Chapter 22: Confirmation
Sunlight, thin and pale, cut through the gap in the curtains and landed directly across Hannah’s face. She stirred, not to the shrill beep of an alarm, but to the gradual press of daylight against her eyelids. The space in bed was a warm, tangled knot of limbs. Matt’s arm was a lead weight across her stomach, his face buried in the pillow beside her, breathing deep and even.
She lay still, blinking. The digital clock on the nightstand glowed 10:07 a.m. in angry red numbers. A Sunday. No warehouse hum, no forklift beeps, just the distant sound of a church bell and the lazy drone of a lawnmower somewhere.
Last night’s conversation felt like a dream, a heavy, shapeless thing that had spoken itself into the dark. A month before you’re due. The words had mass. They occupied the room now, sitting silently in the corner like an uninvited guest.
She carefully extricated herself, Matt grumbling incoherently, his arm flopping to the empty space she left behind. The wood floor was cool under her bare feet. She padded to the kitchen, her mind already reaching for the routine, the normal. The coffee canister was nearly empty. She scraped the last gritty remnants into the filter, the smell of old grounds sharp and comforting.
While the coffee gurgled and spat its first brown drops, she leaned against the counter and watched him sleep. In the clear morning light, he looked younger. The usual easy confidence he wore like a second skin was softened in sleep. He was just a man in a rumpled bed, one arm thrown over his eyes. The man who wanted to buy a house.
The coffee finished. She poured two mugs, left his black on the side table, and took hers to the couch. She curled into the corner, pulling the fraying afghan over her legs, and sipped. It was bitter, a little stale, but it was warmth and wakefulness.
The sound of the mug clicking on the table finally roused him. He pushed himself up on his elbows, hair sticking out at wild angles. He squinted at her, then at the clock, then back at her. A slow, sleep-creased smile spread across his face.
“You robbed the last of the coffee,” he said, his voice gravelly.
“I made you some. It’s weak, but it’s caffeinated.”
He swung his legs out of bed, stretching, the tendons in his back pulling tight. He snagged his boxers from the floor, stepped into them, and wandered over to retrieve his mug. He took a long sip, grimaced, but didn’t complain. He came to the couch, not to his usual spot, but right next to her, lifting the afghan and sliding in so their hips and thighs were pressed together from knee to shoulder. He was a furnace.
“Morning,” he said, leaning over to kiss her temple. His lips were warm.
“Morning.”
He settled back, arm around her, pulling her into his side. She went willingly, fitting herself against him, her head on his chest. The afghan covered them both. They sat in silence, drinking the bad coffee, listening to the lawnmower finish its pass and start another.
“What’s the agenda?” he finally asked, his voice a soft rumble under her ear.
“No agenda.”
“Perfect.”
He reached for the remote with his free hand. The TV flickered to life, still on the streaming service from days ago. He navigated to their show, the one with the space pirates and the cheesy CGI. He hit play on the next episode. The opening theme, a bombastic synth-orchestral mess, filled the room.
It was a ritual. Lazy Sunday disintegration. They’d done it a dozen times. But today, everything felt different. The weight of his arm around her wasn’t just comfort; it was a claim. The plot of the show—a smuggler trying to outrun a galactic warrant—seemed trivial, a background buzz to the louder narrative unfolding silently in her head.
He laughed at a dumb joke, his chest shaking under her cheek. She smiled, but her mind was elsewhere. In the bathroom cabinet. On a small, rectangular box she’d bought three days ago and hadn’t yet opened. She thought about dates, about her body, about a faint, fluttering nausea she’d blamed on the stir-fry.
She must have tensed. His hand, which had been absently stroking her arm, stilled. “You okay?”
“Mm-hmm. Just thinking.”
“Dangerous pastime,” he murmured, his attention half on the screen where a spaceship was dodging asteroids.
“What were the houses like?” The question was out before she could stop it, quiet but clear in the space between dialogue on the TV.
His fingers resumed their gentle motion on her arm. “Which ones?”
“The ones you were looking at. Online.”
He was quiet for a moment. The show played on. “There was a blue one. Ranch style. Needed a new roof, but the kitchen was big. Had one of those old porcelain sinks, deep as a tub.” He took a sip of coffee. “Then there was a newer one, in a development. Beige. Everything was beige. Felt like living inside a sandcastle.”
“Which did you like?”
“The blue one. It had a weird little tree in the backyard. A persimmon, I think. Never seen one in real life.”
A persimmon tree. The specificity of it undid her. He wasn’t just looking at square footage and mortgage calculators. He was looking at trees.
“You’d have to fix the roof,” she said.
“I know how to fix a roof.”
“Since when?”
