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The plan was never to stay in California for long. It was too much the same: too sunny, too dusty, too old, too much like what I supposed I had to call home. I’d decided to take care of the old house for a few months after my parents had finally split and left, leaving me with a creaking timber frame steeped in old and fading memories that I didn’t care to dig up. As it turned out, the paperwork stayed in its folder on my father’s old desk while I busied myself doing nothing until August was drawing to a close and I realised that I was in no position to sell the house. The only option was to settle in California for the time being and I resigned myself to scanning the job adverts in the back pages of each morning’s paper.
In the end, I think it was a combination of irony and coincidence that led me to becoming a teacher. At that point, I’d been on the uncomfortable side of skint and my old high school had just lost one of their English teachers in a last-minute resignation, so, on September 1st, I found myself at the front of a room I’d once sat in the back of. The paint was the same shade of off-white, still peeling where it met the ceiling, and the atmosphere of mind-bending boredom remained.
Ninth graders and twelfth graders, as it turned out, were two completely different entities. The first sat with glazed eyes and a thorough disinterest in what I had to say while the latter talked to me about the subject at length, albeit with a laughable superiority complex. My comparable youth to the only other member of the department seemed to have resulted in their disregard for any authority that I held and I knew that I had an arduous road ahead of me.
My schedule was tight and the work often kept me awake well into the night, but the routine slowly became comfortable, almost to the point of enjoyable. I got used to soft yellow light shining on scribbled essays as my students grew accustomed to my harsh marking and my questions to their answers which exasperated them. Eventually, I learned to cater to my students: I staged miniature productions of scenes from ‘Death of a Salesman’ and invented games for my ninth grade class while I moved the tables so that I could sit in a circle with my twelfth graders, discussing, cutting down and building up ideas. Despite the work it took, teaching slowly began to kindle a love in me that I didn’t think had been possible. Familiarity slowly soaked into my days and eventually they began to bleed together.
It took a lot to upset a pattern once I’d set it up for myself, but the disruption did come and it came in the shape of a physical and metaphorical storm.
There was an unnaturally heavy rainfall on the Friday night marking my first month at the school. The sound was loud enough that I hadn’t bothered to turn on the radio as I marked the week’s essays which meant that I heard the dull knocking at my front door. I dismissed it as a cause of the storm until I heard it again, louder and more insistent. The way it sounded had to make it a person outside but there was almost nobody I could think of who’d want to be at my house in this weather. I sat very still in my seat, ears straining against the rain to see if their resolve would break, but the knocking came again and I huffed out a sigh, throwing my papers down and stalking to the door, mentally preparing myself to gently push away whichever poor soul was standing outside in the cascading rain. But then I threw open the door and stopped in my tracks.
“Francis?”
And there he was. Red hair dark and plastered to his forehead, white shirt sticking to his skin and the same black coat hanging heavy from his shoulders.
“Hi. Richard.”
“W-what are you doing here?”
“The wedding’s off.”
“Off? How come?”
“I believe your exact words were ‘Don’t do this, Francis.’?” He cocked his head to the side, and the dim hallway light danced off the rain coursing down his face.
“Oh.” It’s all I could think to say, my mind reeling at his words. “I, uh- wait, you should come inside, it’s pouring!”
Francis raised an eyebrow at me, as if to say Is it now? , before gratefully stepping past me, his bag hitting my leg and soaking it immediately. I motioned him to wait in the hall before hurrying upstairs and coming back down with a couple of towels for him. He’d stood in the exact same place that I’d left him, dripping onto the hardwood, with the only differences being that his shoes were now neatly placed next to mine by the door. Taking his coat, I asked, “Tea?” and he gave me a muffled, “Please.” behind the towel he was scrubbing through his hair
I finally asked him what happened as I poured out his second cup.
“You told me not to,” Francis said, simply, dumping sugar into his tea.
I sighed. “Francis-”
“When I told her, it seemed like she’d been expecting it.”
“O-oh… I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.”
Suddenly, a thought occurred to me. “What about your grandfather’s money?”
“What do you mean?”
“When I was in Boston you said you wouldn’t be able to live without your inheritance,” I said drily, remembering the childish way Francis had clung to it back at the hospital.
He looked up at me then, with a tight smile, and said: “I think pretending to be someone else was far worse than I thought it would be.”
“I could have told you that,” I grumbled.
