I take a step back. “Wait. What?”
He reaches for my hand and pulls me inside the apartment. “Welcome home, Lily.”
I pause in the foyer.
Yes. I said foyer. There is a foyer.
“You bought an apartment?”
He nods slowly, gauging my reaction.
“You bought an apartment,” I repeat.
He’s still nodding. “I did. Is that okay? I figured since we live together now we could use the extra room.”
I spin in a slow circle. When my eyes land on the kitchen, I pause. It’s not as big as Allysa’s kitchen, but it’s just as white and almost as beautiful. There’s a wine cooler and a dishwasher, two things my own apartment doesn’t have. I walk into the kitchen and look around, scared to touch anything. Is this really my kitchen? This can’t be my kitchen.
I look in the living room at the cathedral ceilings and the huge windows overlooking Boston Harbor.
“Lily?” he says from behind me. “You aren’t mad, are you?”
I spin and face him, realizing that he’s been waiting on me to react for the past several minutes. But I’m completely speechless.
I shake my head and bring my hand up to cover my mouth. “I don’t think so,” I whisper.
He walks up to me and takes my hands in his, pulling them up between us. “You don’t think so?” He looks worried and confused. “Please give me a naked truth, because I’m starting to think maybe I shouldn’t have done this as a surprise.”
I look down at the hardwood floor. It’s real hardwood. It’s not laminate. “Okay,” I say, looking back up at him. “I think it’s crazy that you just went and bought an apartment without me. I feel like that’s something we should have done together.”
He’s nodding and it looks like he’s about to spit out an apology, but I’m not finished.
“But my naked truth is that . . . it’s perfect. I don’t even know what to say, Ryle. Everything is so clean. I’m scared to move. I might get something dirty.”
He blows out a rush of air and pulls me to him. “You can get it dirty, babe. It’s yours. You can get it as dirty as you want.” He kisses the side of my head and I don’t even say thank you yet. It seems like such a small response to such a huge gesture.
“When do we move in?”
He shrugs. “Tomorrow? I have the day off. It’s not like we have a whole lot of stuff. We can spend the next few weeks buying new furniture.”
I nod, trying to run through tomorrow’s schedule in my head. I already knew Ryle was off tomorrow, so I didn’t have anything planned.
I suddenly feel the need to sit down. There aren’t any chairs, but luckily, the floor is clean. “I need to sit down.”
Ryle helps me to the floor and then he lowers himself in front of me, still holding my hands.
“Does Allysa know?” I ask him.
He smiles and nods his head. “She’s so excited, Lily. I’ve been thinking about getting an apartment here for a while now. After we decided to stay in Boston for good, I just went ahead with it to surprise you. She helped, but I was starting to worry she’d tell you before I had the chance.”
I just can’t wrap my head around this. I live here? Me and Allysa get to be neighbors now? I don’t know why I feel like this should bother me, because I really am excited about it.
He smiles and then says, “I know you need a minute to process everything, but you haven’t seen the best part and it’s killing me.”
“Show me!”
He grins and pulls me to my feet. We make our way through the living room and down a hallway. He opens each door and tells me what the rooms are, but doesn’t even give me time to go in any of them. By the time we make it to the master bedroom, I’ve concluded that we live in a three-bedroom, two-bath apartment. With an office.
I don’t even have time to process the beauty of the bedroom as he pulls me across the room. He reaches a wall covered by a curtain and he turns and faces me. “It’s not a ground that you can plant a garden in, but with a few pots, it can come close.” He pulls the curtain aside and opens a door, revealing a huge balcony. I follow him outside, already daydreaming about all the potted plants I could fit up here.
“It overlooks the same view as the rooftop deck,” he says. “We’ll always have the same view we had from the night we met.”
It took a while to sink in, but it all hits me in this moment and I just start crying. Ryle pulls me to his chest and wraps his arms tightly around me. “Lily,” he whispers, running his hand over my hair. “I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
I laugh between my tears. “I just can’t believe I live here.” I pull away from his chest and look up at him. “Are we rich? How can you afford this?”
He laughs. “You married a neurosurgeon, Lily. You aren’t necessarily strapped for cash.”
His comment makes me laugh and then I cry some more. And then we have our very first visitor because someone begins pounding on the door.
“Allysa,” he says. “She’s been waiting down the hall.”
I run to the front door and swing it open and we both hug and squeal and I might even cry a little more.
We spend the rest of the evening at our new apartment. Ryle orders Chinese takeout and Marshall comes down to eat with us. We have no tables or chairs yet, so the four of us sit in the middle of the living room floor and eat straight out of the containers. We talk about how we’ll decorate, we talk about all the neighborly things we’ll do together, we talk about Allysa’s impending delivery.