DESPITE MY REALIZATION CONCERNING THE GUY AT THE BAR, I CLIMB into bed thinking of Zane. Of our complicated history. Of the way he seems to have some ownership over me, still. I am, as I have been since we broke up, adrift. What happened tonight made me realize just how much he still affects me. Of how little progress I’ve made in moving on.
I dream of him in a restless, hallucinatory sleep. Zane and me playing Elden Ring on my couch, him congratulating me on a decisive demigod kill rather than claiming it was due to luck, as he normally would. Me actually sharing my game designs with him, instead of being too afraid of his reaction. At his family’s house on Thanksgiving, though in this alternate universe, his parents believing I’m good enough for him. Zane with me in my childhood home, wading through the shin-deep water, proclaiming there’s nothing to save. This last instance he was never a part of—I met him much later—but in dreamlike states like this he tends to be there with me often, though never particularly helpful.
The enjoyable parts of him are the especially achy ones, though, memories sore like overused muscles. Sure, I know that as many problems as Zane and I had, I’ve inevitably romanticized parts of us. Of him. No matter what distance does—how it might skew—I do still remember the good.
Like the way his face changed over time, as though he were a shape-shifter.
Zane has a big nose—not prominent in a way that demands respect or denotes importance, just too big for his face. I say this objectively. It’s broad and bulbous and long and sits high against his other features, the protrusion starting above his eyebrows instead of just below. It took just two dates for me to stop seeing his nose first. It quickly receded and I saw instead the almond, curved-up-at-the-corners shape of his eyes and the way his smile spread across his face in a flat line instead of upturning. I fell for the way he pressed his bottom lip into his top one when immersed in thought. I was enamored with how he observed the world, reaching for a tree branch to feel its leaves or stopping to stare at the markings of a cloud-smeared sky. I took envious joy in the way he pressed his eyebrows together when concentrating on the designs on his laptop screen that seemed to just pour out of him. And before long, I grew a deep affinity for his nose too.
It’s these good parts of Zane that I denote as special. Unique. Fearful that on anyone else, I would find them to be unnoteworthy. Just a big nose and a flat mouth. A tree toucher. A sky starer. I don’t know if I’ll ever again find these types of mundane details of another human fulfilling.
The sound of banging on my apartment door jolts me awake. Finn pops up from his bed on the floor in the corner and cocks his straw-colored head at me to determine our next move. It’s why I chose a Labrador, intelligent though not aggressive.
I turn to the clock on my nightstand. Two a.m. I decide to check things out—if for no other reason than to determine whether I’m still in my dream state or real life.
“Hey, it’s your neighbor! You’ve gotta come out here!” a voice shouts from the hallway. Finn releases one sharp bark, warning our visitor of his presence, then trots close behind me as I fumble my way from the bedroom. Grabbing the canister of Mace from the console table, I look through the peephole, leaning forward with my feet an ample distance behind me so the person knocking won’t detect my shadow under the door. All I see are blurry features and tan skin, but my throat instantly burns, knowing who it is on the other side.
I gather myself, say a silent string of curse words for my stupidity at the bar, and fling the door open. “What’s going on?”
The man at my door is shirtless, wearing only dark gray joggers and black slides. I wonder again for a split second if it’s a dream, because outside of last night’s bar debacle, that’s the only place I tend to interact with the opposite sex these days, particularly if said male is shirtless.
But then I realize I am too aware of my surroundings and deficits for this to be a fantasy. I’m wearing a MS. PAC-MAN T-shirt and oversize men’s boxer briefs. I take in the faint smell of mint and remember I ran out of pimple patches and have a blob of toothpaste on my right cheek over that stubborn zit.
It’s real life.
“Hey, sorry, but it’s kinda an emergency,” he says, thick eyebrows raised.
Our eyes lock and my throat clenches. I was born via emergency C-section after the doctors found the umbilical cord wrapped securely around my neck, about to cut off my post-birth air supply. I’m convinced this is why my throat is the literal choke point for all my bodily stress.
In this situation, he is the cause. It’s him. Free Hugs Guy from hours ago who I attacked with my mouth, who is also Hot Neighbor Guy. How could I not have made the connection before I kissed him? I am vaguely aware there’s a hot guy who lives just across the hall, but I rarely see him, and usually at a distance. So rarely, in fact, that I don’t even know his name. And it’s been so long since he moved in, and the bar was so dim, and he was wearing a hat last night that apparently obscured his face, and I’ve been too consumed with Zane and—
“Hello? I said it’s an emergency?”
