The next morning, Lainey woke to the sounds of brutish grunting outside her door.
Not wanting a repeat of the threadbare T-shirt situation, shethrew a hoodie over her top half and wandered into the hall, where she nearly tripped over a prone Elliot in blue running shorts and a baggy sweatshirt.
“Is this an attention-seeking thing? Like when a cat scratches at the door to be fed?”
“Was I loud?” he asked, his voice strained as he was holding a rigid plank position.
She high-stepped over him. “Was your performative grunting in front of my bedroom loud? No, not at all. I was already awake on account of all the burpees I was cranking out beneath your open window. I hope that wasn’t too disruptive for you.”
He collapsed into a kneel. “Sorry. I’m used to living alone. Next time, I’ll do this outside after my run.”
“You run, too?” It wasn’t much of a question. He had the muscled thighs of a man who possessed strong opinions on kinesiology tape and the rigid set to his shoulders reserved for evangelists of the elusive “runner’s high.”
“Yeah, do you?” He walked into the kitchen, panting.
“No. When you wake up every few days with knives driving into your skull, it’s difficult to pick up a running habit.” Chainsaw sculpting, carpentry, and the general maintenance work she so often did to pick up extra cash was fairly physical work, so she’d managed to keep active despite her occasional bedbound days.
“I’d imagine so,” he responded, sounding genuinely sympathetic. It surprised her and made her feel a bit like a bug under a microscope. He knew so much about her—where she lived, her chronic health issues, where she purchased cheese—and all she knew about him was that he was an architect who didn’t like bars that played sports on the TV.
An unfamiliar gray water bottle sat on the counter, which hegrabbed and took a long gulp from. It was starting. The slow takeover of her space. Soon, there would be other foreign objects floating around with an ulterior motive she wasn’t privy to.
He pulled the bottle away from his mouth and gasped for air. “I had a pull-up bar in my apartment, so I’m still trying to figure out a new routine without one.”
“If you want to install a pull-up bar, be my guest,” she said. Against her will, images of shirtless pull-ups—right there in her kitchen—intruded into her thoughts. But as she had no clue what was going on under that sweatshirt, the figure was more of a flexing, flesh-colored blob with Elliot’s grunting head atop it.
He set down his water bottle with a delicate smack. “I can’t tell if you’re joking.” He searched her face. There was no chance her thoughts were projected onto her forehead, was there? “I can’t drill a pull-up bar into a Vincent Groff house. Tell me you’ve never drilled holes into this place.” Panic flashed in his eyes.
“No. I don’t think so.” He kept staring at her. Her blood pressure rose like a perp’s under the lights of an interrogation. “I don’t know! I can’t remember everything that’s ever happened here.”
“No holes from here on out,” he declared with a sense of finality. He scooped grounds into the coffee maker. “Do you want some?”
She nodded. “I need to go grocery shopping, but there’s oatmeal packets in the cabinet if you’re hungry.”
His shoulders seemed to relax by one degree. “That’d be really great. Moving forward, we can split the grocery bill if you want. Or do separate groceries.”
“Separate is probably best.” She squinted at the sweatshirt again, imagining how much it would cost to feed fifty percent of the man who wore it.
He pulled the packet out of the cabinet and gave it a shake. “I haven’t had oatmeal since I was a kid.”
“Really? That’s weird,” she hummed, meandering over to the dining table. “I can’t imagine you being a kid.”
“I suppose that’s a good thing.”
“I can only see you entering the world as a tiny adult, marching around the hospital, saying things like, ‘What is the meaning of this?’ and demanding to speak to the manager.”
He snorted, his face in the lower cabinet. “That’s exactly how it all went. Right down to the British accent.”
“No, that’s my East Coast erudite voice.”
He rifled through her cookware, settling on a medium-sized saucepan, and filled it with water. “Where do you think I’m from?” he asked, sounding uncharacteristically amused.
She pulled her sweatshirt sleeves over her hands, considering. “Massachusetts?”
He gasped, like she’d shot him.
She laughed. “Is Massachusetts bad?”
“Do I scream ‘Masshole’ to you?”
