The sound of fingers flying across a keyboard woke me up. I sat up in bed, disheveled and disoriented as the smell of honey and vanilla filled the air.

“You shower, babe?” I asked.

“Last night, yeah,” Kylie said mindlessly.

I nodded my head and drew in a deep breath, trying to wake myself up. I fell back into bed and pulled the covers over my head, resolving to sleep another hour. The smell of coffee filled the space around me, though, making it hard for my body to rest. I wasn’t sure how much longer I slept, but when I peeked out at the clock on the wall, it was almost ten in the morning.

“Why are you working before work?” I asked.

“I’m going in after lunch,” Kylie said. “I’ve got some things I can do from my laptop, so I got them done.”

“Then what are you doing now?” I asked.

“Booking the moving company.”

I threw the covers off my head and sat up in bed.

“What?” I asked.

“I’m booking the moving company. I’m not sure what you’re going to do, but I’m having someone else move my stuff for me,” she said.

“So we’re not going to even talk about it?”

“I tried that, remember?” she asked.

She went back to sipping on her coffee and poking away at her laptop as I slid off her bed.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Kylie asked.

“No, I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Suit yourself.”

“What is this, some sort of reverse psychology?”

She panned her gaze over to me with a confused look on her face.

“No? You don’t want to talk about it, so I’m not. You can move however you see fit. I’m booking what I want for the move.”

“So we’re moving in together but not actually doing it together,” I said.

“Look, I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but I haven’t had enough coffee for it. There’s some for you in the pot. Make yourself a cup, and if you want to talk about it, we’ll talk about it.”

“No, I don’t want to talk about it!”

“Then why the hell are you giving me such a hard time about it?” she asked. “First you didn’t want to talk and we had a fight. Now you're pissed we aren’t talking about it and we’re about to have another fight. Yet you just stood there and claimed you didn’t want to talk about it like last time—before we fought.”

I clenched my jaw and picked up my clothes, pulling them on as fast as I could.

“Adam, come on. Don’t do this. Get some coffee and wake up a second. You’re terrible in the morning when you don't have coffee.”

“I don’t need this,” I said.

“Need what?” Kylie asked.

“You do whatever you want.”

“I know. That’s what I’m doing. I want to move into this apartment because it’s beautiful and has a great view, so I’m making plans to move in nine days. What do you want to do?”

I glared at her as I pulled my shoes onto my feet.

“I don’t have time for this,” I said. “I’ll call you later.”

“If I don’t pick up, I’m at work.”

She said it so nonchalantly, like she didn’t give a shit if I called her or not.

“You couldn't even let us have one night, could you?” I asked.

Her eyes slowly panned up to mine from her laptop.

“I’m not letting you bait me into another argument just so we can have make-up sex and pretend like this isn’t happening. You signed a lease, and you’re lucky I can still foot the rent should you choose not to move in with me.”

“Of course I want to move in with you!”

“But you don’t want to take any of the steps to actually do the moving. What did you think was going to happen once your name was put on it? Did you think you were going to close your eyes and poof! Be in a new apartment?”

“The last thing I need is you chastising me,” I said.

“At this point, I’m not even sure I am. You’re the one who approached me with this, remember? You’re the one who showed up out of the blue, knocked down my damn door, and told me, ‘Let’s do it. Let’s do it, Kylie. Oh yeah, let’s do it.’”

“I do not sound like that.”

“You do right now,” she said under her breath.

“What was that?”

“I said you do right now,” she said, exaggerating each word.

“Call me when your fucking attitude changes.”

“Call me when you have plans to move,” she said.

I slammed out of her apartment and raced down the stairs, jamming myself into my car. I sped out of there as fast as I could and headed straight for Sawyer’s office. I marched through the lobby and ran up the steps, taking them in threes before I shoved my way onto the fifth floor of the office building.

I knocked rapidly on Sawyer’s door until he opened.

“I’m with a patient,” he said.

