Two days before Christmas, Wren's editor called with a revision of the offer: the Los Angeles seat needed an answer by December twenty-sixth, and the salary had been raised enough to make refusal look like romance at the expense of sense. The same afternoon, Dez's boss at Vinyl Underground mentioned, casually, that a friend was selling a record shop in Portland—small, weird, perfect—and did Dez want an introduction? Opportunities, like snow, arrived in clusters.
They sat at the kitchen table with the lease notice between them like a third plate.
"I don't want to choose a coast like I'm choosing a team," Wren said.
"I don't want Portland if you're not in the story," Dez said.
"And I don't want to be the reason you stay in a dying lease or the reason you don't take a shop," Wren said. "Love isn't supposed to be a veto."
Gus, entering with groceries, surveyed the table and said, "You two are doing the thing where you try to out-noble each other until nobody gets what they want. I've seen this episode. In life. Not—" He caught himself before naming anything. "In life. Stop it."
"Helpful," Dez said.
"I am helpful. Here's help: Christmas first. Decisions after. The tree is still up. Your mother would not approve of strategic coastal negotiations under her angel."