Oh my! This book is so relevant right now that it was almost hard for me to read. Engaged couple Julian and Zakarias are separated because Zakarias is in quarantine until he has no fever and tests negative for the virus.

I live in an area where over 50% of the population is older than 65 years of age. I personally know of two couples who were separated for more than just a few months. I’m talking really separated as in one person lives at home and the other in a nursing home and they were allowed no contact other than phone calls. At least Julian and Zakarias could see each other even if they couldn’t touch.

This is a beautiful story about young people in love and the longing they have for physical contact with each other. It’s one thing if you are separated by choice but to have the separation forced on you by this kind of circumstance make it so much worse.

The story is told by Zakarias and describes what he goes through each day that he and Julian are separated. We also learn what a toll it’s taking on Julian, who is a nurse and must work many extra shifts to help out at the hospital.

Once again Nell Iris has written a beautifully poignant love story. While it was inspired by the current Covid situation it really is a story to could fit into many other situations where couples are separated for any reason. It’s a story filled with longing and love and it made me more than a little sad in places. But it also had me shedding tears of joy when Zakarias and Julian are finally able to reunite. And what a steamy reunion it was!

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When we’d just bought it, we spent many long evenings making plans and discussing options. We’d share a bottle of wine and make long lists of things we wanted, things we deemed necessary in what was going to be our forever home. The lists started outrageously—a wine cellar bigger than the actual house with an employee who turns the bottles? Really, Zakarias?—but distilled into a few reasonable items. So Julian’s dream of the biggest bathroom in the northern hemisphere—a Bath Palace, Zakarias, not a bathroom So Close, Yet so Far Away —complete with a pool, a jacuzzi, a sauna, and every other imaginable luxury, turned into a more feasible sized room with a fancy walk-in shower and a separate bathtub with jets—both of them big enough to accommodate the two of us. It also has a heated floor and double sinks. And my favorite feature; the tiny lights over the bathtub, sprinkled in the ceiling like a starry sky.

We both love the house; it’s our sanctuary. Every design element is chosen for comfort and to make it feel like a real home. Like someplace we can be ourselves. Someplace we can grow old together.

There are things left to do on the house before we’re happy with it, and we still spend evenings on the couch, sipping wine and making lists. Evenings that more often than not turn into heavy make-out sessions on the couch, with clothes being torn off and strewn about. Evenings that end with us panting in a sticky mess and blissed-out grins on our faces, but without deciding what to do with whatever room we’re considering remodeling at the time. “The discussion is half the fun,” he’ll say with sparkling eyes, and my mouth agrees, while I’m thinking the discussion is all the fun, because I could live in a tiny shack in the forest and be happy as long as he lived there with me.

But this house…it’s not just a house, it’s a home. Our home and I miss it.

I miss coming home from work and finding Julian sprawled on the couch in only his underwear, watching some horrid reality show or other on the big screen TV. I miss waking up early on weekends and preparing luxury breakfasts for him, miss how the scent of freshly baked bread never fails to wake him and lure him out of bed. I miss the adorable sight of him stumbling into the kitchen, bleary-eyed, hair in disarray with pillow creases on his cheek and dried drool on his chin. I miss how he beelines for me like a heat-seeking missile and winds himself around me, burying his face in my neck, snaking his arms around me, and tapping three times over my heart.

His family came up with that code when he was little; his younger sister was born with a genetic developmental disorder and never learned to speak, so three taps to the heart meant “I love you.” She died when she was only five, but the family keeps her memory alive with that gesture. It was how Julian told me he loved me for the first time. I didn’t understand it at the time, but when he told me the story, I realized he’d been telling me he loved me long before the words were spoken out loud.

I straighten my spine. Shake my head at my moment of weakness before marching back to the guesthouse and pulling a sweater over my head. I pour out the cold forgotten contents of my mug and pour fresh, steaming coffee into it.

Then I sit, take a sip, and breathe.