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Their first apartment together is a tiny little thing, but Patty swore up and down when they went to the open house that it had charm and potential. She spoke about the large window overlooking the city with a nook where she could set up her easel, and the natural light in the kitchen, and the fire escape leading up to the roof.
For Stan’s part, when he’d walked through the apartment, his concerns had been different. Can he picture Patty painting at her easel by the window? Can he see her in the kitchen, trying to cook omelets for breakfast before he’d swoop in and take over, saving the apartment from the burnt egg smell? Could he see her in the small master bedroom, curled around him in their bed, fast asleep and more beautiful than Stan deserved?
And the answer to those was yes, so his answer to her had been yes.
So there’s a large window that overlooks the city, and a refrigerator that’s definitely straight from the 1970s, and room in the living area for either a sofa or a dining table but definitely not both, and soon there will be Patty’s books on the shelves next to Stan’s, and their clothes hung up together in the closet, and Patty. Asleep on the couch with a book on her chest. Singing in the shower, horribly off-key when she knows Stan is listening but gentle and calming when she thinks he isn’t. Painting her toenails as she sits on the end of their bed and going cross-eyed to tease him when he tries to reprimand her for it.
She’s hanging up a piece of art above the mantle when Stan comes in with the last box from the truck. He puts it down next to the other boxes then crosses over to her. As soon as the painting is hung and she steps back, he swoops forward and wraps his arms around her waist. “A lovely addition to the home, Miss Babylove,” he murmurs in her ear.
“Don’t kiss ass to try and get out of unpacking, we’re getting through some of those boxes today,” Patty tells him. She turns her cheek towards him so he can press a kiss there. “Although you do look so cute trying to kiss ass.”
Stan grins and pinches at her side, still smiling when she yells out and elbows him in retaliation. They settle, after a moment, and he twines his arms back around her. She covers his arms with her hands and leans her head against his.
“We have a whole new home,” she tells him. “Feel surreal yet?”
He shrugs, knowing she can feel it. “I’ve been waiting for this since the day we met.”
There’s a truth in the statement that bears a certain weight. Stan had known about ten minutes after he met Patty Blum that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.
It had been
that
instantaneous, in a way that nothing in Stan’s life had ever been before. He was a man of careful calculations, planning, and consideration. But with Patty, all it took was a look. One shared look, across a room filled with people Stan barely knew and didn’t care to, and a smart upturn of her pretty mouth for him to know that whatever came next, it wouldn’t be without her.
“You’re an old charmer, Stanley,” Patty says warmly. “Don’t you know you’ve already won me over?”
“Oh, this isn’t charm,” Stan replies. “I’m still just kissing ass. I really don’t want to unpack boxes. I still think we should have tricked Richie into helping us. He’s very easy to bribe, it just would have cost us a pizza.”
Patty’s laugh echoes through their empty home. Stan’s favorite sound in the world. “You didn’t want to put up with his jokes all day,” she reminds him.
Stan sags against her with a sigh. “You’re right. I deal with enough of your jokes.”
“Hey!” she laughs. She smacks his arm and breaks out of his hold, but he catches her hand and spins her once before pulling her into a slow-dance. There’s a soft smile on her face. Her eyes drift closed. “You’ve got moves, baby.”
“You’re just noticing?”
Patty hums. She puts her head on his shoulder. They sway in the empty room. “Is it always going to feel like this?” she wonders aloud. “I mean, it’s extraordinary, isn’t it? Being this happy? Feeling this certain?”
“It is extraordinary,” he agrees. “I think that’s just the love that you and I were meant for, though.”
He can feel it when Patty smiles against his shoulder. “I’m going to tell Mike that he was right about you being a secret romantic. He’s been saying it ever since you introduced me, I bet he’s been saying it for years.”
“Don’t you dare,” he deadpans, though realistically he knows that he’d support Patty with any choice she made. There’s still no music playing but Stan imagines the swell of the song, so he hums it as he gently dips her before pulling her back up and pressing a soft kiss to her mouth.
She’s smiling when he pulls away. Patty is almost always smiling. “You still aren’t getting out of unpacking,” she tells him. He groans and drops his head so it can rest against hers. He can feel the laughter shake her body from where they’re pressed together.
On the mantle, below where Patty had hung one of her more prominent art pieces, one of the very first things to be unpacked is the myriad of pictures they both deemed necessary. The frames are filled with pictures of their families. Not the blood ones, though they’ll get a spot somewhere in the apartment as well. Stan’s friends come to life in the frames, even captured in one frozen snapshot.
