"He sent me a list." Devin pulls out his phone. "Essentials, in order: kitchen scale, chef's knife, cutting board, one good pot. He underlined 'one good pot' three times."
"Do you have the good pot?"
"Robin bought it. A Le Creuset. It costs more than my rent."
"That sounds like Robin."
"He cried in the store. The cashier was concerned."
I sit on the mattress because there's nowhere else to sit. No couch, no chairs, no table. Just the mattress on the floor with the new sheets and two pillows and the books lined up along the wall and the herbs on the sill and the French press on the counter.
It's the most Devin room I've ever seen. Stripped down to what matters. Books, coffee, growing things, a place to sleep.
"Do you like it?" he asks. There's a nervousness there, faint, controlled, but present. He wants me to like his space. His first space. The four hundred square feet that belong to nobody else.
"I love it," I say. "It's you."
"It's empty."
"It's potential. It's a room that hasn't been filled yet." I lean back on my hands. "The books on the floor are a nice touch."
He sits next to me on the mattress. Cross-legged, his mug in both hands, his shoulder against mine. The window above the sink lets in the streetlight. Not the orange glow of my room above the bar. Something cooler. Bluer. New light for a new place.
"First night," he says.
"First night."
"I was going to do this alone. Prove I could. Sleep here by myself, in my own apartment, and wake up and be okay." He takes a sip of coffee. "But then I thought, that's the old logic. The foster-care logic. The one that says being alone is the only way to prove you're strong. And we're not doing that anymore."
"We're not?"
"We're not. We're doing the new thing. The one where I ask for what I want instead of managing around it." He looks at me. "I want you here tonight. Not because I need you. Because I want you."
"Then I'm here."
"Good." He sets his mug on the floor. "I have Netflix on my laptop and approximately zero furniture to watch it on."
"We have a mattress."
"On the floor."
"The floor is underrated."
He pulls his laptop from the counter and sets it at the foot of the mattress, propped against the stack of books that are serving as a stand. We lie on our stomachs side by side, shoulders touching, the laptop screen glowing in the otherwise dark apartment.
"What are we watching?" I ask.
"I don't know. I've never had my own Netflix account. Tyler let me use his at the shelter but I always watched on my phone with earbuds."
"First Netflix on a real screen in your own apartment."
"First everything in my own apartment." He scrolls. "What do you watch?"
"Documentaries. Nature ones mostly."
"Of course you do. You're a lion shifter who watches nature documentaries."
"They're informative."