Chapter 10
The thing nobody tells you about liking someone you live with is that you become hyper-aware of the apartment itself.
In the morning, it feels normal. There’s coffee to make, screens to stare at, routines to follow.
In the evening, it shrinks.
The couch is one couch. The kitchen is one kitchen. There’s only so much deliberate distance you can create in seven hundred square feet before it starts feeling like theater.
I was in the middle of that performance on a Thursday when Chloe came home forty minutes earlier than usual, sat on the couch, and didn’t open her laptop.
She just sat there.
I gave it five minutes.
“You okay?”
“Fine.”
Three more minutes.
“When you say fine, do you mean fine, or do you mean I had a terrible day and I might want to talk about it in twenty minutes?”
She paused. “The second one.”
“Okay.”
I finished the paragraph I’d been working on, got up, made two cups of tea, set one beside her without making eye contact, and went back to my desk.
Seventeen minutes later, she said, “My client canceled the entire project. Two months of work gone because their CEO had a vision shift.”
She said those last two words with exactly the amount of contempt they deserved.
“And my manager asked if I could pick up someone else’s account by Monday.”
“That’s awful.”
“I know it is.”
“Did you say yes?”
A pause.
“Obviously.”
“Obviously,” I repeated.
She looked at me. “Don’t.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything.”
“You had a face.”
“I can’t control my face.”
She drew her knees up and wrapped both hands around her mug.
There was something different about her like this. She wasn’t guarded. She was just tired.
“Do you like your job?” she asked.
“Most of the time.”
“What does it feel like when you do?”
I thought about it.
“Like I’m building something that belongs to me, even when it’s hard.”
She was quiet for a while.
“Brand consulting doesn’t feel like that.”
“What does it feel like?”
She looked toward the window. “Like I’m very good at making other people’s things look like something they’re not.”
Neither of us said anything for a bit.
“That sounds exhausting,” I said.
“Everything is exhausting.”
Same answer as before.
Only this time, she half smiled when she said it.
And it was directed at me.
Later that week, a man named Felix showed up downstairs while I was coming back from the grocery store.
He looked about our age, dressed in that easy, effortless way men do when they’ve never once had to think about clothing in their lives.
He was standing at the call box looking at his phone.
“You trying to get to 614?” I asked.
He looked up. “Yeah.”
“Elevator’s broken. Six floors.”
He made a face. “Seriously?”
“Since I moved in.”
We started up the stairs.
On the third-floor landing, he said, “Is this the building where Chloe Park lives?”
Something in my chest did a small involuntary thing I refused to examine.
“Could be,” I said.
He smiled. “We used to date. She said she was free today.”
Right.
I kept climbing.
When we got to the apartment, Chloe was already by the door, which meant she had heard us on the stairs.
She was dressed casually, but in that suspiciously intentional way people dress when they want to look like they’re not trying.
“Felix is right behind me,” I said.
“I know.”
Then she smoothed the front of her shirt once, caught herself doing it, and crossed her arms instead.
I went to my desk and put on my headphones.
Not to listen to anything.
Just as infrastructure.