Chapter Twenty-Two
Teague
There's a toothbrush in my bathroom that isn't mine.
Purple. Extra soft. Still in the packaging when she left it on the sink three days ago, which means she bought it on the way over, which means she was planning to sleep here before she asked.
I opened the packaging for her that night because she was already in my bed and couldn't be bothered to get up, and I put it in the cup next to my toothbrush and didn't think about it.
I'm thinking about it now.
The bar opens at four. I've got five hours of nothing and I'm standing in my bathroom looking at two toothbrushes in a cup, one black and one purple, side by side, and the image is doing something to my brain that I can't quite name and don't want to examine.
No one has ever had a toothbrush here besides me.
No one has ever asked and I never invited anyone to leave anything here either.
And somehow Zoe got through those rules and now there's a toothbrush next to mine. A bright purple toothbrush.
The apartment has changed. Not all at once.
Not in any way I agreed to. Zoe didn't ask permission to leave things here because Zoe doesn't operate in the permission economy.
She operates in the assumption economy, where wanting to be somewhere means you bring what you need and if nobody tells you to take it back, it stays.
The sneakers are by the door. White, clean, lined up parallel to my boots with the toes pointing out.
She does this every time. Takes them off, sets them down, adjusts them so they're even.
I watched her do it last night and she didn't know I was watching because she was already talking about something Torres said during drills, hands moving, voice going, and her feet just did the thing on their own.
My boots are black and scuffed and the laces are frayed and they sit wherever I kick them off. Hers look like they belong in a display case. The two pairs side by side tell a story I didn't write or, technically, agree to.
There's a hoodie on the back of the chair.
Gray, soft from years of washing. She wore it here one day and then it got warm and she took it off and draped it over the chair and it's been there since.
I haven't moved it. I could have moved it.
I could have folded it and put it by the door so she'd see it on her way out and take it with her. I left it on the chair.
I left it on the chair because the apartment looks different with her things in it and I don't hate it.
That's the part I'm sitting with. The not hating it.
Three years I've lived here and the space has been exactly what I need: small, functional, mine.
The couch, the records, the kitchen where I eat standing up because sitting at a table alone is a specific kind of quiet I'd rather skip.
Everything in here exists because I chose it or because it was free and useful and didn't ask anything of me in return.
Zoe's things ask. Not out loud. The toothbrush asks if she's coming back.
The sneakers ask if there's room. The hoodie asks if it can stay.
And the answer to all three is yes and I said yes without saying anything, which is how Zoe gets in.
She doesn't knock. She just walks through the door I didn't realize I left open.
I make coffee. My coffee, which she has told me repeatedly is terrible and which she drinks every time she's here, holding the mug with both hands because the apartment is drafty in the mornings and she runs cold.
I pour one cup, then look at the mug rack and realize I've started reaching for two before catching myself.
One cup. She's not here. She's at the station. She texted me at 5:48 this morning: up. coffee. hayes is going to kill me today (extrication drills). tell me something good.
I texted back: the pretenders are working on new stuff according to a social media post.
She responded with fourteen exclamation points.
I drink my coffee at the counter. Standing.
The hoodie is in my peripheral vision on the chair and the sneakers are by the door and the toothbrush is in the bathroom and I think about how routines work.
How you build one, brick by brick, and then someone comes along and rearranges the bricks and you either fix it or you let it change.
I'm letting it change.
After coffee I shower and get dressed and check the bar inventory on my phone because I'm low on well vodka and the tonic order hasn't shipped yet.
Anthem business. Real business. The contract is still in the office drawer, Carl's signature and mine, and the savings account is getting closer to the number I need and the bar is the thing that makes sense, the plan I built when everything else was formless and uncertain.
Anthem makes sense. Anthem has always made sense.
There's a phone charger plugged into the outlet by the bed.
White cord, long, the kind you buy at the drugstore.
She plugged it in one night and I watched her do it from the bathroom doorway and she looked up and said "Is this okay?
" and I said "Yeah" and she said "Cool" and plugged it in and charger is still there.
It doesn't even work on my phone and yet it's there.
Because she's leaving the things she needs when she's here with me.
