The more time passes, the more I realize how completely out of my element I am.
I need help. Badly.
I suppose she will do.
Even if she is odd.
Well think of it this way. If shes really THAT strange, you won’t be tempted to either eat OR fuck her right?
Why do I still speak to you?
I mean I made sure you were fed, right?
And set it up so your bills and HOA dues were paid on time
I also got u a cell phone
You owed me AT LEAST that much, given the circumstances.
You know on second thought it would probably be good for you if you DID fuck your new roommate
God knows its been long enough
I am blocking your number as soon as I work out how that is done.
Frederick wasn’t there to greet me when I moved in. Of course, I hadn’t expected him to be. We’d emailed a few times after I said I’d take the room, and he’d explained his nocturnal schedule was a seven-days-a-week thing. He’d be sleeping in his bedroom—not to be disturbed—when I arrived.
So it wasn’t a surprise when I rolled my suitcase through the front door and found myself alone in my new, weirdly dark, weirdly decorated living room. It was also freezing in there, like it had been when I’d first visited.
I rubbed at my arms, trying to warm them.
Sam was originally supposed to help me move in, but he wasn’t there, either. I suspected his last-minute need to visit an elderly great-aunt I’d never heard of before out in Skokie was his passive-aggressive way of saying he thought my moving in was a mistake.
To my extreme annoyance, he’d done a complete one-eighty on the whole moving into the two-hundred-dollar apartment thing once I told him Frederick was hot.
“Living with someone you think is hot never ends well,” he’d warned the night before. “You either end up sleeping with them—which is a huge mistake, nine times out of ten—or else you drive yourself nuts because you want to sleep with them.”
Sam and Scott had come over the night before to help me pack. There wasn’t much to do; I’d already dropped most big things off at the consignment shop. But I was feeling a little sad over saying goodbye to yet another apartment, and I was glad for the company.
Even if Sam had mostly used the opportunity to talk me out of moving in with Frederick.
“If they’re hot, you either sleep with them or you want to sleep with them, huh?” I stared at him. “You speak from experience?”
“No,” Sam had said quickly, looking over his shoulder to see if his husband was hearing this. I was pretty sure he was—Scott kept smiling to himself and shaking his head as he pretended to check his work email at the kitchen table—but he had a much better poker face than Sam. “I’m just telling you what I’ve heard.”
I’d scoffed. “Frederick’s hotness will be a complete nonissue. We have totally opposite schedules. I’ll barely see him.”
“What if his work schedule changes?” Sam had pressed. “What if he suddenly doesn’t have some mysterious job that keeps him out all night long? What if next month he starts working from home?”
“Sam—”
“I just don’t want you getting hurt again, Cassie.” His voice dropped in pitch a little, and his eyes turned soft. My cheeks went hot—knowing he’d been thinking of my long string of stupid decisions when it came to romance. “It’ll be hard to plot throwing him off a building for breaking your heart and ruining your credit if he’s right there, sleeping in the next room.”
“That only happened once,” I countered. “Most of my other bad decisions at least had the decency to leave my credit rating alone. And Frederick is so weird I will never want to sleep with him, even if he is the hottest human being I have ever personally seen.”
Sam still looked skeptical.
“Listen—when I say he’s weird, I mean he’s really weird. I’m pretty sure he collects Precious Moments figurines or something. There’s a closet he says is off-limits and he won’t tell me what’s in it.”
Scott—who was clearly listening by that point—had chuckled. “Yeah, that isn’t a red flag at all.”
“I saw no obvious signs of him being a serial killer on my visit,” I insisted. “And like you said when you told me to email him in the first place—I’m out of options.”
When Sam and Scott left my place that night, I’d almost been glad to see them go. But now I wished Sam were here with me. Now that I was moving in, and was essentially all alone in an unfamiliar apartment, it felt . . . strange. Frederick wanted his apartment to feel like my home, but how could it? The creepy vibe that the too-dark walls and hodgepodge decor gave off was only enhanced by how frigid, and pristine, and completely devoid of any sort of personal effects the room was.
My idea of finally being able to work on my art and watch my garbage television in my new living room seemed ridiculous now. How could I bring either RuPaul or the treasures I found at Chicagoland recycling centers into this spotless room? The apartment felt so cavernous I couldn’t help but wonder if there’d be an echo if I shouted. I opened my mouth to give it a try before remembering that Frederick was likely in his bedroom, sleeping. Waking him up by yelling for no good reason probably wouldn’t be a good way to begin our new roommate relationship.
I rolled my suitcase down the hallway towards the bedrooms, taking special care to give a wide berth to the hall closet Frederick said was forbidden. As I walked by it, I thought I detected a faint fruity smell coming from it, but that may have just been my imagination. Either way, indulging my curiosity by seeing what was inside would also not be a good way to begin our new roommate relationship, since staying out of it was one of Frederick’s only rules.
Frederick’s bedroom door was closed, of course, but there was an envelope taped to the outside of my door, with Miss Cassie Greenberg written on it in flowing cursive.
I took the envelope off the door and saw it had been closed with a blood-red wax seal embossed with the letters FJF. I’d never seen an actual wax seal outside of a movie. Did they even exist anymore?
I slid my finger beneath the seal and, breaking it, carefully opened the envelope. Inside it was a single sheet of stiff white stationery, folded into perfect thirds, bearing another highly stylized FJF monogram at the top of the page.
Dear Miss Greenberg,
Welcome.
I am sorry I am unavailable to greet you in person. If you have arrived at two in the afternoon as you indicated you would in your last email to me, I am in my bedroom, sleeping. I remind you to please allow me to rest undisturbed.