Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Willa
“Okay,” I tell my closet. More precisely, my closet door.
Which is closed and looks exactly as a normal closet door should. Sturdy. Wooden. Door-like.
I marched straight to it the moment the new building owner unlocked my door. More precisely, the moment after I slammed the door on his handsome but grumpy face—the one I’m struggling to banish from my memory.
My closet and I need to have words.
“You,” I say, “are a closet. You store clothes and shoes. You tend to attract moths. That is your sole purpose.” I pause. “The clothes storing, I mean, not the moths.”
The closet, being just a closet, does not respond.
“You are not a T.A.R.D.I.S. or a portal. You aren’t even a Narnian wardrobe. There is no Mr. Tumnus or Turkish delight inside you.” I shake a finger at it. “Remember your place. You have one job, and it is not to somehow transport me into the closet of a very attractive man who now thinks I’m some kind of stalker and who also has the power to evict me. Do we understand each other?”
I didn’t really expect the closet to react in any way. But I still pause and wait a few long seconds while the closet continues doing its normal closet thing.
Exactly as it was doing earlier when whatever happened happened .
Depositing me in the closet of the most intimidating—and attractive—man I’ve ever met. When he threw open the door, I felt a mix of terror and hel - lo, nurse .
Not that there was anything at all nurse-like about him. From his tailored suit to his fierce eyes and tense jaw, he is not the kind of person you’d want at your bedside. His manner is far too severe.
Plus, I think he’d cause swooning rather than cure it, with those steely eyes, broad shoulders, and deep, rumbly voice.
Even though he was, at best, dismissive and, at worst, downright rude to me, there was something commanding about his presence. Commanding and alluring. Like, he could bark out an order that would have me responding with a crisp salute and a quick yes, sir , but then I’d find myself swaying into his orbit rather than standing at attention.
Archer Gaines .
The new building owner. On whom I’ve made a horrible first impression.
“He thinks I’m either a cat burglar or a woman with narcolepsy. Or worse,” I tell the closet. Normally, I don’t speak to inanimate objects. But normal flew out the window thirty minutes ago. “He suggested I might have a brain tumor. And it’s all your fault.”
I’m still trying to wrap my brain around it. There were no voices at the time. No weird sounds, no flash of light. I just opened the door— I open the door now just as a test —stepped inside— I step inside —and started rummaging through the hanging clothes— I start to rummage . I remember blinking a few times, like I’d gotten dust in my eye or something, and then I was suddenly not in my very overfull closet but a very empty one in an apartment two floors up and on the other side of the building.
l blink now.
Open my eyes.
And … I’m still in my closet.
I shouldn’t be disappointed. Because this? This is normal. Closets should just be closets. Not teleportation devices or wormholes. Or whatever.
But now, I think I might be losing it. Or whatever it I had left to lose.
I sink down to the floor and sit cross-legged next to a pair of high heels I haven’t worn in at least a year. Not since I quit my office job. Work is the last thing I want to think about right now—even less than a magical closet that transported me into the apartment of a man who seemed to hate me on sight.
Not that I can blame him. I mean, if some stranger showed up in my closet saying they teleported there?
Ugh! What a way to make a first impression! Archer was right not to believe me. Though I’m loath to do so just because of his attitude, I have to agree with his assessment, which is that what I said happened couldn’t have happened.
It couldn’t have.
The problem is that it did .
I throw my head back and laugh, the absurdity of it all hitting me anew. I’m honestly lucky the man didn’t call the cops.
The thought sobers me right up. Why didn’t he call the cops?
Maybe he’ll just evict me. Icy panic zips through me at the thought. But then, he didn’t seem eager to say anything about it to Bellamy either. This surprises me, though maybe the moment I left, they had a meeting about upping security measures and kicking me out of the building.
Grasping at possibly the final straw of my sanity, I stretch out my legs in the cramped space and click my heels together three times.
“There’s no place like home?”
Nope.
Now, I’m just a woman sitting in a dark closet.
Alone.
Possibly demented.
What other explanation is there for me having somehow moved through space and time? Oh, no … what if I time-traveled too? I scramble to my feet and stumble out of the closet to find my phone.
The screen lights up, showing today’s date on top of a photo of Sophie and me.
