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“Have you ever thought about opening an ice cream shop?” I asked him from where we sat side by side on the couch on the third night, some reality dating show playing mindlessly on the TV.

“I’ve considered opening a combination ice cream shop / arcade,” said Marcus. “Does that count?”

“Whatever it is, you should perfect this and make a buttload of money.” The ice cream’s texture wasn’t perfect, a little grainy, but the taste was on point. Buttery vanilla studded with chunks of crunchy candied pecans and a graham cracker swirl, sweet but not sugary sweet, a little salty and spicy for variety.

“Tell me more.”

Before I could flatter him further, our buzzer rang. I leaped up. Hopefully it was my Thai food. I couldn’t wait to shovel an entire plastic container of sugary takeout tofu pad thai into my face. A-plus coping strategy. I hit the button to open the downstairs door, then opened my own apartment door, so ready to take that warm plastic bag in my hand, and—

“Julie?” Emerson Leigh peered up at me from the bottom of the staircase. “Can I come in?”

I blinked down at her. She was hunched in on herself, her tailored tan trench coat clutched tight around her body, her arms wrapped around her designer purse. Seeing her here, at my apartment, just did not compute. It was like ordering a strawberry cupcake at a bakery and having them hand you a sparkling Christmas ornament. Not entirely unwelcome, but like . . . what?

She cleared her throat, and I realized she was waiting for my response. Might as well get it out of the way early. “Emerson Leigh, I’m sorry,” I began. “I shouldn’t have—”

“Can you apologize to me inside, where it’s safe?” she asked through clenched teeth, glancing over her shoulder like there were muggers lurking in the shadows behind her. I backed up, letting her scurry up the stairs. She poked her head in first before entering, still wrapped up tight around herself. She shut the door hard behind her and flipped both locks, even the second dead bolt that had the tendency to stick. “Okay. That’s much better.”

I bit my tongue, not wanting to get into how I did not actually live in a dangerous neighborhood. “Come in, sit down.”

She kicked off her stiletto heels in the entry, which was good, because they probably would have marked up our wooden floors. For a moment, I wondered how she’d navigated the subway stairs and the walk here over the cracked sidewalks in stilettos, until I realized that of course she’d just hired a car to get here. I glanced out the window before sitting back on the couch beside Marcus. Sure enough, a shiny black SUV idled on our curb.

Emerson Leigh raised her eyebrows in surprise as she entered the room. “Julie, who is this? I didn’t realize you lived with someone.”

“He’s my roommate, Emerson Leigh,” I said wearily. “I found him online.”

“Ooooh.” She sat gingerly on the opposite end of the couch, avoiding the dried wine stain from two roommates ago that had never come out (pro tip: only drink white wine on a white couch). “I don’t think I could ever have roommates. I just like living on my own.” Before I could even think of rolling my eyes, she held up a finger as if she were correcting herself. “That was my privilege speaking. Wasn’t it? Because most people don’t have roommates for fun; they do it because they need to do it. For financial reasons. So I shouldn’t say things like that.”

My jaw dropped open at her self-awareness. That was certainly new. Marcus said, very seriously, “Yes, I actually hate Julie. I’m only here because I need to be. For financial reasons.”

I swatted him as he jumped up, chortling. “I’ll go finish my ice cream in my room and leave you guys to it,” he said, and indeed went into his room. I was impressed he could resist the sure drama to happen. At least until I realized he’d left his door open.

Whatever. I didn’t care if he listened in. He’d heard me cry from breakups and have diarrhea not just once but twice, even if he didn’t know my middle name. It was the strange intimacy of a New York roommate.

I took a deep breath. “Look, Emerson Leigh, I’m surprised to see you out here, but I’m happy, too,” I said. “I owe you an apology. I shouldn’t have said those things to you at your party. It was rude and mean and I regret it.”

She cocked her head, peering keenly at me with those green eyes. “But you meant everything you said, didn’t you?”

“I—” Couldn’t deny it. “Yes, I did, but still, I shouldn’t have said them there, or said them the way I did, and especially not in front of all those people like that. I’m really sorry.”

“I appreciate the apology,” Emerson Leigh said. She took her purse from where she’d been hunched over it on her lap and placed it on the floor between her feet. She must have felt safe enough from any living room muggers crouched behind the bookshelf. “But I should apologize, too. I feel terrible how I didn’t see so much of the privilege I had.” She blinked. “Still have.”

My first instinct was to comfort her and tell her that wasn’t true, but that was a leftover from working for Mr. Decker. I didn’t work for Mr. Decker anymore. “You are a little oblivious,” I said. “But it doesn’t make you a bad person.”

“Just a kind of ignorant one.” Emerson Leigh let out an airy laugh, but this time there was an edge beneath it I hadn’t heard before. “I feel silly that I’ve never really thought about the role my family’s money plays in my life. And I can’t believe how I just assumed you would work my party. It was wrong. It was all wrong.”

It might seem like a ridiculous revelation to have, but these were huge steps for her. “How did you . . . come to these conclusions?”

Something creaked inside Marcus’s room. Probably him leaning over to hear better.

“Well, after you had your little outburst, the party went on and I put on a brave face,” Emerson Leigh said, lifting her chin and perhaps mimicking her brave face, which looked a little bit like she was leading an army into battle. “After the party ended, I went home with Mom and Dad since I really needed some comfort in my old childhood bed. And my dad was telling me in the car that he fired you, that you didn’t know what you were talking about, that you were just bitter and jealous and hating on me because my business was doing so great.

“And I just looked at him and knew he was wrong. I don’t know how, maybe it was spending so much time with you and knowing that you weren’t that kind of person. And maybe part of me knew that my business was a little ridiculous. And that it’s not doing great. And that I’ve only been working on it because I don’t know what else to do with myself.” She bit her lip. “But I asked the driver to drop me off at Bennett’s so I could hear what he thought. And he really . . . he really helped me realize how much privilege I have.” She looked at me earnestly. “You know, he’s a really good person.”

Bennett. Bennett had helped her realize all this. Maybe . . . maybe that meant something.

But I had something to address before thinking about that. “Your dad wasn’t entirely wrong.” I swallowed hard. “I was really jealous of you. Am still really jealous of you, maybe even a little bitter. I think that’s one of the reasons I was so hard on you at your party.”

Emerson Leigh’s eyes went wide and round as I continued. “I’m so jealous that you get to do whatever you want, whenever you want, and you don’t have to worry about rent or student loans or anything like that. You can quit your job to pursue any passions that cross your mind without any kind of business plan or plan B because you’ve never had to worry if they’ll make you money or not. I’m so, so jealous of you that it burns sometimes.”