The ceiling starts dripping on my face exactly three minutes before my alarm.
Cold water kisses my forehead, runs down into my hairline, and pools at the collar of my thrift-store T-shirt. For a breath, I lie there, staring up at the brownish ring blooming across the plaster like some abstract painting no one asked for.
“Perfect,” I mutter to the dark. “Really going for that drowning-in-my-sleep aesthetic, huh?”
The radiator hisses in response, like it’s laughing at me.
My phone screen blazes 4:57 a.m. when I grab it. I silence the alarm that hasn’t quite started yet and swing my legs off the mattress. The floor is cold enough to make me flinch, the kind of cold that wakes up your bones. I jam my feet into fuzzy socks that have seen better centuries and grab the dented mixing bowl from under the sink.
By the time I drag a chair under the worst of the leak, the water has picked up speed. It plinks into the metal bowl like cheap percussion, echoing around my shoebox apartment. I tighten my ponytail, smearing sleep from my eyes with the back of my hand.
“Add ‘roof’ to the list,” I say to the empty room. “Right under ‘electric bill’ and ‘don’t completely implode.’”
I don’t write it down. There’s no space left on the list.
By 5:30, I’m half-dressed in my diner uniform, mascara wand between my teeth as I tug my black jeans up with one hand. My shirt still smells faintly like yesterday’s grease no matter how much cheap detergent I drown it in. I swipe on mascara, pull a line of eyeliner that’s almost straight, and wrestle my hair into something pretending to be a bun.
Keys, phone, tips from last night’s shift—nine crumpled singles and a handful of coins—get shoved into my bag. I check the stove twice, because the last thing this building needs is a fire to go with the leaking ceiling, then crack open my apartment door.
The hallway is dim, lit by a single buzzing fluorescent at the far end. The carpet runner is worn down to threads in the middle, edges curling up like it’s trying to escape. Someone’s dumped a busted office chair by the stairs. It smells faintly of old onions and somebody’s bad choices.
Home sweet health code violation.
I pull my door shut, jiggle the lock until it catches, and turn—straight into a wall of cardboard.
“Oof!” The sound bursts out of me as the box slams into my chest. My heel catches on the rug and I grab for balance. My hand finds fabric and something solid beneath it. A man’s shoulder. Warm.
“Whoa, sorry—sorry!” a male voice says, rough with sleep and way too close.
The box wobbles, then tilts. A cascade of books, a crooked black lamp, and what looks like a framed photo spill toward the floor in slow motion.
I drop my bag and lunge. My fingers close around the frame just before it smacks the ground. Books thud onto the carpet between us. The lamp hits with a sad metallic clunk.
For a second, all I can hear is my pulse and the embarrassing rasp of my own breathing.
“Got it,” I say, a little breathless. “Mostly.”
He’s looming over the mess, eyes wide, box still in his arms. He’s tall—of course he’s tall—and wearing a gray hoodie with the sleeves pushed up, exposing forearms dusted with freckles. His hair is a dark, messy wave like he fought with a pillow and lost, and there’s stubble on his jaw that says he definitely doesn’t have a 9-to-5.
And he is absurdly, disarmingly cute.
Fantastic. Just what my overcomplicated life needs.
“I’m so sorry,” he says again, softer this time. His voice has a low, scratchy edge, like he hasn’t used it much lately. “I didn’t think anyone would be awake yet.”
“It’s five-thirty,” I say. “So around here, that’s practically rush hour.”
One corner of his mouth kicks up, like he’s not used to smiling but might want to be.
“I’m Chloe,” I add, because we’re both standing in a pile of his belongings and pretending this is normal. “Apartment four-B. Serial avoider of falling objects.”
“Liam,” he says. He shifts the box so he can extend a hand.
His palm is warm when it closes around mine, a brief, firm squeeze. His fingers are rough, callused, completely at odds with the fact that he’s moving into this building with a single box and a crooked lamp. Not that I’m judging. Much.
“Newly arrived disaster in… four-A, I think,” he adds, tilting his head toward the door opposite mine. There’s a strip of blue tape with a hastily scrawled 4A on it. Mr. Roselli, our landlord, apparently couldn’t find actual numbers between ignoring code violations.
“That tracks,” I say. “We like to keep complementary disasters across the hall. Really balances the aesthetic.”
He laughs, an actual surprised sound that lights up his whole face. It does something weird to my chest.
A beat of silence stretches. The fluorescent at the end of the hall flickers, buzzing like a trapped fly.