“Yes, well,” he swirled his tea around in the mug, “I was being petulant.”
I’d made my parents’ bed the first day I’d arrived, swayed by the idea of sleeping in a king-size, and had promptly decided to reclaim my old bedroom instead. The prospect of springs pushing against me all night had turned out to be preferable to the weird tangle of feelings that room pulled out of me. So, I gave it to Francis.
“This is a nice surprise,” he murmured, dropping his bag in the doorway.
“Only the best for you, my liege,” I said wryly and he laughed.
“Shower’s at the other end of the landing, I’ll be here if you need me.” I tapped my bedroom door.
“Alright.” He offered me a tired smile. “Thank you, Richard, really.” He moved to enter the room.
“Francis,” I called, suddenly not wanting to end the conversation.
He turned, eyes dark, and I lost all that I might have said. “I… just, prop your door open during the night. It still gets pretty warm,” I mumbled before escaping down the hall.
I finished the rest of my marking that night, partially in an attempt to alleviate my weekend and partially because I couldn’t sleep. The remnants of my old life had collided with the unsteady foundations of my new one and I wasn’t sure where that left me other than confused.
When I woke up the next morning, I half-expected it all to have been one long work-induced hallucination. Instead I went downstairs to find a plate of buttered toast that was rapidly becoming the texture of cardboard on the table and a tired but smiling Francis leaning against the countertop with a cup of coffee in his hands and another on the surface next to him. The window was open but I could still smell the faint cigarette smoke in the air.
“This was all I could find without making too much of a fuss,” he told me, passing me my coffee and I took a sip. It was far sweeter than I usually took it, but it managed to soothe away my late night.
“Have you eaten?”
“I had a slice.” He gestured at the toast. “But I’m afraid it’s gone a bit cold now.”
“Nothing some jam can’t improve,” I said, smiling inwardly at the effort that he’d put in. “Will raspberry do?”
Breakfast was pleasant and Francis filled in the details of his hurried escape from his once-impending marriage.
“I felt like I couldn’t breathe, Richard. She took away all the little things I had - threw out my cigarettes, replaced all my alone time with silly parties and gatherings so she could keep an eye on me. Each time I heard her voice, I wanted to jump out of the window.” He sipped his coffee. “When I told her, I just took what I could at a moment’s notice and ran. Hell, I’ll probably start running again in a few days if I find somewhere cheap enough.”
I stared at him for a moment, shocked. “Again?”
“Well I can’t stay here Richard,” he stated, as if it were obvious.
“Yes you can,” I said sharply, surprising the both of us with my tone. I was worried for Francis - everything had happened so quickly for him that it seemed like he was still in a daze, quiet and distracted. His dark circles stood out like charcoal on clean paper and his fingers were gripping his mug so hard that I thought he might break it.
“You can stay,” I insisted.
“Richard,” he laughed, looked away, looked back again. His face was crumpled in frustration. “I can’t just upend your life like this and move in with you. I’d just get in the way.”
“It’s a big house, Francis,” I said quietly, “I think we’d be alright.”
And, after a little adjusting, we were. Francis moving in finally gave me a reason to sort through whatever belongings were left in the house and between us the task was manageable. Enjoyable. Even if Francis’ neatness clashed with my preferred organised mess - not least when I returned home one day to find the entire kitchen to be reorganised in a ‘more efficient system, Richard, I don’t know how you found anything before’.
It soon became easy to share my space with Francis. I learned to pick up jars of cherries at the supermarket and buy white sugar in addition to brown. I knew which floorboards to avoid once Francis had gone to bed and what time to wake up so that the coffee he’d make for me wouldn’t be too cold. It became a habit to put the clothes in the dryer on Thursday afternoons and I could separate what was his from what was mine without thinking.
The peace lasted until Francis became bored. Francis’s restlessness flooded the house and his constant pacing nearly drove me to distraction. He’d read all of my books (‘I can’t believe you don’t own a Kafka! You’re an English teacher!’ ‘I think I own enough Tolstoy to make up for it.’ ‘Tolstoy isn’t Kafka!’) and had organised my bookshelf by author, title and colour separately before I’d had enough and tossed him a pile of old newspapers to search through the job adverts and told him to either work through them or to leave the house and not come back until he’d at least gotten himself an interview. It brought me a couple of hours of peace before Francis burst through the door late in the evening, face radiant, with shining eyes and cheeks tinged pink with the cold.