I come to. “What’s the emergency?”
“I smell smoke. I think the building’s on fire.”
“What? Oh shit!” I have a flash of my childhood home, waterline well above the baseboards, photo albums and throw pillows floating along, colliding into waterlogged walls like bumper boats. I shake my head furiously. Not again. I am prepared for this moment. It’s sort of a nighttime ritual of mine, lying in bed imagining worst-case scenarios and how I might handle them.
I stride past him into the hallway and pull the fire alarm, wondering why he didn’t think to do it. Why he came straight to me instead. There’s no time to contemplate. I rush back into my apartment, leaving him standing at the door. In my bedroom, I grab the large duffel bag that’s shoved into the back of my closet. It already holds a first-aid kit, a piece of flint, dehydrated meals, and a few water bottles. I throw my phone, laptop, Kindle, and their respective chargers inside. I pull out the drawer of my jewelry box that holds the few small important items. Amma’s wedding ring. The bracelet I’ve added charms to since I was five, which I miraculously found clasped around a dresser drawer handle in my waterlogged room at age eleven, when so much else had been permanently lost. The delicate “I’m sorry” diamond bracelet from Zane. The only diamonds anyone has ever given me. I hesitate for a moment, contemplating if I should let the latter burn.
No.
Despite it being a remnant of our failed relationship, it’s undoubtedly an expensive piece. I can always hawk it on eBay should I lose all my other possessions in this fire.
Finn, who’s taken his leash in his mouth, follows me around the apartment, his own senses keen and now a bit jumpy with the alarm blazing. He drops the leash only for a second so he can pick up his oatmeal-colored teddy bear from the kitchen floor and place it in the duffel bag.
“Are you coming back?” Hot Neighbor Guy/kiss recipient yells from the doorway.
“Yes, yes, one second!”
The fire alarm continues to rage. Why did it not go off on its own, without my having to pull it, if Hot Neighbor Guy was already smelling smoke? I intend to write a strongly worded letter to building management, should I come away from this unscathed. And if there is any silver lining here, it’s that the urgency of a fire supersedes the need to address the kiss.
I throw on a zip-up hoodie despite the sweat forming at my hairline, then collect all the loose sheets of paper scattered across my kitchen table, shoving them into my sketchbook before placing it in my bag. Finally, I take the stack of three-ring binders on my kitchen counter and toss them inside too. I’ll be damned if my presentation goes up in flames, literal or figurative. I debate grabbing the gas mask in the hall closet, but I’m already struggling to zip the duffel closed. I get it halfway and decide it’s good enough.
“Okay, sorry,” I say, breathless when I return to the front door, bag slung over my shoulder. He’s still shirtless and holding only his phone. Why is he not more prepared?
“C’mon,” he says before starting down the hall.
“Wait!”
“What, do you want to carry your furniture out too? Let’s go!”
“No,” I say, insulted. “What about Mrs. Crandall?”
He stares blankly at me.
“Mrs. Crandall, 6D?” I point to her door, a few feet behind us, as I secure Finn’s leash with my other hand. “She may need help.”
I make my way to her door and bang with both fists, surprised when Hot Neighbor Guy starts drumming against it beside me. I assumed he would have given up on me by now and headed for the stairwell.
“Mrs. Crandall, there’s a fire!” I yell, then bang some more. Finn gives another rare bark. He lifts to his hind legs and taps his paws against the door to assist.
Nothing.
“How do you know she didn’t already get out?” he asks.
“Did you see her while you were waiting for me?”
He shakes his head.
“Well, I doubt she got out before you were in the hallway,” I yell over the shrill ring of the alarm. “Mrs. Crandall, open the door. It’s an emergency!”
Still nothing. I smell it now too—the scent of something charred, sharp and bitter.
“You should knock the door down,” I tell him.
“What? That seems a little over the top, no?”
“It’s a fire! She’s an old lady. Maybe she can’t hear the alarm.” When he doesn’t move, I raise my eyebrows at him as he rubs at his bare shoulder. “Seriously?”
“I have a bad shoulder.”
I’m about to throw my bag down and do it myself when the door finally opens and Mrs. Crandall appears. We’re hit with the overwhelming smell, a mix that reminds me of singed hair and vinegar.
“What the fuck,” she says, looking back and forth between us. She’s wearing full-length light pink silk pajamas that hang on her delicate frame and they seem to give her blue-gray hair a pinkish hue. So taken with her bedtime style, it takes a moment for me to recognize the smear of black soot across her front right side.
