Ezoic
I stared at her. Behind her, my apartment looked the way it always did on Sunday mornings. Tidy. Calm. Sunlight coming in through the living room window, soft and pale. A plant on the sill reaching toward the light. The faint smell of lemon cleaner. It looked like a space that belonged to someone with discipline.
Ezoic
Vanessa looked like a disruption given human form.
I forced myself to inhale, slow, through my nose.
“Why are you really here?” I asked. “What happened?”
Vanessa’s expression shifted instantly, like a switch flipped. Her eyes widened. Her mouth softened. She let out a sigh that sounded rehearsed.
“Fine,” she said. “If you need the whole sob story, I got evicted.”
I blinked. “Evicted?”
“Mm-hmm,” she said, nodding like it was an annoying inconvenience. “My landlord is a complete jerk. I was only late twice and suddenly he’s all, pay or get out. Like he’s never been late on anything in his life. So unfair.”
Ezoic
The words landed in my chest like something heavy. Evicted. Late twice. Only. Her tone made it sound like she’d been wronged by the universe.
“And you didn’t think,” I said carefully, “to tell me this before you showed up with suitcases?”
Vanessa waved a hand. “I stayed with a friend last night. She has roommates. They’re weird. They didn’t want me there. So I came here.”
“You came here without asking.”
She shrugged again, like the concept of asking was optional. “I didn’t want to bother you until I had to.”
Ezoic
Ezoic
I let out a short laugh, without humor. “This is bothering me.”
Her gaze slid around my apartment, like she was already imagining it rearranged around her. “You’ll survive.”
My skin felt too tight, like my body knew something was happening that my mind still didn’t want to accept. The second bedroom. My office. My space. The place where I took client calls and built campaign reports and tried to keep my career moving forward.
“I use the second bedroom as my home office,” I said. “I work from home two days a week.”
“So work at the kitchen table those days,” Vanessa said immediately, as if she’d already decided that solution was perfect. “It’s not a big deal.”
“It is to me,” I said, my voice rising despite my efforts. “It’s my home. My routine. My job.”
Vanessa’s eyes flashed. “God, you’re always so intense.”
“I’m intense because you just showed up unannounced and declared you live here.”
“Because I do,” she said, and then she reached for her phone. “Let’s ask Mom. Since you love rules so much.”
Ezoic
The panic in my stomach turned cold. I watched her thumb through her contacts, watched her tap our mother’s name with the confidence of someone who had never been told no in any way that mattered.