“How do you feel about the library?”
I’d visited it once a couple of weeks ago once the reading material that I’d brought with me had been used up. It was quiet, muffled by the thick dark carpet and muted colours of the walls, but charming in a coffee-stained sort of way. The elderly man at the desk perked up at our inquiry and directed us over to the girl who’d stamped my books - Vanessa, I think it was - who eagerly showed Francis the paperwork that he needed to fill out. I stood nearby, awkwardly not-really-browsing the shelves, returning the smiles Vanessa shot my way with grimaces of my own until they’d finished.
Francis’ mood had lifted as we walked back to the house, talking animatedly while the majority of his cigarette burned out in his hand. Having not smoked in some time, the smell made me cough a little and Francis shot me an inquisitive look.
“Did you quit, Richard?”
I shrugged. “Guess so. Never really smoked that much to begin with.”
“Would you prefer it if I quit?” he asked sharply. I looked at him, slightly confused.
“I don’t mind it, Francis. Just keep the windows open.”
He nodded thoughtfully, and then immediately relaunched into whatever he’d been talking about.
It started to rain quietly as we settled down in the study and Francis fiddled with the radio for a good minute before he found a channel to his liking and soft piano crooned into the room. I pulled out my massive mark book and began to plan out the details of the next week’s lessons. The high school’s teaching freedoms meant that I crafted each month at school however I pleased, adjusting timings and such when I felt I had a better grasp of how my students were doing. I had grown fond of them all to varying degrees and Francis often joked that I’d turned into a bit of a ‘mother hen, might as well have them live with us at this point honestly’. I hoped that working at the library would help him how teaching had helped me.
“Ever indulged the library girl?” Francis asked suddenly in the lull of silence in whatever music was playing.
“Who, Vanessa?” I looked across at him - a lean figure hunched over his paperwork, hair falling over his face and those ridiculous pince-nez perched on the end of his nose.
“She gave you some very pointed looks over the desk today,” he mused, staring fixedly at his papers, pen unmoving.
I sighed. “No, I haven’t. Haven’t done anything of the sort since Hampstead, since Camilla and… and you,” I mumbled.
He looked up at that. Surprise flickered faintly over his features along with something else I didn’t recognise before they fell into a familiar smirk.
“That’s a shame Richard, you used to be quite the whore.”
My face burned. I stared intently at my papers and muttered, “I suppose I want it to mean something now.”
I didn’t have to look at him to see the raised eyebrows and decided to keep my head down until the heat in my cheeks had subsided. Thankfully, Francis dropped the subject, but I did catch him glancing at me a couple of times.
Work gave structure to both of our lives and gradually we slipped into a comfortable rhythm:
I’d wake up to the sound of clattering in the kitchen and would go down to find a mug of coffee on the warm side of lukewarm and a plate of toast and eggs on account of Francis being a much earlier riser than I was.
The weekdays would pass in a flurry of lessons and each day I’d return to a quiet house under a sun that set earlier each day. I’d drop my bag of schoolwork onto my desk and go downstairs to make a pot of tea and read until Francis stumbled in. A full belly and a random documentary on the television sent Francis off to bed as I settled down to work, only going to sleep most days in the early hours of the next.
Weekends were drowsy. Plano had always been a dull barely-a-town, but in my years away most of the things that had perked up my forgettable childhood had been whittled away almost into the Californian desert landscape. Still, we found our entertainment in the coffee shops and second-hand bookstores that Plano still clung onto, even visiting the dilapidated drive-in once in a while. The cosiness worked for us and when it didn’t, the early bus into the nearest city worked just as well.
The need to preserve our finances had pushed us both to cook and we suffered a fair few disasters before we had a varied enough repertoire to satisfy both of our tastes. In the process, though, the kitchen became the part of the house that we frequented most together, even after Francis slowly passed on his cooking duties to me in return for the washing up. I grew to love cooking and on the days where I wanted to do nothing but lie on the floor, Francis’ compliments made the effort worth it. Apparently, I could ‘do no wrong in the kitchen, gosh, I didn’t think I’d stop missing takeout’.
Which I remembered with a wry laugh when Francis found me on the kitchen floor one day with scalded hands and the remains of a broken teapot around me.
