Page 29 of Except Emerson (Detroit ABCs #7)

“W hat was it that I said about moving?”

“When you carried the last bag of stuff out to Hernán’s car, you announced, ‘I’m never moving anything again. You can quote me,’” I answered.

“I guess you just did that,” Levi said. “You have an amazing auditory memory. Maybe it’s because you didn’t like the visual stuff.”

Maybe, but more likely it was that I recorded it all (to the best of my ability) and then read through it a lot (also to the best of my ability).

I was very sure of what he’d said about moving, because it had been in the last painful moments before Hernán had driven away and I probably would have remembered it even without the transcript.

And here we were today, moving again. I would remember this too, because it was wonderful. It was also painful, but not emotionally. My hip would probably ache tomorrow but it was well worth it.

“Why does my mom’s couch weigh a metric ton?” he asked me. “Why am I a person who’s taking my mom’s couch?”

“It’s sturdy and it has lots of wear left in it,” I answered. “I took Hernán’s couch. What’s the difference who had it first?”

“You don’t think I’m old enough to buy my own furniture?”

“You could, if you wanted to,” I said. We had finally gone over his finances, which had eased my mind a lot.

I had seen that he wasn’t rolling in money, but he definitely had enough for a new sofa.

“I think it’s silly to be wasteful,” I continued.

“When I was a kid, I never had anything new and I didn’t mind it. ”

“My sister Liv hated getting hand-me-downs,” he said. “She wanted things that were just hers and sometimes Ava’s stuff didn’t ft right. Liv’s shorter and not as…” He looked down at his chest.

“Busty?” I suggested, and checked on my own area. Still not a great situation there.

“She said all that about used clothes when we were kids, but now she and Aves love sharing baby gear. And I like this couch,” he said, “despite how it weighs as much as a bank vault. I’d rather not waste money on a new one and I’m glad my mom has always hated it and wanted to give it away. Her irrational feelings are my gain.”

“I don’t know why anyone would hate it, and Coral obviously loves it.” The cat was curled on a cushion, asleep. She had already made herself at home in this apartment.

“Good, we’re all in agreement,” Levi answered. “Come on, we’re burning daylight.”

That wasn’t exactly true, since dusk was falling.

We’d started late and had gotten a lot done when the temperature dropped slightly this afternoon, but it was still August. Fortunately, unlike Hernán’s dreadful move-out day, the air conditioning was functioning.

It had been Levi’s idea to work when it was cooler, either early or late afternoon, but I had said we couldn’t start in the morning because he couldn’t miss his crew practice, of course.

Things had gone quickly since he didn’t really have that much stuff—most of it, he’d explained, he had left with Mary Evelyn.

In other words, he hadn’t stolen it while she was in the hospital or otherwise incapacitated, which spoke very well of him.

This move, from his friend August’s apartment in Detroit to Hernán’s former place in Ferndale, had been a piece of cake.

Well…maybe not cake, because that was something which people looked forward to and enjoyed.

I would just say that this move was a lot easier, especially since he hadn’t let me carry very much.

Anyway, I was getting stronger because I’d been doing yoga and taking multiple walks a day, not just waiting for Levi’s companionship.

I did like it better when we went together, but solo was also ok and I’d met a few neighbors.

We weren’t really friends with actual relationship bonds, but we were saying hello to each other and waving. It was nice.

But starting today, I also had a neighbor who was an actual friend, because Levi would be across the thin, stained carpet of the hall. “Would it be crazy to rent the apartment in your building?” he had asked me on the night of his regatta, the night that followed the Grant sighting.

Since we were texting, I had taken a moment to formulate a response to his question. I didn’t want to sound pathetic, desperate, or abnormal, and my pause had given him time to write more.

“I hate thinking that Ava is right about this like she’s right about everything else, but I have to get out of here and why not? I won’t tell her about it, and that way she won’t hurt her other shoulder by patting herself on the back.”

“It’s better to listen to your sister,” I’d finally responded.

That absolved me of any responsibility in the decision-making process, in my opinion.