There’s Eddie and Bev, drunk and laughing, and Ben, making silly faces at the camera. Mike, with an arm around Bill as they pose dramatically in front of Niagara Falls. Richie, wearing the ridiculous feather boa Beverly had made him wear on his most recent birthday. All of them at their high school graduation. All of them age thirteen, the quarry behind them. A semi-awkward looking photo, of all of them the first time Stan had brought Patty around, followed immediately by a picture of Beverly carrying Patty piggy-back style at a beach. So many pictures it should look cluttered and tacky, but so what if it does? This is a snapshot of Stan’s life. The before and after. Because that's the truth, isn’t it? There are two distinct parts to Stan’s life now. Before Patty, and the rest of his life.
Stan’s smiling as he places the last picture up there. Him and Patty, right at the center. Her birthday, last year. His arms are around her. She’s wearing that gold skirt he loves so much. His face is covered in cake, and she, the guilty culprit, is holding her cake-covered hands away from him while she laughs.
“Good,” Patty hums, as she comes up behind him. She mimics him from earlier, wrapping her arms around his waist and hooks her chin over his shoulder. “Our mantle is now officially the only unpacked part in our entire apartment. Good thing it’s the most important.”
“This is important,” he tells her. He covers her arms with his own and twines their hands together. “That’s our family, Pats. Our history. Our story. It’s important.”
“You’re so sentimental, it makes me wonder why the hell your friends think you’re an emotionless robot,” Patty tells him. She presses up on her tiptoes so she can kiss his cheek. “It looks great.”
She lets go of him and goes back to the box she had been unpacking in their small kitchen. Stan steps back and adds his now empty box to the pile near the door to take out later. “Is the bread still out?” he asks.
“Bread and salt are still on the counter,” she answers. “Gonna bless the house again?”
“No, I’m just starving,” he tells her honestly. He uncovers the bread and cuts a slice before offering it to Patty. “Are you hungry?”
Patty hops up on the counter next to him and takes the slice, tearing off a piece. “You know what sounds good?” she tells him. Stan hums as he cuts another piece for himself. “Remember that place we went to last month with Richie and Eddie?”
“On the most awkward not-double date of all time?” Stan laughs. He covers the bread again then moves so he can stand between Patty’s legs as they eat. “Oh, you had that parmesan crusted eggplant.”
“Yes,” Patty groans. “That sounds so yummy.”
Stan thrums his fingers against her knee thoughtfully. “I think we actually moved closer to that restaurant. We could go tonight. Celebrate the move. Get both of us out of cooking after all the moving.”
Patty giggles. “Can we invite Richie and Eddie again and hope maybe this time they get the hint?”
“You’re a meddler, Patricia Blum.”
“I’m a believer in love,” she corrects him matter-of-factly. She pats Stan’s cheek fondly to prove her point. “And I believe that Richie and Eddie have been in love for an obnoxiously long time. And I know you think the exact same thing.”
Stan rolls his eyes. “It doesn’t matter what we think, they’re never going to pull their heads out of their asses for long enough to get together. If you think it’s bad after a year, just wait til you’ve been dealing with it for nearly twenty years.”
“Oh, your life is so hard, you’ve never meddled well enough for anything to happen,” Patty teases him. Stan growls and presses up on his toes to kiss her. She’s laughing when he pulls away.
“So you admit you’re a meddler!” Stan says.
“A believer in love!” Patty repeats. She eats the last bite of her bread then wraps her arms around his shoulders to keep him close. Her fingers play with the curls at the base of his skull. “Are you telling me you aren’t a believer in love, Stanley Uris?”
Stan tilts his head back and forth, like he’s sincerely contemplating. Like there’s a universe out there where he could ever look at Patty and still be a person who didn’t believe in love. The way Patty holds him right now tells Stan that she can read right through him. “I believe in you,” he tells her. It’s as cliche a line as any. She beams at him all the same. “Guess that makes me a believer in love.”
“Oh, you just say things,” she tells him.
“Babylove, have I ever done anything to make you doubt the way I feel about you?” Stan asks seriously.
Patty shifts her hands so she can cradle his face. Her fingers trace along the scars he still can’t bring himself to talk about. There’s emotion in her eyes that Stan still hasn’t found a name for. It’s an expression she uses on him often. He thinks it’s love. He thinks it’s stronger than love.
“You’ve never done anything to make me doubt you,” she promises. She pushes his curls up off his forehead then gives him a wicked, teasing smile. “Except for when you sold Sedanly. That was unforgivable.”
Stan splutters. “Sedanly was breaking down! It was time for him to go!”
“You told me you loved me for the first time in that car!” Patty laughs. Stan tries to pull away but she hooks a leg around his waist to keep him put. “Sedanly had sentimental value! History was made in that car.”
“Unspeakable things happened in that car,” Stan says. He runs his hands down her sides and cups her ass for emphasis. She digs her heel into his back.
The wicked grin is back, though. “Like I said,” she tells him smugly. “History was made in that car.”