“Fuck, Richard! What happened?” He hurriedly pulled me to my feet and dragged me to the sink, holding both my hands under the cold water tap by my wrists.
“Put the pot too close to the edge of the counter. Knocked it,” I muttered, my face going warm as I felt his breath drift past my cheek.
“And you tried to catch it, I assume,” he groaned. “Really, Richard.”
“Shut up. It wasn’t that hot.” Which was true - the tea had cooled since I’d made it, but it had still been hot enough for my hands to still be hurting.
“Doesn’t matter, we’re going to the hospital.”
“Francis-”
“Now.” The finality in his voice stilled any further arguments I might have made. I just nodded, and stared down at the sink. His fingers might have been shaking slightly but I couldn’t tell if that was what I was feeling against my skin or the running water.
I returned from the hospital with both of my hands wrapped in bandages with strict instructions to keep them like that for at least three days, changing the dressing each day. The scalding hadn’t been too bad, but the fact that I’d managed to catch almost the entirety of both of my hands meant that the most I could do was turn the shower on and off and Francis had to call me in sick for the rest of the week. I mourned the boredom awaiting me.
As it turned out, reality television was fascinating and I’d made my way through half a season of almost identical dyed-blonde-bitches when Francis came back the next evening with a box of pizza in hand.
“I thought this’d be the easiest-”
“Shush. Julia’s about to tell Harry that she’s cheating on him.”
“…What.”
I waved him over absently, staring at the explosive argument that was happening on the screen with glee, and Francis joined me with a pained sigh. He spent the evening voicing his disdain at the antics on the television (‘Dear God, she’s absolutely abhorrent.’) while I defensively corrected him (‘She’s just jealous because she isn’t as popular!’). To my delight, he begrudgingly began to enjoy the shallow drama unfolding on the screen before us and we often spent our spare evenings engrossed in some forgettable show.
With my new obsession, I barely noticed the days passing nor the inconvenience of not having full use of my hands until Saturday dawned and I realised that I needed to shave. Francis’ disapproving face in my head immediately shut down all thoughts of taking the bandages off early - he’d spent a lot of time each evening rewrapping my hands after I showered, time that I spent staring fixedly at the wall behind him for a reason that I couldn’t quite place - so I resigned myself to somehow managing.
A task, which I soon realised, was near impossible as I struggled to even pick up the razor with my mitten-like hands. All my floundering only resulted in me pushing it further out of my reach until I swept it onto the table in frustration.
“Really, Richard. There’s no way you’ll be able to get a clean shave with your hands like that.”
I turned around to find Francis leaning against the doorway, wearing what looked like one of my shirts. I was much broader than Francis, and it showed in the way that his collarbones were peeking out from above the neckline. I bit the inside of my lip.
“Is… is that my shirt?”
Francis smiled sheepishly, face flushing. “I accidentally took it up with my washing. It’s comfortable.” He tugged the material up from where it was slipping off his shoulder. “I’ll change if you want me to.”
Shaking my head, I mumbled, “It’s fine, suits you.” before returning my concentration to the shelf.
I heard a sigh from behind me. “Do you really think you’re going to be able to do this successfully?”
“I’ll be fine,” I told him, fumbling for the shaving foam. He watched me struggle with the lid for a minute before sighing dramatically and sweeping across the bathroom floor. Holding out his hand, he stared at me expectantly until I caved under his gaze and passed him the pot.
“Sit up on the counter, Richard,” he instructed and I obediently followed, shivering at the cool surface beneath my thighs.
Francis moved closer and I instinctively spread my legs to accommodate him. Neither of us spoke as he covered my face with shaving foam, fingers steady at the corner of my jaw, and neatly began to clean it away with the razor, leaving me to do nothing but watch him. His eyebrows were scrunched slightly in concentration and the weak bathroom bulb lit up the pale blue of his eyes until they were almost grey. He pursed his lips as he carefully dragged the razor across my skin and I suddenly felt the urge to press my fingers to them. Or perhaps my mouth.
It was only then that I realised that I’d fallen in love with Francis somewhere along the way.
I wasn’t sure what to do with the information.
