Take All The Time You Need

Chapter 1

1

I tape up the last box, and dust off my hands. It’s time to go. Something begins to boil up inside me, like someone turned the stove burner under my stomach on high. I’m no stranger to this feeling. It’s something I’ve felt every day—to every now-and-then—and every variation in between. I ignore it and pretend no one is home. It would leave in a moment just as fleeting as it came.

But it doesn’t this time around.

Grief. That motherfucker is relentless.

Especially when I’m leaving the only apartment I’ve ever known in New York City and the last place I saw my fiancé, Grant, alive three years ago. I didn’t want to move but my therapist insisted it would be good for me . . . I rationalized it, knowing I couldn’t keep up with the rent hikes on an apartment this size, but truthfully, I couldn’t stomach having a roommate seeing my carefully arranged Ziploc bags still full of his clothes, or the trail of snot-filled tissues that appear every now and then, or the extremely pitiful memorial collage I couldn’t bear to take down.

So, moving it is, whether I like it or not. And besides, Stuart, the superintendent of the building got me a good deal on a new place just a few floors down. A one-bedroom unit with a corner window. It’s not the two-bedroom with a fireplace and outdoor terrace I picked out with Grant, but Grant’s not here anymore.

Before we signed the lease, Grant was working as an interior designer, and designed everything from intimate, cozy living rooms to sleek, cool offices, and dazzling, spacious ballrooms. He had such an eye for color, light, and pattern. I look around our now empty apartment. It was his one true love, besides me.

Original puritan pine, herringbone hardwood floors with crown baseboard molding. Picture rails on cream walls with hand-picked brass sconces. An acid washed fireplace. Green painted cabinets with glass. White quartz countertops. He spent so much time making this place his own.

Our apartment was adorned with dazzling Persian rugs worth more than my college tuition, and carefully selected designer drapes to complement the rugs. An off-kilter gallery wall with bronze accents, a custom oak coat rack, and a media console with a built-in record player.

I never bothered to install the Tiffany-style chandelier Grant begged me to get while he was in hospice. It was still in the storage unit. I might have lived there longer, but the apartment was still Grant’s design.

We moved here right after college. Grant had a seizure a year after we moved in, and his glioblastoma diagnosis, a deadly brain cancer, was diagnosed three weeks after that. He lived for ten months.

I lived alone in this apartment without Grant longer than we had together.

It was more my apartment than it ever was his, but still, I couldn’t help but think of it as ours. I made my very first painting commission here. Grant built our kitchen table to fit perfectly in the eat-in kitchen. It won’t fit quite as well in the new apartment, but I’ll still take it with me.

I’ll miss this place. I walked in as half of a whole, and I’m leaving as whatever crumbs of my old self are left. My therapist has slowly been encouraging me to say it’s okay to move. It has to be. I hoist the box up onto my hip and collect my keys from the island countertop. I scuff my feet on the floorboards one last time, and head towards the door.

Without me touching it, the door swings open on its own. What the fuck? I step back as cold air from the hall rushes in. I’m shocked to find someone standing there, mirroring me with a box in his arms. I squint, shaken out of my thoughts at the prospect of an intruder…even though I’m technically leaving and there’s nothing here, so what would they steal?

“Hello?” I ask.

“Sorry!” The stranger exclaims. He’s wearing what looks to be a chef’s uniform, although I’m not sure. It’s been so long since I’ve been to a restaurant that had actual chefs. The words, The Red Kettle, is embroidered on the top right of the jacket, with a teeny-tiny design of a red kettle with steam billowing out. “Is this—is this apartment 502?”

I don’t answer and shift my box from one arm to the other. “Um.” He’s tall. And handsome. His dark, black hair falls in a swoop over his forehead and I am thoroughly intimidated by his good looks.

“Yes, this is definitely 502,” he decides after checking the number plate on the door.

“Who are you?” I ask.

“I should be asking you! What are you doing in my apartment?” He says, setting down his box and rolling up his sleeves.

“This is my apartment—was—was my apartment.”

“Oh?” He laughs. “You must be Riley! I’m Jae.”His dark brown eyes crinkle in the corners, delighted at my confusion.

“Huh?” I ask. I feel like he’s in on a joke that someone told behind my back. “How?—”

“Stuart said you might still be in here…but he said he swore he saw you at the cafe downstairs…”

“That assho—” I start. Of course. Sounds exactly like Stuart to be giving new tenants keys before the old one’s officially move out.

“Hey now,” Jae interrupts, moving through the apartment. “This is a nice place.”

“Yeah. Sorry to still be here.” I apologize and hustle towards the doorway.

