Chapter 6
six
MAYA
As I knock on the door, I know I’ve made a terrible mistake.
“You can still back out,” she whispers, even though we both know that ship has sailed, because my credit cards are bouncing and my apartment is packed.
“I have precisely one option left that doesn’t involve selling a kidney,” I say. “Living with Maine.”
Hockey god.
Campus legend.
Owner of an ass that could kill and a laugh that could resurrect the victims.
My stomach churns with volcanic warnings that have nothing to do with the three shots of espresso I mainlined this morning. Those were strategic armor, designed to fortify me for this catastrophe, standing outside the lair of the man who’s just opened the door.
“Hayes! Perfect timing!” Maine fills the doorway, his grin illuminating the whole hallway. He’s wearing basketball shorts that predate several presidencies and a Pine Barren Devils t-shirt featuring ventilation holes that definitely weren’t factory-installed. “Come on in! The guys are just?—“
The smell hits with testosterone tsunami force, so aggressively, so triumphantly male. Like someone weaponized the concept of “dude” and crop-dusted it. But at least he’s gone to some effort, because there’s a faint scent of pine fighting a losing battle.
“—finishing this boss fight,” Maine continues, blissfully unaware of my olfactory trauma. “Mike! Rook! Get your lazy asses vertical and help with boxes!”
I force what I hope is a passable smile and trail him inside, the living room unfolding before me like a cautionary tale.
There’s a blood-red leather sectional that could comfortably seat the entire hockey team facing a television so massive I’m genuinely concerned about the load-bearing capacity of that wall.
Yep, that confirms it.
This is rock bottom, with a cable sports package and a communal bong.
“Just dump everything in that corner for now,” Maine gestures vaguely toward a space already colonized by hockey equipment. “We’ll figure it out.”
We’ll figure it out.
Four words that probably explain everything from the apartment’s décor to several of Maine’s life choices, but I don’t get the chance to consider it further because Sophie is already struggling through the door with my first box—KITCHEN: FRAGILE GLASSWARE, written in my precise handwriting.
“Kitchen,” I say, desperate to establish some kind of beachhead in this wasteland of bro.
I head for the kitchen as Maine lurks and the other guys go down for more boxes.
The fluorescent bulb above flickers like it’s transmitting an SOS, casting everything in harsh morgue light that highlights every fossilized spill and mystery stain.
I yank open the first cabinet and actually stagger backward.
It’s dishware hell. Promotional plastic cups jostle with stolen pint glasses in a precarious tower that defies many laws of physics. There are at least six different hockey team logos visible, plus a mug shaped like breasts that says DRINK IF YOU’RE HORNY.
My wine glasses—delicate, matching, designer—would survive five seconds.
“Problem?” Maine materializes at my shoulder, clearly feeling none of my doubt or doing a much better job of hiding it.
“Your cabinets are…” I search for diplomacy while my brain screams profanities. “Occupied.”
“Oh, we can totally make room.” He reaches past me, his arm grazing mine with the casual disregard for personal space that must be hardwired into athletes, and starts shoving mugs around like he’s playing dishware Tetris. After ceramic shrieks against ceramic, he grins. “Tons of space now.”
A mug teeters on the precipice. I watch its death wobble in slow motion, my entire future flashing before my eyes—a future of serving Pinot Noir in vessels that say BEER PONG CHAMPION 2024—before it, mercifully, falls and shatters on the floor.
“Heads up, princess!” Rook’s voice booms across the apartment, handling my belongings with the delicacy of a caffeinated rhino. He’s shaking a box labeled KITCHEN: FRAGILE CERAMIC DECOR like he’s trying to guess what’s inside. “This one’s heavy as fuck!”
“Please don’t—“ I start, but he’s already dropped it with a thud that definitely just murdered something irreplaceable.
“Smells like a fucking garden center exploded in here,” he announces, nostrils flaring dramatically.
Mike follows Rook in as he lifts a box with surprising care. “Christ, how much shit do you own?”
“A normal amount,” I snap defensively.
“This one says BATHROOM: LUXURIES,” Mike reads, holding it like it might be contagious. “What the fuck is a bathroom luxury?”
“Skincare products,” I explain, heat crawling up my neck. “Face masks, bath salts, essential oils?—“
“Essential for what?” Rook interrupts, looking genuinely mystified as he’s halfway out the door to go get the next box.
“For not looking like you wash your face with bar soap and prayer,” I shoot back.
Maine’s laugh detonates—that seismic sound that probably registers on geological surveys—and suddenly I’m hyperaware that I’m surrounded by three hockey players and defending my ten-step skincare routine.
