1
Itape up the last box, and dust off my hands. It’s time to go. Something begins to boil up inside me, like someone turned the stove burner under my stomach on high. I’m no stranger to this feeling. It’s something I’ve felt every day—to every now-and-then—and every variation in between. I ignore it and pretend no one is home. It would leave in a moment just as fleeting as it came.
But it doesn’t this time around.
Grief. Thatmotherfucker is relentless.
Especially when I’m leaving the only apartment I’ve ever known in New York City and the last place I saw my fiancé, Grant, alive three years ago. I didn’t want to move but my therapist insisted it would be good for me . . . I rationalized it, knowing I couldn’t keep up with the rent hikes on an apartment this size, but truthfully, I couldn’t stomach having a roommate seeing my carefully arranged Ziploc bags still full of his clothes, or the trail of snot-filled tissues that appear every now and then, or the extremely pitiful memorial collage I couldn’t bear to take down.
So, moving it is, whether I like it or not. And besides, Stuart, the superintendent of the building got me a good deal on a newplace just a few floors down. A one-bedroom unit with a corner window. It’s not the two-bedroom with a fireplace and outdoor terrace I picked out with Grant, but Grant’s not here anymore.
Before we signed the lease, Grant was working as an interior designer, and designed everything from intimate, cozy living rooms to sleek, cool offices, and dazzling, spacious ballrooms. He had such an eye for color, light, and pattern. I look around our now empty apartment. It was his one true love, besides me.
Original puritan pine, herringbone hardwood floors with crown baseboard molding. Picture rails on cream walls with hand-picked brass sconces. An acid washed fireplace. Green painted cabinets with glass. White quartz countertops. He spent so much time making this place his own.
Our apartment was adorned with dazzling Persian rugs worth more than my college tuition, and carefully selected designer drapes to complement the rugs. An off-kilter gallery wall with bronze accents, a custom oak coat rack, and a media console with a built-in record player.
I never bothered to install the Tiffany-style chandelier Grant begged me to get while he was in hospice. It was still in the storage unit. I might have lived there longer, but the apartment was still Grant’s design.
We moved here right after college. Grant had a seizure a year after we moved in, and his glioblastoma diagnosis, a deadly brain cancer, was diagnosed three weeks after that. He lived for ten months.
I lived alone in this apartment without Grant longer than we had together.
It was more my apartment than it ever was his, but still, I couldn’t help but think of it as ours. I made my very first painting commission here. Grant built our kitchen table to fit perfectly in the eat-in kitchen. It won’t fit quite as well in the new apartment, but I’ll still take it with me.
I’ll miss this place. I walked in as half of a whole, and I’m leaving as whatever crumbs of my old self are left. My therapist has slowly been encouraging me to say it’s okay to move. It has to be. I hoist the box up onto my hip and collect my keys from the island countertop. I scuff my feet on the floorboards one last time, and head towards the door.
Without me touching it, the door swings open on its own.What the fuck?I step back as cold air from the hall rushes in. I’m shocked to find someone standing there, mirroring me with a box in his arms. I squint, shaken out of my thoughts at the prospect of an intruder…even though I’m technically leaving and there’s nothing here, so what would they steal?
“Hello?” I ask.
“Sorry!” The stranger exclaims. He’s wearing what looks to be a chef’s uniform, although I’m not sure. It’s been so long since I’ve been to a restaurant that had actual chefs. The words,The Red Kettle,is embroidered on the top right of the jacket, with a teeny-tiny design of a red kettle with steam billowing out. “Is this—is this apartment 502?”
I don’t answer and shift my box from one arm to the other. “Um.” He’s tall. And handsome. His dark, black hair falls in a swoop over his forehead and I am thoroughly intimidated by his good looks.
“Yes, this is definitely 502,” he decides after checking the number plate on the door.
“Who are you?” I ask.
“I should be asking you! What are you doing in my apartment?” He says, setting down his box and rolling up his sleeves.
“This ismyapartment—was—was my apartment.”
“Oh?” He laughs. “You must be Riley! I’m Jae.”His dark brown eyes crinkle in the corners, delighted at my confusion.
“Huh?” I ask. I feel like he’s in on a joke that someone told behind my back. “How?—”
“Stuart said you might still be in here…but he said he swore he saw you at the cafe downstairs…”
“That assho—” I start. Of course. Sounds exactly like Stuart to be giving new tenants keys before the old one’s officially move out.
“Hey now,” Jae interrupts, moving through the apartment. “This is a nice place.”
“Yeah. Sorry to still be here.” I apologize and hustle towards the doorway.
“No problem.” Jae says, peering out the window. “I came to check out the place before moving all of my furniture. Renting sight unseen is a risky move, but the Streeteasy photos looked amazing. Did you take those? Or was that Stuart?”
“Um, yeah, I took them.”
