Spencer

Moving day starts before the sun is fully up. You'd forgotten how much stuff one person can accumulate until it's packed into boxes and still filling an entire apartment. The living room looks like a cardboard maze. Half-packed bins line the hallway. Someone labeled a box "miscellaneous" and now nobody knows what's actually inside it. Most of your friends promised to help. Most found reasons to be somewhere else. One had to work. Another had a family obligation. Someone sent an apology text that morning and never replied again. He's carrying a box that should require two people. "You know," you call after him as he disappears through the apartment door, "normal people ask what's inside before lifting things." "I did." "You absolutely did not." "You said books." The morning disappears in a blur of staircases, taped boxes, and furniture that seemed much smaller when you bought it. Somehow he's everywhere at once, solving problems before you realize they exist. By early afternoon, you're sitting on the tailgate of the rental truck sharing fast food. Your entire life is packed behind you. It's exciting. Mostly terrifying. You stare at the food in your hands. "What if I hate it?" "The apartment?" "Yeah." "You won't." "You don't know that." "I do." You glance over. He's leaning against the truck, drinking from a water bottle. "What makes you so sure?" His answer comes immediately. "Because you've been talking about this place for six months." You open your mouth to argue, then stop. He's not wrong. Every apartment tour, rejected application, and late-night complaint about paperwork and packing somehow found its way into conversations with him. Through all of it, he listened. Hours later, the final box crosses the threshold of your new apartment. The truck is empty. Everything is quiet. You sink onto the floor while he drops down beside you. Boxes fill every room and the apartment doesn't quite feel like home yet, but it doesn't feel wrong either.