Then I had listed some of the building’s attributes: a quiet street, no second-floor neighbors since both units had been damaged in a severe rainstorm that had caused the roof to leak, and new flooring and paint (due, again, to the water leaks).

“Also, the window in that place works,” I added. Mine still didn’t (thanks to that storm).

“Then I guess I have to go for it,” he had written back, and he had.

Now, we were neighbors. The building would feel better with someone else in it, because even if Coral and I were making progress, we clearly didn’t have the bond that Levi and I had.

He never ignored me for days on end as she did, but I also didn’t think that he would do anything to purposefully hurt my feelings.

He was upset with his friend August, and maybe it was because that guy had said some mean things about me—

“Damn!” Levi yelled. There was a crash in the other room and he further yelled that the closet doors had fallen off again, just like they’d collapsed onto Hernán. I went to help.

“We should probably talk about boundaries,” I mentioned as he tried to fit the very small cylinder at the top of the door into a very small hole in the opening to the closet. My job was to stand on a chair and help direct the process. “Go a little to the left—my left.”

“We’re facing the same way, so we should have the same left.” He swore, in English. “Did you mean right, or left?”

“Toward me—almost got it,” I encouraged as it slipped again and the door fell onto his foot. “We can wait and discuss boundaries later, when this is fixed.”

“I’m interested in what you mean and I’m also wondering how much I need closet doors.” He tried again to fit it together.

“Almost! That was close. I mean, we should establish when we’re going to see each other, so we don’t feel like we’re in each other’s business all the time,” I explained.

“Are you thinking I’m going to turn into Hernán and monitor—” He stopped. “Is that it? Did I get it in the top?”

“Yes!” I said happily. “Now we have to fit in the bottom piece.”

“I don’t really need doors,” Levi told me, but he knelt down to try.

“I know you were afraid that I was going be a voyeur or something, but I’m not and he wasn’t doing that either.

He was worried because you weren’t ok. It clicked in!

” He stood and tried the closet door, which slid closed. “Thanks for helping.”

“I’m not angry at him for watching over me. It felt weird because it was a new experience,” I explained, “but what I mean now is that you don’t have to worry about me bothering you all the time. I’m talking about boundaries for me, not you.”

“You don’t bother me,” he said. He lifted me off the chair and put me on the floor.

“Oh,” I said, slightly off-kilter. That had felt vaguely like being in the barn dance scene from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers . I’d been studying cinematic chorography as of late. “I wish I could dance,” I mentioned nonsensically.

“We will tomorrow,” he answered, because that was when we were going to his cousin’s wedding. “Why would you bother me, Emerson?”

I shook my head. “I don’t want to. I’m trying to establish limits, since I know that people like their privacy.”

“Sure, and if I’m busy over here with some secret agent kind of stuff and can’t be disturbed, I’ll let you know,” he said, and threw himself down on the couch that we’d picked up from his parents’ house.

They had been so nice and so happy to see us together, and his mom had wanted to ask me—me!

—about the outfit she’d chosen for the wedding.

I had thought it was great, and told her so.

“Here’s another question,” Levi told me.

The cat climbed over and settled on his lap, and he petted her.

“Why did you feel like it was a new experience to have Hernán watching you? I get that you probably didn’t have neighbors spying too much in the past, but you had a boyfriend.

You had a mom, too, and they must have kept an eye on you. ”

I sat, too, close enough that I could continue my desensitization training with Coral. I scratched her head. “No one had to do that.”

“I know that things change when we grew up, but I still watched out for Mary Evelyn.”

“Really?” Because I remembered what I had written in my transcript of the first conversation I’d had with Ava, in the doctor’s office lobby. She’d told me that her brother’s ex thought that he was “clueless.” “What do you mean?”

“I knew how much she hated cleaning her hair out of the drain in the shower, so I did that when the water started running slower. I worried about her when she came home late a few times and she had turned off her location…” He stopped.

“That was also when I started to get the idea that she was interested in someone else.”

“Wait a minute. Wait a minute! That woman cheated on you?”

The volume of my voice had startled Coral, and she got stiff.