“All right then. Where’s my room?”
He gestured to the hallway without so much as uncrossing his arms. “Down the hall.”
I nodded, pushing off the counter and moving past him toward the door. When I opened it, though, I froze halfway inside. The room was neat. Painfully neat. I breathed in slightly and knew immediately it was his room. It smelled just like him: faint traces of expensive cologne, clean laundry, and something else annoyingly appealing.
I turned to him. “There’s only one bedroom?”
“Yes.”
“This building costs fifty grand just to step inside of it. You’re telling me you pay that much for one room?”
“Too many rooms make a place unsafe.”
“Unsafe,” I repeated slowly. “Right. Because God forbid you have a guest room. Someone might hide under the bed and sabotage your morning routine.”
“I just don’t need extra space.”
“No, but what youdoneed is therapy and maybe a fern.”
I could’ve called him a serial killer again, but I knew he’d just stand there blinking like,Oh well. There are worse things.
I stepped further into the room. The mattress was perfectly made, tucked in neatly. The closet doors were shut—of course. The blinds were shut. Thevibewasshut. The whole place felt like no one lived here. Not in the way people mean when they say “minimal,” in a way that made me question if he slept standing up in the corner and plugged himself in overnight.
“This place isbleak.There’s clean, and then there’s ... whatever this is. This is, like, ‘I haven’t had a friend since 2009’ clean.”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t evenlooklike he was taking it personally. That was the worst part. He just stood there, still and unbothered, watching me pace around his bedroom as if I were trying to sniff out proof of life.
“So what—you don’t sleep? You just meditate over spreadsheets and file your feelings away alphabetically?”
“Something like that.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re not a monk, Marco. You’re a man. Men have mess. Even the scary ones. Where’s your mess?”
He tilted his head. “You brought it.”
I stopped. Dead in my tracks. Slowly turned to him. “Funny,” I said, monotone.
I continued to look around the room, and then eventually the bathroom. It was the same, clean, except there was no mirror above the sink.
I turned back to him, leaning against the frame.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked.
“Why don’t you have mirrors?”
His head tilted slightly, and I got the sense I’d caught him genuinely off-guard. That was rare.
“Mirrors?”
“Yeah. You know, reflective surfaces. Kinda useful for things like shaving.Speaking of which, how do you do that?”
“I get by.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Youchoosenot to have mirrors, don’t you?”
He didn’t answer, which meantyes.
Marco was hard to read. Even now, after spending more time around him, I couldn’t quitefigure him out. That was frustrating. If I couldn’t figure him out, I couldn’t decide if he was dangerous. If I was right about him. If there were real skeletons in his closet.