This is how dignity dies: not with a bang, but surrounded by men who think SPF is a conspiracy.
“Alright, alright, children,” Maine says, still grinning like this is the best entertainment he’s had all week. “Less investigating her shit, more moving it. Mike, you’re on lamp duty. Rook, grab the books and try not to use them as weights.”
They disperse with surprising efficiency.
Mike handles my standing lamp with the careful reverence of someone who’s been Sophie-trained not to break things, while Rook juggles my nursing textbooks, whistling appreciatively at their heft.
Sophie shoots me a look that screams I’m turning this into a TikTok series .
I retreat to the refrigerator, praying for one small territory in this domestic battlefield.
But it’s not to be, because there’s a pizza box hogging the top shelf, a door that’s a monument to hot sauce—at least fifteen bottles creating a rainbow of future regrets—and an entire drawer that’s just beer.
My almond milk. My farmers market vegetables. They’re all going to die here.
I turn to Maine. “The fridge is filthy.”
“But it’s cold. Doesn’t cold kill germs?”
I stare at him, desperately scanning for any hint of sarcasm, but all I get is pride and warmth. His blue eyes are wide with what appears to be genuine scientific interest, a man who has reached legal drinking age believing refrigeration equals sterilization.
“That’s not how microbiology works,” I say slowly. “I’m going to need to clean this out…”
He shrugs and leans against the counter, his frame making the kitchen feel like a dollhouse. “Learn something new every day.”
My eye twitches, but I begin my sanitization mission with the grim determination of someone who is all out of choices, carving out one pristine shelf through sheer force of will and industrial-strength disinfectant. Once I’m done, my food and my almond milk huddle together like disaster survivors.
Rook bellows from the living room, holding my essential oil diffuser like it might explode. “Hamilton, where does this witchcraft go?”
“That’s—“ I start.
“Bedroom,” Maine interrupts decisively. “All the smell-good stuff goes in there.”
“It’s not ‘smell-good stuff,’ it’s aromatherapy for?—“
“Bedroom,” he repeats, his grin shifting into something dangerously teasing.
I let out an exasperated breath. “I?—“
“Unless you’re trying to seduce us all with your magical lady smells?”
“They’re therapeutic-grade essential oils designed to?—“
“Seduce us. Got it.”
Rook makes dramatic gagging noises while Mike and Sophie share a look—that sickening look of the successful couple that somehow makes everything worse. And, phone in hand, Sophie is definitely recording this disaster, her thumbs flying across her screen with documentary filmmaker speed.
“Shit,” Mike says, having excavated something from my boxes, my first edition of The Beautiful and Damned . “She has real books. Not just school ones.”
“I can read,” Maine protests, sounding wounded at the unspoken comparison, given his bookshelves don’t have… well… books. “I read all the time.”
Mike snorts. “Instagram captions don’t count, buddy.”
“I read other things!”
“Name literally one book you’ve read this year.”
The pause stretches. Then, Maine grins. “The playbook!”
“That’s not a book, you beautiful idiot.”
“It has pages! And words! That’s literally the definition of a book!”
This is my life now.
“Last box!” Sophie announces with the false cheer of someone abandoning me to her fate. “Where does exercise equipment go?”
Maine perks up like a golden retriever spotting a ball. “Oh, sick, you work out? We converted the spare room into a gym! Got a bench, free weights, a?—“
“Yoga,” I interrupt flatly. “It’s for yoga.”
His enthusiasm deflates. “Right. That’s like… competitive stretching?”
“It’s a spiritual and physical practice that—“ I stop, realizing that I’m about to waste my time explaining mindfulness to someone who probably thinks meditation is what happens when you forget your phone in another room. “Yes. Fancy stretching.”
“Cool. That can go in your room too.”
My room. The potential hellscape I haven’t even witnessed yet.
“Speaking of,” Maine says, reading my catastrophic thoughts, “want to see?”
I don’t, but I follow him down the hallway anyway. We pass his open door, revealing exactly the biohazard I expected: clothes draped over every surface like fabric stalactites, hockey gear breeding in corners, and what appears to be a shrine built entirely from empty Gatorade bottles.
It’s horrifying, making me despair over the likely state of my room. But then he continues down the hall and pushes open my door with a flourish that suggests he’s proud of something. And, following behind, I’m shocked to see that the room is empty.
Completely, blessedly, miraculously empty.
And clean.
Actually clean, not just male-clean where you redistribute dirt democratically.