Marco and Lara leave for their honeymoon two days later, but not before driving you to see the house.
It is modest exactly the way your dreams always were. Cream-colored walls. A little porch. A lemon tree in the yard that has not yet learned how to bear much fruit but promises it might, in time. The kitchen window catches morning light. The second bedroom smells faintly of fresh paint. In the back, there is space enough for potted herbs and maybe a chair where you can sit in the evenings without hearing mechanics shouting downstairs or neighbors arguing through thin walls.
You stand in the empty living room while Marco unlocks windows and Lara chatters about curtains and paint colors and whether you would like raised garden beds. Their voices blur together around the edges as you turn slowly in the center of the space.
For the first time in your adult life, a room exists that is not arranged around survival.
