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.