One of the more noticeable outcomes of the whole affair was that Francis began to steal my shirts more frequently. As the days grew warmer, I saw him almost every morning with one of my soft, faded t-shirts draped over him. I never complained. School had come to a close far sooner than I had expected it too and that threw me as I hadn’t really done anything in Plano without it. Francis found it funny, suggesting that maybe I should go down to the river and see if I could find some ducklings to follow me around as a replacement. I instead decided to pick up running again. It had been a welcome expenditure of my energy when I was younger, done well enough to have been part of the cross-country team in high school, and it served the same purpose now, despite my ill-timed choice to start in warm weather.
The incoming summer also cursed me in the way that I rarely slept properly due to the heat. Despite growing up in California, I’d never enjoyed the heat and that feeling remained as I repeatedly woke up in the middle of the night, the only difference being that I now had the freedom to wander the landing until I cooled off. I clambered out of bed, taking care to avoid the cup of water I kept on the floor and stumbled onto the landing. The air was always somehow cooler here, even as I kept my bedroom door open, and I breathed it in deeply. In the quiet I heard a noise coming from down the corridor and froze before realising that it must have come from Francis’ room. Francis usually slept like the dead - silent and impossible to wake - so I decided to check in on him. The noises got louder as I neared his room and the open door meant I could hear the distressed tone to them and I quickened my pace.
Peering into his room, I saw him tossing and turning on his bed, the sheets tangled in his legs. Another anguished sound left his throat, fingers clutching at his shirt, and I hurried to his bedside. His face was crumpled in fear or sadness, I couldn’t tell, cheeks glistening with tears. I reached out and gently touched his shoulder but he just continued to mumble feverishly.
“Francis,” I whispered, shaking him slightly. He flinched away from the sound of my voice, one arm flailing out. I grabbed his wrist before he hit me and he began to struggle more and his words sounded more and more terrified.
“Francis!” I hissed and he finally jerked awake, breathing in ragged gasps.
“You’re okay,” I murmured, letting go of his wrist, “you’re okay.”
Francis struggled to his elbows and looked over at me. “Sorry to wake you,” he croaked.
I shook my head. “Do you want water?”
“Please.”
As I handed him the cup I kept by my bed, I asked, “Nightmare?”
“What made you think that?” he muttered wryly, taking a sip.
I sat down carefully on the edge of his bed. His face looked almost grey in the dim light filtering through from the landing and his skin was damp with sweat. Strands of his hair stuck to his forehead, the dark red of it almost black in the shadows.
“What… ” I started, hesitantly. “Was it about-”
“Yes,” Francis sighed.
I waited.
“I never expect it,” he began, “because it always starts so normally. And then suddenly it becomes the bottom of the cliff and everyone’s bodies are there and you all look like broken dolls. I… hadn’t had it in a long time. I don’t know why it came back. But this time…” He looked up at me briefly before staring down at the cup in his hand. “This time it was just you,” he whispered, “and I was holding the gun and there was so much blood.”
“That’s awful,” I murmured. “Francis, I-” I stopped, not sure what I was about to say. I couldn’t think of anything that could make things better. “Do you need anything?”
He shook his head, still looking down at his lap.
“Do… do you want me to stay?”
Francis visibly froze, knuckles going white as he gripped the cup and I sat with him quietly until I felt cold fingers snag against the back of my hand.
“Please.”
So I did. I crawled over Francis to the other side of the bed and lay down next to him, carefully tucking my limbs close to me. Francis curled up facing away from me, the sheets gathered at his waist, and I could see the knobs of his spine where the t-shirt hung low off his shoulders.
I watched over the rise and fall of his ribs until I slept.
It said a lot that Francis was still fast asleep as I woke up the next morning. His face was smushed into the pillow, hair tumbling over his eyes. I crawled out of bed as carefully as I could and padded to the bathroom, not seeing any reason to grab a shirt from my room. I hadn’t slept well - last night had brought back the memories that I’d locked away and it had been difficult to squash them away again. My near-constant dark circles had darkened almost to the point of looking bruised.
As I swiped some shaving foam on my cheek, I felt a warm face press itself into my shoulder, and bony arms wrapped themselves around my waist.
“‘Morning, Francis,” I rasped, my voice raspy from disuse.
He didn’t reply and all I felt was the cool brush of his thumb against my stomach. His fingers followed and I sucked in a sharp breath, hands braced against the edge of the sink as the white foam began to very slowly slide down my face. The room was deadly silent except for the slow drip of the tap that I hadn’t closed properly and the pounding of my heartbeat in my ears. The moment froze around me. All I could think about were the points where Francis’s body met mine: his forehead against my shoulder, the insides of his elbows at the sides of my waist, one splayed hand flat against my navel, the other trailing a delicate and burning cold touch up my stomach.
