Three months later...
October is the best month in Boston. One of his teammates at Stanford grew up outside the city had told him that once, and after living through it, he believed it was true. The crisp air, the leaves changing, the woman sitting across the table from him drinking coffee on a Sunday afternoon that he kept stealing glances at while he was supposed to be coding, while she was engrossed in her class reading and looking like something he'd dreamed about.
Then again, September had been pretty great, too… and that last day of August when she first arrived, when they'd driven to the beach for the weekend but didn't really manage to get out of their hotel room…
Maybe it was less Boston, and more Gina that made every month the best month.
It wasn't all a fairy tale. There'd been arguments and miscommunication and all the growing pains of rebuilding a relationship as two real live adults with responsibilities and obligations. But, EJ thought, one important thing had been true: she stayed. THEY stayed. With each other. Making it work.
Gina tossed her glasses on the table and rubbed her temples. "I cannot read another sentence. Action potential stopped making sense like 3 pages ago."
"Ah, the vexing action potential, gets me everytime" he deadpanned, not looking up from his laptop.
She narrowed her eyes at him before bursting into laughter. "I'm going to go shower, you mind?" She'd been spending plenty of time at his place, but was still very conscious of it being "his place," not wanting to overstep and push it too fast. Except the coffee cups, she absolutely treated those as hers.
"Be my guest, be my guest…" he sang in a terrible fake French accent.
"Good thing you were Gaston," she said, planting a kiss on his cheek before heading towards the bathroom. "Because that's awful."
He laughed and looked back to his screen.
A little while later, he realized the water had stopped running but Gina hadn't reappeared. "Gi," he called, "you OK?"
He looked up as she appeared in the doorway of his bedroom, wearing his old Duke sweatshirt… and nothing else.
"I need a study break, you want to explore some action potential of our own?"
He smiled. "I'm not going to pretend I know what that means, but I believe the only right answer here is 'yes please'."
He met her in the doorway, kissing her thoroughly. He didn't know if he'd ever get enough of her, but he'd keep trying to find out.
October in Boston looked pretty great from here.