It occurs to me, standing in the kitchen with my coffee and the quiet machines below and the morning light coming through the window, that I used to know exactly what my apartment looked like.
Every surface, every object, every shadow.
I catalogued it the way you catalogue a space you own completely, a space that answers only to you.
I knew where the light hit at seven AM and where the draft came through the window frame and how the floorboard by the bathroom creaked if you stepped on the left side.
I still know all of that. But now I also know that Zoe's phone charger reaches the pillow from the outlet but only if she sleeps on the left side, which is the side I don't sleep on because it's too close to the windows, which means we figured out sides without discussing it.
And I know that her sneakers by the door make the entryway look less empty.
And I know that the hoodie on the chair smells like her laundry detergent, something clean and vaguely floral, nothing I'd ever buy.
I do the dishes. Two mugs, two plates from last night.
She brought her mom's chicken again and we ate on the couch because I don't have a table and she sat cross-legged with the plate on her knee and told me about Dorothy Haines and the unsalted steps and how Hayes said her patient rapport was good, and her voice went fast and bright the way it does when she's proud but trying not to be too proud because she thinks too-proud is obnoxious, which it isn't. Not on her.
Two mugs. Two plates. I wash them and put them in the rack and stand at the sink and the math of it is simple and irreversible: I'm cooking for two. I'm sleeping on the right side. I'm reaching for a second mug before I've finished my own coffee.
The record player is quiet. I put something on. Chrissie Hynde. "Kid" comes on and I let it play while I wipe down the counter and check the time and calculate how many hours until four, until the bar opens, until the night starts and the routine kicks in.
But the routine has a new step now. Sometime after midnight, after closing, after the walk home and the shower and the quiet apartment, Zoe will text. Or she'll already be here, because she has a key.
She has a key.
I gave her my spare last week without ceremony.
She was leaving for a morning shift and I was half-asleep and she said sometime it might be fun to come in and surprise you and I pulled the spare off the hook by the door and handed it to her and she stared at it like I'd given her something valuable.
It's a key. A piece of metal. It opens a door. That's all.
Except it's a key to a space I built on purpose, a life I built on purpose, and I handed it to a twenty-two-year-old firefighter who drinks terrible coffee and lines up her sneakers and texts me at 5:48 in the morning because she wants to hear something good before Hayes tries to kill her.
I gave her the key and I meant it. I didn't think it through though, didn't give myself a chance to talk myself out of it.
No one has ever asked for a key, even if she didn't ask directly.
Part of me wanted her to have it. The other part of me wanted to stop overthinking everything and just go with something nice because the pretty girl wanted to surprise me sometime.
I don't even like surprises. But apparently I like her. A lot more than I probably should.
Chrissie Hynde is singing about being a kid from the '80s and the apartment is warm and the machines below are starting up, the first cycle of the day, a deep rhythmic hum I've been falling asleep to for three years.
I sit on the couch in the indent that used to just be mine and is now slightly wider because two people sit here now, and I look at the sneakers by the door and the hoodie on the chair and the phone charger cord trailing from the outlet to the empty side of the bed.
There's a word for what this is. I know what it is. I've been circling it for weeks, editing it out of my own thoughts, replacing it with safer words: nice, fine, good, whatever. But the apartment knows. The two mugs know. The key knows.
I'm not going to say it yet. Not out loud. But I'm done pretending I don't know what it is.
My phone buzzes. Zoe.
hayes says my extrication time improved. also torres brought enchiladas and i saved you some. also i miss your face.
I type back: bring the enchiladas to the bar. and the face.
both will be there by 7.
I'm smiling as a type back to her. Good. Is your face still good? Damn I sound like such an idiot. I do not know how to flirt over text. I've really never had to try to learn. I don't normally do this. Any of it.
Weirdo. My face is always good. But not as good as yours.
I look at the screen. She called me a weirdo. She called me a weirdo and she's bringing me enchiladas and she has my key and her toothbrush is in my bathroom and I'm smiling at my phone like a person I wouldn't recognize six months ago.
I put the phone down. Get dressed for work. Pull the jacket off the hook, the patches settling into place across my shoulders. Walk to the door, step over the sneakers, and head out into the afternoon.
The apartment stays behind me, quiet and full of evidence.