I shift to sit up beneath the fleece blanket—the good blanket, Renee called it last night when she set me up in her living room with sleepy tea and more pillows than any one person could need. She showed me how to work her TV, asked me one last time if I had everything I needed, then gave me plenty of space to cry. She didn’t hover or supervise, but she kept me safe from myself, and in the light of a new day, that’s a larger gift than I know how to unwrap.
I fold up the blanket and find my phone on its charger. I didn’t see much of the apartment in the dark, but its industrial feel, thehigh ceilings and exposed ductwork, reminds me a little of Gentle Giant. I would have imagined Renee living inside a modern-art museum, all stark-white lines and hard angles and color-coded everything. Instead, her buttercream walls boast a mismatched gallery of art prints and pictures that hang seemingly at random, although it’s too visually balanced to be accidental. I imagine her plotting and measuring each frame, her nose scrunched up in concentration.
Plenty of familiar faces smile back at me from the photo wall. There’s a picture of Gin and Renee at a Cubs game and another with Gin, Renee, and Chrissy kneeling on the back of a boat with windblown hair and tipsy smiles. In the center of the wall, a gaudy gold leaf frame surrounds a photo I have memorized: Renee posed with that blond Ken doll at her office holiday party.Merry, Bright, and Blomquist, I recite in my head, wondering why I committed her caption to memory.
At eight o’clock on the dot, the coffeepot gurgles to life. Cars hiss down the wet pavement, off to their Monday-morning meetings, and it occurs to me that Renee should be doing the same. She hasn’t made a peep, and I won’t be making the mistake of letting her sleep in again. Down a hall lined with framed playbills, I rap a knuckle against her bedroom door.
“Renee? Are you up?”
No response. Cautiously, I push the door open, revealing a tidy, feminine bedroom with a four-poster bed in the center. Renee sits up beneath a lavender quilt, wincing into the daylight with her blonde hair falling every which way. My pulse flutters, and in my mind’s eye, I’m in bed beside her, Renee’s smooth, sculpted legs tangled with mine. I cough, shoving the thought away.
“Shouldn’t you be getting up for work?” I ask.
Renee blinks at me, confused, as she finger combs her bed head back. An enormous gray T-shirt hangs loose and lazy off her shoulder, and panic stretches her sleepy eyes as she paws for her phone on the end table, checking the time. “Sorry.” She coughs. “Had to remember what day it was.” Her voice is a low, sleepy rasp. “Monday, right? I, uh. I took today off.”
“Oh. Sorry to wake you.”
“It’s fine.” Renee rubs her eyes, then reaches for her nightstand again and slides on a pair of round wire-frame glasses. “You want coffee?”
“More than anything on this earth.”
In the kitchen, Renee digs two mismatched mugs out of the cabinet—one big bellied and teal with a chip in the lip and another with a twirly-lettered roastery logo on the side. She fills both to the brim and gives me my pick of the two. I choose the teal one, worrying my thumb against the chipped porcelain. It feels lucky somehow—or maybe it’s just the grand luck of the last twelve hours, that Renee happened to be passing by right when I needed to be found.
I follow her back to the couch, still collecting details of the apartment like souvenirs. Renee’s home is so much more normal than I expected—the basket of unfolded laundry, the brown-spotted bananas in the fruit bowl, the abandoned stack of mail cluttering the small oak desk in the corner.
“Great apartment, by the way.”
“Thanks.” Renee brushes her fingers along the giant waxy leaf of a thriving elephant ear plant. “Enjoy it while you can. They’re raising the rent, so…we’ll see.”
“Well, it’s a great space.” The next thought is meant to stay inside, but it flies out anyway. “Not at all what I was expecting.”
She squints at me over her shoulder. “What were you expecting?”
“I don’t know. You’re just so organized and clean cut, but your apartment is…eclectic?”
Renee lifts a brow. “Am I allowed to contain multitudes, Alice?”
We settle on the couch, backs against the khaki armrests, toes almost touching on the center cushion. We’re a set of matching bookends, each holding our mug steady in both hands.
“So,” Renee starts. “Last night.”
Right.I fight through a swallow, then a deep inhale that pours out as a wavering sigh. “Yeah. Last night. Thank you for letting me stay with you.”
“Of course.” Renee’s voice is slow and measured, like she’s trying to suss out exactly what drove me toward a late-night staring contest with my old favorite bar. She sips her coffee cautiously, eyeing me from behind her mug until the steam fogs her glasses. When her lenses clear, Renee’s eyes lock on mine.
“So what’s going on?” she asks outright.
“I was…a little shaken up.” An understatement but not a lie. “It was a hard night. I’m glad you found me.”
Renee’s lips tick up on one side. “I did sacrifice the good blanket for you. That was very big of me.”
I grunt a laugh. “At least you’re honest.”
“Yes, well. You can be, too, you know.”
“I can be what?”
“Honest,” she says.
