Two hours later, Kara had lost track of Nisha in a throng of sweaty bodies and artificial smoke. She’d had two drinks, and she’d danced surrounded by people without feeling self-conscious about what she was wearing or how badly she was dancing. She’d even spent a few seconds grinding with a random woman in a sequin mini dress before another woman had yanked the dancer off the floor. Kara had died and gone to gay heaven.
The DJ put on a hip-hop song she hadn’t heard before, one that seemed hard to dance to, and she took it as her cue to take a break. She pushed her way to the bar and asked for a glass of water. The bartender returned with a plastic bottle, its cap missing, and declared she owed him three dollars. Before she could complain, the next group of patrons had pushed in front of her to place their order. She left a five-dollar bill on the bar and looked for a spot to linger while she drank the precious water. She spotted Nisha near a window talking to two people and made her way over.
Nisha had taken off her sweater to reveal a form-fitting white bodysuit. In the black light, her bra glowed hot pink underneath the thin fabric. Kara wondered if Nisha knew it was showing and drawing attention to her perfectly rounded, perfectly sized chest. Was this her normal bra and shirt combo, or had she dressed this way for her wine bar date with Kara?
Not that it was a date. It was really a pity invitation.
Kara quickly looked away, but in the second she’d looked at Nisha’s breasts, one of the other women had caught her. She stared at Kara, her lips pursed, and Kara’s cheeks flushed with embarrassment.
“I hope I’m not interrupting!” she shouted over the music.
“You looked like you were having a good time!” Nisha replied. “These are my friends, Madeline and Sunita! They just happened to be here tonight!”
They gave their hellos, but Kara doubted Nisha’s claim that they just happened to be at the same club at the same time on a Wednesday night. More likely, this was a friend intervention.
“Thank you so much for bringing me here! This is awesome!”
“Will you be okay getting home on your own?”
“Where are you going?”
Nisha’s hand came up to Kara’s waist, and she leaned close to Kara’s ear to be heard. “Bed.” Kara felt a shiver run through her body at the word and the sensuous way Nisha said it. “It’s getting late.”
Kara looked at Nisha’s friends. They were actively listening, not even pretending to give them privacy. “It’s only ten.”
“I’m done, and my shoes are done.” She raised a hand to show her heels dangling from a finger. On her feet, as if by femme girl magic, were a different pair of shoes that looked far more comfortable. “We already called a rideshare.”
Madeline said, “It was nice to meet you.” Sunita, the one who had seen Kara momentarily glance at Nisha’s breasts, just glared. The two of them turned toward the exit.
Nisha gave Kara a hug, and unlike the one they’d shared at the wine bar, this one was long and tight. Kara could feel every curve of Nisha’s warm body.
“I hope you have a really good night tonight,” Nisha said in her ear. “I hope you get everything you’re looking for.” She turned to follow her friends.
A feeling Kara couldn’t identify bubbled up inside, and she yelled, “Wait!” But Nisha couldn’t hear her over the music and the space between them. She followed the trio all the way to the exit, which was bright and quiet and incongruous with the dark noise inside the club. She reached past Sunita to touch Nisha’s elbow, and Nisha turned in surprise.
“Could we maybe talk privately before you leave?” Kara asked. “Is your car here already?”
Madeline seemed to like Kara better than Sunita, who folded her arms over chest. “We have two minutes if you guys want to talk. Come on, Suni.”
“Nish, you okay?” Sunita asked without moving.
“I’m fine. I’ll meet you guys outside in a second.”
Yeah, she’s fine, Kara wanted to say, but she didn’t want Nisha’s friends to be more off-put by her than they already were. In truth, Kara didn’t know why she’d run after Nisha.
“I didn’t mean to freak Sunita out. I don’t think she likes me very much.”
Nisha gave her coat to Kara while she pulled her sweater back on. “Suni thinks she’s everyone’s bodyguard.” Kara held out the coat as Nisha slipped her arms into it. Then Nisha flipped her long black hair back into place. “Was that all you wanted to say?”
“No, I…” Kara stuck her hands in the back pockets of her jeans. “I just wondered why you were leaving so abruptly.”
“What more do you want? You want me to pick out your hookup for you?”
“What?”
“That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” Nisha said, walking backward toward the door. “You wanted me to be your wing man. I brought you here, and you can have your pick of people. You don’t need me anymore.” She pushed the door open and called over her shoulder, “Have a good night, Kara.”
Kara had indeed asked Nisha to be a tour guide and wing man, and Nisha had agreed. So why was Nisha being weird about it? And why did Kara feel so awful?
