She flits from display to display taking it all in. “You guys should register here.”
“Register?” Xavier asks.
“For stuff, for once you get married. You know, you make a list and people buy you things off the list.”
“That’s a thing?”
“Can confirm,” Bianca says, giving his arm a reassuring pat, and he slings an arm around her shoulders as they follow Chloe toward a soft-looking cream-colored couch with a chaise extending from one end.
“Suddenly marriage makes a lot more sense. People just do it for the free shit.”
Bianca snorts. “You’re not wrong.”
“You two are lucky,” Chloe says, dropping into the corner of the display sofa, curling into it, and then nodding to herself, as if it meets the standard of comfort she’s looking for.
Bianca slides out from under Xavier’s arm and sends him a meaningful look. Now is not the time for public displays of affection. Chloe doesn’t need to see it, not with what she’s been through in the last day.
“No,” Chloe says, shaking her head. “Don’t do that, not for me. It’s actually weirdly comforting. Josh and I didn’t have that, at least not in a long time. Just one more reason that this is agood thing, I think.” Then she takes a deep breath and runs her hands over the material of the couch. “This is the one.”
“Sweet,” Bianca says, holding out her hands for her friend and pulling her up. “And now, a bed.”
In the end, she convinces Chloe to pick out a couch, a bed and a dining-room table and chairs, all the opposite of the shit she had with Josh, and, while not exactly a full fresh start, enough to make the condo they just left feel likehers.
Xavier eyes the boxes of furniture piled up at the curb once they’ve paid – the most money Bianca’s ever spent on anything that wasn’t a tuition bill – and he shakes his head.
“We’re gonna need a truck.”
Bianca wrinkles her nose. “I didn’t think about that.”
He laughs. “Someone needs to stay with the stuff, while I go rent one.”
“You can rent a truck?”
“Yeah,” he says, “like a U-Haul. Home Depot does it too.”
“Huh, the more you know.”
Chloe pulls out her phone. “You two go. I’m going to call a locksmith. I’m changing the locks today.”
“That’s a good plan.”
They leave her perched on top of the box holding her new headboard, scrolling through her phone.
“So you’re spending our wedding fund on this?” Xavier quips once they’re back in his Jeep and pulling out into traffic headed toward the closest Home Depot.
She snorts and shrugs. “My parents didn’t specify what the money was for, not really, and you saw that check. It barely makes a dent. Besides, Chloe’s good for it.”
“You’re something else, you know that, right?”
“What?”
“People don’t do things like this, Bianca. You . . . you’re just . . .”
She feels a flush building over her skin as he struggles to find a word, but she doesn’t look at him, despite feeling the heat of his gaze.
“Eyes on the road,” she says, diverting hers out the window.
She hears his sigh, but then his hand finds hers and, twining their fingers together, he lifts it to his mouth and presses a kiss to the back, setting the skin there alight. The sparks flicker up her arm and over her body, settling in her chest with a fluttery warmth.
