He gives me a look that closes the subject. Then he picks up his empty mug, rinses it at the sink --- sets it upside down on the drying rack, which has been there less than a day and is already perfectly positioned --- and heads for the connecting door.
The pause stretches just long enough to be something.
"If you need anything, kitchen's fair game after five. Anything breaks, tell me before you try to fix it."
"Noted."
"And..." He gestures vaguely at nothing in particular. "Thanks for. Earlier. With Ivy."
"She's great."
"She's amazing." A beat. "And exhausting." The way he says it --- flat, factual, both things equally true and equally love --- does something small and inconvenient to my chest.
Then he's gone, the door clicking softly behind him.
I stand in the middle of my living room and run an assessment.
My landlord just spent the better part of an hour giving me a comprehensive tour of a space I already spent a night in. He demonstrated the shower temperature zones I discoveredthrough painful personal experience. He showed me the coat closet currently holding my jacket. He treated the laundry schedule like municipal code, made one joke he refuses to acknowledge, rinsed his mug and positioned it perfectly on the rack out of what appears to be pure instinct, and said thank you like the words cost him something to find.
Beck Delano is going to be a problem. Not the annoying kind. The other kind.
I wash my mug in the kitchenette sink --- I already know which way the hot tap sticks --- unpack the rest of my duffel, and drop onto the couch. A spring registers its objection immediately. I shift. Another spring. It's fine. It's dry, it's mine, and the walls don't have water running down them.
My phone buzzes.
Riley: How's the new place?
Me: Dry
Riley: Setting the bar high
Me: Landlord gave me a full house tour. Including a demonstration of the shower handle. Has a label maker for the breaker box.
Riley: Sounds delightful
Me: Also has a six-year-old who is obsessed with dinosaurs and possibly the cutest human on the planet
Riley: Oh no
Me: What?
Riley: You're going to get attached
Me: I'm not going to get attached. It's six weeks.
Riley: Sure, Gem. Six weeks.
I toss the phone onto the cushion and stare at the ceiling. She's wrong. Six weeks is plenty of time to find something permanent without getting attached to a grumpy fire captain with excellent coffee and a kid who has strong feelings about the orange cat's emotional life.
Kevin lists slightly to one side on the windowsill. I straighten him before heading to the bedroom.
I collapse onto the unmade mattress and stare up.
Through the wall, Beck's voice. Low, steady. A bedtime story --- I can't make out words, just the rhythm. Patient. Nothing like the clipped efficiency of the house tour, nothing like the careful way he parceled out personal information and then shut the door on it. Just a man reading to his kid at the end of the day.
Then Ivy, clear as a bell: "Daddy, I think the new person is pretty."
I freeze.
