Vault

Forty-Eight

"Ready to go?" I asked Karl.

He nodded happily as he grabbed my hand, intertwining our fingers. We walked out to my car and I drove us in the direction of the dream house.

"Where are we?" Karl asked as I parked in the driveway.

I didn't answer him, instead I just walked us up to the front door and unlocked it to let us in. I led Karl into the to-be living room and smiled over at him.

"So this, I imagine would be the living room. And I think I want to actually remove this wall," I explained as I gestured around, "because then it would be openly connected to the kitchen and it would make both rooms look bigger. I like the neutral walls, but maybe this wall could be painted a medium dark color like a blue so we can paint a mural on it, because blue is your favorite color."

I led him into the kitchen, the smile only growing on his face with every room I brought him into.

"What would you do in here?"

"I want to paint the cabinets a darker shade of this grey to balance out with the light counter tops. But otherwise, I love this kitchen," I smiled.

We went through every room until we finally made our way upstairs.

"I think this would be an office. So you could stream in here if you wanted to and we could paint it whatever color you wanted to and put whatever you want up as a background for your streams," I smiled.

"I like that idea, but I think we should put a desk in here for you too so you can do homework in here and then do work stuff or research for whatever groundbreaking stuff you're working on," Karl smiled, "and you can build whatever kind of robots you wanted to in here."

"There's one more room left to show you before we go outside," I smiled.

I brought him down the hall to the master bedroom. It was a big, beautiful room and the only changes I wanted to make were simple.

"Now this, would be our bedroom," I smiled, "and I think I would want to paint it all a light color so it looks like quartz and then we can make one wall red so I can paint a mural on it. And then I think we'd put our bed here, with the windows natural light above us."

"I love that idea," Karl smiled, "for our bedroom."

"Outside?" I asked, smiling at his emphasis on the word our.

Karl nodded as he grabbed my hand and tangled our fingers together. We walked back downstairs and I led him out the back door to the backyard. There was a pool not far from the back porch, just like with the house he built in Minecraft.

"I imagine, putting a fire pit back here and by next summer making this into an area that all of our friends want to hang out in with us," I smiled.

"Baby, this is a beautiful house," Karl smiled, "and you keep saying our. Do you want to tell me what's going on?"

"Well remember how I said I was looking at internship options outside of Wilmington?" I asked.

Karl nodded so I reached into my back pocket for the printed copy I had of the email from my internship director and handed it over to him. He read it, looking almost confused for a moment before I think it all clicked for him.

"Here? You're doing your internship here?" Karl asked.

"I have the option to do my internship here," I smiled, "if you'd want me around more. Then I could move back here and be closer without giving up my internship."

"Are you kidding?" Karl exclaimed and he reached over and nearly tackled me in a bone crushing hug, "oh my god baby, you're going to be here and we won't be apart. You'd really be back here."