May followed Ben inside and up a dark staircase while her stomach sank lower and lower. She fixed her attention on her shoes, which looked about as bedraggled as she felt from the day’s adventures.
Allie had bought her these shoes. They were too girly for May, but she tried to be receptive to gifts. Allie had given them to her because they were girly. You should have beautiful things, she’d said. So May wore them every now and then, even though they made her feel like a giantess lumbering through the Land of the Small People.
The stairs went on and on. By the time they reached the fifth floor, she was short of breath and trying hard not to sound like it. Did he have to climb these stairs all the time? With groceries and everything? Her little ranch house was looking better and better.
Ben led her down a short hallway and unlocked a door. He started flipping on lights, and May stood a few feet inside the threshold, absorbing the view.
The materials were nice—granite countertop in the kitchen, wood floors, deep moldings in the doorways and along the ceiling—but it couldn’t be more than … what, five hundred square feet? It was as though someone had taken Dan’s whole city apartment and shoved it into a shoebox. She had the impression that from where she stood, she could reach out and touch every surface in the place.
To her right, there was a living room—couch, window, entertainment center—and a small nook that contained the kitchen, with a breakfast bar for dining.
To her left, she glimpsed his unmade bed through an open door. It seemed to take up most of the space in the room. Right next to the bedroom was a white-tiled bathroom, barely wider than its doorway.
Ben was looking at her expectantly, and she searched for a compliment. “It’s tidy,” she said finally.
“Yeah, I’m kind of a neat freak. Costs an arm and a leg, but the location’s unbeatable. I’m subletting from my friend Alec while he’s in Spain.”
If this place cost an arm and a leg, Dan’s place in the Meatpacking District must have cost, like, all the limbs. Plus the torso, the head, and three or four other poor suckers, to boot.
“It’s nice,” she said. And then, just to get it out of the way, “I can take the couch.”
“Not a chance.” He ducked behind her and closed the door, which she’d left gaping open. When he turned the lock, the spearing sound of the bolt moving into place did a funny thing to her insides.
Locked in. Locked in this tiny apartment with a stranger. Maybe this hadn’t been her smartest move ever.
“You want a glass of wine?”
“No, thanks.” Best to stay sober so she could berate herself properly for getting into this situation.
“Have a seat.”
Ben went into the kitchen and pulled a bottle down from one of the cabinets. He opened it and poured a glass, then joined her on the couch. Which was pink.
“So you want to take a shower?”
“No.”
Ben leaned forward, squinting at her face. “You look really freaked out.”
“It’s been kind of a long day.”
“I bet. Sure I can’t get you some wine? Might help you unwind.”
That’s what I’m afraid of.
He’d already unlaced his shoes and left them by the door, and now he unzipped his hoodie to reveal a gray T-shirt underneath.
Socks and a T-shirt. Lounging on his pink couch, he should have looked like Ken relaxing at the Barbie Dream House. Instead, he looked disreputable. A standing lamp cast a pool of light around him, and the exposed bricks behind him gave the scene a rugged feel. The T-shirt stretched tight across his chest, hinting at an even better build than she’d guessed.
She could see him exactly like this on a catalog page. Slap a faded Packers T-shirt on him, put some other bodies in the frame, and with the wineglass in his hand and the unzipped jacket, the scene would say, I’m just lounging around in my urban apartment among my metropolitan friends, drinking wine and eating canapés and being hipper than you.
He would sell so many clothes.
“You should be a model,” she said.
He made a deeply cynical face.
“What? You’d be great for catalogs. It probably pays better than washing dishes.”
Oops. That had been a rude thing to say. She really was nervous, if she was forgetting the social niceties so thoroughly.
“You think I’m a dishwasher?”
“Aren’t you?”
“No.”
“Oh. So what are you, then?”
Ben sipped his wine, and the silence drew out between them. She couldn’t read his expression—bemused, bewildered? Finally, he said, “I guess I’m a beekeeper.”
Of May’s mental list of all the things he might have said, I’m a beekeeper was way, way down toward the bottom. So far down, she couldn’t think of a response. Finally, she came up with “This is New York.”