6. Rule Seven
Chapter six
Rule Seven
Mandy
The store stretches before me in rows of humming fluorescent tubes, each casting a clinical glow over floors freshly buffed to a mirror sheen.
It’s so ordinary it almost feels sacred.
I snag a cherry-red cart, the wheels squeaking once, and brace my fingers on the handle.
My Too-Big sneakers, Sterling’s “lost-and-found special”, slosh around my heels, like I’m wading through an inch of water.
The gray sweatpants are cuffed to the knee, exposing striped socks and calves that tremble with every step. Perfect reflection of my insides.
Sterling falls into step behind me, shoulders squared, hands jammed in the pockets of his denim jacket.
He never offers to wrest the cart from me, and I’m grateful for something to cling to as we pass the Starbucks kiosk with its espresso hiss and the home-decor aisles where glass vases catch the light in impossible rainbows.
He hovers at arm’s length, close enough to catch the cart if I let go of it.
We start with the essentials: three-packs of underwear, ankle socks the color of oatmeal, plain white tees.
I tick them off on a mental clipboard, clinical and distant, blanking out the curious glances of other shoppers.
To them, we look like a suburban couple tackling errands. My pulse pounds at the thought.
“What about this?” Sterling holds up a neon-pink romper trimmed with ruffles and palm-tree appliqués, like something a Florida influencer would pair with a margarita. “It says, ‘Rough week, but still a CEO in stilettos.’”
I snatch it from his hand, the fabric almost fluorescent under the store lights. “It screams ‘I’ve snapped and I’m starting a cult.’” I hang it back on the rack. “Try harder, Captain Save-a-Hoe.”
“Ouch.” He clutches his chest, mock-dramatic. “I’m diversifying your wardrobe. You can’t live in my sweatpants forever, Sparkles.” He winks, casual as breathing.
The tension from this morning hasn’t gone anywhere, just packed itself into the space between us like a static charge. Every time our arms brush as we reach for a hanger, I feel a thrill that has nothing to do with cotton blends.
In the knitwear section, I hover over a beige cardigan—undeniably safe, chalky, forgettable. It whispers I’m together. I’m Fine. I didn’t witness my roommate’s junk on display an hour ago.
“No,” Sterling says from just behind me.
His voice is low and unhurried, the one he used on me on the curb the night of the fire.
He reaches past, his arm a warm weight in my periphery, and pulls down a forest-green sweater.
The yarn has that post-rain moss glow, soft and almost luminescent. “This one.”
I lift it up, draping it against my chest. The color is bold on a rack of taupes and grays. “Green? I don’t do green.”
He tucks a stray curl behind my ear without quite touching me. “It matches your eyes.” His tone is steady, no teasing. “Remember that gallery opening last spring? You wore that black dress with the emerald trim. You looked… like you.”
I swallow. That night had been a haze of champagne flutes and echoing footsteps. He noticed a dress I almost forgot I’d worn. I take the sweater. Its wool is buttery against my palms, and for a second the fluorescent hum fades until it’s just us.
“I didn’t think you cared about fashion,” I admit, voice low.
He shrugs, a grin tugging at his lips. “My job is noticing details. It’s how I save lives.”
We detour to the jewelry rack next, an assault of plastic feathers, gaudy crystals, and metallic confetti, and I feel a sudden rush of normalcy. Sterling lifts a pair of studs the size of Coca-Cola caps. “Statement earrings?”
I weigh them in my hand. “These say, ‘I’m hosting a DIY glitter workshop.’”
He laughs and points at another set. Three dangling vines of tiny acrylic strawberries with glossy leaves. “These?”
I hold them up to my ear. “They scream, ‘I’m applying for an unpaid internship at the farmer’s market, but I moonlight as a crime boss.’”
I try both on in the little mirror. The chips of plastic catch the overhead lights and ricochet pinpricks of red across my cheeks. I add them to my pile.
Sterling grins at me wiggling a set of dangling banana charms, bright yellow plastic, absurdly long. “What about these?”
He dangles them like a moth to a bulb. “You’re violating Rule Seven,” I say, snatching them and dropping them in my basket. “But I’m taking them.”
“Obviously.” He beams.
We wheel our cart to the register, where the clerk double-bags everything with the solemnity of a sacrament. Sterling pulls out his wallet and waves off my protests. “I’ll just expense it to your GoFundMe” he says and chalks the total up to hero duties.
Outside, the day sun is softer, sloping toward afternoon. Sterling hoists the bags into the bed of his truck. The latch clinks like a promise.
At the loft, exposed brick and sun-bleached hardwood greet us.
Sterling deposits frozen pizzas and a gallon of milk on the counter, then pushes open the guest-room door so I can crash in privacy.
I peel off the too-big sweats, fold them into a neat rectangle, and drop them next to his door with a scribbled note: “Laundry not included. Thanks for the rescue.” I almost add a smiley face. Almost.
