(Noah)

Elle wasn't kidding about needing a nap. She curls up next to me on the couch when we get back and by the time I've sent off messages to the friends who'd said they could meet this weekend she's asleep, her head propped on my leg. I don't think I'd realized how much the pregnancy is affecting her until hearing the stories she told my mom today, and I'm frustrated by how little help I can offer right now. Even if I move back the day classes are over, she'll still have been on her own for nearly the whole pregnancy. Well, not entirely on her own. She's had Mickey, and then her dad, and I'm sure my mom will be driving her nuts with attention now. But I haven't been there. I didn't know, of course, but reminding myself of that doesn't actually help—I'd have known if I hadn't been too proud to call first. Or if I hadn't been so all or nothing to begin with.

I hear back from a couple friends and we agree to meet in an hour not far from Elle's apartment. Hopefully by then she won't get too mad if my departure from the couch cuts short her nap. In the meantime I scroll through my calendar and try to figure out if there are any weekends I can't fly down, because otherwise I'm planning to make this a weekly trip.

A message from Lee arrives about a half hour into Elle's nap.

Just talked to mom. She's basically delirious. Congrats on continued most favored son status.

What can I say, weak competition.

Hilarious. But seriously, no way I'd get this reaction if I knocked up my gf.

The difference is Elle. Not me. She's the favorite.

When you put it that way it just makes this weirder.

You're the only one still hung up on this.

How is that favorite child doing? She's ignoring my messages again.

Napping. Two hours with Mom is a whole lot of Mom.

You sure you want to move back to LA and Mom striking distance?

Better hope so because I resigned already.

Finally going to make Dad happy and get a real job?

Teaching is a real job. Just not one he likes. And what about you, joining the family business after graduation?

Dad has a narrow definition of real job, mostly involving the size of the paycheck. He got his start the old-fashioned way—nepotism, rising through the ranks of the company his own father founded. Then, after that company went public, Dad plowed his share of the windfall into co-founding a tech venture capital firm. He's always made it clear he expects me and Lee to follow, and while we did pick Dad-approved engineering majors, we've both steadily rebuffed his attempts to bring us into the fold. That's why I'm meeting with these friends today, to try and network my way to a job not beholden to Dad or Dad's buddies. I don't mean to sound ungrateful for all Dad's done or the advantages his and granddad's money have given us, but I'd like to do something that's my own, and Lee seems to be of the same mind.

Still weighing options. But no, not with Dad. What's your plan?

Working on it. Ask me in a few weeks.

Have you talked to Elle about it?

Also working on that.

TALK TO HER

Right this minute? No, she's asleep. But chill, we will.

I don't need Lee's nagging to know these are discussions Elle and I need to be having. Not just about what I'll be doing, but what she's planned for herself. She'd had such big dreams when we started college, and I don't want her giving up on them. We just haven't gotten that far yet in our long list of of necessary discussions. Our living arrangements also need discussing soon, especially after that awkward moment at lunch.

I've told Elle I'm moving to LA, but so far I've avoided phrasing it as moving in with her. There's the issue of Elle's reaction the last times I suggested something like this, and then there's the weirdness of our status. The weirdness of having six years of history and yet having just barely begun again. It's also becoming clear to me that Elle hates the idea that any of our decisions are being forced or accelerated by our situation. So while it should be incredibly obvious that the best way for me to be there for Elle and take on my share of responsibility would be for me to... be there, living with her, I need her to come to that conclusion on her own and without feeling forced into it.


Elle wakes herself from her nap not long before I need to head out to meet my friends.

"I wasn't sure you'd still be here. How long was I asleep?" Elle sits herself halfway up, leaning her head on my shoulder.

"A solid hour. Feeling any better?"

"Much. Did you get something scheduled with your friends?"

"Yeah—I should leave in a few minutes."

"Any friends I would know?"

"Joe Cortez from the team. You'd recognize him if you saw him. And Natalie I'm certain you remember."

