Daron's Guitar Chronicles Volume 12

1059 Movin' on Up

"Just so," he agreed, propping himself up on one elbow.

"It's hitting me that part of the reason we moved in together up here was so I could get my mental and physical health together."

"Mh-hmm."

"And that process got really...interrupted by us haring off to Tennessee."

"You've been down there for six months," he said softly, in case I had forgotten.

"Will you be all right if I have to be down there for another six months?"

He licked his lips. "Maybe it will be easier if I know what's coming next."

What's coming next is Claire dying, and a lot of lawsuits, and I'm not really looking forward to suffering through either one, I thought. But what I said was, "I know you love your place in the city. And I love seeing you there. But you know I don't really have a... a... space there. My space there is on the other half of your bed. Which has its charm. But–"

"But you can't live out of a suitcase forever," he said. "Despite all evidence to the contrary."

I chuckled in the direction of my sorted clothes. "Yeah. I guess this is what I'm thinking. I don't know that we had enough time to really know the answer, but it seemed to me like we did okay living together."

"Did you think it wasn't going to work out?"

"I was cautiously optimistic. But there's still a kind of basic, underlying disconnect that we need to be aware of." Listen to me, being all aware of things and stuff.

"Which is...?"

"If you spend too much time alone, you go bugfuck, and if I don't spend enough time alone, I go bugfuck."

He smiled and then covered his mouth with his hand, trying not to laugh, because this was serious, but at the same time... "That is a very direct way of putting it. A very Daron way of putting it."

"Janine said that's what she learned from me. To just come out and say stuff." I flexed my hand. It was a little crampy from carrying the guitar case.

Ziggy sat up, and took it and rubbed it, working his thumbs into the muscles in the palm. "Can I just come out and say something?"

"Of course."

He kissed my palm before going on. "I love the way your brain works. I don't always understand it, mind you–"

"Ha."

"Tell me what you want. For us, for a living situation in the future. If money were no object."

"I'm not sure I can answer that, because money is an object." I tried to relax my wrist. His fingers were doing wonders for my hand and the rest of my body, but for some reason my wrist and forearm were still stiff. "I know if we can we should buy instead of rent."

"How about right now think about where, not how we're paying for it," he suggested.

"Okay." I felt my shoulder finally relax, too. "I know you love New York–"

"How about stop saying what you know I'd like." He pecked me with a kiss. "I'm trying to hear what you'd like."

"I think we should live in Boston." There, I said it.

To my surprise, he agreed. "It is a lot easier to live here."

"It is?"

"Oh, God, yes. It's so much less difficult in every way, except for the distance we'd need to go for meetings. And no one here gives a fuck who we are. Up here we won't have to look for some place with a doorman and 24-7 surveillance cameras in the elevators."

I didn't point out that his place in New York didn't have a doorman. I wasn't sure about the elevator. "I don't think we need as much space as Bart and Michelle, but their place got me thinking."

"About what?"

"About where music can happen, for one thing." I smiled, remembering one time Barrett had banged on the floor with a broom handle to get me and Ziggy to shut up. At the time I hadn't known it was him. "And about the room thing."

"The room thing?"

I meant the fact that Bart and Michelle each had a bedroom. My eyes felt hot as I brought this up and I wasn't even sure why. "I don't necessarily need my own bedroom, but I need my own room."

He kissed gently along my temple, then between my eyes, like he was blessing me. "Yes, of course."

Why did I think that was going to be hard? Had I expected him to object? Another thing to write down to unpack with Lynne, whenever I got around to a therapy appointment again.

"What else. A garden?" he asked lightly. "Hot tub?"

"Do you want a garden?"

"Not particularly. I'm just trying to think of the kind of things you see in real estate listings."

"If we had a garden we'd have to hire someone to tend it while we were gallivanting around the world, you know," I said.

"Sooo... it'd have to be a... rock garden," he said, and then started to giggle at his own joke. I was laughing at it before I even realized he'd made a joke, which was part of what made it extra funny; it was so unexpected.

We were soon both helplessly laughing, punctuated by occasional snorts or sobs of "rock garden...!" and really, honestly, I hadn't even expected to have that conversation at all and there it had gone way better than I could have ever hoped.

Not to worry, plenty of conversational mine fields were yet to be crossed that evening with my mother, but for the moment we fell into bed, laughing like utter fools.