Jamie
There was something Jamie needed to tell Jo, but he hadn’t figured out how—there hadn’t been time to figure out how—and Jo had a look about her. She said she couldn’t stop thinking about him, which sounded like a good thing, but the way she burrowed into his arms on the couch made it seem like a bad thing. This was Jo seeking comfort, and of course he was happy to lie down with her and wrap his arms around her and be there for her, but was this a time when he should ask what was going on or try to wait her out?
Part of waiting her out meant sitting on his news and second-guessing himself.
Jo finally took a deep breath and shifted to prop her head on her hand, not quite looking down on him but not trying to disappear into his chest anymore, either. “I, uh.” She sniffed, even though she hadn’t started crying. Maybe she was close, but she shook her head and pushed on before he could say anything: “I got kind of bogged down thinking about The Future.” Her voice gave those words some weight.
Great. Uh. Obviously, it was an emotional subject, but he didn’t have a clear read on what aspects of the future, and if they were good feelings or bad. “Do you want to talk about it?” Ugh, and his question was far too cautious.
She smiled a little. “I think I’d rather make out, but.” Jo shook her head again and her gaze drifted. “I don’t know if I want to keep doing the research thing. I don’t know if I want to keep doing the Davis thing.” And maybe she felt him tense, because she met his eyes and smiled and swiped at an escaping tear. “I do know I want to keep doing the us thing, but my move-out date feels like it’s just around the corner.”
Okay. He still didn’t know the best way to do this, but this was the moment, so he shifted to pull his phone out of his pocket. The email was already on the screen, because that’s how close the timing was, and he handed it over to Jo. Frowning, she propped herself up more to have a look at it, and he sat up, too, trying to read beyond her frown.
“Wait, what is this?” Jo finally asked, even though it was right there: receipt of a down payment.
“I’ve been looking at apartments,” he explained, and it wasn’t quite trying to walk a tightrope blindfolded, but this felt like something he had to do carefully. “I’d started with houses and apartments, but … the timing …”
Jo scrolled back up. “A one-bedroom apartment?”
Jamie nodded, even though that seemed a bit dangerous when he wasn’t sure how high off the ground he was. “The property manager called this morning to say he was down to the last one with that layout. You’ve got it for a year.”
She blinked. “What do you mean, I’ve got it for a year?”
“Well, I wasn’t going to ask you to move in here.” He gestured around them at Mom’s place. “Not even as some sort of stopgap while we look at houses.”
“Houses are ridiculously expensive in Marquette,” she argued back, but that meant she’d looked.
Jamie nodded slowly. “I’ve got a nest egg. Dad left all of us a lot. The food truck’s doing well, so I’ve been able to keep adding to it.” He licked his lips, because she still hadn’t fully reacted yet. “I didn’t want to buy us a house without your input.”
Jo slowly looked up, still almost hunched over his phone.
“So I viewed the apartments, and that one”—he wanted to reach over to tap the screen, but he also didn’t want to disturb her calm in case it meant she’d turn him down—“is the one I figured would be big enough for both of us, depending on … well.” Shit, he’d stumbled right into the heart of the thing. “If you decide you want to keep me. And then we’ll have time to figure out the next step.” He blinked and sort of rewound some of that in his head. “August 15. You can move in on the fifteenth and then it’s yours until the fourteenth next year.” He carefully pressed his lips together because, if he kept talking, he’d just make things even more precarious.
She shook her head a little. “You got us an apartment.”
“Yes.” Technically it was her apartment, because he had his room here, but yeah, he’d picked it out. She’d never seen it, even though the building wasn’t all that far from where she lived now. That was part of the appeal, a sort of continuation of the summer beyond her planned date, but it was risky. He’d gone ahead and made some pretty big decisions about her future, or at least made decisions that opened up some options about her future, and there was a huge difference between doing all this behind her back and supporting her in the moment when she only needed a little nudge to keep moving in the direction she’d already chosen.
For all he knew, that it’s the last one, so take it or lose it spiel was a lie meant to get him to jump. Well, he’d jumped.
This breath brought the animation back into Jo’s body and she laughed a little as she carefully set his phone down. “God, Jamie.” She reached for his face and he noticed her hands were shaking. For a moment she searched his eyes, but maybe she couldn’t find what she really wanted to say because she ended up shrugging and whispering “Thank you.”
It was plenty. Jamie leaned in to kiss her, and then pulled her down on the couch again, this time for more than just a soothing embrace.
Chapter Thirty-Nine – coming November 8
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