"Theo's Natalie? I liked her. She lives here now?"

"She stopped being Theo's Natalie a long time ago, but yeah. She'd probably love to see you again, if you want me to put you in touch."

"Yeah, say hi for me."

"How long do you want me to clear out of here so you can work?" Elle hasn't yet moved to get up from the couch, still draped drowsily on my shoulder.

"I don't want you to clear out at all. But I'd feel better about the week if you gave me until seven. Does that work with whatever you have planned?"

"Yeah, about that... I was only teasing earlier, about having more surprises planned. I hadn't actually planned anything other than... being here with you. Since that's still pretty novel by itself. Do I need to come up with a more elaborate plan?"

"No. You being here is more than special enough." She's looking up at me with a soft smile that has me reconsidering all our afternoon plans. But no, we've both got work to do.


Joe and Natalie both beat me to the coffee shop and we spend a while catching up. Natalie and I have kept in touch occasionally since graduation, but Joe was two years ahead of us and we haven't talked much since he left Harvard. He's apparently recently engaged and eager to vent about wedding planning.

"So basically we're going to need to elope to avoid our parents driving us nuts for the next year. Seriously. Never get married. Or, like, get married, but never have a wedding."

"Thanks, but I'm in no danger of needing your sage advice," Natalie laughs. "I'd settle for meeting someone who isn't blatantly swiping through his hookup apps while we're supposed to be on a date. Post-college dating sucks."

"What about you? You're not still with your high school girl, are you? Ellen, right?" Joe asks.

Natalie grimaces and jumps in faster than I can.

"You mean Elle, but nooooooo, don't bring her up. He'll get all cranky on us."

"Actually - " I try to answer, but Natalie cuts me off.

"Oh, don't deny it. You were unbearable senior year."

"Bad breakup?" Joe asks.

"Yeah, but - "

"The worst. She dumped him and he moped for months." Natalie continues to helpfully contribute.

"That's too bad. She was cute." Joe comments, and I can't help but glare at him. It's a reflex.

"She is cute." I finally manage to finish a sentence without being interrupted.

My comment flies right over Joe's head, but Natalie cocks her head in curiosity. "Is cute, present tense?"

I grin at her.

"No. You're kidding. Really?"

"Yep."

"How have none of us heard about this yet?"

"Unlike you, some of us don't post every detail of our lives online." True, even if not really why my Harvard friends haven't heard about this yet.

"Wait, is this why you're moving back here? Is she still in LA?"

"Yeah. She said to say hi, by the way."

"Wow. So you're not just back together, you're, like, moving-for-her back together? Were you planning on, I don't know, telling any of us? I mean, I always liked Elle. Other than the part when she dumped you."

"Yeah, about that... there was more to it than I told you all, back then. So maybe avoid the dumping talk when you see her."

"Well, now I'm very motivated to help you find a job. I need you to move here ASAP so I can see Elle again and find out what the heck else you've been hiding all this time."

I have to laugh at that one. Natalie looks stunned enough, no need yet to blow her mind with the rest of our news.

"That was the point of this get-together, I thought. So yeah, let's get talking."


I've got an hour left to kill after Joe and Natalie are gone, and I debate again whether to come up with some kind of elaborate plan for tonight. That was always my thing, to show up on Fridays after Elle's last class with some adventure planned for us, and I find myself wanting to slip back into all our best habits. But I don't want another meal out with constant interruptions from a waiter, or anywhere too noisy to talk, and some inconvenient rain rules out outdoor plans. And we really do need to just talk, so staying in is probably for the best. Thankfully, I have an inside source to tap—Mickey. One phone call later, I've got very specific instructions on where to pick up dinner and what to order for Elle. I'm also attempting to extract intel on more important topics, but that conversation isn't working out as well.

"You realize this is getting awful close to talking behind Elle's back, right? Which she made me promise not to do?" Mickey reminds me.

