Page 10 of Faking the Heat

BATHROOM SCHEDULE IS SACRED.

“Do you want to post a time sheet on the door?” she asks. “Or can we just have a whistle system?”

I ignore her and proceed.

BOWIE IS NOT ALLOWED ON THE KITCHEN COUNTERS.

I underline it, hard. Bowie, mid-sniff of Mandy’s sandwich, makes direct eye contact with me and licks the plate anyway.

Mandy raises her eyebrows. “Do you really think you can enforce that one?”

“I have military training,” I inform her. “You have no idea the lengths I will go to.”

She leans forward, grabs the red pen from my coffee mug, and in a move that is both reckless and exactly in character, she adds, in looping, deliberate script at the bottom of the list:

NO BEING WEIRD ABOUT THIS.

She sits back, arms crossed, and studies my face like she’s waiting for the retaliation.

I read the rule. I cap the pen. I extend my hand across the notebook. She shakes it. Her hand is small, her grip firm, her expression daring me to call her bluff. I do not call her bluff. We seal it.

“That’s it, then,” she says. “We’re cohabiting like civilized people.”

“Pending the result of a mandatory two-week review,” I say.

She tips her head, pleased. She tips her head, pleased. “Can we add a clause about noise-cancelling headphones?” she asks. “Because I do not want to hear your hoe-saving activities.” I look up from the notebook. “Mandy. I am a gentleman.” She gives me a look that could strip paint. “The headphones,” I say, “are already in the welcome basket.”

She rolls her eyes before we both laugh.

The sandwich is going cold. I pick it up, take a bite, and am immediately reminded that I forgot to add salt. Rookie move. I finish it anyway.

Mandy picks at the edge of her sandwich, peels the bread back, and eats the filling first, which is a thing I have seen her do a hundred times but never called out.

“Do you always eat it that way?” I ask.

She shrugs. “Only when it’s not homemade. It’s a trust exercise.”

I want to ask what the test is, but before I can, Bowie edges forward and starts licking the abandoned crusts off her plate.

She catches me watching. “He likes you, you know.”

I look at the cat. “I’m not convinced.”

She grins. “He only destroys the property of people he respects.”

I hoist myself up onto the counter and cross my arms. “Is that why you torched your last landlord’s security deposit?”

“That was mold,” she says. “I was being a responsible tenant.”

I smile. She smiles back.

The notebook sits open between us, the red-inked “NO BEING WEIRD ABOUT THIS” underlined for emphasis. She glances at it every so often, like she’s checking whether the words have changed, and I realize that beneath her bravado, she is bracing for something to go wrong.

We finish breakfast in the kind of silence that doesn’t itch. I clear the plates, rinse them, and stack them in the dishwasher. Mandy wipes the crumbs from the counter into her palm and makes a point of feeding the last ones to Bowie, who acts as if he’s just been bequeathed the family fortune.

She stands, stretches, and in the stretch, the shirt rides up just enough that I have to stare at the faucet for three solid seconds. She doesn’t notice or pretends not to.

“Alright,” she says. “Work time. I have a logo deadline at noon. You want more coffee?”