I’m not sure why I’m so relieved about the time. I guess if I have to handle an event so absurdly ridiculous, it needs to be one thing at a time.
Closet that transports me across the building? Not great, but somewhat manageable. Closet that transports me across the building and also makes me jump forward or backward in time? Too much.
Since the phone is already in my hand, I call Sophie.
“Hey,” she says distractedly after the first ring. From the windblown background noises, I can picture exactly where she is.
“You still up there, planting flowers in the dark?”
The rooftop garden of The Serendipity is as much Sophie’s place as the commercial kitchen downstairs is mine.
She snorts. “Where else would I be?”
“I don’t know—maybe your apartment? Or hanging out with Peter?”
Peter is Sophie’s other best friend. I’m not sure why just a friend since he’s super cute and a really decent guy, but both of them are insistent on the platonic thing. There’s a muffled sound, and I imagine her shoulder pressing the phone to her ear while she drags a trowel through fresh dirt. Since winter is just releasing its clutches to make room for spring, Sophie is more likely covering the flower beds with sheets, whispering sweet nothings to her baby buds.
“You should pitch a tent and live up there with your plant friends,” I suggest.
“Now you’re making me sound ridiculous. Crazy Plant Lady, living on the roof with all my babies.”
Her joking words strike a little too close to my current situation of Crazy Closet Lady, teleporting through the building.
“Wait—do you think I’m a Crazy Plant Lady?” Sophie asks.
“No! Absolutely not.”
“Then why are you so quiet?”
“I just had an incident.”
“An incident, huh? Sounds serious. I’ll come down. Do you have any icing?”
“Duh.”
“Be right there.” And without a goodbye or waiting for a response, she hangs up.
In an age when most people treat phone calls like venomous snakes, I’m so glad I still have Sophie, who, like me, prefers to use the phone for its primary function. But when the conversation is done, she sees no need to put the frilly bow of a goodbye on it. She just ends the call. I admire that about her. She’s the most decisive person I’ve ever known.
I tend to land on the other side. Far on the other side. While Sophie’s decisions fall as swiftly as a guillotine blade, I tend to let things go on and on, hoping conflicts and things I don’t like will just resolve on their own.
A perfect example is my last relationship. Which I should have ended months before my latest failure of a dating experiment, Paul, finally got exasperated with my complete passivity and put us both out of our misery.
I keep hoping Sophie’s decisiveness will rub off on me. So far, no luck.
I unlock my door and leave it cracked for Soph, then root around in my fridge. I almost always have a container of royal icing on hand, along with broken sugar cookie pieces. They are helpful if I want to practice technique—or to feed my best friend.
Sophie and I first met almost exactly two years ago in The Serendipity’s courtyard. It was the kind of early spring day so sunny and so glorious that residents came stumbling out of the building like bears awakening from hibernation. In our case, it was more like human beings to a swimming pool.
The weather wasn’t quite warm enough to swim, but the lounge chairs quickly filled up with people savoring the weather.
Sophie took the chair beside me and asked if I liked the book I was reading. It was historical fiction—the kind showing a woman’s back on the cover with planes flying overhead. Award-winning, from the gold seal on the cover. I’m sure it was a lovely book. But every time I picked it up, I hated reading just a little bit more. On the plus side, it was more helpful than melatonin for falling asleep at night.
“It’s well-written,” I answered after a moment of trying to remember which war the book was even about.
Sophie rolled her eyes, snatched the book from my hands, and rooted around in her bag until she pulled out one with a sword and shiny gold lettering on the front.
“Try this.”
I frowned. “I don’t read fantasy.”
She only hummed. “Just read the first chapter. If you don’t like it, I’ll give back the book that’s clearly boring you to tears.”
I read the first chapter. And I didn’t come up for air until almost an hour later to see Sophie grinning at me. “Told you.”
“Can I borrow this?” I asked. “It’s … wow.”
She gave me her apartment number and contact info, then headed out, taking my historical fiction with her.
I texted her for the first time that night at three a.m. like some kind of addict.
Willa
Is book two out yet?
She immediately called, sounding like she, too, had been up. She also sounded smug. Like she’d just been up waiting for my call.