"I believe you promised not to meddle. Which merely providing your impressions wouldn't be." I argue back.

"Yeah, well, I'm not sure I have much useful information in any case. I think Elle was putting off figuring out where to live after graduation until she'd dealt with telling you. And we all know how long that took." Mickey laughs dryly. "So I'm not sure she had a plan yet. If you weren't moving here, I don't know. I think she'd probably move home. But I assumed you moving here meant you'd be living together?"

"Sure, that would be the obvious, rational conclusion. But..."

"But you think Elle's going to get weird about it if you bring it up?"

"Basically."

"Give her more credit. Yeah, she freaked out the other times, I get it. But you realize I know that because she told me about those times, right? She's well aware of how things played out before. So stop avoiding the subject and give her a chance to react better this time."


And of course, Mickey was right that I should have given Elle more credit, because it's Elle who beats me to the punch.

I get back to Elle's apartment not long after seven and find her still deep into her study groove. Her hair is twisted haphazardly on top of her head, there's an explosion of illegibly scrawled post-it notes all around her desk, and I see the remains of at least two peanut butter toasts in the kitchen. If not for the belly that even her—well, my, but I doubt I'll win this battle—giant hoodie no longer quite conceals, she'd look just like I remember from a hundred attempts in Boston to distract her from her studies. She looks delighted by my return, although I quickly realize it's the bags I've just set down on the kitchen counter that she's staring at, not me.

"Ooooh, is that from the Thai place down the street? Did Mickey tell you? Did you get panaang curry? And the soup with the mushrooms? And the chicken skewers with the peanut sauce? And please tell me you got sticky rice for dessert. Because sometimes they tell me they don't have it but they're lying, it's just that they've run out of mango and think no one will order it with just the rice, but why would I care about the fruit part when the whole point is the coconut rice?" She's digging through the bags with glee and Mickey was clearly not exaggerating when she said this was Elle's favorite.

"Yes, to all of those. Although how you can possibly still be hungry after that lunch and your apparent peanut butter frenzy while I was gone - "

"Are you seriously asking? I thought Adam was going to sit you down and explain how pregnancy works to you. Yes, I am still hungry. And if you want any of this food for yourself, be nicer to me. Because this is all your fault, I should remind you."

"Again, I really thought you'd made it clear you considered this to have been a joint endeavor."

Yeah, I earned that shove.

Dinner distracts us for a while, but eventually we get back to real conversations.

"Are you still planning to fly down next weekend, so we can tell your dad?"

"Yes to flying down, although, now that we've told my mom, I should probably just call Dad tomorrow. Mom's not going to be able to keep this quiet much longer. But I was planning on flying down anyway. I was thinking I'd fly down every weekend, actually."

Elle starts to say something, stops herself, laughs, and finally answers. "I was going to say that's ridiculous. Except—I want you to, ridiculous or not."

"Is it even that ridiculous? It's only two more months until I move here, anyway."

"Now that you've gone and resigned without warning me, you mean?"

I look at her in confusion. "We talked about it—last weekend."

"What if I wanted to move to San Francisco?"

"Elle, you saw my mom's reaction today. We have all our family here. Would you actually want to leave all this behind?"

"Yeah, and you have all those friends in San Francisco, and a job. Or at least, you did."

"A job I never intended to stay in for more than a few years. And most of my friends won't be sticking around, either. They hire a bunch of recent grads to coach and and so they'll have some young people among the teaching staff, but they know most of us will move on. That was always the plan." I pause, then smile. "If it's your new best friend Adam you're worried about, he's planning to leave after next year. So start telling him how great LA is, if losing him is what's bothering you."

"Fine. And I know you did mention you were planning to resign. But still, tell me when you take these big steps, next time. Before you tell your mom."

"Promise."

"Are you really going to fly here every weekend? I could visit you, too." Elle offers.