“Oh, dear, if only we had a place all to ourselves where we could do unspeakable things in the future,” Stan deadpans. “Some place with a bed, and no roommates, maybe a place that has our name on the lease. Can you think of any place like that?”
Patty looks around their apartment. “Not a one,” she lies.
Stan groans. “You kill me. You actually kill me.”
“Oh, then we really won’t have a place with our name on that lease if that’s the case,” Patty says mildly. “Which would be a shame. I’m a big fan of this cute little place. Even though we’ve only unpacked two boxes.”
“You distracted me.”
Patty rolls her eyes. She leans forward and presses a kiss to the top of his forehead. “You’re the one who insisted we stopped for a snack break. Then cut a slice of bread and called it a snack.”
“There’s nothing else in the house!”
“I’m teasing you,” Patty laughs. She tilts his head up and kisses him, leisurely. Easily. They’ve got nothing but time. And it feels abundant, now, enveloped in the space where they live. Their first of many homes. The start of their future. “And I’m accepting your offer for dinner tonight. It’s very generous of me.”
Stan nods gravely. “I appreciate the sacrifice you are making for this family.”
There’s a moment where he realizes what he says and wonders if, perhaps, it was too much. It lasts for less than half a second. He means it. So it doesn’t matter if it was too much. Patty raises an eyebrow at him. “Oh, so we’re a family now?”
Stan places both of his hands on either of her thighs. His gaze is serious when he catches hers. He doesn’t want her to have any reason to believe he isn’t being serious. “I sure hope we are,” he tells her honestly. “Whether it starts today or whether it starts when we get married or whether it starts if we choose to have children. I want you to be my family.”
She surges forward and kisses him, then kisses him again, and again. “You idiot,” she tells him, when she pulls away enough to rest their foreheads together. “We’ve been a family since the day I asked you out. You and me against the world, baby, or was there ever any other way you expected this to go?”
“I wanted to ask you to move in with me a month into the relationship,” Stan tells her honestly. “I knew the second we met that you were it for me.”
Patty’s eyes are shiny. Stan reaches up with one hand to wipe underneath it, catching the small tear as it falls. “I didn’t mean to make you cry, babylove,” he whispers softly.
“Well, then, you’re simply going to have to reign in the romance, Mister Uris, because this is a result of you wooing me,” she tells him. She leans forward again and kisses him. A soft, familiar press of mouth to mouth. There’s no intention there, no need to go any further. A kiss just because they can. “Though, you’re delusional if you think this family is just you and me. I’m half afraid Bev’s gonna break down that door and yell at you because, somehow, she heard you say that.”
Stan laughs. He loves Patty, he loves everything about her, but he especially loves the way she makes him laugh. She matches his sense of humor, she meets him where no one else has understood, but even more than that her presence makes him want to laugh. Her sly smile and the way her voice lilts up when she’s looking for a laugh. Who is Stan to deny her that laugh? Who is he to pretend he doesn’t feel a pull around her that makes him think, for the first time in his life, that it’s okay to get out of his own head and just laugh at the world?
“Yeah, they’re family, too,” Stan allows. “Even if they’re idiots sometimes. All the time. God, do you know how long I’ve been waiting for all of them to get their shit together? That’s my family. They’re my idiots.”
Patty hums. “Want to call your idiots and ask them to help us unpack, since clearly we’re not getting anything done? We can bribe them with that restaurant.”
“That restaurant is expensive, are you suggesting I bribe my friends with expensive meals?” Stan asks. “Am I made of money, Miss Blum?”
“Do you want to unpack all these boxes yourself while I call Bev and Richie and ask if they want to go get expensive meals with me?” Patty says back. She raises an eyebrow to accentuate her point. Stan’s so in love with her he can feel it cracking his ribcage wide open.
“I’ll text the group chat,” he concedes, though there’s no question in either of their minds that this is where they were heading anyway.
The family comes. Slowly, the apartment that Stan didn’t mind unless Patty loves it starts to resemble a home. Their books fill the shelves that line the wall by the door. Plates and cups and pots and mugs fill the cabinets in their kitchen. The bedframe gets assembled, the dresser moved in, the clothes unpacked. Patty’s easel gets its special home near the large window with the nook. Ben treats them with a surprise, a tiny dining table he built that will only fit the two of them, but tucks in nicely in an empty corner in their kitchen. Richie brings the framed poster that hung in his and Stan’s shared apartment of many years. Beverly shows off the curtains she embroidered for them, special designs of flowers and birds that lighten up both the kitchen and the living area. Mike presses a scrapbook into Patty’s hands that ends up on their coffee table, full of pages of Stan and Patty and their friends and their days together and the days before. Eddie’s gift is practical, in all the ways that Eddie himself is, and provides a nice space for Stan and Patty to put their car keys and hang their coats by the doors. He proudly says he made it himself, with a little help from Ben. Bill pulls Stan into a hug when practically everything is unpacked and whispers in Stan’s ear that his gift, the one Stan had asked for, is in the shop right now. Stan won’t receive it until the engraving is complete, and Patty won’t receive it for a few months, but Stan hugs Bill back tightly and thanks him.
