Chapter 1

The first thing Maya noticed about the new apartment wasn’t the view or the crooked radiator—it was the clause at the bottom of the lease, typed in the same bureaucratic font as everything else but somehow louder than the rest.

Rule 9: Tenants agree not to pursue romantic or sexual relations with one another.

She tapped the paper twice with her pen, the small sound barely carrying over the hum of the window unit. Across the scratched oak table, Theo leaned back in the landlord’s chair, long legs stretched under the table, one ankle crossed over the other. He’d come straight from the studio, still smelling faintly of turpentine and the lemon hand soap he used to scrub the paint off his fingers. The afternoon light caught the edge of his jaw where a faint shadow of stubble had started.

“Bold of them to assume we’d even consider it,” he said, not quite smiling.

Maya signed anyway, the pen sliding a little too easily. Her signature looked neat next to his messy one from the month before when they’d toured the place. Two best friends. One lease. Zero complications—that was the plan. They’d been saying some version of it since sophomore year, when they’d both ended up in the same drafty group house and Theo had started leaving coffee on her desk without being asked.

Now the group house was gone, sublet to a new crop of students who didn’t know how the shower pressure dipped at 7:12 every morning. Maya’s last relationship had ended the same week finals did; Theo’s had dissolved somewhere between spring break and the final critique. They needed cheaper rent and someone who already knew their cereal preferences. The clause was just paperwork.

She slid the papers across the table. “We’re adults. We can handle one stupid rule.”

Theo’s mouth twitched—the almost-smile that always meant he was about to say something he’d pretend was a joke. “One year. Then we can renegotiate the terms.”

“Or move out,” she added.

“Or move out,” he echoed, and signed the last page with a flourish that left a small blue smudge on the corner.

The apartment was smaller than either of them remembered from the tour—two bedrooms off a narrow hall, a kitchen barely wide enough for both of them to stand at the counter without brushing shoulders, a living room that fit exactly one couch and Theo’s easel if they angled it right. The previous tenants had left a strand of fairy lights tacked above the window, and Maya left them up because the soft glow made the scuffed floors look intentional. She unpacked her books first, lining them along the low shelf beneath the window, then her plants, then the chipped mug Theo had given her three birthdays ago that said “World’s Okayest Roommate.” He’d crossed out “Roommate” with a Sharpie and written “Friend” underneath.

By the time the sun dropped behind the brick building across the street, the place already smelled like them: her jasmine tea, his linseed oil, the takeout Thai they’d split on the living-room floor because the table was still covered in lease copies and moving boxes.

Theo sat with his back against the couch, legs long in worn jeans, and passed her the container of pad see ew without looking. “We should make rules of our own,” he said. “House rules. Non-romantic ones.”

“Like what?”

“Like…no stealing each other’s leftovers after midnight. No playing music after ten unless it’s agreed upon. No walking around half-naked when the other person has company.”

Maya raised an eyebrow. “You planning on having a lot of company?”

He shrugged, the movement easy. “Just covering bases.”

She took the container from him, chopsticks clicking against the plastic. “Fine. My rule: if either of us brings someone home, we text a warning first. No surprises.”

“Deal.”

They ate in the comfortable quiet that had always existed between them, the kind that didn’t need filling. Outside, someone’s dog barked twice and went silent again. Inside, the fairy lights hummed faintly. Maya felt the day settle into her bones—the ache of carrying boxes up three flights, the pleasant looseness of being done with it. Across from her, Theo’s knee bumped hers when he reached for the water, and neither of them moved away.

Later, when the containers were empty and the lights were dimmed to that soft amber, Theo stood and stretched, shirt riding up just enough to show the pale strip of skin above his waistband. He caught her looking and grinned, small and private.

“Early studio call tomorrow,” he said. “Don’t wait up.”

“I won’t,” she answered, already knowing she probably would.

He paused in the hallway, one hand on the doorframe of his new room. “Maya?”

She looked up from where she was stacking the empty containers.

“Thanks for doing this with me,” he said. The words were simple, but the way he said them—quiet, almost careful—landed somewhere low in her chest.

“Anytime,” she answered, and meant it.

He nodded once, then disappeared into his room. The door clicked shut with a soft finality that should have felt like the end of the day. Instead it felt like the first small step past a line neither of them had named yet.

Maya stayed on the floor a minute longer, listening to the building settle—the pipes knocking, the neighbor’s television murmuring through the wall, the distant rush of traffic two blocks over. She traced the edge of the lease with her thumb until she found Rule 9 again, the ink already starting to smudge from where Theo’s thumb had rested while he signed.

One year, she thought. Easy.

She turned off the fairy lights and the apartment went dark except for the thin strip of hallway light still glowing under Theo’s door.