ELEVEN YEARS OF US

Three Days Left

Chapter Four:

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‎They didn't sleep much, and when they finally did, Maya woke tangled in Jonah's arms with the strange, disorienting joy of a person who has woken up somewhere entirely new that also feels, impossibly, like home.

‎Morning light came through the blinds in thin gold stripes. Jonah was still asleep, one arm thrown loosely over her waist, his face soft and unguarded in a way she'd never seen it — not once, in eleven years, because sleep was the one thing he'd never let her watch him do until now. She lay there a long time, just looking at him, cataloguing the moment the way you catalogue something you're afraid might not last: the exact color of the light, the sound of his breathing, the specific weight of his arm.

‎Three days left. The thought landed like a stone in still water, rippling out through the calm.

‎He woke slowly, blinking against the light, and when his eyes found her his whole face changed — surprise first, like some part of him had expected to wake up and find last night had been a dream, and then something warmer, steadier, settling in behind it.

‎"Hi," he said, voice wrecked with sleep.

‎"Hi yourself."

‎"I keep waiting to feel weird about this." He pulled her closer, tucking her head under his chin like it was something he'd been doing for years instead of hours. "I don't. I thought I might. I don't at all."

‎"Me neither." She pressed her palm flat against his chest, felt his heartbeat under it, steady and real. "Terrifying, actually, how not-weird this feels."

‎They spent the morning in bed longer than either of them meant to, trading slow kisses and quiet conversation, the kind of talk that comes easier after you've already said the hardest thing out loud. He told her things he'd never told her before — how he'd almost said something at her sister's wedding two years ago and lost his nerve at the last second, how he'd once deleted and rewritten a text to her four times before giving up and sending a joke instead. She told him about the flights she'd already priced, the three different versions of a confession speech she'd written and never used, the year she'd dated someone for eight months mostly because he reminded her, in small ways, of Jonah.

‎"That's a little unhinged," Jonah said, laughing into her hair.

‎"You have no idea. I compared every person I dated to you for a decade. Nobody ever won."

‎By afternoon, the packing resumed, but everything about it felt different now — less like watching a life dismantle itself and more like watching two people build toward something, even as boxes stacked higher by the door. They worked in comfortable rhythm, bumping shoulders, stealing kisses between wrapping dishes in newspaper, and more than once the packing stalled entirely because he'd catch her hand and pull her against him instead, murmuring that the boxes could wait, that three days was not nearly enough time and he intended to waste as little of it as possible on cardboard.

‎That evening they ordered too much Thai food and ate it sitting cross-legged on the floor amid the boxes, the way they had a hundred times before as just-friends, except now his hand rested on her knee the entire time and neither of them mentioned it, because it didn't need mentioning anymore. It just was.

‎"I keep doing the math," Maya admitted, pushing noodles around her container. "Portland's a six-hour flight. That's not nothing."

‎"It's not nothing," he agreed. "But it's not forever, either. I meant what I said. I want this to actually work — visits, calls, all the unglamorous logistics of it. I'm not interested in a version of this where we just quietly let it fade because the time zones are annoying."

‎"Six weeks," she said. "I already checked. I can get out to see you in six weeks, once I clear it with work."

‎"Six weeks," he repeated, like he was testing the shape of the promise. "I can do six weeks."

‎He reached over and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, an old, familiar gesture that used to mean nothing and now meant everything, and kissed her softly, unhurried, like they had three days and also like they had the rest of their lives, both at once.