Better Than Home: Better Than Good Novella

I rescued his latte, setting it next to me on the bench, and pulled him into my arms. “Shh. It’s okay, Aar.”

He curled against me like a small child and cried for a minute or so while I ran my fingers through his hair and whispered assurances that everything was going to be fine. The way I had over the past month since he’d been demoted.

Not gonna lie, it had been a tough year and a half.

Due to circumstances beyond anyone’s control, the international economy suffered a major blow that unfortunately affected Aaron’s chance-of-a-lifetime job opportunity. In normal times, the new office he’d opened on Madison Avenue for his DC-based magazine would have grown into a successful, fully operational branch within a year. But after only a few months, the staff was instructed to work from home. Not easily done for an enterprise that dealt with photo shoots, models, and designers.

And though the economic downturn had slowly begun to correct itself, it hadn’t made fiscal sense for the company to continue its expansion plans. They opted to close the Manhattan office and asked Aaron to return to his previous post as an assistant art director in DC. I think he appreciated the logic behind the maneuver, but he was still devastated.

To Aaron, this was a failure—the first time he hadn’t accomplished a goal. And it was even more disappointing because he’d always dreamed of making it big in New York City.

I understood. We’d talked about moving to the Big Apple well before this opportunity had come up. And it had seemed like good timing. We’d been in a “just married and not quite ready to buy a house or a start a family” mode—an ideal place in life to try something new. But to be perfectly honest, it had never been easy. Commuting sucked.

There had to be a sensitive way to tell my husband that I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of here and go home. I craved a normal schedule with minimal travel and boring everyday chores, like trips to the market where the cashiers always remembered our names.

“Hey, I know you’re sad, but—”

“I’m sorrowful, desolate, and downtrodden,” he corrected, sniffing loudly.

And still dramatic.

“I’m sorry, baby.”

He sighed theatrically. “Me too. I never want us to split time between two cities again. This has been hard. The worst part is I feel like we’ve wasted time we’ll never get back. I’m the one who did this to us. This was my idea.”

“No regrets, Aar. I’m not sorry.” I swiped a tear from his cheek and kissed him. “I’d follow you anywhere.”

“Thank you. Same here.” He flashed one of those radiant smiles that always turned me inside out. “Don’t worry. I’m okay, Matty. I’m mourning a moment, but you know what?”

“What?”

“Other than my personal career woes, there are a lot of pluses to going home. We get to see our friends and family whenever we want.”

“True.”

“You can join your sports court team again.”

“Basketball?”

He nodded. “Yes, if you say so. And we can babysit for Peter and Jay at a moment’s notice.”

I held his chin and rubbed my thumb over his jawline. His eyeliner was slightly smudged, but he was still so damn beautiful.

“You know what else we can do?”

He closed his eyes and leaned into my touch like a greedy cat. “Hmm.”

“We can talk about the plans we put on hold for a year and a half—like house hunting and—”

“Yes!” Aaron straightened with a gasp. “Yes, yes, yes. I’ve been thinking the same thing, but I didn’t want to overwhelm you with another adventure quite so soon after this terrible calamity of a year. I admit I’m a little gun-shy, though. I can stomach a setback or two in the city of my dreams, but putting down roots is a big deal. We’ll have to find the perfect house in the perfect neighborhood for our future children.”

“Aaron…”

“This is important. Once we buy something, we aren’t going to want to move again for a long time. Maybe ever. The next generation is counting on us to make the right decisions, Matty. Daunting, right? You know, I really want to be a dad, but I’m so afraid I’ll fuck it up. And I cannot fail as a parent. I don’t want to work too much or let someone else raise our darlings or—”

“Okay, hold up. You’re getting a little ahead of yourself.” I briefly set my hand over his mouth, chuckling when he nipped my finger. “Ouch. There’s no rush.”

“True, but if we dive into a happy project, we can put this calamity behind us.”

“Hey, stop saying this was a calamity, Aar. It wasn’t. It was a kind of lesson. I’d like to think we learned something about expecting perfection.”

“Try harder?”

“No.” I rolled my eyes. “The lesson is…there’s no such thing as perfect.”