Love Heals

“Wha-of course not!” He sputtered. “I want to have this chance at something new,” the surprise in his eyes was suddenly tinged with nerves.

“I’m not the one vetoing every decent place we come across.” She pointed out. His eyebrows furrowed.

“Rach, no. That’s not-” He leaned forward catching her face in his hands, eyes darkening. “There’s nothing I want more than to be able to start again, a new beginning for me…for us. Trust me.”

Her heart kicked in her chest. It did that a lot when Emilio looked at her like that. Her gaze flickered down to his lips.

“So,” she said, distracted by his proximity. “What are we going to do? If you can’t find a place you like, where-”

He cut her off by kissing her, and she felt a familiar surge of heat the moment his lips touched hers. She’d thought that would go away after a while, just the spark of a rekindled relationship. But if anything, it’d gotten stronger over the weeks, deeper. Just as her fingertips touched the hem of his shirt, he pulled away.

“This is an open house.” He said breathlessly. “We probably shouldn’t-”

“Probably not.” She pretended to agree. Although she wasn’t nearly as prudish as he was. She stood up, holding out her hand, and he took it.

“This is fine.” He smiled at her, gesturing at the apartment. “I like it, it’s good. I’ll take it.”

There was something missing, in his smile. She didn’t get that swooping feeling in her stomach that she always did when he directed it at her. He was lying. But she was starting to realize that they would  never find a place that he liked. She wasn’t sure exactly what he needed to make it feel like home, but she figured they probably wouldn’t find it in the classifieds.

“Okay.” She gave his hand a squeeze, practically feeling his unhappiness seeping through her skin. It settled like a weight in her stomach. The smile she sent him felt as forced as his looked. “We’ll take it.”

*****

Two weeks later, he had moved in. Or, more accurately, Emilio got a text at his desk telling him that Rachel had just got off the phone with the movers and his apartment was all set. The one he hated.

It wasn’t that the floors weren’t nice, because they were. And the walls were thick, the windows were big, the space was light and airy. It was everything he wanted.

But.

He remembered the way he used to feel when his front door would close behind him at the end of the day. Safe. Protected. Home.

And he didn’t feel any of that at the new place. It was a quick drive from the center, at least, so if he left now he could be there in fifteen minutes.

And Rachel would be there; she’d been crazy helpful in getting him moved in, volunteering to supervise the process so that Emilio didn’t need to exert himself, getting him in touch with a designer who identified pieces of furniture he would need at his new place and had them moved in without too much hassle. He was grateful to her; and hopeful that it all meant something. They hadn’t been…intimate…since their first date but they’d certainly spent a lot of time together. And not just during therapy. It had to mean something.

And that’s all that mattered, really. Even if the rest of it didn’t feel right. He would have her. So he grabbed his phone and his cane plus a few weights he knew weren’t supposed to leave the building (he was actually invested in what he did, so sue him), and had himself driven to his new home.

On the way, he told himself that it would be good, at least, to have the boxes off the floor. They had been driving him crazy, and Rachel knew that, and considering her general aversion to any kind of organization he was suddenly struck by a wave of affection for her finishing the unpacking. It usually took him a month or two, figuring out where things should go, but she just puts things places. The coffee table went there, because it fit there. The bookshelf went there, because there’s a wall there, and come on Emilio, don’t be ridiculous, who puts a bookshelf in the middle of a room. It’s refreshing.

So.

She had certainly simplified the unpacking process.

He pulled up outside, feeling a tiny shadow of his old comfort at the light streaming out from his new living room window from the penthouse suite.

At least, he reminded himself, he was all unpacked. It was something. He needed to invite his family for a housewarming dinner.

Note to self.

Maybe Rachel could come too. It was high time she met them.

He swung open the door, plastering a smile on his face. And when he saw the apartment, it slid right off again.

It was-well.

Unrecognizable.

Part of that was due to the lack of boxes everywhere, the hardwood now shining up at him from the foyer to the back wall. The walls had been painted, and maybe he hadn’t been here since they moved all the boxes in a week ago, but he couldn’t believe how different it looked. How much work had been done. The same blue from his old apartment covered the walls, his soccer posters hung in exactly the same formation on the kitchen wall.

Dropping his keys, he moved slowly through the house, taking in the way his movies and x-box games were aligned on the shelf, in exactly the same order as before, a hybrid genre-director system he’d never really been able to explain to anyone. His eyes fell on a Blu-Ray, one of the Friends specials, a case that sat out on the TV stand for weeks before the move, as though it had all come that way, exactly as it had been before, straight from the box.

“Rach?”

“In here.”

He followed her voice into the bedroom, stopping in the doorway when he saw her.

She was sitting cross-legged on the bed, hair up in a messy bun, wearing his Talk Footy To Me t-shirt.

She made his heart stop.

Her eyes were buried in a book, something Emilio had bought her a couple days ago about BDSM. She’d told him she was thinking about writing some fan fiction of her own on tumblr and he’d wanted to help however he could. Plus he was looking forward to seeing what her brain would churn out from that.

“Rach.” He said again, quietly. She looked up. “What did you do?”

Her mouth opened, then closed. Something like uncertainty flashed over her features, an emotion he didn’t see there very often.

“I unpacked.” She told him. He walked over to the bed, taking the book from her hands and placing it on the bedside table. Which, he noticed, was about exactly the same distance from the bed as before, even though the room was about twice as big as his last place. He sat beside her, cupping her cheek in his hand.

“You…how could you even remember all this?” He asked. “My books, the movie…they’re exactly the same.”

Her lips quirked, like he was missing an inside joke.

Then her face turned serious.

“I just wanted this to feel like home. And I don’t know what that means for you, but I just thought maybe if everything was exactly like it was before-”

“Rachel-” He tried to say thank you, but it didn’t seem like enough, because she didn’t have any idea what she had done, so instead he just kissed her.