“What?” he asked when I said nothing.
I stopped focusing on his eyes and focused on him.
“Called my landlord to check in. He’s letting me out of my lease, which is his nice way of saying he’s evicting me.”
The easy we’d fallen into being together together disintegrated when his anger hit the room with a heavy weight, and I felt my back straighten.
“Say that again,” he ordered.
“It’s okay, Ren. If you’re okay with me hanging here awhile, I’ll find a new place.”
“No, Ally, it isn’t fuckin’ okay. Everything you own is ash in an explosion that was not your responsibility. It had nothing to do with you and everything to do with a pot-addled moron in New Mexico you haven’t seen in two years. So it’s not okay that you pay further for that guy bein’ a moron. You’ve tolerated too many knocks in too short a period of time. Your landlord isn’t going to land another one.”
He reached to his champagne, threw some back and finished his alpha badass statement while placing the glass on the table.
“I’ll have a word with him. You’re good to stay here until they repair the damage.”
“Ren, I’m down with being let out of the lease.”
He again turned his gaze to me. “I’m not down with it. I’ll have a word.”
“But—”
“Ally, no.”
I waited for him to say more. But it seemed he figured, Ally, no, was the end of it, and I knew this because he resumed eating.
I took in a deep breath. Then I ate more shrimp. Then I took a sip of champagne. After that, I took another deep breath.
Nope.
None of that worked. I didn’t feel calm. I felt like mouthing off, being a smartass and making a massive point.
However, that was not an option open to me during a special dinner with my hot guy.
So I turned my eyes to Ren and did everything I could to break our pattern of fighting instead of conversing.
That was to say, I struggled to sound calm when I said, “It’s both cool and hot, this gig of you wanting to protect me and stick up for me. But I just want to make it clear right now, honey, that you don’t get to make and carry through decisions about my life without discussing them with me. And just to be crystal clear, discussing is a courtesy I extend to you. My life is my life, and in the end, I make the decisions.”
His head had turned to me while I was talking and I was feeling pleased with myself for dropping the “honey” in my statement, thinking that softened it nicely.
“Your life is not your life,” he replied, and I expected a lot of things, particularly him saying something in Asshole or him dismissing me.
That I didn’t expect. I also didn’t understand it.
“I don’t follow,” I told him.
He shook his head and stated, “I’ve changed my mind. I won’t talk to your landlord.”
That was better.
Surprising. Surprisingly easy. But better.
Maybe he wanted to break the pattern of shouting at each other too.
“Thanks, honey,” I said softly.
“Because you’re movin’ in with me.”
I blinked.
“What?”
He put his fork down and turned fully to me and I didn’t suspect this boded good things.
I would be proved right.
“Ally, your life is not your life. We love each other, and in case you missed it, that means we’ve committed to each other. So your life and how you lead it affects me. So yeah, we discuss things. But you don’t make decisions we disagree on about shit that affects me—in other words, your life. You also need to have a mind to my need to protect you. I know this is not news that I have this need. You picked me, you signed on for that. But all that’s moot. We already decided you’re gonna stay awhile. Yesterday, you lost everything. Today, you found out you can’t go back. Backed in a corner by circumstances, thinking on it, shit often happens for a reason and even bad shit leads to good things. And this particular good thing is that there’s absolutely no reason not to make the arrangement we already agreed on permanent.”
“Zano, making that permanent is a big leap from what we had to roomies.”
“Baby,” his voice (and expression, I’ll add—double whammy) turned sweet, “there is never a time we’re gonna be just roomies.”
My eyes narrowed, not because I didn’t like what he said (a lot).
They narrowed because I was getting a sneaking suspicion he turned on the sweet in order to get his way. I’d missed it for months because usually by the time he turned on the sweet, we were shouting at each other.
Things were now coming clear.
