*Friday evenings were for decompressing, not for apartment hunting.*
The sublet fell through on Tuesday, which leaves Leo six days and a savings account doing a convincing impression of a leaky faucet. So here he is, parked outside a building that looks like it was designed by somebody who hated windows, watching a man in a stained t-shirt stagger out with a recycling bin full of empties.
The Hawthorne. Old red brick, mortar crumbling like bad dental work, a laurel hedge eating the ground-floor windows, a brass sign gone murky green.
Gary the landlord smells of mint gum and stale cigarette smoke and delivers his warning on the landing, voice dropped. The tenant up there has been in the building three years. Pays on time, keeps to himself. But he is particular. About where the mail goes. About the thermostat. About the recycling schedule. Just out of a long relationship. Very private. Don't take it personally.
The door opens onto a showroom: white plates stacked square in the cabinet, spices alphabetized in a rack on the wall, utensils in a drawer sorted by function, an espresso machine worth more than Leo's car. One framed print above the sofa and no other trace of a person anywhere.
Leo takes the top floor anyway, and the walls at The Hawthorne turn out to be thin enough that Julian can hear a phone buzzing on the other side.
What follows is a truce at the farmers market, twelve sunflowers carried up three flights of stairs and stems trimmed on a diagonal under running water, a tomato seed left on a counter, a bathroom converted into a darkroom, pizza with an indefensible topping, and a kiss neither of them has planned.
Then Evan comes back. Julian's ex is easy and smiling in the doorway and something entirely different at a table with his knuckles gone white, and the thing he finally says out loud is worse than anything Julian was braced for.
And Maya, who makes Leo's coffee black exactly the way he takes it, who has a spare key somewhere and a couch and a corner where he could set up his gear, tells him that what he has with Julian is not a relationship but a rescue mission, and that her offer has always been open.
An MM contemporary romance about thin walls, controlled lives, and learning that needing somebody is not a weakness. The romance is closed-door.
