You never realize how much stuff you have until you try to move it into an already occupied house. Even though I’d sold a lot of my furniture before the move, I still had a ton of items that needed to find a new home in an already engaged space.
“Where do you want this?” one of the moving men asked as he hauled in my bookshelf.
I hadn’t even thought about it, but as I glanced around the full living room, I knew there wasn’t a place for it.
“I have no idea,” I said.
Aiden maneuvered his way through boxes, holding on to his side as he went. He was supposed to be using a cane to get around, but he’d left it by the front door and refused to use it when there wasn’t a doctor around to insist.
“Put it in the bedroom down the hall,” he said. He pointed toward his weight room.
“Aiden, there’s no room for it in there.”
“There is now.”
I went back to the room to see that it had been completely cleared out. All of the weights and training equipment were gone.
“Where’s your workout stuff?” I asked.
“In the other room,” Aiden replied with a shrug. “I figured you’d need some space, and this room is bigger than the other one, so I had Mo and Lo move the gym stuff. Besides, this room faces the ocean.”
I peeked in and saw that it was true—everything had been moved into the smaller room. All of the boxes that had been in there before were gone.
I walked back into the living room as the moving guy started taking the bookshelf and boxes of books to the cleared-out space. I stood next to Aiden and looked up at his eyes.
“Where did you put the other things?” I asked quietly.
“In the garage,” he said. “I was going to go through them, but…well…”
He licked his lips as he looked down the hall. I reached up and put my hand on the side of his face until he looked back at me.
“Maybe once I’m settled in, we can go through them together,” I suggested.
“Maybe,” Aiden said with a slight nod. He reached out and put his hand on my hip. “I don’t know. Not yet.”
“When you’re ready,” I said, “I’ll be there to help.”
He nodded.
“Thank you, Aiden.”
“For what?”
“For giving me a place for my things.” I reached up with my other hand and hugged him around his neck. “All of this has happened so quickly, I didn’t think about everything.”
“I want you to be happy here,” he said simply. “Everyone needs some space.”
I ran my hands over his shoulders and down his arms, gripping his hands lightly before I reach around his middle and gave him a big hug.
Aiden’s muscles tightened up, and he grunted.
“Oh, crap!” I said, stepping back and pulling my hands away. “I was trying to stay away from the bandage!”
“It’s not that,” Ai
den said. He gave me half a smile. “I was going to show you later.”
“Show me what?”