We hate in relative silence. I guess everyone was unsure in how to act after that.

After we cleaned the dishes, I went to take a needed shower, and by the time I was out, Eloim was already put to bed.

I had no idea how to act around Xander now. The echo of that kiss reverberated on my skin. He used the bathroom after me, so that we didn’t have much time to talk about it and it was getting late and I was getting up early tomorrow for work. Which would be the last I’d possibly see them. I changed into my PJ and prepared for bed.

It felt wrong to just end things this way. But my mind was going in circles and landing nowhere. Every time I tried to get something, I just drew a blank. I heard the bathroom door open after Xander’s shower and I decided that if my mind was unable to function, then I should go with my guts. I’m not sure if relying on the organ that produces literal crap is the best way to make life asserting decisions, but I felt the clock ticking, and it annoyed the hell out of me.

“Xander?” I said as I opened my bedroom door.

He turned around, his hand on his door, clearly about to go to bed himself.

“Yes,” I said.

“About what?” he asked confused.

“The marriage.”

His eyes widened and he looked at me in shock.

“You didn’t expect me to say yes,” I guessed. “You didn’t want me to say yes.”

“What? No,” he said, still reeling from my answer.

I bit my lip unsure of what I’d just done. Was he even serious? Was this legit?

I nodded confused and sank back into my room and closed the door.

What had just happened? I wanted to dig myself a hole to hide into, and pull the earth on top of me.

Soft knocks got me out of my downward spiral.

I tried to smooth my expression before I opened the door.

“I’m sorry about how I reacted,” said Xander who was only a few feet away from me. “I didn’t expect your answer, or at least not this quickly, but I did want you to say yes,” he said the last few words slower.

“Your hesitating,” I noted.

“I’m—let’s just say that this is not what I expected for life a couple of weeks back.”

“Ditto.”

He nodded. “How about we just take this one step at a time?”

“Sounds very reasonable.”

He gave me a shy smile, I tried to reply to him in kind.

I saw his eyes dart to the bed behind me and I felt my heart do a triple axel in my chest.

“Daddy?” whined Eloim. “Daaaaddd.”

“Probably a bad dream,” he told me.

I nodded and he left to go to bed in his own room with his son, and I went to mine with my mind in shambles.

I woke up confused to a crying mass that jumped on me.

“What’s going on?” I mumbled.

“Eloim, let Mila get up, please.”

There were a few ruffles until I understood that Eloim had had the news that he was about to leave, and it was not sitting right with him.

I spend the next half hour rocking him in my arms, with my hair going every which way, and trying to convince him that we would see each other again.

Seeing how I was a little taken, and I had to prepare for work, Xander got me some breakfast to bed that I ate with Eloim. It was adorable.

Eloim calmed down after a while, though he was really bothered by my lack of knowledge in when exactly would we see each other again.

“I guess we won’t see each other for a while,” Xander told me as I was about to leave.

“We can still call,” I suggested.

“We should,” he agreed.

“I guess I’ll have to give my notice soon.”

He nodded. “If you can leave faster, you can join us in San Francisco, and we’ll leave for Europe together?”

“I’ll see what I can do,” I said, unsure.

“Don’t worry about the plane tickets, I can take care of it.”

I nodded. “Thanks.”

“Thanks for everything, Mila.”

I nodded. “I really need to go now.”

“Have a good day.”

“Have a good trip.”

I said my goodbyes to a sulking Eloim and left.

When I returned nine hours later, the apartment was eerily quiet. I signaled for my landlord and tried to negotiate to get out of my lease early. Then I made an appointment for Lily’s and Miki’s vaccinations, even though they had received them all, they needed them again in a shorter span of time for international travel.

Part of me wondered if I was not putting the ox before the cart. What if Xander changed his mind once he was away. That evening we didn’t talk, he was probably still in the plane. We didn’t talk in the morning either because of the time-zone difference, but I received a text later telling me to call him once I’d be off of work.

After I got home, I changed out of my work clothes, walked Miki quickly, ate, then called Xander.

“Hey there,” he told me.

“Hey, how was your flight?”

“Long,” he said in a little sigh. “Eloim is—well, he’s not going very well.”

“Anything I can do?”

“I don’t know, maybe we can try?” he said. “Elo, would you like to talk to Mila?” I heard Xander ask. There were a few more words that I didn’t hear well. “Talk,” Xander said, further from the phone.

“Hello?” I asked.

There was silence, so I turned facetime on and waited for them to follow suit.

The image of a quiet Eloim was on the other side of the screen, probably held by Xander.

“Hello, how was your day?” I asked.

He opened his mouth to answer, but closed it again and looked a way.

“How about I tell you about my day yesterday and today?” I suggested.

He obviously didn’t answer.

“Yesterday, I talked to my landlord, that’s the man who owns the apartment that I live in and asked him to break my lease to that I can leave, and I got an appointment for Miki and Lily to have their vaccination so that they can travel, I told my boss today that I will stop working there soon, and I started to put a lot of my stuff on Craigslist to sell it so that I can leave and come to live with you.”

Those last words registered and his eyes snapped to mine.

“Of course I would come with Miki and Lily and there is a lot of preparation to do, but I will do it as quickly as I can, so that we could see each other soon.”

“How soon?” he asked.

“It will take at least a few weeks, maybe more.”

“It’s too long,” he said and left.

Xander flipped the phone to him. “I’m sorry about that.”

“It’s okay.”

“Did you do all of that?”

“Yeah, I’m going to have to find a tenant to replace me or I’ll be liable for the entirety of my lease. That’s the only way I could make my landlord release me, and I promised my boss I would train the next recruit, so it could take a little more than two weeks for that, and I’m far from done with all the stuff I have to sell.”

He nodded. “You can have some things shipped you know?”

“Isn’t it super expensive?”

“It depends, there are companies specialised in this. Things like your paintings and a few other things you can’t replace. Let’s settle for less than a container worth, and I can see to have it done.”

“That could be nice,” I admitted.

“If you join us in the US, you won’t need a visa as long as you don’t work here and are just visiting, but you’ll need one in Britain. I make a few inquiries, and I looked for private health insurance too.”

“Oh, I completely forgot about this one,” I admitted.

“We can do this together, right?”

“Right,” I said.

We talked a little more, but we were interrupted by a business call, so I left him to it. I send him my work schedule so that it would be easier for him to know when he could call me, as his work schedule was even more hectic than mine, and I spent my whole evening taking pictures of things that I put up for sales, made a donation pile—split into one for family, one for friends, and a last one for anyplace that takes donations.

I contacted my second boss by phone to give him my two weeks’ notice, as I didn’t want to wait too long, just in case.

I felt strange when I went to bed that night. Things were changing.