“So, uh.” I crouch to grab the nearest book and stack it in his box. “Welcome to the Palace.”
“The… Palace?” he echoes.
“Roselli likes to call it that in the lease to justify the ‘amenity fee.’” I air-quote with one hand, plopping another book into the box. “Amenities include: perpetual leaks, water pressure that gives you trust issues, and occasionally heat if you perform the right sacrificial dance.”
He glances down the shabby hallway, then back at me. “Do I at least get a crown?”
“You just hit your queen with a box,” I say. “You’re on thin ice.”
His smile deepens, small lines crinkling at the corners of his eyes. “Noted. I’ll… work on my court etiquette.”
He bends to pick up the lamp, and I catch the faintest whiff of something clean and warm—soap and maybe coffee. The sweatshirt hangs loose on his frame, but when he straightens, I can see the suggestion of broad shoulders under all that softness.
Danger, my common sense whispers. Absolutely do not notice that.
He looks at the frame in my hand. “You saved that. Thanks.”
I glance down. It’s a photo of a city skyline at dusk, all glass and light and water. Not our city—not the view from this neighborhood, anyway. It’s too clean, too expensive.
“No problem,” I say, giving it back. “I feel personally attacked by gravity at this hour.”
“Do you always leave for work this early?” he asks. There’s no push in it, just curiosity.
“Double shift,” I say, lifting a shoulder. “I work at Lou’s on Twelfth. The diner with the neon coffee cup sign that’s been threatening to fall since the Bush administration.”
“Right, I passed it last night.” He shifts the box in his arms again, muscles in his forearms flexing under the skin. “Are you… walking?”
“Bus, if the universe is kind. Sprint, if it’s not.” I scoop up my bag and sling it over my shoulder. “You’ll see me on the news: ‘Local waitress mowed down by number fourteen, died doing what she loved—being five minutes late.’”
“That sounds… bad,” he says solemnly. There’s a glint at the back of his eyes that didn’t used to be there five minutes ago.
“I mean, I’d probably haunt the fryers,” I say. “Make the patties flip themselves. Real poltergeist stuff.”
He lets out another quiet laugh, then looks down at his box, at the door behind him, then back at me like he’s debating something.
“I, uh.” He clears his throat. “I make too much coffee for one person. If you ever… want a cup. Before you go.” His gaze skims away, like the offer is bigger than it sounds.
It shouldn’t land in my chest the way it does. It’s just coffee. It’s just a neighbor. I know better than to lean on anyone. My life is a Jenga tower built on tips and overdue bills; one wrong dependency and the whole thing goes down.
But I remember waking up under that drip, the way the room smelled like damp plaster and old dreams, and I hear myself say, “You make too much coffee?”
He hitches one shoulder. “Bad habit. I… used to live with people who drank a lot of it.” The words feel careful, like he’s stepping around something sharp. “Hard to adjust expectations down.”
Roommates, maybe. Ex, maybe. Doesn’t matter. Not my business.
“Offer stands,” he adds quickly. “No obligation. Just… in case your bus is late and you need to bribe the universe.”
I regard him for a second. His hoodie has a small hole near the cuff, and there’s a faint bruise at the edge of his jaw, half-faded yellow. His eyes—hazel, I realize now, with a ring of green—are steady but guarded, like he’s waiting for me to laugh in his face.
“Bribing the universe with caffeine is basically my religion,” I say. “So. I might take you up on that. One time. As a trial run.”
His shoulders loosen, just a fraction. “One time,” he agrees. “Trial run.”
The plink of water filters faintly down the hallway, my ceiling protesting somewhere above. I send a mental apology to the mixing bowl.
“I gotta go,” I say. “Lou gets twitchy if I’m not there to placate the regulars by six.”
“The regulars sound terrifying,” he says.
“Worse,” I tell him. “They tip in conspiracy theories.”
He smiles again, softer now. “Good luck, Chloe-from-four-B.”
“Enjoy the Palace, Liam-from-four-A,” I reply. “If your faucet starts screaming, you can kick it twice on the left and whisper kind words. Sometimes it helps.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
I head for the stairs, the carpet sagging under my steps. At the landing, I glance back.
He’s still in the hall, watching me go. When he catches me looking, he ducks his head like he’s been caught doing something almost intimate and fumbles his keys at the lock. The box jostles; the lamp tips again.
“Careful!” I call.
“I’m okay,” he says, but the key skitters from his fingers and clinks against the floor.
The sound follows me down the stairwell, weirdly endearing.