“What are you doing for lunch?” I asked.

“Nothing, since you look like hell. Sit and wait. After this patient we can talk,” he said.

I sat in the waiting room of his office and listened as someone sobbed their eyes out behind the door. Fucking people who didn’t know how to deal with their shit. I’d never pay someone three hundred bucks a session to listen to me bitch and moan about shit. But I was thankful Sawyer was going to talk with me over his lunch break. I knew I was being irrational about this moving thing. I knew everything Kylie was saying about my attitude was right.

But what the hell was I supposed to do about it?

Sawyer opened his door and a woman with a red nose and puffy eyes came stalking out. He led her to the door and rubbed her back, then handed her a reminder for her next appointment. He looked at me and nodded his head, and I scrambled to my feet so we could have lunch in his office.

“A sandwich from downstairs sound good to you?” he asked as he picked up his phone.

“That’s fine. I’m not really hungry anyway,” I said.

Sawyer placed our order for lunch, then came and sat on the couch next to me. He stared at me from beyond his glasses, shrinking me down and waiting for me to begin.

“Don’t give me that look.”

“What look?” he asked.

“That look that says you’re ready to analyze and pick apart everything I say.”

“I always do that.”

“Well don’t do it now.”

“Why? Scared of what I might find?” he asked.

“I need Sawyer, not Dr. Shrinky Dink.”

“That’s a good name. I should put that on my door from now on.”

He smiled at me, and it pulled a chuckle from my throat.

“I don’t even know what’s wrong with me anymore,” I said.

“I take it this is still about the move?” Sawyer asked.

“Every time she brings it up, I bristle. It’s like this automatic reaction to the word ‘move.’ All this word vomit just spews out. It’s insane. She’s frustrated. I’m frustrated. I know I’m sending mixed signals. I know I was the one who brought this up. But it’s like I have no fucking control over what I’m saying once that damn word hits my ears.”

“I’m just going to let you keep talking, because you’re literally giving yourself the answer,” he said.

“Things feel different between us, man. And I snap every time Kylie brings up moving in together.”

“What do you mean it feels different?”

“Like last night. I called her up and practically begged her to have dinner with me. We sit down, I apologize for our last explosive fight, we go back to her place and have fucking awesome make-up sex, but it’s different. Right? Like, we have this ritual, things that always happen when we’re about to have sex.”

“Like what?”

“Like taking off our clothes. Something small, right? But Kylie and I don’t do quickies. That’s not something we’ve ever done. But last night? It was hot, but it was a quickie. We didn’t bother to undress each other. And apparently, at some point, she got up in the middle of the night to shower.”

“Is that a bad thing? Most people clean up after sex, especially women,” he said.

“Not Kylie. That was our thing: falling asleep next to each other and waking up still smelling like the other. That was always our thing. But she got up last night apparently and washed down.”

“And that bothers you?”

“Yeah, it bothers me. It’s not like us. It’s changing. Everything is fucking changing, Sawyer.”

“Life has a tendency to do that.”

“I don’t want it to change.”

“Then don’t change. But don’t expect Kylie to follow that lead.”

“I don’t want to lose her, Sawyer.”

“Is that why you aren’t telling her the truth?” he asked.

“What?”

“Is your inability to see yourself without Kylie preventing you from telling her you really don’t want to move in with her?”

I sat back into the couch as a knock came at his door. Sawyer got up and retrieved our lunch, then tossed my sandwich into my lap. He set a soda down next to me before grabbing a pack of chips out of fucking nowhere, but I wasn’t hungry any longer.

“It’s obvious, man,” Sawyer said as he cracked open his soda. “You don’t want to move in with Kylie. That’s why you bristle. That’s why you get mad. What prompted you to tell her you wanted to move in?”

“A conversation with my dad,” I said mindlessly.

“What was that conversation about?”

“Not losing Kylie. Progressing forward. Shit like that.”

