Page 51 of Love, Take Two

"What do you want?" I ask her directly.

"Honestly?" she says. "I want you to stay here while we figure out what works. But I don't want you to feel pressured or like you have to decide everything right now."

"And honestly," I say, "I've been thinking about it the entire flight, and I can't imagine wanting to be anywhere you're not. So if you're okay with me crashing on your couch until we find something together, that sounds perfect."

"The couch?" Maya interjects with obvious horror. "Are we pretending you two haven't been sharing a bed for the past week?"

"Maya," Vada says, her cheeks turning pink.

"I'm just saying, you're adults in a relationship. The guest room has a perfectly good bed if you want separate space, but let's not pretend anyone's sleeping on the couch."

She's not wrong, but there's something weirdly nerve-wracking about the transition from paradise romance to actual domestic life. In the resort, everything felt magical and temporary. Here, it feels like we're making real decisions about our actual future.

"Guest room's fine by me," I say. "Though I should probably mention that all my stuff is currently in storage in LA. So I'm basically moving in with two suitcases and a camera bag."

"Perfect," Vada says with obvious relief. "We can drive down to get your things next weekend, and in the meantime, we can start looking at apartments."

"Or houses," Maya suggests. "Portland's got some great neighborhoods for young professionals who are totally in love and want to build a life together."

"We're not buying a house on week one," I say with a laugh.

"Why not?" Maya asks seriously. "You guys have known each other for eight years. You just spent a week remembering why you're perfect for each other. Emory's moving here specifically to be with Vada. At what point do you stop calling it 'taking things slow' and start calling it 'building a future'?"

She has a point, even if it makes my chest tight with the magnitude of what we're actually doing here.

"One step at a time," Vada says diplomatically. "First, we figure out living arrangements. Then we see how the business collaboration works out. Then we make bigger decisions."

"Business collaboration?" Maya asks with obvious interest.

"Travel content meets event planning," I explain. "Destination wedding documentation, authentic celebration experiences, that kind of thing."

"That's brilliant," Maya says with genuine enthusiasm. "You guys could totally corner that market. Couples would kill for that kind of authentic documentation."

"We're still figuring out the logistics," Vada says, but I can see the excitement in her voice when she talks about it.

The next few hours pass in a blur of practical decisions and planning sessions. We look at apartment listings online, discuss neighborhoods, and start making lists of what I'll need for an actual permanent living situation. It's weirdly domestic and comfortable, and I catch myself thinking that this is what normal people do when they're building a life together.

"I should probably check my email," I say eventually. "See if any clients freaked out while I was offline."

"Go for it," Vada says, curling up on the couch with her own laptop. "I need to catch up on business stuff too."

My inbox is exactly as chaotic as I expected—three potential sponsored post opportunities, two brand partnership inquiries, and about forty emails from followers asking when I'm posting more content with Vada. The paradise content is still performing incredibly well, which means the demand for collaborative stuff is only going to increase.

"How's the business world treating you?" I ask Vada, who's frowning at her own screen.

"Good, mostly," she says. "I've got five new event inquiries since we've been gone, and three of them specifically mentionedseeing our social media content. Apparently, people like the idea of hiring event planners who actually seem happy together."

"Makes sense," I say. "We do look pretty happy together."

"We are pretty happy together," she corrects with a smile that makes my chest warm.

By evening, we've made actual progress on real-world planning. I've accepted a freelance content opportunity that can be done remotely, Vada's scheduled client calls for the week, and we've identified three apartments to look at this weekend. It's productive and practical and completely different from the magic of paradise, but it feels right in a way that surprises me.

"Hungry?" Vada asks around seven. "I can cook, or we can order something, or there's a great Thai place down the street."

"You cook?" I ask with genuine curiosity.

"I'm not bad at it," she says with a grin. "Though fair warning, my specialty is comfort food, not Instagram-worthy presentation."

---