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To my extreme annoyance, he’d done a complete one-eighty on the wholemoving into the two-hundred-dollar apartmentthing 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 youwantto 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 willneverwant 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’sreallyweird. 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 flagat 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 wouldalsonot 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, withMiss Cassie Greenbergwritten 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 lettersFJF. 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 stylizedFJFmonogram 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.
I have left instructions for you regarding various features of the apartment in places where I trust said instructions will be of most use. I believe I have thought of everything, but if I have missed something crucial, please let me know and I will do my best to address your concerns.
As we have discussed, I suspect we will interact infrequently. When I wish to convey information to you and you are not here, I will leave a note for you on the kitchen table. I ask you to kindly communicate with me in this same way. I strongly prefer more “old-fashioned” methods of communication to email and text messaging. I use the latter as infrequently as possible.
I look forward to greeting you properly in a few hours if you are still in the apartment when I rise at sundown.
Yours in good health,
Frederick J. Fitzwilliam
Frederick’s handwriting was easily the prettiest I had ever seen, his cursive gracefully slanting across the page like the lettering in a formal wedding invitation. The last time I’d gotten a handwritten letter was in the sixth grade, when my class did a pen pal exchange with a sixth grade classroom in France. Somehow, it didn’t surprise me that my new roommate wrote letters often enough to justify having monogrammed stationery.
