Sunlight cut across the floor in golden bands, warming the worn wood beneath her feet. A desk sat beneath it. Nothing fancy. Just smooth wood and rounded edges, softened by time. It felt used. As if it had been waiting. Welcoming private thoughts and untold stories.
Penny’s usual sparkle faded a notch when she spoke. “I didn’t know exactly what you’d need, but the desk felt right. I thought… maybe you’d need a place to think. To create. To just… exist.”
Her gaze caught on the desk, and something shifted.
Quiet. Tentative. Not quite hope, but close enough to hurt.
Penny clapped her hands,eyes gleaming with mischief. “So, I have an idea… no unpacking tonight.”
Arden arched a brow. “No unpacking?”
“Nope,” Penny confirmed. “Tonight is for celebrating, and I take my celebrations very seriously. Chocolate cake, bubbles, and a lineup of gloriously bad TV. Trust me, I’ve curated only the best.”
The absurdity tugged a laugh from her. Small, but real.
“Cake and champagne for… not unpacking?”
“For new beginnings,” Penny corrected, giving her a conspiratorial wink. She leaned in, voice dropping to a faux-serious whisper. “Now, crucial intel needed: cake or cookies? This is a friendship-defining moment.”
Arden barely had to think about it. “Cake. Definitely cake.”
Penny gasped, clutching her chest as if she’d been personally blessed. “I knew we’d get along, but this? This confirms it.”
Arden let out a sharp laugh, half protest, half surrender, as Penny grabbed her wrist and started dragging her kitchen-ward like the night had an agenda.
“Alright, before anything else,” Penny said, smacking the light switch with all the flair of someone making an entrance. “We’re toasting to fresh starts, terrible reality TV, and the long-overdue arrival of you.”
The cork launched with a sharp pop, pinging off the fridge before hitting the floor. Penny didn’t even flinch. She filled two mismatched glasses and slid a plate of cake across the counter toward Arden with the effortless precision of someone who had done this a hundred times before.
“Eat,” she instructed. “Drink. Surrender to the madness.”
Arden picked up her glass, the fizz whispering against her lips before the first sip. Then came the cake: dense and dark, the kind that cut thesweet with just enough bite. She wasn’t sure when she last enjoyed something without bracing for the cost.
Later,once Penny was asleep, the apartment settled into a quiet that didn’t quite feel like hers. Arden stood by the window, watching the city pulse below.
She wasn’t planning. She wasn’t bracing.
She was just here, and that felt like enough.
Behind her, the desk waited: patient, unfinished, full of half-formed thoughts—words she hadn’t expected to write.
She turned from the window, bare feet whispering across the worn hardwood, and crossed the room, drawn not by obligation but by the quiet pull of possibility.
CHAPTER 5
A World Away
The air was thick with cinnamon and fresh coffee, Penny’s signature welcome.
Arden had spent the afternoon methodically unpacking, grounding herself in this new reality. Suitcase by the closet. Mission complete.
Her room gradually became something more. Not just a place to sleep—but hers.
Music filtered through the walls, indie beats pulsing with Penny’s irrepressible energy. The apartment thrived on motion.
After aligning the last book’s spine with quiet satisfaction, Arden stepped out, curious to see her new roommate in her natural habitat.
Penny sprawled on the floor amid a riot of sketches and design mockups, her tablet casting a cool blue glow across her face. The stylus swept across the screen in time with the music, her focus absolute.
