Page 8 of The Single Father Upstairs

"I want to promise you that I am more put together than this, but I'm not. But I always do my best, and I don't bite."

"Noted," I said.

It hadn’t crossed my mind that he’d bite me, but he sounded dead serious and I treated it as such. "Let’s get you to your apartment." Along the way he showed me where his place was, in case I needed help, and then led me up the stairs to the second floor.

"This is you." He stood in front of my door.

"Okay, thanks." I wasn’t sure what he was expecting me to do with him blocking the way.

"I mean, I gave you the keys."

"Oh, sorry." I handed them back to him, and he opened it. Couldn’t he have stepped out of the way or used one of the many rings on his keyring?

Stepping inside my one-bedroom place, I was expecting it to be small and with nail holes in the walls and a dated carpet. I was wrong on all accounts.

The living room was pretty good. The kitchen was small, but a lot larger than what I'd been living with, and best of all, had full-size appliances. There was enough counter space for me to leave my toaster and coffee pot out.

Jon showed me where the thermostat was, the “hidden” outlets, and how to unlock the windows. I could’ve figured it all out, but he was so excited to share.

By far, my favorite element of the entire place was the huge picture window. Marmalade was going to love it. She'd probably spend most of her time basking in the sun or staring at the birds outside.

The bedroom was smaller than I would have expected with the living room that size, but it was going to fit all my furniture, and the closet was double what I'd had before. The bathroom had a tub! When my realtor said to snag it quick before someone else did, she hadn’t been exaggerating.

"It's perfect. Absolutely perfect."

I spent the next hour and a half lugging things in, Jon helping me with the furniture and refusing to accept any cash for his time. I needed to make him cookies or something.

When I first decided to broaden my job search radius, I culled a lot of my belongings. If I hadn’t worn a shirt since freshman year of college, I didn’t need to lug it to a new place to be ignored. The result was me not bringing too much. Most of the furniture I’d had came flat-packed and wouldn't hold up well when moving it. My best bet was stalking the thrift stores, but until I found treasure, what I had would do. It wasn’t like I was going to have a lot of company.

I was bone tired when I finally had everything inside. All I wanted to do was make the bed and take a nap, and I would after returning the trailer and my most important errand of the night, picking up Marmalade.

She was thrilled to see me and far less thrilled when I put her in the travel case. Poor thing didn’t believe me when I told her repeatedly that we were going home and all would be well. She bolted the second I opened it back up at our place. She smelled all the things we’d brought in, rubbed against the boxes, jumped on the mattress, ate out of her own bowl, and purred up a storm.

“We're home, sweetie. We're home.” And as I sank into bed that night with her curled up beside me, those words felt true.

I woke the next morning sore but ready to get my place set up. Part of my compensation was getting a few days off to move, which was good because unpacking was a lot more time consuming than I’d expected.

As nice as my apartment was, the community I was hoping to find wasn't here. They didn't have multiple common areas likethe huge complexes I was used to. There was no swimming pool, no rec center, and no real shared spaces where I could meet people aside from outside areas. And honestly, aside from Jon, the tenants here didn't seem to want to meet me.

I'd pass them and smile, say hello—the normal, polite things you do. And they would stop, look at me, then walk right past without so much as a word. A few even leaned in and smelled me and wrinkled their nose. If it’d been just one person or one day that it happened, I'd say it was a jerk or my clothes smelled like the storage unit.

The first day, I stank so bad that I could smell me. But the second day? I was all clean clothes, freshly showered, carrying in my groceries. I brushed it off, telling myself it was the food they didn’t like. The third day, I stopped using my cologne, telling myself if the sniffing stopped, I’d made a bad choice shopping the clearance section of Christmas kits after the holidays. Lesson learned.

Nixing the fragrance had no effect on the situation. If anything, it was getting worse. One of my neighbors shut their door as soon as I entered the hallway. That or I was getting paranoid.

I wanted to ask them what I’d done to offend them, but every time, I chickened out. They hadn’t done anything overt enough for a confrontation. I needed to ignore it. I’d never be happy here if I let my insecurities keep festering.

Instead I sank into a routine I was familiar with, getting up and going to work, coming back at night to hang out with Marmalade, and repeat.

Aside from the neighbors being less than hospitable, Moonridge Place was far better than living in the hotel and anything else I'dseen while touring the city. One thing I loved about it was how lively it was. I might not have been included in all the activity, but being surrounded by it made my time here less lonely.

A few days in, I could hear kids, lots and lots of kids, and they were laughing. It was one of my all-time favorite sounds. They weren't all from here. You couldn't keep that many kids quiet for as many days as I'd been here.

It was a party, and until I heard them singing “Happy Birthday,” I hadn't realized what kind. Part of me wanted to show up to the party and see if I could meet some people. But if I was the child’s parent, that would be creepy. No one wanted a stranger to join in when kids were involved. Maybe if they had a random BBQ one day, I'd wander in.

Included or not, I loved hearing the festivities. It was nice to know somebody was having fun, eating cake, and from the sounds of things, popping an awful lot of balloons.

“What do you think, Marmalade?” I plopped on the couch, and she jumped up and snuggled beside me. “The apartment's pretty good. The neighbors are weird, but old man Stu, who used to live next door to us, was weird too, so not much different than that.” I scratched behind her ears. “Weird, we can live with, right?”