The man straightened with his newspaper in hand, saw me, and froze.
I should mention what I looked like at that particular moment.
My cropped tank top was fabulous. It was the one that says CHAOTIC GOOD in rhinestones, which I’d bedazzled myself during a wine-fueled craft night that Mia still has photos of. My boxer briefs were bright coral, because I believe underwear should have ambition. I wore slides with socks, because I wasn’t goingoutsideoutside. My hair was in its natural post-styling state, which is to say it was aggressively blonde and pointing in four directions at once. Last night’s eyeliner still smudged under my left eye because I’d been too lazy to properly remove it, and there was—I would discover later—a small streak of glitter across my collarbone from TikTok filming, because glitter is my cross to bear, and it follows me everywhere like a sparkly haunting.
So, to recap:
Me, in the hallway, looking like a disco ball that had recently been in a minor traffic accident.
Him, in the hallway, clutching a newspaper with vigor while wrapped in an oatmeal bathrobe like aman who had never once in his life seen a disco ball.
We stared at each other.
“Mornin’,” he said.
Oh no.
That was a drawl.
ATexasdrawl.
It was warm and unhurried, like honey being poured from a height, the kind of voice that took its time getting to the end of a word because it knew the word would wait. There were only two syllables in “mornin’,” and he gave each one a full, leisurely lifespan.
“Hi!” I said, at a volume and pitch that I immediately wished I could take back. It came out like a parrot who’d been startled and immediately shat itself. “Hey! Hello! Good morning! I’m Benji! I live”—I pointed at my door, which was barely a foot away and plainly obvious—“here.”
He looked past me toward my door, then looked at me. His expression didn’t change, which was impressive, because I was giving him a lot to react to.
“I know,” he said. Then, after a pause so long I thought maybe he’d finished speaking, had a nap, and come back, “You come home at 3 a.m., and your door sounds like a gunshot when it closes.”
“Oh.” I winced. “Sorry. I work late nights at a bar. I tryto be quiet, but—”
“And your cat,” he continued, in that same unhurried way, “sounds like she’s being murdered once a day. It happens around noon, regular as clockwork.”
“That’s her mealtime yell. She gets vocal when she’s hungry.”
“Vocal. Right.”
“Enthusiastic,” I amended.
“I thought someone was being harmed.”
“She’s very passionate about wet food.”
Another pause.
He looked at me, at the rhinestones, the coral underwear, the glitter, and the smudged eyeliner, with an expression I couldn’t quite read. It wasn’t hostile, but it clearly wasn’t amused either. It looked more like a man cataloguing a natural phenomenon he hadn’t expected to encounter in his hallway.
The bulldog wheezed.
It was the loudest sound in the hallway and also, somehow, the most eloquent commentary available.
“Well,” the man said, then folded his newspaper under his arm. “Enjoy your weather check.”
He glanced pointedly at my boxer briefs, then stepped back into his apartment and closed the door with a soft, definitive click.
I stood in the hallway for a full five seconds.
“Okay,” I said to no one. “He’s awful.”
