Chapter 2 The Stranger on Her Couch

The Stranger on Her Couch

POV: Lily

The door swung open before I could knock again and there was nobody there.

Just the dog. Big. Brown. Tail going sideways like a broken propeller, nose already pushing into my leg before I could step back. I looked past it into the apartment and the first thing that hit me was the smell. Beer and takeout and something that might have been dirty laundry. The second thing was the music still pumping from a speaker somewhere, and the third thing, the thing that made me actually stop in the doorway, was the man on the couch.

Half off it, really. One leg hanging over the edge, arm thrown over his face, shirtless. Asleep. Or he had been asleep before the dog apparently let itself open the door. I looked at the dog. I looked at the couch. I looked at the three empty beer bottles standing on the coffee table like they were organized that way on purpose.

The guitar leaning against the wall was the least weird thing in the room.

"Hey." My voice came out flat. "Hey!"

He didn't move.

The dog circled back to the couch, sniffed his hand, then came back to me.

I walked in, dropped both my bags on the floor hard enough to make noise, and said it again louder. "Hey. Wake up."

He pulled his arm off his face and looked at the ceiling first, then the dog, then me. Brown eyes, the kind of face that had probably talked its way out of a lot of things. Tattoos running up both forearms. He blinked twice like he was trying to sort out which of us was the problem.

"Who are you?" he said.

"Who am I?" I pulled out my phone and opened the email from Marcus. "I'm the person who paid the deposit on this apartment. That's who I am. Who are you and why are you in my apartment?"

He sat up slowly. Rubbed the back of his neck. Looked around the room the way someone does when they are not panicked about being caught and that somehow made it worse.

"I live here," he said.

"No. You don't."

"Been here three weeks."

I held up my phone so he could see the email. He squinted at it, then reached down to the floor beside the couch and picked up his own phone from next to a takeout bag. He scrolled for a second and turned it around. His email. Different email, same address. Same apartment number. Same landlord name.

We both looked at the phones.

"Marcus," I said.

"Marcus," he said.

I called the housing office while he pulled a shirt on from somewhere under the coffee table. The line rang seven times. I stood by the door because I was not sitting on that couch. The dog sat on my left foot and stayed there and I didn't have the energy to deal with that too.

The woman who answered had a voice like she had already heard every version of every problem before and had stopped being surprised years ago. I explained the situation. She put me on hold. The hold music was something smooth and instrumental and completely wrong for the moment.

He was watching me from the couch. Not saying anything. The dog was still on my foot.

She came back.

"I'm seeing two active leases on that unit," she said. "There was an error during a system migration in July. Both deposits went through and neither flagged."

"Okay," I said carefully. "So which one of us has the apartment?"

"Technically both agreements are valid."

"That's not an answer."

"I understand, and I'm sorry. The error was on our end. We're looking at remedies but the issue is that our available inventory is fully occupied for the next six weeks. We don't have another unit to offer either party at this time."

The room went very quiet except for the speaker, which was still going. I turned and looked at the man on the couch. He had heard enough of it. I could tell by the way he had stopped pretending to look at anything else.

"Six weeks," I said.

"I'm deeply sorry for the..."

I hung up.

He stood up then. Not fast, not aggressive, just stood. He was taller than I expected. I took half a step back without meaning to and then stopped myself.

"Six weeks," he said.

"Don't."

"I'm not doing anything."

"You're doing that thing where you look calm. Stop looking calm."

He picked up one of the beer bottles from the table, realized it was empty, and set it back down. "Look, I don't want to be in this situation either. But I can't go anywhere. I gave up my last place for this one and I've got a paramedic program starting Thursday."

"I have classes starting Thursday."

"Then we've got a problem."

"No. You've got a problem. I need that bedroom."

"The couch is fine for me."

I stared at him. "You're serious."

"I've slept in worse."

The dog made a sound. Not quite a bark, just a sound. It walked over to him and sat on his foot the same way it had sat on mine and some part of my brain flagged that as information about something without bothering to explain what.

"The lease says no pets," I said.

He looked down at the dog. The dog looked up at him. "Murphy doesn't know that."

"Murphy can't live here."

"Murphy already lives here."

I pressed my fingers against my forehead. The headache that had started with the landlord's email that morning had been building in layers since then and it was currently sitting right behind my eyes and threatening to become something serious.

"There will be rules," I said.

"Sure."

"I mean actual rules. Written down."

"Okay."

"And you clean up." I looked at the bottles. The takeout bag. The general situation of the coffee table. "All of this, today."

"Fair."

"And the music. Not at that volume. Ever."

He looked at the speaker. "Define ever."

"Past nine at night or before eight in the morning."

He thought about it for a second. "Nine-thirty."

"Nine."

"Deal," he said, and stuck out his hand like we were closing something. I looked at it. The tattoos went up past his wrist and I didn't look at them any longer than I had to.

I shook it once.

Murphy barked at the window. Probably at nothing. The sound bounced off the walls of this apartment that was somehow both mine and not mine, and I stood there with my bags still by the door and my car still full of boxes and six weeks stretching out in front of me like a problem I hadn't studied for.

"I'm Asher," he said.

"Lily," I said. "And I need you to move your stuff off the couch so I can go get my boxes."

He started moving things. I went back out to the hallway and pulled the door almost closed behind me and stood there for a second.

Six weeks.