Moments later, I emerge in the green sweater and my own jeans. Sterling is rifling through a drawer of takeout menus. The folded clothes I left outside his door are stacked on the counter. “Keep them,” he says, sleeves rolled to his elbows. “I’ve got a million.”
His tone is breezy, but somehow it lands heavy in the quiet loft. I open my mouth to joke, but swallow it down, thumbs doubling the crease in the tile backsplash.
“Chinese?” he asks, phone already in hand. “I know a place.”
I exhale and let the shift happen. “Lo mein or bust.”
“Attagirl.” He dials.
I collapse on the couch, toes digging into the plush throw. Bowie launches himself after a rogue pillow feather. I want to text my parents a photo, proof I’m alive, but I stay still, letting the hum of the city seep in through the windowpanes.
My laptop is on the coffee table, the one thing I own that came out of the fire with any real value, and I open it to see whether the insurance portal has done anything useful in the last six hours.
It has not. But there is a new email sitting at the top of the stack, and the subject line is two words and a number.
Following up (3).
It is the studio in New York. They have been emailing me for weeks. I have been reading them in the preview pane, where they cannot mark themselves as read, and then not opening them, which I have decided counts as a form of decision-making.
This one has a date in it.
I close the laptop. Not the lid-half-down thing. All the way, and then face down on the table, as though that settles anything.
In the kitchen, the sound of Sterling rearranging the condiments stops for exactly one second, and then starts again.
In the kitchen, Sterling re-arranges condiments in the fridge like he’s defusing a bomb. I close my eyes, count out breaths.
The next hour moves in slow motion. The door buzzer sounds, and Sterling intercepts the delivery with the efficiency of a designer meeting a deadline. He sets down a brown bag bulging with Styrofoam cartons. Steam coiling, soy-sweet and vinegar-tangy.
We unpack at the coffee table: two large lo mein, spicy beef stir-fry, orange chicken glistening with sauce, sesame balls dusted in sugar. No plates. Chopsticks tap against cardboard. Bowie hovers at the edge, whiskers twitching.
First bite inventory, salt, sugar, the faint bite of scallions. Second bite, sweeter somehow, because I’m here. We butcher every chopstick-etiquette rule but eat until our eyes water. Sterling leans back, licks sauce from his lips.
“Real talk,” he says between mouthfuls. “Remember that time when you made lo mein from ramen and peanut butter?”
I groan. “Do I? My nightmares have nightmares.”
“You at least proved a concept,” he says, grinning. “My cholesterol still hasn’t forgiven you.”
We swap stories, embarrassing, warm, ragged around the edges. When the cartons run dry, Sterling challenges me to Truth or Dare, and we trade dares like old friends passing a flask. I dare him to text Jake at Firehouse 99 a random photo. He makes Bowie an honorary pillow model.
Then comes his pick. Truth: “What made you nervous today?”
He stands silhouetted against the window, tracing shapes in the vapor from his breath. “You being here,” he says so softly I nearly miss it. “Because it’s new.”
My chest tightens. “You’re doing fine.”
He shrugs, just a little, but his eyes don’t lie.
“My turn,” Sterling says, leaning back into the couch. “Truth or dare.”
“Truth.”
“What was the ping on your laptop?”
Of course. Of course he heard it. The man can pick a smoke detector chirping out of a closed apartment two floors up.
“A studio in New York wants to interview me,” I say.
His eyebrows go up. “Mandy. That’s huge.”
“It’s a lot, is what it is.” I wave a chopstick at him.
“Four hundred people. An office with a view of something. I would have to own a coat that is not this one.” I hold up a sleeve, which is technically his.
“I would have to find out what a brand architecture workshop is and then run one. On purpose. In a room. With my mouth.”
“You’d be good at it.”
“I’d be a rounding error at it.” And I laugh, and it comes out easy, it comes out completely normal, which is the part I am proudest of. “It’s too big, Sterling. It’s a size up from me. You don’t buy the shoes that don’t fit and just hope your feet grow.”
“Fair enough,” he says.
And that is it. He lets it go. He reaches for the last sesame ball and asks me, with total sincerity, whether lo mein counts as a vegetable.
But there is half a second before that, where he opens his mouth and then closes it again, and I watch him decide not to push. Which is somehow worse than being pushed.
We drift through silence, then I snatch the remote and find a documentary about cats surviving on remote Japanese islands. We narrate their internal monologues poorly, in accents that should be illegal.
Eventually, the credits roll. I gather the empty cartons while Sterling leans in the doorway, watching. “This place is yours as long as you want.”
I nod and barely manage, “Thanks.”
He salutes, then disappears down the hallway.
In the quiet of the guest room, I peel off the sweater, but leave it draped over my shoulders as I crawl under the covers. The green against my skin is the color of something alive. Outside, the city hums. My laptop ping ghosts behind my eyelids, but not tonight.
For now, I am exactly where I want to be.