"I found the box."
"Same thing, sometimes." She sat on the floor beside him, flannel pooling around her knees. Without asking, she took a red bulb and hung it where the light would catch. Their hands brushed. Neither pulled away. The unspoken thing between them—six years of almosts, of shared laundry and shared colds and shared midnights on fire escapes—settled into the space like a fourth person in the room, patient and enormous.
"Dez," Wren said.
"Yeah?"
"I'm glad you brought the giant."
He wanted to say: I brought it because I miss her and because I love you and because I don't know how to hold either of those truths without dropping one. Instead he said, "Me too," and let the lights do the talking for a while.
---
Monday arrived with the arrogance Mondays always have in December, as if deadlines and subway delays had not received the memo about peace on earth. Wren left early for the magazine, cardigan buttoned against the wind, mauve lipstick applied on the stairs while Gus shouted that she would miss her train. Dez walked to Vinyl Underground with snow in his hair and a song stuck in his head that he could not name. Gus graded essays at the kitchen table until the essays began to grade him back, then put on his mustard blazer and went to teach irony to freshmen who believed irony was when rain fell on wedding days.