"Sure. But I also have stuff to get done down here. Like finding a place to live. And hopefully, interviewing for jobs. That's why I was meeting with Natalie and Joe—to figure out job leads. And I've got some more people to talk to."

"Well, the finding a place to live part I can work on."

"Thanks, I could use the help."

Elle eyes me oddly. "I mean, it's not really 'help.' I'd kind of like a vote on where we live."

I come close to spitting out the bite of food I'd just taken. "We?"

"Oh, don't play coy. Obviously we're going to live together."

"Wait. Back up about six steps in this conversation that I wasn't aware we'd had." Apparently while I was busy looking for a way to make Elle think moving in together was her idea all along and not something to freak out about, she'd actually... already decided on it.

"Look, I know why you're giving me that look, and I know why you've avoided the topic. But you don't need to. I'm not going to get all panicked about it. It's what makes sense."

And that's when I recognize the jut of her chin and the tension in her jaw. It's the brave face again, and the brave face means there's a lot she's not saying.

"Shell, we don't have to do anything just because it 'makes sense.'"

She's staring at her food rather than looking at me, like at lunch when things got awkward. "I mean, what else would we do?"

"I don't know. Whatever else you want. You could move home. You could get your own place. Hell, you could make my mom's life and go live with her. I'm sure she could spare some room for you and a baby in that house."

She smiles at that, but shakes her head. "Except I don't want to do any of those. And I do want to live with you. It's just... frustrating."

"Frustrating how?" I need this to be something she's happy about. Not resigned to.

"It's a little ridiculous, no? That we're having this conversation already, when two weeks ago we weren't even speaking?"

"The ridiculous part was that we weren't speaking two weeks ago. For us to be talking about moving in together, no, I don't think it's ridiculous at all."

"Are you honestly telling me that if I weren't pregnant we'd still be having this conversation? That if we'd stayed safely on the 97% side of the odds, we'd be considering moving in together right now?"

"Yeah, maybe. I mean, you know I wanted to before all this. And I know you weren't ready last fall to think about that yet, but... yeah, I do think it's entirely possible we'd be having this conversation, right now."

"I guess. But it would still be—a conversation. Not a foregone conclusion. Not the most logical solution to a problem. I guess that's what I mean by frustrating. That even if we want to, we also just kind of... have to. There isn't much of a decision left." She's back to staring at her plate instead of looking at me.

"We really don't have to. There are a lot of other arrangements we could come up with. If we wanted to. But I was hoping you'd agree this is the most appealing one. Regardless of whether it also happens to make sense."

I get why she's struggling with this, because I feel that frustration too. I wish we'd heard each other in October. I wish we'd found our way back to each other sooner than October. I wish we hadn't split in the first place. I wish for any number of what-ifs that would have left us more breathing room to give each of these decisions and milestones their own time. But we are where we are and I can only hope Elle will see that too. That she won't let regrets about not having gotten it right earlier keep us from getting it right now.

Elle speaks up again. "I guess it wouldn't be the first big decision we've rushed."

I'm not sure what she means until she looks up and I see her smirk. Our teenage impatience doesn't strike me as the most appropriate comparison for this decision, but hey, whatever convinces her. I certainly don't mind the reminder.

"And you're right. It is what I want to do." Elle continues. "So really I just need to know that you want to, too. And not because it's the reasonable thing to do. Because you want to."

"Are you... are you trying to talk me into what I've spent the past week trying to figure out how to talk you into? Yes, you dork. Of course I want to live with you. Have you not been paying attention... ever?"

Elle giggles, and this time it's a real smile she gives me, not her brave face. We can start working on the details tomorrow, but for now I'm going to enjoy having so satisfactorily crossed this item off the list of necessary conversations. I wonder what else among the topics I've been avoiding Elle has already decided for us without telling me. There's really only one topic with an even bigger caution flag flying over it than this one, but I'm not going to press my luck this weekend.