“Since YouTube.” He said it so plainly, so matter-of-fact, that a laugh bubbled out of her, tight and sudden. He grinned, squeezing her. “What? I’m handy. I can learn.”
They lapsed back into silence, watching the show but not really seeing it. His thumb traced idle circles on her skin. The circles felt like plans. Like blueprints.
By 1:30, the coffee was gone, the show’s season finale had ended on a ridiculous cliffhanger, and the emptiness of the fridge was a palpable presence in the apartment.
“We need food,” Matt said, untangling himself and standing. He stretched, his t-shirt riding up. “Real food. Not leftover stir-fry.”
The grocery store was a ten-minute drive, a sprawling, overlit place that always felt vaguely apocalyptic on weekends. They got a cart. Matt pushed, one hand casually on the bar, the other drifting to the small of Hannah’s back as they moved through the automatic doors into the blast of chilled air.
It was a normal chore. But nothing felt normal.
In the produce section, he held up a bulb of fennel. “What even is this?”
“It tastes like licorice. Put it down.”
He did, but then he picked up a pomegranate, hefting it like a baseball. “This looks like a grenade.”
“It kinda is. It’ll stain everything.”
He leaned down, his lips close to her ear, his voice a low murmur meant only for her over the Muzak version of a pop song. “Maybe I want to make a mess.”
A flush spread from her neck to her cheeks. She ducked away, selecting apples and avoiding his eyes, a smile tugging at her mouth.
In the cereal aisle, he stopped the cart abruptly. He looked at her, his gaze intense, playful. “Okay, serious question. Life-or-death. Crunchy or marshmallowy?”
She folded her arms. “You know I’m a shredded wheat purist. It’s like eating hay, but it’s responsible.”
“That’s your problem, Hannah. Too responsible.” He grabbed a box of something chocolate-filled and frosted, tossing it into the cart. “We’re getting this. For research. To see if it really turns the milk brown.”
“That’s not research, that’s diabetes.”
“It’s living,” he corrected, pushing the cart forward, his hip bumping hers.
His flirting was a constant, low-grade current. A hand brushing hers as they both reached for the same loaf of bread. A pointed, raised eyebrow when she debated between two kinds of pasta sauce. In the dairy aisle, he came up behind her while she was comparing yogurt prices, his front to her back, his chin resting on top of her head. He was so tall he could see over her easily.
“You’re in my light,” she said, but she didn’t move.
“You’re taking too long. It’s fermented milk, Hannah. Just grab one.”
“There’s a fifty-cent difference!”
“And you’re burning fifty cents worth of calories just thinking about it.” He reached around her, his long arm snagging the more expensive Greek yogurt. “This one. More protein. You need your strength.” His tone was innocent, but the implication was not. He dropped it in the cart, his arms circling her for a second in a quick, tight hug before he let go.
By the time they got to the checkout, her nerves were singing. It was all so painfully domestic, yet charged with the unspoken. The clerk, a bored teenager, scanned their items: the irresponsible cereal, the good yogurt, the ingredients for a proper roast chicken. Matt loaded the bags back into the cart.
Outside, the afternoon had turned grey, a cool breeze cutting through the parking lot. As they approached the car, he stopped her with a hand on her wrist.
“Hey.”
She turned. He was looking at her, his playful mask slipped just a little. The wind tousled his short hair. In the flat, concrete light of the parking lot, his face was serious.
“Whatever happens,” he said, his voice quiet but firm, cutting through the rattle of other carts. “The lock, the house, the… whatever. We’re doing it, okay? Together.”
He wasn’t asking. He was stating a fact. We’re doing it. It covered everything—the roof repairs, the grocery runs, the terrifying possibility growing in the silence between them.
She couldn’t speak around the sudden tightness in her throat. She just nodded, once, a sharp, quick movement.
He accepted that. He leaned down and kissed her, right there between the parked cars. It wasn’t a deep kiss, but it was solid. A seal on the promise.
He broke away, popped the trunk, and started loading bags. Hannah stood for a second, the wind chilling the place his lips had been. She watched his easy movements, the sure way he handled the bags. He was already building things in his head. Blue houses. Persimmon trees. A future with foundation.
She got in the passenger seat. He slid behind the wheel, started the car, and reached for her hand, lacing his fingers through hers on the center console as he backed out of the spot. He drove one-handed, his thumb stroking her knuckle in a steady, rhythmic pattern.
She looked out the window at the passing strip malls, but she didn’t see them. She saw a bathroom cabinet. She saw a little plastic stick. She saw a blue front door.
His thumb kept moving on her skin, a silent, relentless metronome counting down the seconds until they got home, until the groceries were put away, until there were no more chores left to do as excuses. The momentum of the day, lazy as it was, had been steadily, irrevocably pulling her towards that moment. The car hummed beneath them, carrying them forward.