We’d gotten the keys a couple of days ago and were trying to settle in between classes and football and work, but I knew no matter how long the boxes went unpacked, I’d feel settled as long as Jude was with me.

“No,” I said, shifting onto my knees. “It’s crooked.”

“Damn it,” he muttered, pulling the picture off the hook. “I can’t get this thing right. I’m starting to think the walls are crooked.”

“I’m sure that’s it, babe,” I said, folding another pair of his boxers. “I’m sure it has nothing to do with your lack of experience hanging pictures.”

“If it wasn’t a physical impossibility, I’d come over there and show you what your punishment is for teasing me,” he said, propping the picture against the fireplace, flashing me a wicked grin.

Grabbing a pair of my own underwear from the pile, I sling-shot them at him.

“I wouldn’t exactly call four times in a twenty-four hour period a ‘physical impossibility.’”

He snatched my underwear out of the air before they bulls-eyed his face. “Was that a challenge, Luce?”

“That was whatever you wanted to it be,” I said as he started my way.

“After you get that picture hung properly, that is,” I added, stopping him in his tracks.

“Why can’t I just prop the thing up on the mantle?” he asked, his face doing that tortured thing when he was either pouting, lonely, or ha**ng s*x delayed. Lifting the picture of the two of us we’d had taken as an engagement picture, right on the beach where we first met, he rested it on the mantle, propping it against the wall behind it. “See? Problem solved.”

“Problem not solved,” I said, standing up and crossing the room towards him. The studio was small enough it only took me about five steps to cross it. “Look at this thing.” I plucked at the crumbling brick mantle. An avalanche of mortar and dust cascaded to the floor. “It could fall apart any day, and our picture along with it.”

The skin between his brows creased. “Man, this sucks. The ground even wants to fall out beneath our picture. That’s just not fair.”

I shoved him and he laughed in amusement. “Since you’re having so much fun with this, then do it right. Our picture needs to hang from its rope too just in case the ground falls out beneath it.”

“I believe, Luce,” he replied, twisting the picture around, “that this is referred to as a wire. Not a rope.”

I groaned as he handed me the picture and climbed the step stool again, hammer in hand. “Could you be any more infuriating?”

I knew from experience he could.

“For you, Luce,” he said, looking down at me as he repositioned the hook and nail. “I could be whatever you wanted me to be.”

“How about quiet and focused until you get that thing right?”

He winked down at me, sealing his lips as he pounded the nail into its new location.

“You know, this whole apartment idea was the most brilliant, foolish thing you’ve done to date,” I said, investigating the room that, to pay for it every month, meant Jude would have to pick up extra hours at the garage. All so we could spend weekends together. No more sharing a room with India or his housemates. This was a place all our own.

He made a face down at me, moving his mouth in silence.

“What?”

“I’m supposed to be quiet and focused right now,” he whispered down at me.

I blew out a sigh of exasperation. “How about just focused then?” I said. “Since asking you to be quiet is like some rare form of torture for you.”

“Focused,” he said, bouncing his brows at me. “I can do focused, Luce.”

“Does your mind ever drift from sex?” I swatted his backside.

“Rarely.”

“More like never,” I muttered.

He grinned his agreement. “So why is the apartment my most brilliant idea ever?”

“Well, Mr. Selective Hearing, it’s your most brilliant because we’ve got our own place, some place where we don’t have to tiptoe around other people. Some place we can grow into.”

Motioning that he was ready, I handed him the picture.

“It’s your most foolish idea because you’re paying eight hundred dollars a month for two days a week; it’s a two hour drive from my school and a three hour drive from your place. And let’s not forget we’re a couple of eighteen-year-old college freshman that have moved in together and are engaged.”

He looked at me like he always did when I was talking all crazy. “I’m not sure how to respond to that, so how about I just offer a ‘you’re welcome’?” Hanging the picture on the hook again, he adjusted it, craning his neck from side to side inspecting it.

The damn thing was still crooked.

“Thank you,” I said, as he adjusted it again, only making it worse.

“Thank you for what?” he said, his fists balling like he wanted to drive them through the wall in frustration. “Thank you as in a prelude to my ‘you’re welcome,’ or thank you for the most brilliant, foolish thing I’ve ever done?” He adjusted it to the other side and, in the midst of straightening it, the hook fell right out of the wall in a cloud of drywall dust.

“Damn it!” he hollered, punching the wall.

I checked the picture where it’d fallen on the mantle. The glass hadn’t broken. It had survived the fall and its impact.