Page 21 of Her Age Gap Match

We took off.

The city at night was different from the city in the afternoon.

Everything was lit up and moving, the streets busy with Friday people spilling out of bars and restaurants, the cold keeping nobody inside who didn't want to be. I watched it all go by over Johnny's shoulder, my chin tucked against his jacket, and felt something I didn't have a good word for yet—something adjacent to right. Like I was exactly where I was supposed to be, doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing, wearing a cobalt blue helmet covered in a teenager's sharpie drawings on the back of a motorcycle driven by a man nineteen years older than me who was going to cook me pasta.

My life was insane.

I loved it.

Bridgeport was quieter than Wicker Park, more residential, the streets narrower and lined with two-flats and bungalows. Johnny pulled into a spot on a side street and cut the engine and I climbed off, already getting better at it—right leg, push up, swing over—and he noticed, a small approving tilt to his mouth that did embarrassing things to me.

He took the helmet, tucked both of them under his arm. There was a little old lady walking into the apartment downstairs, and she turned and waved.

“Evening, Mrs. Okafar,” Johnny said. “Staying warm?”

"Trying," she said, her eyes sliding to me with open curiosity. "And who is this?"

"This is Poppy.” No embarrassment, no qualifications.

Mrs. Okafor looked at me the way only a woman of a certain age can look at you—like she was reading something written very small. Then she smiled.

"Pretty girl," she said, to Johnny rather than to me. "You make her something good."

"That's the plan," he said.

She nodded, satisfied, and disappeared through her door.

I looked up at him. "She approves of you feeding people."

"She approves of me having someone to feed," he said, and started up the stairs.

I followed him up, absorbing what I was seeing, how strange it seemed. Johnny was rich—I knew that for a fact, had seen his profile, his income level–but this wasn't somewhere a rich person lived.

This was a man who knew what mattered to him and didn't perform anything else.

The building was well-kept but unpretentious. Johnny, I was learning, was exactly like that. He owned it outright—I remembered that from his file too, the quiet way he'd listed his assets without fanfare. He'd bought the building, rented the lower unit, lived simply in the upper one.

He could have lived anywhere.

He lived here.

He unlocked the door and held it open and I stepped inside.

The apartment was warm and smelled incredible—garlic and tomato and herbs, low and slow on the stove, filling the whole space. Small living room, a couch that looked actually used, books on a low shelf. Two things on the walls: a photograph of a lake in low golden light, and a framed print of a street corner that had clearly been there a long time. No clutter. Nothing decorative for its own sake. Everything exactly where it belonged.

I loved it immediately and completely.

"You can throw your coat anywhere," he said, already moving to the stove as he shrugged off his own jacket and tossing it on the back of the couch.

I hung mine on the hook by the door instead, and stood there for a second taking in the kitchen. Cast iron pan. Good knife block. A wooden spoon resting on a ceramic holder that looked handmade, maybe by a kid. The sauce was simmering in a heavy-bottomed pot, and he lifted the lid to check it, stirred once, replaced it.

I climbed onto a stool at the island.

"That smells unbelievable."

"It's been going since four," he said, not looking up. "Needs time."

"You started it before you came to get me."