The few boxes that don’t get unpacked get hidden purposefully at the back of Stan and Patty’s closet, behind her dresses, and everyone collapses onto the couch and ottoman in the living room. Patty curls into Stan’s side. “We have a home,” she tells him. She’s punch drunk and overly affectionate, and Stan knows without a shadow of a doubt that he’s the luckiest guy on the planet.
“We have a home,” he agrees. “With furniture. And plates in cupboards.”
Patty sighs. “We need to go grocery shopping so we can use those plates in cupboards.”
He waves his free hand in the air dismissively. “We can do that tomorrow.
Beverly catches Stan’s hand and squeezes it. He turns to look at her and give her a smile. “I’m super proud of you guys,” she tells them. Patty pats Stan’s stomach and kisses his jawline from where she’s curled against him. “This place looks great. Definitely courtesy of your genius, creative, kind, generous friends.”
Stan nods solemnly. “Ah. I see where this is going.”
“And as such creative, generous friends,” Beverly continues. She stands, and the others cheer her on, slapping their hands on the table or chorusing with here, here! , “I think that aforementioned nice dinner you promised to buy us all is… quite definitely thanks enough, for all our hard work. I will even generously offer to allow a few of us to carpool in my car.”
“Very generous,” Richie says seriously. He applauds her. With the way he’s sitting, on the ground, between Eddie’s legs, it gives Eddie the ability to kick Richie’s side. “Ouch! What the fuck?”
“Don’t be a dick,” Eddie gripes.
“Oh, like you didn’t come here just because you wanted to try that spicy salmon again?” Richie says back. “I know you, man, you are easily persuaded by free food.”
Eddie tugs on an errant curl and petulantly sticks his tongue out when Richie yelps and turns back to glare at him. Stan and Patty both collectively sigh from their spot on the couch. No one else seems to be paying them any mind.
“I think we should go to dinner just so I don’t have to keep watching that,” Stan says seriously. Patty giggles against him.
“Everyone up!” she announces. “It’s dinner time. If I don’t get my hands on some parmesan crusted eggplant, I might just kill a man.”
Richie groans as Eddie helps pull him to his feet. “That would be a shame,” he grunts out, “considering you just moved in with your boyfriend and the love of your life and your stars and moon or whatever cheesy nickname you guys call each other.”
“Babylove,” Eddie and Mike correct at the same time. They high five at their synchronicity.
“Get out of my house,” Stan says with a sigh.
“No, you’re buying us dinner,” Mike says with a grin. He slings an arm around Bill’s waist and pulls him close, pressing a kiss to the top of Bill’s head. Richie wrinkles his nose dramatically at the sight of it.
“God, everyone is pairing off,” he mutters.
“Not everyone,” Eddie says, before flushing red.
“Oh, Christ,” Stan groans. “Out, out! Everyone out. Get into your cars, drive to the restaurant, or I’m not feeding any of you.”
There’s more cheering as they all make their way out of the apartment, now almost fully unpacked and definitely lived in. Patty grabs Stan’s hand to hold him back. He raises an eyebrow as she pulls him into an embrace, both of her arms twining around his shoulders. “Do you not want the eggplant you threatened first degree murder for anymore?”
“I still want that,” she promises him. There’s a soft smile on her face. “I just want to kiss you and tell you I love you first more.”
Stan grins. “Oh, well, that’s alright.”
“Oh, you’ll allow that?”
“Very magnanimously,” Stan says with a nod.
She shakes her head. “You’re a hero, Stanley Uris.”
“That’s what they tell me.”
She kisses him before he can say anything else. And that’s all there is to it. At the end of the day, it’s him and Patty. As he always knew it would be. Kissing in the foyer of their new home, their first home. They’re both smiling so hard it breaks the kiss.
“I love you,” she tells him.
“Oh, you do?” he says, feigning surprise. “I never would have guessed. I thought you were just moving in with me to get into my pants.”
Patty rolls her eyes. “That’s an added bonus, dummy.”
“I love you, too,” Stan says then, because if he keeps it in for another moment his heart might actually give out. He doesn’t want to go a day without saying it.
“You better,” she tells him seriously. “We should go. Before Richie and Eddie get to the restaurant and accidentally set it on fire.”
Stan laughs as he breaks the embrace. He reaches for her hand, still wanting to hold onto her even as they leave and lock up. She squeezes his hand back, and that’s that. The beginning of their future.