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into the taut silence.
    “Yeah?” He sounded defeated. I skimmed my hands up his sides and rested them on his shoulders.
    “I love you. Thank you for the Christmas gift. Now, can you tell me what you want to talk about before my agile mind leaps to any more unfounded conclusions?”
    He rested his forehead against mine, and I caught the twitch of his lips and his exhale of relief. “I’m taking a job here in town. It’s a full time live-in position. The pay’s not as great as my previous job, but there’s less travel and I’ll have a great boss.”
    Why that urgently required my attention, I didn’t know. I nodded. “Sounds awesome, Cris. I’m so happy for you. The interview went well then.”
    “It was beyond my wildest dreams. I had no idea you’d put me through the ringer like that.”
    I blinked and swallowed. “Me?”
    “Ben, will you marry me?”
    My knees went weak, and I leaned on the door for support because I needed it, not because it was the farthest I could get from Cris. “Marry?”
    “I want to spend the rest of my life, here with you. I want to live with you, to love you, to fight with you.” His lips twisted into a wry grimace. “Though not right now. Now, I’d like to just know that you feel the same way I do and all this plotting and planning isn’t going to be wasted.”
    “Plotting and planning?” I rolled my eyes. “I’m a little lost. Your new job is going to keep you here more, and you want to get married.” The idea was warming on me. “That’s kind of a huge step, from open relationship to ball and chain, isn’t it?”
    He growled. Literally, actually growled. “Open relationship? I don’t know about you, but I stopped seeing other people so long ago I can’t remember what sex with anyone else is like. You’d better just nod and agree with me, because if you have been seeing other people, I don’t really want to know about it.”
    “I haven’t. I haven’t wanted to, either. But, you know…you could just move in here, we could take things slowly.” My head was speaking but my heart demanded to know if I was crazy. I’d just been bemoaning my boyfriend who didn’t want to commit twenty-four hours ago. Why couldn’t I just accept this and run with it?
    Cris wrapped his arms around me, spun us both around and settled me against his chest as he leaned on the door. “Look around you, Ben. What do you see?”
    “Our room.” I played along.
    “Your nightstand, our bed, my nightstand. Your chest of drawers, my chest of drawers. Your side of the closet.” He emphasized that with a thump of his heel on the door. “My side of the closet. I already live here. The only thing of mine that isn’t here is my mail. I’ll just give up the apartment. It’s a little pricy for a mailbox, anyway.”
    It was true. Seen from that perspective, it wasn’t as much of a leap as I had imagined. The problem wasn’t that Cris was skipping steps, it was my habitual aversion to change. Not all change was bad, though, as I had learned through my playing with Cris’s gift. If Cris was going to be home more, then things would be changing anyway. I made a snap decision. I’d do it. “Yes. Yes. I accept. Get rid of the mailbox, have a yard sale. My mom is going to freak. She was just telling me about how she approved of you.” The other shoe dropped. I’m always waiting for that to happen, and this time it dropped with a tremendous thud. “They were in on this, weren’t they? Knew what you were going to do?”
    “Yes. I couldn’t have done it without them. Later, I need to call and thank them for all the help. For now, does that mean I got the job, boss man?”
    Slow on the uptake, that was me. “Yeah, you’re hired.”
    His eyes lit up and his arms tightened around me. I’d never felt as secure as in that moment. Except…I didn’t make a lot as a librarian, and the old story about two could live as cheaply as one? I didn’t think that was true. I could barely survive on