Dez restocked. He thought about shrinking. He thought about Wren's Los Angeles maybe, which he did not yet know was a maybe, and about Gus's unfinished play, and about the KEEP box in the closet. He went home that night with a plan to buy a modest tree on Sunday and then, on Sunday, bought the giant instead, because plans are what you make before a smell reminds you who you are.
---
After the lease notice, after the first kiss, after the magazine party shrimp and the map on the floor, there came a smaller crisis that nearly undid their careful truce: Wren's father called from Ohio on a crackling line and asked, with love that sounded like worry, whether she was throwing away stability for a boy and a purple apartment that was ending anyway. Wren stood in the kitchen with the cord wrapped around her wrist and answered carefully, then less carefully, then with a firmness that made Dez proud and nervous in equal measure.
"He's not a boy," she said. "And stability that requires me to pretend I'm not in love isn't stability. It's set dressing."
When she hung up, her hands shook. Dez took them. "I can talk to him."
"Not yet. He needs to meet you as a fact, not a debate topic. Come to Ohio in spring. Bring the angel for luck. Leave the giant tree here; Ohio ceilings are judgmental in a different way."
Gus, overhearing, offered to write Wren's father a letter in the style of a Victorian gentleman defending a marriage plot. Wren declined. Elena, consulted by phone, said parents came around when happiness became boringly consistent. They decided to aim for boring consistency as a long-term aesthetic.