She waited until Nisha and her friends climbed into an SUV, and then she walked out of the club to figure out her own way home.
* * *
The next morning, there was a glass lying sideways on the counter and a sticky orange mess congealing beside it. Still only half-awake and slightly hungover from too much alcohol and not enough water, Kara was more angry than freaked out.
Nisha had testified on the building manager’s behalf and had said they were friends. Maybe Nisha had told him about the sour end to their night out together, and he’d left the orange juice as a message to Kara not to hurt Nisha’s feelings.
Kara hadn’t done anything wrong. Nisha didn’t have a valid reason for being upset. Even if she did, Kara didn’t deserve to have her home and privacy violated because of it. The situation was unacceptable, and it was time to stop it. Either the building manager was going to tell her what was going on, or, if he continued to assert he wasn’t involved, she was going to insist to the management company that they break her lease.
She slid a bra underneath her T-shirt and hooked it, grabbed her keys, and headed to the basement to the custodial office. It was shut and locked. She walked the first floor corridor until she found the apartment where Oleg lived and knocked on the door. Nothing. She banged harder and faster. Still nothing.
“Open up! I’m not playing around!”
A man carrying a laundry basket of folded clothes came out of the back stairwell. “You looking for Oleg?” Kara nodded. “He’s out of town the rest of this week. There should be a note on his door to call the emergency number if there’s a problem in your apartment.”
Kara saw a handwritten note with blocky lettering pinned to the bulletin board next to the door. She turned back to the guy with the laundry, who was now balancing the basket on one hip while he fumbled with the lock to his apartment door. “Do you know when he left?”
“Yesterday afternoon, I think.” He opened his door and went inside.
If Oleg had been gone since the afternoon, he couldn’t have been the one who broke into Kara’s apartment.
She trudged up the five flights of stairs to her own apartment. She found the copy of her lease and called the number to the main office.
The call disconnected.
Kara looked at her phone to make sure there were enough reception bars and the battery was fully charged. She dialed again, confirming the number before she hit the green button, and waited. It rang once, twice, and then—
It disconnected. No answer, no voice mail. She slammed her phone down on the newly scrubbed kitchen counter in frustration.
She didn’t have time for this nonsense. She had to get ready for work. She took a shower to shake off her bad mood. The hot water felt soothing on her bone-weary body, and it was only with reluctance that she finally made herself shut it off. She pushed the shower curtain back and reached across the small space for the towel.
The mirror opposite the tub was fogged up, but as she approached it to brush her teeth, she could see something written in the fog.
LOVE
She threw the towel around her body. She looked around the bathroom, but there was no one else. Her heart was pounding as she turned the doorknob, and the floor creaked as she stepped into the hall.
“Hello?” She waited, then called out again a few times.
The apartment was eerily quiet. She couldn’t even hear the radiators or the buses outside.
She retrieved her slippers—because the floors were still sticky and gross—and then she did a full inspection. The kitchen and living room were empty, and the door was still bolted shut. No one was in the bedroom, and the closet was empty.
This was beyond creepy. It was one thing to drink someone’s orange juice, but it was another to come into a bathroom while she was in the shower. And what the hell did “LOVE” mean, anyway?
Maybe she should have called the police after the first night instead of wasting time asking Oleg and Nisha about it. But the police would ask if anything was stolen, and as far as she could tell, nothing was. They’d look around as she had done and tell her there were no signs of forced entry. Then they’d look at her differently, and she’d lived through that before. She didn’t need them making her feel as if she was seeing imaginary things when she knew for certain she wasn’t.
She got dressed and decided to get the hell out of there. She could spend her lunch break trying to find an Airbnb or hotel room for the night.
The morning was rushed with meetings and phone calls and mounds of files that were starting to take over her office, and she was so lost in work she forgot about everything else—the apartment stalker, Nisha, all of it was blotted out of her mind through the cleansing power of drudge work.
When it was finally time to take a lunch break, Kara wasn’t hungry. She opted for coffee from the café on the ground floor. As she drank her flat white, she sat at a counter facing the sidewalk. She pulled out her phone to begin a search for a place to stay but got distracted by a text message from Nisha.
Hope you made it home safely last night. :)
She nearly rolled her eyes. They barely knew each other, and Nisha worried about Kara getting home—yet not enough to stay at the club until Kara left. The person Nisha was in written messages was totally different from the person she’d been at the club. Kara debated whether she should respond and, if so, what to say.