“No problem.” Jae says, peering out the window. “I came to check out the place before moving all of my furniture. Renting sight unseen is a risky move, but the Streeteasy photos looked amazing. Did you take those? Or was that Stuart?”

“Um, yeah, I took them.”

“You have a real talent.” He compliments me with a grin. Is he always this friendly to literal strangers?

“For real estate photography?”

“Sure, everyone needs a side hustle, right?” He smiles, and I’m nearly blinded by how white his teeth are. “You should show me sometime, you’re still in the building right?”

Goddamn, could Stuart keep his mouth shut?

“Look—” I start. “It was nice talking to you, but I have to go.” I want to get downstairs, drop off my box, get rid of these godforsaken keys and binge watch New Girl for the twentieth time. I should have left sooner. “I have to return my keys to the office.”

I give the apartment one last mournful glance, and make a beeline for the door before Jae notices.

“Oh, I was heading that way tool, I also have to go to the office,” Jae pulls his keys from the door handle, and follows me down the hall. “So, how long have you lived in this building?” He asks.

“Four years,” I say flatly, hoping to deter him from further conversation. I need to get out of here.

“All by yourself?”

“No,” I grit my teeth. “I have a dog.”

“Dogs love me,” Jae continues. “ Some say I just have an aura about me, you know?”

“An aura that makes bitches like you?” I ask pointedly, and that stuns him for a moment, and he figures out I’m referring to myself. For a moment, I think he’s going to give up.

He laughs instead. “So, do you have any plans for tonight? I’m looking to meet new people in the area,”

Is he asking me out? Can this elevator get here any slower?

“Why are you asking?” I say, the elevator dinging. We step in, and Jae presses the button for the ground level.

“I thought you could use a friend.” Jae answers, cold honesty slicing through his voice.

“What makes you think that? You don’t even know me,” I retort.

“Well, if I’m being real about this—” Jae breaks our eye contact for the first time.

“Stuart fucking told you about Grant.” I snip.

“Yeah, it was Stuart.” He confesses as the elevator arrives at ground level. “I’m sorry for your loss, Riley.”

“Don’t say that to me. You don’t know me.” I look away. “I don’t need your condolences.”

Jae steps out the elevator, and I quickly press the button for the third floor, where my new apartment is, and start jamming the CLOSE DOOR button before he can get back on.

“Hey!” He shouts as he realizes what’s happening. “Don’t?—”

He’s cut off by the sound of the elevator doors snapping shut. All I wanted was to get into my new apartment and pretend this day was over. I don’t want to explain that I’m being an asshole because my fiancé is dead, and now I have to leave my dream apartment—that he’s moving into.

I doubt he has the patience to understand why I’d be such an asshole on a day like this, and I don’t want to give him the explanation right now. I’m sure he’ll come looking for it later when Stuart inevitably tells him where I’m living now.

The realization that someone who isn’t me is going to be living in my apartment is hitting me. Our apartment. No one should be living there but me and Grant. Panic comes crashing down around me, like someone has thrown a stake in a sandbag in my lungs and I feel like I can’t breathe

Big, fat cartoon tears drip down my cheeks and I one hundred percent guarantee I look like a fucking maniac over this. I take a huge gulp of air and try to regain my composure as I walk down the hall towards my new apartment.

It’s just an apartment. I try to calm myself. Floor 3. Apartment 321. Lily, my aging Boston terrier, is waiting for me inside. She was a present to Grant after his diagnosis, in an attempt to help solidify our rocky future. I doubt she even remembers him.

As I fish for my new keys in my pocket, I remember one of the first grief group therapy sessions I attended. They said, “Go where the memories are.”

When someone dies, you should visit places they loved to help you feel closer to them. If they loved the ocean, take a walk on the beach. If they loved cooking, spend more time in the kitchen. If they were an avid bird watcher, spend time outdoors.

I unlock my new door and look around at my barely put together apartment. The sectional sofa haphazardly arranged in the center of the living room with Lily nestled in the corner. The TV on the floor with no stand, unplugged, wires in a twisted tumbleweed. The mountain of boxes begging to be unpacked and put out of their misery. And yet, this new apartment, this building, still has Grant in its DNA.

I’m comforted by the fact he is still somewhere in my home, even if he is just in the walls. I hope I can make this place my home now. I have to. If I don’t, I’ll be back where I started.

I flashback to when I told Stuart I had to leave apartment 502. He asked me a question I still think about, even now. What if you took a chance on something new? This apartment is my something new. This move has to mean something. It will be the start of my new life. Where I’m not afraid to talk to people. Where I will find happiness, in whatever form it comes in.