It takes twenty minutes to move in. My entire life in twenty minutes.
"Done?" Robin asks from the doorway, watching me hang my flannels.
"Done."
"That's it?"
"That's it."
He looks at the closet — his clothes on the left, mine on the right. The nightstand — his books and my books. The bathroom — two toothbrushes, his face wash and my bar soap, the reading glasses case next to his hair products.
"Huh," he says. "We live together. With my brother and his boyfriend but still."
"We live together."
"That was easy."
"Most things are, when you stop making them hard."
He crosses the room and kisses me. Soft, certain. "Welcome home."
The café renovation takes three weeks.
Every day after the garage, I drive to the library and work. Knox rebuilds the counter — sands it, stains it, makes it beautiful. Jason installs the used commercial oven and proof box, running gas lines with steady confidence. Silas paints the walls — warm cream with sage green trim, colors Robin chose from a paint deck while lying in my lap on the couch.
Ezra handles the business side — permits, licenses, insurance, the LLC paperwork. Ash writes a check for equipment that Robin argues about for three days and then cries about in the shower when he thinks no one can hear.
Toby organizes everything. Lists, schedules, spreadsheets. He and Robin spend hours at the kitchen table with laptops and notebooks, building menus and pricing models and marketing plans. Toby designed the logo — a rolling pin crossed with a whisk, simple and clean.
Robin directs all of it. Not the performing Robin, not the flirty Robin, not the Robin who deflects and charms and makes himself small. This Robin is competent, decisive, passionate — standing in his café space with flour on his jeans and a pencil behind his ear, pointing at walls and saying "espresso station here, display case here, the pastry case needs to face the library so people see the food before they see the menu."
This is the Robin who was always there under the performance.
This Robin is building something.
I watch him and my lion is still. Not restless, not pacing. Just still. Just home.
Opening day is in a week. The café is finished — gleaming counter, warm lights, the pastry case stocked with a test run of croissants and hand pies and the savory danish that made Ash eat four in one sitting. The chalkboard menu is in Robin's handwriting, which is elegant and specific and nothing like my handwriting, which is "barely legible" according to everyone.
The name is on the door.
Pilot Light Café.
"Pilot light?" Knox had asked when Robin announced it.
"It's the small flame that keeps the burner ready to ignite," Robin explained. "It's always on. Even when you can't see it. Even when everything else goes out."
He'd looked at me when he said it.
I didn't say anything. Didn't need to.
The night before opening. Everyone's gone home. The café is dark, the library quiet, and Robin is standing behind his counter with his hands flat on the wood.
I find him like this — still, silent, in the dark. Not panicking. Not performing. Just standing in his space, feeling it.
"Hey," I say from the doorway.
"Hey."