Francis stopped suddenly as the edge of his palm grazed my scar. He fumbled for it, traced its edges, pressed his fingertips into the smooth dip of skin.
“Richard,” he mumbled, breath hot against my neck, “thank you… for staying with me.” He placed his palm over the scar as he said it, and I accepted his silent apology.
Francis made to leave and I felt his lips brush gently against the side of my neck just before he slipped out of the room, not looking at the mirror as he went.
I could still feel the places where he’d been and they felt cold. Shakily, I reached out, closed the tap and leaned forwards to press my forehead against the cool porcelain sink. My neck buzzed where I remembered his lips grazing against it and I groaned.
Somehow I managed to collect myself and get dressed, only to go downstairs and find an empty kitchen. The kettle was cold. I stumbled into the hall and breathed a sigh of relief seeing his oxfords lined up neatly next to my own shoes and the front door still locked. The rest of downstairs was similarly empty as I rushed through it and ran back upstairs. I found him passed out on his bed, sprawled across the covers.
I’d surprised myself by how worried I’d been not to find Francis where I expected him to be. The tight feeling in my chest made tighter in my growing panic had subsided, and now I just leaned against the doorway and watched him sleep. Warm light flooded in through the gap in the curtains, painting over Francis’ face in gold. His hair glowed like fire against the pillows, eyelashes dark and soft against his cheeks. He’d always been beautiful, but somehow never more so than now. I indulged myself for a few more seconds before softly closing the door.
I was making dinner when he finally wandered downstairs.
“You’ve got good timing,” I called over my shoulder. Francis offered me a tired smile as he slowly began taking the cutlery out of the drawer.
“I don’t really know what-” he started, but I waved away whatever he was going to say.
“Let’s talk about it after dinner,” I told him carefully, “you must be hungry. You haven’t eaten all day.”
“I… alright.”
The nervous energy that I’d subdued bubbled up again as we ate - Francis ravenously, me barely - and together we silently set about tidying up the kitchen, busying ourselves in an effort to delay the inevitable. It was when I was watching Francis wash up that I finally dared to breach the subject.
“You wanted to talk about this morning?”
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done it,” he told me, intensely scrubbing at the plate.
“No, i-it’s fine, I…” I trailed off. “I just wanted to know why.”
Francis sighed. He rinsed off the plate. Sighed again. “It meant a lot to me, Richard. You mean a lot to me. I wanted you to know.”
“Keep talking like that and you’ll make me think that you’re in love with me,” I teased, trying to alleviate the tension between us.
Francis looked over at me, hair half-hanging over his eyes, my shirt half-hanging off his shoulders. He placed the plate on the draining board and, very quietly, said: “Maybe I am.”
I stared at him. “What.”
He huffed out a nervous laugh. “I’m not going to say it again,” he grumbled, water dripping off his hands.
Love. The word had hung unspoken in the air between us for a long time and I had contented myself with the fact that I would never hear Francis say it meaning that . He’d said it about a lot of things: the coffee shop next to the library, my mother’s old scarf that he’d found in the back of the closet, the cherries we’d bought two days ago. He’d never said it about me.
“You’re in love with me?” I asked finally.
Francis sighed exasperatedly. “Really Richard, are you that dense? I’ve been flirting with you for months did you really not-"
“Francis,” I interrupted, “I’m going to kiss you now.”
I heard him suck in air sharply through his teeth as I pushed myself up slightly onto my toes and shakily pressed my mouth to his. The kiss was soft, not unlike the first one we’d had that night so long ago, messy, yes, but so much warmer. Francis held my face in his hands as I steadied myself on his shoulders. His hands were still damp and the lukewarm soap water trickled down my cheeks and into my collar but I truly did not care.
Life went on. The patterns we’d set up for ourselves hadn’t changed, but the details had - for one, we woke up in the same bed and secondly we kissed a lot more. We tumbled into the next chapter of our lives without much fuss since we’d been half-living it already and soon I couldn’t imagine a time where I didn’t spend my evenings with Francis’ head in my lap, running my fingers through his hair. Despite what we’d been through in the time that we’d known each other, we’d built a space for ourselves together, and that space was in a house that I could finally, wholeheartedly, call home.