“So you didn’t agree to the move because you wanted it. You agreed to the move because you thought it was expected of you, and you knew it was what you had to do in order to not lose your girlfriend.”

I raked my hand through my hair as I stared out the window.

“Just tell her, Adam. I’m tired of watching you flounder like this. If you don’t like the changes in your life, then don’t go through with them. If you don’t want to get married and have kids, then don’t get married and have kids. But you can’t stay with a woman who wants all those things. You can’t be that selfish when it comes to her. She deserves to be happy too. Right now, the two of you are just making each other miserable.”

“She told me she loved me, Sawyer.”

“But it takes more than love to make a relationship work—even if that relationship isn’t sexual. Take us for instance.”

I whipped my head over to him and watched him take a bite of his sandwich.

“I love you,” Sawyer said once he swallowed. “You're my best friend. I’ve known you for years. But we have more than that. We have common likes, a common senses of humor. We have respect for each other and the lives we lead. I don’t give you shit for not having kids and you haven’t given me shit for always wanting them. We build each other up. We trust each other. There hasn’t been a step we’ve ever taken in our lives where the other wasn’t there to support us. Hell, you don’t want to get married but you fucking officiated my wedding, Adam.”

“I was happy to do it.”

“But you’re not happy to do it when it comes to moving in with Kylie. Or having kids. Or getting married. And that’s the kind of stuff she wants.”

“Why though? She’s so beautiful and so successful and she has so much going for her. Why would she want to ruin that with kids and sleepless nights and a piece of paper that takes years to dissolve and countless arguments before the two can go their separate ways?”

“Breaking down your parents’ divorce is a completely different section that would require you to pay me, but it does play a role in all this. You watched your mother take your father for everything he had. You watched how that broke him down inside. You’ve watched your father keep every woman at arm’s length since your mother did him wrong because he doesn’t want to get close to women. So part of you thinks that if you marry Kylie, it will eventually happen to you. Part of you thinks that if you marry Kylie and you become successful, she’ll leave with your money and dump you with children you never wanted in the first place.”

“She’s not that kind of woman. She could never do that.”

“But when you close your eyes and dream at night, what are your nightmares about?” he asked.

I bit down on the inside of my cheek to keep from proving him right.

“A relationship takes more than love, Adam. It takes work and compromise. It takes similar life paths and futures. It takes money, and respect, and gratitude, and grief. But most importantly, it takes similar values. You can’t press down on a quarter and expect a dollar to come shooting out, Adam. No matter how much pressure you put that quarter under, it will never turn itself into a dollar.”

I sighed as I slumped into Sawyer’s couch.

“You think Kylie’s putting pressure on you, but you’re putting pressure on her as well. She’s moving into a new apartment and she has no idea if she’s doing it alone or with her longtime boyfriend—all because you can’t control yourself and grow a set of balls to tell her that you really don’t want this.”

“Fuck you,” I said.

“Be angry all you want. But I love you, Adam, so listen up. You’re acting like a child., and it’s time to act like a man. Change is coming whether you want it to or not. It’s the only thing we can bet on in this world. Either move in with Kylie and find the joy in it…or tell her you can’t and lose her. There are no other options.”

“Why does it all have to change?!” I exclaimed.

“Because people grow up, Adam.”

I tossed my sandwich onto the side table and stood.

“One last thing before you walk through that door,” Sawyer said.

“What?” I asked.

“You’re a runner. It’s what you do when you get nervous. You ran from your father when he tried to get you to attend business school so you could take over his company, and you ran from your mother when you figured out that all she wanted was your father’s money. You’re running from Kylie because she’s at a point in her life where she’s no longer a college student but a fully grown adult with a purpose to fulfill. You’re running from me because you know I’m right.”

“Is there a point in there?” I asked.

“You can run, Adam Tucker, but you can’t hide.”

“Thanks for the trite response. Glad I didn’t pay you for it.”

But even as I ripped open his door and strode out of his office, I knew he was right.