She didn’t really want to cultivate a friendship. They didn’t have much in common, except that they both lived in apartment 503. Nisha clearly wasn’t over her breakup. Listening to her wallow in pain would make Kara constantly think about her own pain, and that was something Kara didn’t want to do. She was actively working to heal and move forward, but Nisha didn’t seem interested in doing the same.
But Nisha had been respectful when Kara said she didn’t want to talk about Hilary. She hadn’t asked how long they’d been together or how Hilary had died, the things people usually asked, right before they asked when. As if the date of Hilary’s death could somehow determine their appropriate level of sympathy for Kara’s grief.
It’s been six months, and her shoes are still lying in the middle of the hall, her sister Becca had once scolded her. That was right after Kara had been sent home from work early with a clear message that if she didn’t pull herself together, she’d lose her job. Six months, and Kara could still hear Hilary breathing beside her at night as she lay in the dark. At eight months, Hilary’s pillowcase no longer smelled like her shampoo. At nine, the remaining traces of Hilary all over the house stopped feeling comforting, and Kara had slowly started to clean and box up Hilary’s things.
She wondered how Nisha managed to stay in Chicago, where every street corner must have reminded her of her relationship with Angie. She seemed to enjoy that. Maybe she and Oleg cooked up a plan to scare Kara out of the apartment. Maybe Nisha wanted to move back in.
It didn’t seem likely. The person Kara had met was kind—maybe too kind—and it didn’t seem forced or artificial. What had she said? That she was Kara’s best friend in Chicago? Seriously weird.
Missing ring or not, Kara didn’t have to talk to Nisha again. She wasn’t under any obligation.
Her fingers didn’t seem to realize that. They pushed the call button of their own free will.
Nisha answered on the third ring. “Hi.” Her voice was flat. “I didn’t think I’d hear from you after yesterday.”
“You texted me.”
“I didn’t think you’d text back. I definitely didn’t think you’d call.”
“I’m not sure why I did.”
“I’m sorry about last night. I was pissy, and I shouldn’t have asked Maddie and Suni to come rescue me.”
“I knew you didn’t run into them by chance!”
“Yeah, well…I was getting bored, and they kept texting me to find out who I was with and what we were doing. I guess they were worried. Anyway, I’m sorry if I ruined your night. I hope you had a better time after I left.”
I wished you had stayed.
The thought made Kara choke on a sip of coffee, and coughing into a napkin gave her time to figure out what to say aloud.
They could just talk about Nisha’s feelings.
“You were miserable last night, weren’t you?” Kara asked.
“Honestly? I’ve always hated that place. But you said you wanted to dance, and the wine bar didn’t really seem like your scene.”
“I didn’t mean for you to spend your night having a bad time on my account.”
“It’s not a big deal. It’s just that Angie was always dragging me there.”
“Then why on earth did you suggest it?”
“I don’t really know many clubs,” Nisha admitted. “That’s not really my scene.”
She had gone to a club that reminded her of her ex to make Kara happy. “That was really generous of you. I wish I had known. We could have stayed at the wine bar.”
“It’s probably time I stop being afraid of going certain places anyway.”
“Give yourself time, Nisha. Revisiting places is hard. Hell,” she said with a scoff, “it’s all hard, and it hits you at times you least expect. One minute you’re fine, and then suddenly—”
“Suddenly you’re in the middle of the dance floor, and all you can think about is the last time you danced together. And you’re with someone desperately hunting for a hookup, and it just reminds you of how people don’t want to commit. How fleeting most relationships are.” There was a pause. “Do you think I’m pathetic?”
“Noooo?” Kara hoped it sounded more convincing to Nisha.
She took another drink of her coffee. Her stomach protested the lack of nourishment, and she regretted that she hadn’t made time for food with her lunch break nearly over. No one would give her any trouble if she was late coming back. They probably wouldn’t even notice, since people were always rushing out to meetings and to court, but as the new person in the office, she wanted to show herself as a model employee. She’d have to make a point to eat after work, maybe before she took the train home.
“Do you want to get dinner tonight?” she asked.
“Oh, that’s really sweet, but I have to be at the theater at five. Maybe we could meet this weekend for brunch instead?”
“How about coming over to look for the ring?”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“I’d really like to see the space again. I haven’t been inside since I moved out. Thank you.”
That settled two really important things. First, Nisha wasn’t breaking in and playing mind games. She said she hadn’t been in the apartment, and Kara believed her.
Second, despite saying she didn’t want to, Kara was definitely cultivating a friendship.