Jason stepped into his apartment and let the door shut behind him without bothering to lock it right away, dropping his bag by the entrance and crossing straight to his bed.
His phone buzzed before he’d even sat down.
Sarah: you home?
He stared at the message for a long moment, thumb hovering over the keyboard without actually typing anything.
I don’t want to see her right now. The thought arrived plain and a little uncomfortable, not because anything was wrong exactly, just because the last few hours had left him with nothing steady enough to bring into a conversation with the one person who actually deserved his full attention. Ten days. Bree’s flustered sprint down the wrong street. Vivian’s easy laugh across a crowded classroom. He didn’t want to sit across from Sarah tonight carrying all of that half-processed in his head, not when she’d have no idea what any of it meant and he had no honest way of explaining it yet.
He typed a reply eventually, slower than usual, deleting and rewriting it twice before settling on something simple.
Jason: yeah. wiped from today though. might just crash early
Sarah: aw okay. rest up. text me tomorrow
Jason: will do
He set the phone down on the mattress beside him and let out a long breath, the exhaustion catching up to him fully now that he’d stopped moving. Not physical tiredness. The other kind. The kind that came from spending an entire day quietly managing three different conversations, none of which he could actually be honest in.
This is exhausting in a way the gym never was. He lay back against his pillow, staring at the ceiling, and had just closed his eyes when a sound outside his door pulled him back upright.
Voices. Muffled, indistinct through the wall, followed by something heavy scraping across the hallway floor. Then a thud. Then more scraping.
What is that.
He got up, curiosity outweighing his exhaustion, and opened his door to check.
The hallway was full of boxes. Stacked two and three high outside the apartment next to his, a hand truck leaned against the wall, and a man in a plain work shirt was hauling what looked like a dresser through the doorway with the careful, practiced strain of someone who did this professionally.
"Oh," Jason said, mostly to himself. "New neighbor."
The apartment beside his had been empty for months, the previous tenant having moved out sometime before Jason had even met Sarah, and he’d honestly stopped registering the door at all, just another blank space in the hallway he passed without thinking.
The worker glanced up, nodding a brief acknowledgment as he adjusted his grip on the dresser. "Evening."
"Evening. Big move?"
"Bigger than I was told." The man huffed out a short laugh, shifting the dresser’s weight. "Client said light furniture. This is not light furniture."
"Sounds rough."
"It’s a Tuesday." The man said it like that explained everything, and Jason huffed a laugh of his own, stepping back to give him room to maneuver the piece through the narrow doorway.
"Well. Good luck with the rest of it."
"Appreciate it."
Jason retreated back into his own apartment, the door clicking shut behind him, and crossed back toward his bed, already half convinced sleep might actually be within reach now that the day’s chaos seemed to be winding down.
He’d barely sat back on the mattress when a knock landed at his own door.
Sarah. His stomach did something complicated and immediate, half guilt, half instinct, the same panic from every previous version of this exact scenario. She said she wasn’t coming over. Did something change. Did I say something wrong in that text.
He crossed the room fast, already rehearsing something in his head, some version of an explanation for why he’d been distant tonight without actually revealing the reason, and pulled the door open.
It wasn’t Sarah.
The girl standing in his doorway was tall, dark hair pulled back loosely, the kind of face that looked deliberately assembled even though nothing about her expression suggested she was trying. She was dressed simply, a plain t-shirt and jeans, clearly midway through unpacking, a faint sheen of effort on her skin from hauling boxes, and none of that did anything to diminish the fact that she was, by any objective measure, strikingly beautiful in a way that made Jason’s carefully rehearsed explanation evaporate on contact.
"Hi," she said, a small, easy smile already in place, like she did this often enough to have the greeting perfected.
"Hi," Jason said, and then said nothing else, his brain apparently deciding that one word was sufficient output for the situation.
Who is this. He ran through every possibility fast, the same instinct that catalogued facts on a chessboard now scrambling to place her somewhere, anywhere, in his existing world. Not a classmate. Not anyone from the gym. Not anyone Sarah had ever mentioned. Nobody I know has ever looked like this in the two years I’ve lived in this building.
"Sorry to bother you," she said, glancing briefly past him into the apartment before returning her attention to his face. "I’m moving in next door. I think we’re neighbors now."
"Right. Yeah. I saw the boxes."
"I figured you might have. Hard to miss, honestly." She laughed lightly, self-deprecating, gesturing vaguely back toward the hallway where the worker was still maneuvering furniture. "I was going to introduce myself properly once everything’s actually inside, but I ran out of both patience and box tape at the exact same time, so."
"So you’re improvising."
"So I’m improvising." She held out a hand. "I’m Alex."
Jason shook it, still faintly aware that his brain hadn’t fully caught up to processing the last thirty seconds. "Jason."
"Jason." She repeated it like she was filing it away properly, the same deliberate attention Bree gave to everything, though nothing about the delivery matched Bree’s careful precision, something looser and more immediately confident about it instead. "Nice to meet you. Sorry again for interrupting whatever you were doing."
"You didn’t interrupt anything. I was just about to go to bed."
"At this hour? Bold." She glanced at her phone briefly, checking the time, and Jason caught himself doing the same thing he’d done watching Vivian at the gym days earlier, noticing more than he probably should about someone he’d known for exactly ninety seconds.
Get it together. "Long day. Gym in the morning, classes after, then a study group that ran longer than expected."
"That does sound long." Something flickered across her expression, brief interest rather than performance. "What are you studying?"
"Business. You?"
"Kinesiology. Third year." She shifted her weight slightly, glancing back over her shoulder at the ongoing chaos of her move. "I should probably get back to that before my mover decides he’s had enough of me and leaves the dresser in the hallway permanently."
"Probably a good call."
"Probably." She smiled again, easy and unhurried, no trace of the awkwardness that usually accompanied a first meeting between strangers. "Anyway. Wanted to actually meet the guy next door before I spent the next few months just hearing you through the wall without a face attached to it."
"Appreciate the effort."
"I try." She stepped back, already turning toward her own door, then paused, glancing back at him once more. "We should grab coffee sometime. Once I’m actually unpacked and not covered in furniture dust."
Coffee. The word landed with more weight than it probably deserved given the ten-day clock still quietly running somewhere in the back of his mind, and Jason found himself hesitating for exactly one beat too long before answering.
"Sure," he said. "Sounds good."
"Great. I’ll knock when I’m less of a disaster." She gave him a small wave, already walking back toward her own doorway, and disappeared inside, leaving Jason standing in his own doorframe for a second longer, processing the entire exchange with the same careful, methodical attention he gave everything else that didn’t immediately make sense.
He closed his door slowly, crossing back to his bed, and sat there for a moment in the quiet, the exhaustion from earlier now competing with something else entirely, some restless, unplaced curiosity he hadn’t been expecting to feel tonight of all nights.
New neighbor. He turned the thought over slowly, the same way he turned over everything. Beautiful. Confident. Direct. Suggested coffee within two minutes of meeting me.
He thought about the ten-day countdown, still sitting patient in the corner of his vision whether he acknowledged it or not, and something cold and clinical settled in alongside the curiosity, a small, uncomfortable voice he didn’t fully want to listen to.
Convenient timing, the voice said.
He shoved the thought aside, lying back against his pillow, staring at the ceiling in the dark.
Coincidence, he told himself. Just a coincidence.
He didn’t entirely believe it.
For several seconds, the apartment remained completely silent, but Jason couldn’t shake the feeling that something had just changed.
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