It occurs to me, standing in the kitchen with my coffee and the quiet machines below and the morning light coming through the window, that I used to know exactly what my apartment looked like. Every surface, every object, every shadow. I catalogued it the way you catalogue a space you own completely, a space that answers only to you. I knew where the light hit at seven AM and where the draft came through the window frame and how the floorboard by the bathroom creaked if you stepped on the left side.
I still know all of that. But now I also know that Zoe's phone charger reaches the pillow from the outlet but only if she sleeps on the left side, which is the side I don't sleep on because it's too close to the windows, which means we figured out sides without discussing it. And I know that her sneakers by the door make the entryway look less empty. And I know that the hoodie on the chair smells like her laundry detergent, something clean and vaguely floral, nothing I'd ever buy.
I do the dishes. Two mugs, two plates from last night. She brought her mom's chicken again and we ate on the couch because I don't have a table and she sat cross-legged with the plate on her knee and told me about Dorothy Haines and the unsalted steps and how Hayes said her patient rapport was good, and her voice went fast and bright the way it does when she's proud but trying not to be too proud because she thinks too-proud is obnoxious, which it isn't. Not on her.
Two mugs. Two plates. I wash them and put them in the rack and stand at the sink and the math of it is simple and irreversible: I'm cooking for two. I'm sleeping on the right side. I'm reaching for a second mug before I've finished my own coffee.
The record player is quiet. I put something on. Chrissie Hynde. "Kid" comes on and I let it play while I wipe down the counter and check the time and calculate how many hours until four, until the bar opens, until the night starts and the routine kicks in.
But the routine has a new step now. Sometime after midnight, after closing, after the walk home and the shower and the quiet apartment, Zoe will text. Or she'll already be here, because she has a key.
She has a key.
I gave her my spare last week without ceremony. She was leaving for a morning shift and I was half-asleep and she said sometime it might be fun to come in and surprise you and I pulled the spare off the hook by the door and handed it to her and she stared at it like I'd given her something valuable.
It's a key. A piece of metal. It opens a door. That's all.
Except it's a key to a space I built on purpose, a life I built on purpose, and I handed it to a twenty-two-year-old firefighter who drinks terrible coffee and lines up her sneakers and texts me at 5:48 in the morning because she wants to hear something good before Hayes tries to kill her.
I gave her the key and I meant it. I didn't think it through though, didn't give myself a chance to talk myself out of it. No one has ever asked for a key, even if she didn't ask directly. Part of me wanted her to have it. The other part of me wanted to stop overthinking everything and just go with something nice because the pretty girl wanted to surprise me sometime. I don't even like surprises. But apparently I like her. A lot more than I probably should.
Chrissie Hynde is singing about being a kid from the '80s and the apartment is warm and the machines below are starting up, the first cycle of the day, a deep rhythmic hum I've been falling asleep to for three years. I sit on the couch in the indent that used to just be mine and is now slightly wider because two people sit here now, and I look at the sneakers by the door and the hoodie on the chair and the phone charger cord trailing from the outlet to the empty side of the bed.
There's a word for what this is. I know what it is. I've been circling it for weeks, editing it out of my own thoughts, replacing it with safer words: nice, fine, good, whatever. But the apartment knows. The two mugs know. The key knows.
I'm not going to say it yet. Not out loud. But I'm done pretending I don't know what it is.
My phone buzzes. Zoe.
hayes says my extrication time improved. also torres brought enchiladas and i saved you some. also i miss your face.
I type back:bring the enchiladas to the bar. and the face.
both will be there by 7.
I'm smiling as a type back to her.Good. Is your face still good?Damn I sound like such an idiot. I do not know how to flirt over text. I've really never had to try to learn. I don't normally do this. Any of it.
Weirdo. My face is always good. But not as good as yours.
I look at the screen. She called me a weirdo. She called me a weirdo and she's bringing me enchiladas and she has my key and her toothbrush is in my bathroom and I'm smiling at my phone like a person I wouldn't recognize six months ago.
I put the phone down. Get dressed for work. Pull the jacket off the hook, the patches settling into place across my shoulders. Walk to the door, step over the sneakers, and head out into the afternoon.
The apartment stays behind me, quiet and full of evidence.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Zoe
Teague does not want to go to the gym.
She has made this clear through a series of escalating objections delivered from the couch in her apartment while I stand by the door in leggings and a tank top with my gym bag over my shoulder, ready, caffeinated, and unmoved.
"I don't work out."
"You carry kegs."
"That's labor. That's different."
