Chapter 8 - The Apartment With the Blue Door
Three weeks later, I signed my first lease.
The apartment was on the second floor of a brick building in Ravenswood.
One bedroom.
One bathroom.
Old hardwood floors.
Radiators that knocked every morning.
Kitchen cabinets painted cream sometime around the previous century.
And a blue front door.
The first time I walked inside, Claire stood behind me holding two coffees.
“You’re smiling.”
“I like it.”
“It’s approximately the size of your old closet.”
I looked at her.
Elena had told her too much.
“Which is why it’s perfect.”
I bought almost everything secondhand.
A wooden dining table with scratches.
A green sofa from an estate sale.
Four mismatched chairs.
A lamp Elena called “aggressively ugly.”
I bought it anyway.
Every object was mine because I had chosen it.
I learned the price of laundry.
I learned which grocery store marked produce down Thursday evenings.
I learned that nobody actually needed six different facial serums despite what the woman at the luxury department store had once convinced me.
Hartwell kept me busy.
Within a month, Claire assigned me a small commercial renovation.
A neighborhood bookstore expanding into the vacant storefront next door.
Nothing glamorous.
I loved every second.
The owner, Mrs. Powell, was seventy and opinionated.
“No gray walls.”
“I wasn’t planning gray.”
“No exposed pipes.”
“Understood.”
“No chairs that look like furniture in a dentist office.”
I smiled.
“We agree on more than you think.”
At night, I made drawings again.
Not because anyone asked.
Because I remembered how.
Marcus remained somewhere nearby.
He was good enough that I rarely saw him.
Once, he entered the coffee shop five minutes after me.
I raised an eyebrow.
He bought a muffin and left.
That was our entire relationship.
Nico did not call.
Week one felt peaceful.
Week two felt strange.
Week three hurt.
I had asked for space and now resented him for giving it.
That contradiction embarrassed me.
Elena understood immediately.
“You wanted him to respect the boundary.”
“Yes.”
“And now he is.”
“Yes.”
“And you hate that.”
“I don’t hate it.”
“You checked your phone six times during dinner.”
“That could be work.”
“It is ten thirty.”
“Hartwell is demanding.”
Elena stared at me.
“I am allowed to miss someone who was bad for me.”
“Correct.”
“And missing him doesn’t mean I should go back.”
“Correct.”
“And I wish you were worse at this.”
“Also correct.”
Meanwhile, Nico changed.
Not dramatically.
Not publicly.
People around him noticed small things.
He no longer drank during meetings.
He stopped conducting business in the penthouse.
The bug had made that practical, but Arthur knew another reason.
Nico could no longer sit comfortably in the room where I heard him erase me.
He began spending mornings at his legitimate development company.
Actually attending.
Reading proposals.
Asking questions.
At first his executives thought something terrible had happened.
Something had.
He learned which properties he owned.
Not just on paper.
He visited them.
He discovered one building had an elevator that had been malfunctioning for six months.
Another had tenants complaining about heat.
Before, those things were beneath him.
Now he thought about the blue mug.
Build something that lasts.
He fixed the elevator.
Replaced the boiler.
Arthur noticed.
“You becoming a landlord?”
“I own the buildings.”
“You’ve owned them eight years.”
“I know.”
Arthur smiled.
Nico glared.
“Don’t.”
One afternoon, Nico drove past Hartwell Studio.
He didn’t stop.
He saw me through the lobby window carrying rolled plans and talking animatedly to a colleague.
I was laughing.
Nico almost pulled over.
He didn’t.
That mattered.
The next morning, flowers arrived at Hartwell.
White roses.
No card.
Claire looked at me.
“Nico?”
I smelled them.
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“He never sends roses.”
“What does he send?”
“Orchids.”
My stomach tightened.
We checked the florist.
Cash purchase.
No security footage useful enough to identify the buyer.
Tucked deep inside the arrangement was a small folded note.
He’s learning to let you go. Are you sure you want him to?
Rafael.
I called Arthur.
This time, Nico did not come.
Arthur did.
He examined the note.
“He’s escalating psychologically.”
“Because physical threats would draw more attention.”
“Yes.”
“What does he want?”
Arthur looked at me for a long moment.
“To turn you against Nico. Or turn Nico reckless trying to protect you.”
“He’s failing at the first.”
Arthur’s eyebrows lifted.
“That surprises you?”
“I don’t trust Nico the way I did.”
“That isn’t the same as being against him.”
“No.”
Arthur nodded.
“He knows that.”
I looked at him.
“Nico?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Because despite everything, that man has spent three years studying your face.”
Something in my chest hurt.
I changed the subject.
“What are you doing about Rafael?”
“Legally?”
I almost smiled.
“Is that painful for both of you?”
“Extremely.”
Arthur folded the note into an evidence sleeve.
“Nico has lawyers building a case for harassment and corporate interference. Rafael’s funding network is being audited.”
“By whom?”
“People with badges and salaries.”
“That must be devastating for Nico.”
Arthur actually laughed.
At the door, he stopped.
“He asks about you.”
My heart shifted.
“Arthur.”
“You didn’t ask me not to tell you.”
“What does he ask?”
“If you’re safe.”
“Anything else?”
Arthur hesitated.
“If you’re happy.”
I looked toward the windows.
“What do you say?”
“That it isn’t my answer to give.”
After he left, I sat at my desk for several minutes.
Then I did something I had promised myself not to do impulsively.
I opened Nico’s contact.
The number remained saved.
I typed:
I signed a lease.
I stared at the message for a full minute.
Then sent it.
His reply came thirty seconds later.
Is it yours?
I swallowed.
Yes.
Another reply.
Then I’m glad.
No request for the address.
No demand to visit.
No complaint that I had chosen somewhere without him.
Just four words.
Then:
I hope the locks are good.
I laughed aloud.
Claire looked over the partition.
“You okay?”
“Yes.”
And for the first time since I had left, I realized there might be a version of Nico I could speak to without disappearing inside him.
The problem was that version had appeared only after I left.
And I did not yet know whether he was changing because he had lost control—
May you like
or because he finally understood love required surrendering it.
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