In our dream home, there will be a shower with two showerheads. Our bathroom will have two sinks and heated tile floors for winter mornings. There will be an industrial-strength hood over the stove, so we can cook steaks without setting off alarms. There will be great big windows that welcome the summer sun, but not its baking warmth. We will have a rooftop deck, a balcony, a wraparound porch. There will be a piano, gathering dust, which will open a secret door when you strike the last black key. Also: a Peloton? The house, we agree, will be walking distance from our favorite coffee shop, our neighborhood bar, the restaurant where servers know our names.

Our dream home, we agree, will not have upstairs neighbors. Or downstairs neighbors. We won’t need timers synced to parking meters that send us scrambling every two hours (except Sundays). We won’t have these claustrophobic, well-meaning windows that only open four inches wide. We’ll have proper curtains—no venetian blinds. We’ll forgo electric burners, handwashed dishes, and laminate countertops in favor of gas, machine, granite.

You say our dream home could be in the Catskills, the Yucatan, the Himalayas. I say that’s smart: to live where others wish they vacationed.

I say our dream home should be somewhere quiet. Abutting water, vistas, park land.

You say our dream-home fridge should have a built-in water dispenser, since I never refill the Brita.

Har har, I say. But let’s not go there. Otherwise, our dream home will just be one big patchwork of fixes for my flaws.

You ask what’s wrong with a dream home that folds laundry, vacuums, and takes out the recycling every Wednesday night.

Puh-lease, I say. I’m you’re personal sanitation worker! When did you last take out the recycling?

In fact, you say, let’s talk bedrooms! How many do you want in our dream home?

I say I really, really don’t think we should go there.

Right, you say. We’ll talk about it next year, because next year never comes!

Fine, I say. You wanna talk bedrooms? We’ll need at least two: one for when you’re being an adult, and a child’s room for when you aren’t.

By now, the sun has set. You grab a sweatshirt, but I make it out the door first. I head north toward Alewife. When I look behind me, you’re walking south, on the opposite sidewalk, probably to Pub Dog. When I reach Alewife, it feels like they’re hosting a wake. Kip, the bartender, asks if I’m here to pick up my mug club mug. I tell him I’m here to fill it, and then I ask who died. He tells me they’re closing, permanently. Don’t I have a Facebook? I say no and sorry. He pours me a beer, says no hard feelings. I ask if I can also get my wife’s mug to bring home, plus two burgers.

At home, I sit on the stoop outside our building. I wish I’d grabbed a windbreaker. Or my keys. But I just had to leave first. You would say I like punctuating our arguments more than winning them.

When you turn onto our block, I see you’re carrying a growler and a pizza box. I hold my to-go containers aloft. Bacon cheeseburgers, you ask. Baja Chihuahua pizza, I guess. We both nod, and you unlock the door for us.

You must have seen the Alewife news online, because inside you just pour the beer into our mug club mugs without comment. Just by looking, I know you bought Muddy Mutt beer, even though you don’t like it as much as I do. I put the pizza straight in the fridge, then bring our burger boxes to you. We balance them on the windowsill and watch as people stream toward the Cross Street bars.

You know, I say. We should have a room for your parents. In our dream home.

They are getting older, you say. And what about another room for when your sister visits?

Good thinking, I say.

We agree that, in our dream home, bedrooms can be whatever we want them to be. They can be home offices. Yoga studios. Workout rooms, crafting spaces, makeshift greenhouses.

And, we say softly, a bedroom could be a child’s room. We quickly add that we don’t have to decide anything tonight. That this is in the future, at some point later, once we have our dream home. But then we say no, it’s okay, let’s talk now.