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“Wow, he really sleeps in,” Tessa says.
“How do you know he’s there and asleep? Could he have left the house?” Emma asks. She’s somewhere in Jade’s apartment, a corkboard behind her head with Jade’s Polaroid collection tiling it. There are shots of Jade all over the world: the Great Wall of China, Sydney, San Francisco, and the newest one, a shot of all four of us in Paris that Luc took.
Emma is a tall white woman whose hair has gone almost entirely gray, which she jokingly blames on her kids. She has a round face and light crow’s feet around her eyes.
“Good point.” I stand up and walk over to the breakfast room, peering out into the driveway. “The car’s still here,” I say.
“Hold up.” Tessa’s voice is firm. “Is that his kitchen?”
I look down at my phone, which is in my left hand and no longer pointed at me. “Oh my god, Tessa, you would love this kitchen.”
I give them a tour, showing them the rest of the house; my room, the living room, the backyard.
“What’s down that hallway?” Emma asks.
She’s talking about a hallway coming off the main great room. From the outside, I know that there’s a lot of house over there, so it feels like it could be a wing.
I duck my head in. It’s short, with three closed doors and an open one, which reveals a half bath.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I’m trying to be a good houseguest and not open any doors. And if Chris is here, I don’t want to disturb him.”
“Don’t want to accidentally find the bodies?” Jade jokes.
The three of us make a face at her.
“Kidding, obviously.” She holds her hands up. “I’m sure he’s very nice.”
“It looks like an old man’s house,” Tessa says. “How old is this guy?”
“His ID says he’s thirty-eight. I think he’s renting this place,” I answer.
“Still, it seems like an odd choice to rent a stuffy mansion out in the countryside.”
“That’s what I thought, too,” Jade says. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the crap out of this place while you are there. Get your ass in that hot tub.”
I laugh. Jade’s the adventurous one out of all of us. She takes every opportunity to travel that she can, and this is her second time living overseas—she lived in Shanghai for a year. When she suggested we all move to Europe together, I don’t think she expected any of us to take her up on it—after all, none of us visited when she lived in China five years ago, but that was different. The rest of us had partners or kids or jobs that kept us pinned down.
Now we’re more flexible.
“I will definitely be getting into the hot tub. Maybe when it gets colder.”
“You think you’ll be there that long?” Tessa asks.
I bite my lip and think before responding.
“Too soon to tell. I’ll try a few days and see how it goes. Plus, I need to work on getting the money back from the cottage. If I can get that back, I can rent a different place sooner. In the meantime, I’ve never lived with a stranger. Any advice?”
My friends chime in with tips and advice, most of which is useless. Since Chris and I aren’t sharing a bathroom, I don’t have to worry too much about my stray hairs in the tub or leaving toothpaste in the sink—not that I would, anyway.
But it gets me thinking about sharing the kitchen, dividing up utilities, and giving each other space.
Before we can get an update on Jade, she’s got to get back to work. One by one, my friends hang up to go about their lives. I’d avoided eating because there wasn’t much that I wanted to eat here, but without the distraction of my friends, my stomach makes it clear that it does not appreciate being empty. I nibble on some bread again and drink more tea while standing at the kitchen island, wishing that I’d grocery shopped yesterday. Then I curl back up with my book in the chair.
Finally, a door opens somewhere, and a few moments later, Chris shuffles in from that small hallway.
His mouth stretches in a giant yawn.
He’s only wearing boxer briefs.
