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Chapter 4
The apartment was ridiculously small––even smaller than the college-issued one I had shared with Jane through law school. The living room was basically a brick box, with two exposed-brick walls jumbled with windows that looked down onto Margaret Street and an adjacent alley, and two others, painted a deep red, that led into the two bedrooms. There was a kitchenette in one corner and a bathroom in the other. No table for eating, just a couch that faced away from the kitchenette toward a large screen that had been mounted on one of the brick walls.
There was nothing about the place that felt like home. Fitting, I thought as I walked inside.
Eric der Vries, my classmate from Harvard and now roommate, dropped my big duffel inside the front door and started to point around, giving the pretense of a tour.
"Kitchen, closet, my room, bathroom, your room. That's about it." He turned to me and grinned. "It's a mousetrap, but we've got loans to pay off, am I right?"
I gave a wry smile. "It's fine. I'm just glad to have a place to live."
Finding an apartment in Boston was a nightmare at the best of times. The fact that a good friend just happened to have a reasonably priced room in a decent part of town the very weekend I needed a place to live was like capturing a unicorn. It didn't matter that the apartment was maybe six hundred square feet total. With the hours I'd soon be putting in, I'd hardly be there anyway.
When I had told Jane where I'd be living for the foreseeable future, she had squawked so loudly into the phone that I thought she might have damaged my eardrum.
"Eric?" she cried. "You can't! You'll fail the bar. He'll leave his shit everywhere! He will keep you up at all hours of the night with his humping!"
Okay yes, Eric was a bit of a ladies' man. But our relationship had always been more sibling-like, as we were both from New York. So who said he couldn't clean the kitchen like anyone else? After I reminded her that I already knew what it was like to live with a sexually active roommate––her––Jane muttered a warning about catching hepatitis in the bathroom and hung up.
As it happened, Eric was really good at cleaning everything. Much, much better than me.
He turned back to face our small surroundings. "So, I've got two rules. Pick up your shit, and no fucking on the couch."
We looked around the living room. It was immaculate. Eric's "shit" was absolutely nowhere to be seen, and the floors, kitchen, and windows all gleamed where the last rays of sunlight shone into the otherwise dark space.
"Fine by me, but can you actually follow that last rule?" I asked with a raised eyebrow.
Eric shrugged, the action stretching the cotton of his T-shirt over his lithe shoulders. "Sure. I don't usually like to bring them back here anyway. They get too attached, want to stay for breakfast." He smirked. "Too much for a piece of ass."
I scowled at Eric's casual misogyny. Maybe Jane was right; living with him was going to be like living with a frat boy. A really clean frat boy who also had a fetish for gourmet coffee, but a frat boy nonetheless.
"Also, rent includes the split cost of a cleaning lady," he added.
Okay, so maybe not as clean as I thought.
"Please tell me you didn't hire Ana," I joked.
Ana was Brandon's housekeeper and Eric's sometime-booty call. She was the reason I had even met Brandon in the first place, when I had followed Eric back to her apartment during a blizzard. Her apartment, it turned out, was in the servant's quarters in Brandon's enormous house.
Eric snorted. "Come on. Give me some credit. Plus, we wouldn't be able to afford her. With what Sterling pays her, I think you and I are in the wrong profession."
He must have seen the sadness that swept over me at the mention of Brandon. It was impossible not to think of him now that I was back in Boston. Everything in this town reminded me of him, of us. My need for distraction had never been higher. Luckily, I'd come to the right place.
Eric clapped an arm awkwardly around my shoulder. "Don't worry, Cros," he said with a friendly squeeze. "We'll make you forget him. I'm the expert in that department."
He hefted my bag over his shoulder again and walked me toward the door on the left, right next to the bathroom.
"Don't worry. Most of the time I'm not even here to use it," Eric said as he caught my disgusted look at sleeping right next to where I'd have to hear him pee.
"Gross," I said, although I wasn't referring to the bathroom.
Eric tossed my things into a small bedroom that was empty except for an old futon mattress on the floor and a desk lamp beside it. I softened. All of my things had fit in the back of my rental car, and I was going to have to find some time to purchase actual furniture. But Eric had taken the time to find me something to sleep on and given me a lamp to read by. It looked like the bedroom of a Soviet-era spy, but I felt warm. A little bit cared for.
"Thanks, bro," I said, nudging my shoulder into his.
Eric just slung an arm back around my neck and squeezed briefly before letting go. "Yeah, well, you needed somewhere to sleep, didn't you? I'm not so much of an asshole that I would make you sleep on the wood floor. Or my couch, come to think of it."
He stepped away to let me adjust to the new space alone. Eric wasn't going to be the kind of roommate who got into my business, and I was just fine with that. I turned to look at the dispiritingly white walls, the sad mattress on the floor. I was glad for the space, but as I stood there alone, the room felt less like a refuge and more like a trap.
