Burns Vietnam documentary with me. It’s really just an incredible era of history…’
‘Eh, nope, too depressing, nice try.’ She nudged his elbow with a toe. ‘This is my night off, so I want something fluffy. Something fun.’
‘Can’t argue with that.’ He nudged her back, and she glanced over and caught the smirk tugging up the corner of his mouth and couldn’t help but smile too. Eventually, she pressed play on an old romcom she hadn’t seen since she was a kid in the 90s, and if Jonah rolled his eyes and sighed it was all feigned protest because he also settled one hand warm around her ankle, his thumb ever so slightly below the edge of her polka dotted socks. The movie turned out to be even sillier than Amy’d remembered, and they traded jokes back and forth for a while, Jonah mocking the haplessness of the central love interest and Amy the shockingly bad 90’s wardrobe of the protagonist. She finished her second beer feeling more relaxed and content than she had in more time than she cared to think about. And then she fell asleep.
When she woke, the lights in the room were out, the only brightness in the apartment coming from the streetlights outside and the tv where the last few minutes of the movie were still playing out. The blanket that had been folded over the back of the couch earlier was tucked in around her now, as soft as she’d suspected, and her feet were still in Jonah’s lap, his hands now moving in lazy circles over arches.
‘You didn’t wake me.’ His hands stilled and his eyes shifted from the screen to her face, half hidden in the blanket.
‘You seemed like you could use the sleep. You missed a killer movie though, even better than you described.’
‘I can’t believe you actually watched the whole thing.’ Jonah laughed.
‘Wanted to see what all the fuss was about.’
‘And?’
‘And, next time we’re watching one I get to pick.’
‘Okay, but I have to pee first.’ She slid her feet to the floor and sat up.
‘Oh, you want to watch another one now?’ The question came out earnestly hopeful.
‘I just took a nap at 11pm,’ she said. ‘I’m awake now, baby. Second wind. Cookies and beer and whatever strange movie you’re about to pick out.’ She looked at him. ‘Unless you’re tired.’
‘No, no, let’s do this. Our friends ditched us for sex.’
‘They did.’ She pushed the blanket away and stood to walk down the hallway towards the bathroom. ‘And I wore a new sweater and everything,’ she said before she closed the bathroom door.
‘It’s an excellent sweater,’ he yelled down the hall after her, and she laughed, a bright, rich sort of laugh he hadn’t heard enough of from her lately. Jonah scrolled through the movie options, smiling to himself. He settled on something black and white, yes, but still something silly and a little sappy in the hopes he could get another few laughs out of her. For her part, Amy picked up the tub of cookies on the way back to the couch.
‘You find something?’
‘I did, and it’s not even in French, I’ll have you know.’
‘I’m a lucky girl, what can I say.’ She offered him a cookie and he took it, and if he was trying not to be disappointed that she hadn’t immediately tossed her legs back across his lap upon sitting down again, she caught him off guard by instead erasing the space between them entirely, tucking herself securely into his side, her head against his shoulder. Even he was not the kind of guy who could over think that sort of invitation. She giggled a little as he got his arm around her, and he had to laugh too, like they were a couple of middle school kids on a first date, flirting in the back row of the movie theater. He thought about kissing her right then, he really did, and he thinks she would have kissed him back, but she was yawning against his arm and the tub of cookies was still in her lap and he really did want her to see this movie. He’d have another chance to kiss her. After the events of the night, he finally let himself feel sure of that.
‘I’m sorry if I fall asleep again,’ Amy said, interrupting his thoughts.
‘S’okay.’ He buried his nose in the hair at the top of her head. ‘But I feel like you should know that, from here? I can totally see down your shirt.’ He wasn’t fast enough to catch her arm before she elbowed him in the side, but she was laughing again, and snuggling in closer, and Jonah had never been more grateful for flaky friends in his life.