“It’s fine.”
“The lock on the main entrance is broken.”
“It’s been like that for weeks. The super keeps saying he’ll fix it.”
“And the deadbolt on your door?”
I finally get the key to turn and push inside. “Works fine.”
He steps in after me and surveys the space. It’s small. A studio with a kitchenette and a bathroom barely big enough to turn around in. My bed is tucked into one corner, my desk in another. Everything I own fits into about four hundred square feet.
“This is it?” he asks.
“Not all of us live in penthouses.” I grab a duffel bag from my closet and start throwing clothes into it. “Some of us have student loans and entry-level salaries.”
He doesn’t respond to that. Just watches me pack with that unreadable look on his face.
“You could help, you know,” I snap. “Or are you just going to stand there and judge my life choices?”
“I’m not judging anything.”
“Your face says otherwise.”
He picks up a framed photo from my nightstand. My mom and I, taken at my college graduation. “Is this your family?”
“Put that down.”
He sets it back carefully. “I wasn’t going to break it.”
“I don’t care. Stop touching my things.”
I finish stuffing clothes into the bag and move to the bathroom for toiletries. When I come back out, he’s exactly where I left him, hands clasped behind his back like a soldier at ease.
“Ready?” he asks.
“Do I have a choice?”
“Not really.”
I sling the bag over my shoulder and take one last look around. I’ve spent two years of my life in this tiny space, building my independence and something that was mine and mine alone.
And now I’m walking away from it because a man I barely know says I have to.
The drive to his place takes about twenty minutes. We leave my neighborhood behind, passing through increasingly upscale blocks until we reach a high-rise that looks like it belongs in a magazine.
A doorman greets us by name. An actual doorman. With a uniform and everything.
“Mr. Karpov. Good evening, sir.”
“Evening, Thomas.”
The lobby is covered in marble floors and modern art. I feel underdressed just standing here in my work clothes with a beat-up duffel bag over my shoulder.
We take a private elevator—because of course he has a private elevator—up to the top floor. The doors open into his apartment, and I stop dead in my tracks.
It’s huge. Enormous. The kind of space that makes my studio look like a closet. Top-to-bottom windows display the Chicago skyline, and the furniture looks like it came from a designer showroom.
“Welcome home,” he states.
