Valentina didn’t look like her, but there were similarities. The inconsistency. The volatility. The way her moods shifted in degrees, like weather fronts you could see coming but couldn’t avoid. She had that same look in her eyes sometimes: wide, deflecting, a little too snappy when she was trying to pretend she wasn’t unraveling.
I didn’t want to make the comparison. But I did.
And I hated it.
Because the last thing I needed in my apartment, in my space, was someone else who couldn’t figure out how to live inside themselves without making a mess of everything around them.
I didn’t need another person forgetting my name.
The door finally opened.
I didn’t look up. Instead I took a slow sip, watching steam curl above the cup like it could give me some sort of answer.
But, of course, I eventually did look up—because self-control only went so far, and I clearly didn’t have much of it around her.
Valentina stepped into the living room, hair messy from sleep, dressed in an oversize shirt that brushed her thighs when she stretched her arms above her head. No bra, of course. Because God forbid she make anything easy for me.
“Is there coffee?” she asked, skipping right past “good morning” and heading straight into demands.
I exhaled slowly, placing my mug down and trying to look unaffected. “Kitchen. Help yourself.”
I forced my gaze back down to my coffee as if I could pretend I hadn’t just memorized exactly how long her legs looked under that shirt or how soft her voice was first thing in the morning.
This was going to be harder than I thought.
She wandered in, her bare feet padding against the cold tile, immediately frowning. “Where’s the sugar?”
“Don’t have any.”
Valentina froze. She turned around slowly, like I’d just confessed to something horrific. “You don’t have sugar?”
I just looked at her. “No.”
“No sugar,” she repeated, as if I’d said I kicked puppies in my spare time.
“You want coffee or not?”
She mumbled something I probably didn’t want to hear—definitely an insult—and grabbed a mug from the cabinet, pouring herself a cup. One sip, and her entire face scrunched up.
“This is awful,” she said, setting the mug down dramatically. “How do you live like this?”
“Like what?”
She waved a hand at the coffee pot, the apartment, me, like I was personally responsible for every injustice she’d everexperienced. “Black coffee. No sugar, no cream, no ... anything. Just pure bitterness.”
“I manage just fine.”
She smiled sweetly, but sweet on her always felt like a warning. “You’re moody.”
“Am I?”
“Yeah,” she said, eyeing me over the rim of her mug. “You are.”
“Then maybe you should give me some space.”
She arched a brow, clearly unimpressed. “Don’t you have enough of that already?”
“Apparently not.”