And friendship was born. Over dragons and epic romance and my admiration for her decisiveness and my willingness to ply her with royal icing.
“Hey!” Sophie bursts in, her greeting breathless, like she ran down the stairs to my apartment.
She and I avoid the elevator, which is toward the front of the building and groans, like any moment it’s going to give up on life. Neither of us want to be inside it when it finally dies.
“Icing’s on the counter, and I’m working on your tea.”
While I put on the kettle, she hangs her coat on the hook by the door and fluffs out her dark curls. A smear of dirt is on her cheek.
Settling onto a stool, she drags the broken head of a unicorn cookie through the bowl of royal icing I set out. Her eyes roll back in her head as she takes a bite.
“You’re the best,” she mumbles around the mouthful. “I swear, these should be illegal.”
“Thank you.” I wish her endorsement was enough to keep my fledgling cookie business afloat.
But alas, Sophie’s love of my cookies, and my own skill at baking and decorating, is not enough to bring in the wild success I hoped for when I quit my job to start Serendipitous Sweets.
Mostly because I’m as bad at marketing and the business side of things as I am at making firm decisions. I set Sophie’s tea in front of her. I’m a steadfast coffee drinker but keep Lady Grey just for her. As best friends do.
“Nice pajamas,” she says around another bite.
I glance down, then groan, reminded that not only did I defy the laws of space, time, and probably physics tonight by appearing in my new landlord’s closet, but I did so wearing my favorite llama pajamas.
With shorts that feel indecently short, considering I wore them in front of him. And Bellamy too. I groan again, louder, then drop my head into my hands.
“That bad, huh?”
“Worse.”
“So, tell me about this incident that has you looking like you’ve seen the Ghost of Christmas Past.”
The Ghost of Christmas Future would be the scary one. Especially now that I can imagine not just my inability to ever pay back my small business loan but also ending up evicted.
I drag a stool around to my usual spot on the other side of the island. My knees knock into the lower cabinets this way, but I like sitting across from Sophie. I take a piece of a broken daisy and twirl it between my fingertips.
“You’re going to think I’m delusional.”
Sophie gasps. “I would never.”
“The alternative is that you’ll think I’m lying.”
“I would also never. Now, spill.”
Drawing in a steadying breath, I explain what happened, watching her green eyes grow rounder and rounder as I explain being in my closet one minute, searching for my favorite soft blue sweater, and then upstairs in a totally different apartment the next.
I stop just short of saying how hot our new building owner is. And how good he smelled. The way I wanted to keep arguing with him just to hear him growl out answers in that gravelly voice.
Irrelevant , I tell myself. Too old. Too grumpy. Too much the owner of the building you live in.
I skip over the parts of Archer that make my stomach flip even now. Instead, I focus on how cold and stiff he was, how he marched me silently back down to unlock my apartment like he was my prison warden.
Which somehow really worked for him. Something—besides my closet—is clearly wrong with me.
“Well—say something.”
Sophie hasn’t spoken a word but has polished off most of the broken cookie pieces.
“It’s my fault,” she says miserably.
“What? Did you enchant my closet somehow?”
“No. I have your blue sweater. I borrowed it and didn’t give it back yet. It’s so soft ,” she says in a reverent whisper.
“It is the very best sweater,” I agree. “But this didn’t happen because you haven’t returned it. Wait—what about the rest of it? You don’t think I’ve lost my mind or my marbles?”
I hate how my voice wobbles a little at the question. My mental health is something of a touchy subject for me.
Sophie gives me a fierce look. “Like I said—never.” She drags a finger through the icing and pops it in her mouth, her expression turning thoughtful. “I do have some thoughts, but first—I have questions.”
“Shoot,” I say, straightening on my stool and preparing to talk her through how it happened.
“What was the new owner like, aside from grumpy? Is he anything like Galentine? Did you get the sense he’s going to come in and change everything? Do we need to start looking for a new place to live?”
Not the questions I anticipated, but o kay .
I do get it. Ever since Galentine mentioned selling The Serendipity, rumors have swirled among the residents. Mostly because we live in a gorgeous historic building in a fantastic downtown location with relatively low rent. Securing an apartment here is like winning the lottery.
