I suppose we were hoping to have some grand adventure. The cost of living in the city was eating into our attempts at saving up, so Liz figured that spending a week housesitting in the suburbs was good enough for a vacation; after all, Marissa was letting us stay free of charge, so that was one traveling expense taken care of. We could use her kitchen and renting a car for a week was far more cost-effective than plane tickets, so, really, the math worked out. Sure, it wasn’t anywhere near as exotic as we’d hoped, but it was still worth the week of vacation days.
I picked up the car from the rental place and headed across the city to Liz’s, long-dormant muscle memories waking up as I drove for the first time in years. The distance between our apartments seemed so much smaller by car than by subway. We’d talked many times about moving in together, but the subsidized housing the university offered me would disappear if we did, and the commute from her place to work was far longer than we could justify.
During the drive, Liz joked about how we were going to be grown-ups playing house. There’d be a yard and everything. A washer and dryer rather than the laundromat down the block. Actual, usable floorspace.
