His Naughty Lessons-Chapter 238: Move-in Welcome

** Harper **

Perhaps she still had a lot to improve on massaging skills, judging from the fact that Eli’s tense shoulders didn’t seem to have gotten any better after half an hour of her hard work. Harper wondered if she should load up on some youtube videos and follow them as she went ... or maybe she should just request more massages for herself and copy it more closely step by step.

Or, maybe she simply needed more practice. Just like what she needed with cooking. It wasn’t until Eli joined her in the kitchen later in the evening that she realized how much she had yet to learn on that subject — she was totally going to add in the meat without browning it first! And she had prepared the wrong type of cheese to top the dish with! Thank goodness that the expert chef was patient and thorough in getting everything back on the right track, helping her narrowly avoid making a complete disaster with their dinner.

Harper made it her personal midyear resolution to brush up on both of those skillsets, starting with carefully taken notes and lots of practice. However, when she offered to try everything again from scratch the next day, the slightly strange expression that she received from Eli made her wonder if she was truly so bad that even such a patient guy had to think twice before giving her a second chance.

So maybe she shouldn’t be too surprised when the second chance never came for her the next day. Instead, she came home to find someone already there ahead of her, greeting her with ... a puff of dust rising in the living room like a giant mushroom cloud.

"... Eli?" she gasped, searching the chaotic debris for her boyfriend’s whereabouts.

"Shit. Don’t come over here, it’s a mess." Eli poked his head out from behind the couch. "Since when do you leave work before six now? What happened to my workaholic Harper and what did you do to replace her?"

Harper giggled. "Well ... since the day I decided to surprise you with a horribly homemade dinner, I suppose?" Then she scanned the disastrous living room that was almost upside down. "Though I guess that’s not happening today anymore. Geez, I thought I made a complete mess of your kitchen yesterday, but even that couldn’t compare to what’s happening to this place right now! What did you—"

Oh.

She stopped mid-sentence, and her jaw fell as she slowly began to process the sight before her.

The minimalist TV stand was gone, replaced by a large entertainment center that already had quite a few items sitting nearby. Everything was still scattered all over the place and utterly out of order, but from the vague outline of an arrangement, she could see his plan if she looked closely: on one side was the newest Xbox, Playstation, Switch, Oculus ... and of course the proprietary headset from Future Vision; on the other side was an almost worn-out collection of N64, GameCube, Atari Jaguar, Wii ... with a stack of disks and cartridges that she immediately recognized as their old time favorites.

"Wait ... where did you get these?" She hurried to the shelf despite the warning otherwise, flipping quickly through the stack. "Super Mario 64? I thought you can’t even buy these anymore! Which antique market did you find it at?"

"What, you don’t recognize it? That’s the same old cartridge we had back when we were kids." Footsteps came behind her, and she heard an unmistakable grin in Eli’s voice. "I kept all of these when I moved out of my father’s house. They’ve been sitting in a storage unit for years ... but the warehouse was supposed to be climate controlled, so hopefully it still works."

Harper swiveled around in disbelief, and it wasn’t till then that she noticed the changes to the rest of the living room behind her.

The empty white sofa was far from empty now, draped over with her favorite types of fluffy blankets and fleece throws. A handful of pillows and cute plushies were haphazardly strewn across the seat cushions, yet to be arranged into their proper spots. A box sat at one end of the coffee table, half unpacked, and she caught a glimpse of the contents to be ... books with suspiciously age-limited covers, not unlike the ones she had seen at May’s booth during the book fest.

He was turning this living room to look just like hers, in her own apartment.

Eli ran a hand over his hair, looking a bit sheepish as he followed her gaze. "It’s taking me a bit longer than expected ..." he explained, apparently with the same tone and the same words Harper had used herself yesterday. "I took the afternoon off to work on this, but the entertainment center took way too long to organize. Guess I should’ve known that I wasn’t so good at packing eight years ago, and I could barely find where everything was in those old bo—"

He didn’t get to finish the sentence before Harper all but pounced on him, wrapping her arms tightly across his neck with a suffocating hug.

"H-Harper!" the man in her arms gasped in horror. "Let go! I’m covered in dust and sweat. It’s gross!"

"It’s perfect," she corrected him, and she meant it. Pulling back slightly without letting go, she smiled up at the handsome face with a dewy glow and the overly tousled chocolate brown curls with hot ruffled spikes. "I can’t believe you’re changing your entire living room just for me ... but it does look so perfect."

She didn’t mind the minimalist style of this apartment. Not at all, if that was what suited him. But she did love how he had surprised her with such a sweet move-in welcome.

After a few more failed struggles to get his sweaty self out of her arms, Eli gave up with an indulging sigh. "It’s not just for you though," he smiled back. "But since you mentioned an ’official move-in’ yesterday, it did get me thinking. I never cared much about the decor of this place before ... because it was just another place to spend another regular day, and all I needed was convenient amenities and quiet personal space. But now, with you here, everything is different."

His hands landed on her waist, holding her lightly. "This is our home now, temporary or not. And I want to make it look like one too. There’s still a lot of work to do, of course, but I thought adding some of our old memories would be a good start ... Honestly, I never expected that those little collections would ever get a chance to see the light of day again."

The warm glow in his eyes against that chaotic background behind him did her in. Despite his protest, Harper pulled him into another tight hug, and she crushed her lips to his in the middle of that messy living room. Which looked so perfectly beautiful, alive, and like home.