“My skincare. I think. It was in the box. Or, on the box. Unless it wasn’t, which is the part I’m —” I stop. “It probably came with the skincare.”
He doesn’t tell me it’s nothing. He doesn’t tell me it’s something. He reads it one more time and hands it back like it’s a takeout menu someone left on my box.
“Weird,” he says.
“Right? That’s what I said. Well — I didn’t say it out loud. To a person. I said it to my plant.”
“How’d he take it?”
“He’s processing.”
That gets the corner of his mouth. Not a full smile. A down payment on one.
I’m aware that I’ve shown a man I barely know a strange note within four seconds of opening my own door. His armful of mail and his easyheyand his stupid forest.
Some part of me already likes Erik. Not likethat.Just as a person. I decided he’s fine. I don’t remember deciding it. It seems to have happened a while ago, without a meeting.
“It’s probably a brand thing,” I say, because the silence is getting roomy. “They do this now. Hand-written affirmations. Makes you feel special so you’ll buy the moisturizer.”
“You must be pretty special, then.” The corner of his mouth tips up again. “Ella.”
It’s nothing. It’s a normal thing a normal person says.
It hits me, fast, before I have any say in it, and I try to keep my face under control, but heat is climbing up from my neck, and the worstpart — the genuinely unforgivable part — is that he’s looking right at me when it happens.
Nobody calls me Ella. I’m Elara to everyone. Elara on the byline, Elara to Mom,Elara Dorneon the package that started this. He just — shortened it.
Like it was already his.
And he saw the whole thing happen on my face.
He doesn’t say anything about it. That’s almost worse. He just lets the little smile finish forming.
Dammit.
“I have deadlines,” I say.
He waits.
“Words,” I clarify. “I have to go make some. Words. For money. That’s my — I write things. I have to go write things now. Bye!”
I am back inside my apartment before I finish the sentence. The door is closed. My back is against it. I am still holding the cold pizza.
“That,” I tell Gerald, “was a completely normal interaction between two adults who are neighbors.”
Gerald, sunlit and serene on the windowsill, does not contradict me, because he is a plant and also because there is no contradicting it. It was completely normal. Nobody did anything strange. Nobody got flustered over the nickname. Nobody fled their own hallway.
I peel myself off the door.
“Nobody embarrassed themselves,” I add.
A lie. We both know it’s a lie. Gerald has the grace not to bring it up.
My phone rings while I’m still standing here holding the box. The screen says MOM, and I answer it the way I always answer it, on thesecond ring, because the first ring is for pretending I have a life too busy to pick up and the second is the truth.
“There she is,” Mom says. “I was about to give up.”
“You waited one ring.”