“There’s a fire. Don’t you hear the alarm?” I shout over the shrill drone.
“Of course I hear it. It’s deafening. But there’s no more fire. I took care of it.”
Hot Neighbor Guy, Finn, and I exchange a three-way look.
“What do you mean, you took care of it?” I ask.
She opens her door wider and I see that her kitchen, including the wall she shares with Hot Neighbor Guy, is covered in black soot. It’s littering the ground in front of her stove and has traveled halfway across her ceiling. A thin red fire extinguisher sits on the counter, surrounded by a collection of various ashtrays.
“You started the fire?” Hot Neighbor Guy asks.
“Oh, it’s nothing. Can you tell them to shut these damn sirens off already?”
“Mrs. Crandall, I think we should get out of the building and let the firefighters take a look,” I tell her.
She stares at me.
“It can’t be healthy to stay here and inhale all these fumes,” I try.
“It’ll be much quieter outside,” Hot Neighbor Guy offers.
“Fine,” she says finally, releasing her grip on the door handle. She grabs a coat and purse from the rack by the door and steps into the hallway, her feet clad in white fuzzy slippers. We wait while she fishes around for her keys then locks the door behind her. I want to tell her it’s unnecessary and likely problematic for the firefighters, but I bite my tongue to keep her moving.
As we make our way down the hall, two firefighters enter our floor from the stairwell in full yellow uniforms. “What are you still doing in the building?” one asks.
It’s too much to explain, so I simply say, “Sorry, we’re going.”
“The fire was in 6D. It’s out now,” Hot Neighbor Guy calls after them when we pass. He takes the keys from Mrs. Crandall’s hands.
“Hey!” she protests as he tosses them to one of the firefighters.
We make our way down the stairwell in painstaking fashion, six flights of Mrs. Crandall clinging to the rail with both hands, refusing to let Hot Neighbor Guy carry her despite his multiple offers, seemingly willing to temporarily overlook his bad shoulder for the sake of getting her out of the building safely.
When we finally make it to the ground floor and onto the street, I throw my bag down and maneuver my neck in small circles, breathing deeply, grateful for the crisp early morning air. The rest of the residents of our building have all gathered across the street. We join the huddle, seemingly the last arrivals.
“Why do these things always have to malfunction in the middle of the night?” some lady behind me says. “It’s ridiculous.”
“It was probably that kid from 7C. He’s got crazy eyes,” suggests the man standing next to her, though 7C is within earshot. I take a look at the group, all these people who avoid eye contact in the lobby and elevators, standing out here in their pajamas and bathrobes: 5C, a beautiful server/actress, has her hair pulled back in a perfect ponytail and is in a sports bra and tiny shorts. Another resident who looks vaguely familiar offers her his jacket and she accepts—much to the dismay of 7C, who is ogling her. The couple from 2A are in matching navy-blue pajamas with an upside-down pineapple print—his a pair of boxer shorts, hers a two-piece tank top and shorts set.
Upside-down pineapples. I’ve learned something new about the couple in 2A.
Beside me, Hot Neighbor Guy has helped Mrs. Crandall take a seat on the curb and has his arms wrapped around himself, rubbing his biceps up and down aggressively. His skin is perfectly smooth, minus the goosebumps; no tattoos, no blemishes, not a mole or birthmark to be seen. I’m covered in small moles that look like freckles, so his flawless skin momentarily captures my attention. I take note of the v-cuts from his hip bones that curve forward and dive beneath his sweatpants. Those are hard to ignore, objectively.
“Are you cold?” I ask, because I’m uncertain what is considered appropriate small talk with the neighbor you drive-by kissed a few hours earlier as you wait for the fire department to clear your apartment building at two a.m.
“Freezing. I would have grabbed a shirt if I knew I’d be waiting for you in the hallway for fifteen minutes.”
Ouch. “Do you want my sweatshirt?”
He looks over at me and shakes his head, though I can sense his envy.
Of course this happens the night before—or technically, the morning of—my big interview. As I stand on the curb, watching firefighters move in and out of the building with no particular urgency, I succumb to the reality that it’s going to be virtually impossible for me to be at my best. The most significant moment of my life to date is happening in a little over five hours, and I’m on the sidewalk waiting for the fire department to find and deal with Mrs. Crandall’s kitchen disaster.
All the preparation in the world couldn’t have readied me for the predicament I currently find myself in.