Galentine announcing her retirement and subsequent selling of the building sent many residents into a mild panic. Though she loves to talk, she was tight-lipped about the person who purchased The Serendipity. Rumors spread anyway about the new owner being a filthy rich recluse—seems pretty close to accurate.
Galentine could not have picked a more different person to carry on her legacy. But maybe she was more concerned with retirement money?
Doesn’t quite seem in character, but then, she was never someone who made predictable decisions.
“He is absolutely nothing like Galentine. And we probably should be worried. Especially me, now that he thinks I either lied about sneaking into his apartment or that I’m totally unstable.”
Sophie eats the last cookie. “Unrelated but also critical info—is he hot?”
“I didn’t notice,” I lie, already feeling a blush rising in my cheeks.
Sophie doesn’t miss my reaction, and she smirks. “Right. Clearly, he is hot. And you haven’t shown any interest in a guy since?—”
“I’m not interested in him,” I say, but it comes out a little too defensive.
Because despite Archer Gaines being hot, I’m not interested. And, based on the cool way he assessed me, neither is he.
In case I need any more reasons to not be interested, Archer is older. Maybe ten years or so? There was no sign of gray in his hair, but the one time he smiled, he had those little lines around his eyes that have a way of making men somehow look more attractive.
Also, unless Bellamy was kidding about the billionaire thing, Archer is ridiculously wealthy. Polished and poised in his suit and shoes, which simply reeked of not only money but status and class. Sophisticated and serious to my … well, neither of those things.
I’m the broke, disheveled failed baker who apparently teleports in llama pajamas.
Even if he weren’t probably a hair too old and a lot too classy for me, there’s no chance he saw me and thought, Now, there’s a woman I’d like to take out on a date!
So, I can stop thinking about him and his hotness right now.
Sophie’s playful expression disappears. “For real, though—do you seriously think we need to start apartment hunting?”
Slumping against the counter, I say, “Maybe. He seems like he’d come in with a wrecking ball. After he found me trespassing in his apartment, he’ll probably evict me. Or at least remove my access to the kitchen. I mean, I couldn’t explain how I got there. Sophie—how did that even happen?”
“Here’s what I know.” She holds up a finger at each point. “I know you’re not a liar, and you’re clearly coherent. This event was witnessed by one other person, so it wasn’t in your head. You actually ended up in his apartment somehow, right?”
“Right.”
“That’s wild.” Sophie leans back a little, smiling a little.
“You … believe me?”
“Of course. I can’t explain it and you can’t explain it, but it happened.”
“Yes,” I say, feeling confident. Even if I have no idea how my closet managed to bend the space-time continuum.
“I mean, we both know the town history,” Sophie says slowly.
“Tall tales, not history,” I argue.
“We’ve heard about the building being magical.”
“And I didn’t think either of us believed those stories.”
Sophie and I don’t discuss it often, but it’s impossible to grow up in Serendipity Springs and not hear the whimsical tales about its good fortune. Or, depending on who you talk to, magic . Our building, specifically, has a lot of lore connected to it. It was impossible to have a conversation with Galentine when she didn’t mention it. Sophie has always found this fascinating, while I prefer magic to stay between the pages of the fantasy novels we trade back and forth.
Right now, I should be jumping on the town magic train. But despite what I experienced earlier, I’m still struggling with this explanation. Even if I don’t have a better one.
“Clearly, I’m more open to possibilities than you are,” Sophie says. “Which is ironic since you’re the one who experienced something supernatural.”
“It wasn’t supernatural. And the only magical thing about this place is the price of rent.” I pause, then add, “For now, anyway.”
Archer’s face comes to mind again. His hot, rent-increasing face.
“I mean, you know I’m not a firm believer in magic or whatever, but if it’s the best explanation, then why fight it?” Sophie shrugs.
“ Is it the best explanation, though?”
“Have you got a better one?”
I don’t. But that doesn’t mean I want to suddenly decide I believe in supernatural or magical events. Even if I might have been part of one.
“No. Could we change the subject, please? I’m starting to get a headache.”
“Fine.” Sophie gives me a devilish grin. “New subject. On a scale of Clooney to Hemsworth, how hot is the new building owner?”