Lou’s Diner is already humming when I burst through the back door at 5:58, tying my apron on the fly. The kitchen is a symphony of clattering pans and popping grease. It smells like coffee and bacon and desperation.
“You’re two minutes early, Carter,” Sophie calls over the hiss of the grill, flipping pancakes like she’s mad at them. “You lose a bet with God?”
“Roof’s leaking again,” I say, reaching for the pot to refill the front urn. “Got waterboarded into consciousness.”
“Sexy,” she deadpans. “Roselli gonna fix it before your grandchildren retire?”
“Please,” I say. “He’s waiting for the whole building to collapse so he can claim the insurance.”
She snorts, bangs the bell for an order up. “Table four’s already angry about the weather, table six wants the ‘usual’ without specifying what that is, and the coffee’s weak.”
“The coffee is always weak,” I say. “Like my will to live and your taste in men.”
“Rude,” she says. “You know I hate men equally.”
I grin despite myself and head out to the front.
The morning passes in a blur of refills and orders shouted over the noise. Regulars grumble about politics, about the transit strike that might happen next month, about the price of eggs. My feet start to ache by eight. By ten, my ponytail’s slipping and my shirt has a mysterious ketchup stain I don’t remember earning.
In the fifteen-second gaps between tables, my mind keeps flicking back to the hallway. To the way Liam’s laugh had broken open like something unused, to the careful way he’d held that box like it was the last solid thing he owned.
A new neighbor who makes too much coffee. Who moves into our half-forgotten building with one box of books and a photo of a city that looks like money.
The thought nudges at an old sore place under my ribs. I know better than to trust people who can pack up and disappear. I also know better than to assume anyone in this building is anything other than broke.
Still. Those hands. Those calluses. Those eyes that looked like they carried more than a few late nights.
“Earth to Cinderella,” Sophie says, snapping her fingers in front of my face as I zone out by the coffee machine.
“Sorry.” I blink. “Was just… thinking.”
“About which bill gets paid this week or which one of our regulars is secretly a serial killer?” she asks.
“New neighbor,” I admit. “Moved in across the hall.”
“Ooh.” Her eyes light with immediate scandal-hunger. “Hot?”
I pour a refill, heat licking my cheeks for no good reason. “Not… not not hot.”
She drags out the word. “Chlo-e.”
“Relax.” I roll my eyes. “He walked into me with a box. It was very romantic in the concussed kind of way.”
“Classic meet-cute,” she says. “Did violins play? Did the ceiling leak a heart-shaped puddle over your bed?”
“That’s not how mold works,” I say. “Also, I am not available for your rom-com projections. I have a hot date with my overdue electric bill.”
“Bills can’t hold you at night,” she sing-songs.
“No,” I say dryly. “They just keep the lights off so you can’t see the poor life choices.”
She snickers, but her gaze softens. “You know I’m kidding, right? The only hot neighbors I trust are fictional.”
“Relax,” I repeat. “I’m not trying to marry the guy. He just offered me coffee.”
“That’s how it starts,” she says darkly. “First it’s coffee, then it’s feelings, then it’s sharing a Netflix password and suddenly your whole life is in a U-Haul.”
I laugh, because it’s easier than admitting the truth: I don’t have room for a U-Haul. I barely have room for myself.
But even as I scoop up plates and wipe down tables, a tiny, traitorous part of me is curious. About the guy in 4A with the broken box and the careful eyes. About what exactly he’s running from that landed him in our forgotten Palace.
By the time my shift drags to a close at three, my back is screaming and my tips jar is depressingly light. I clock out, stuff my share of the day’s crumpled cash into my bag, and step outside.
The sky is a bright, brittle blue, the kind that makes the city look almost hopeful. My bus wheezes up to the curb like it’s also on its last leg. I climb aboard, find a seat by the scratched window, and lean my head against the glass.
The bus lurches forward. Street after street slides past—boutique gyms and juice bars and buildings with doormen, places with polished brass and flower boxes. Worlds away from peeling paint and leaky ceilings.
People like me don’t end up in those worlds. People like my father had tried, and the fallout had nearly taken us down with him.
I close my eyes for a second, letting the rhythm of the ride blur my thoughts.
Coffee, I tell myself firmly. That’s all it is.
But when I climb the stairs to the fourth floor half an hour later, legs heavy, and see a disposable cup sitting on my welcome mat—steam still curling from the little drinking hole, my name written on the side in careful block letters—my heart does something stupid and hopeful in my chest.
And for the first time in a long time, I’m not sure if that scares me more than the leak in my ceiling.
