Chapter 11 — Night Out: Mysterious Neighbour
They spent the afternoon buried in moving boxes, half the apartment already looking like a home and the other half looking like a disaster nobody had claimed responsibility for, when Fidelia's phone rang.
"Hello?"
"Hey, pretty. How've you been since the airport?"
Alex recognized the smile before her friend had even said a word back, the particular curve of Fidelia's mouth that only showed up when a man she'd decided she wanted was on the other end of the line.
"Oh, it's you." Fidelia's voice dropped into something warmer. "I've been busy moving into the new place all day. You?"
"Busy too. But I decided to call the most beautiful woman in my contacts and see if she's free tonight."
Christopher had been waiting for an excuse to call since the airport, ever since Fidelia had vanished the second they'd landed with nothing but a business card to show for it.
"How considerate of you," Fidelia said, already reaching for a pair of shoes with her free hand. "As it happens, she'd love to see what Lin City looks like at night."
"She's knocking on the right door, then. I know all the best places. Pick her up at eight?"
"Perfect. I'm in the southeast residential district, building eight."
There was a short pause on the other end that Fidelia didn't think much of. Christopher, on his end, was busy realizing his employer happened to live in that exact building, and finding the coincidence far too amusing to mention yet.
Alex, watching her friend abandon every trace of moving-day exhaustion in favor of rifling through the closet, couldn't help herself. "Seduction mode activated, I see. Want help with the outfit?"
"Obviously." Fidelia grinned. "You know I do."
Dressing Fidelia for a date had become something of a ritual between them over the years — Alex's favorite kind of practice, honestly, since Fidelia trusted her completely and never once complained about the results. By eight-fifteen, when Christopher texted that he'd arrived, Fidelia was in a knee-length red dress that looked deceptively simple from the front and entirely backless from behind, black heels, her lips a bold enough red to match the dress exactly.
Christopher, watching her cross the lobby toward his car, decided almost immediately that a club felt like the wrong venue for a woman who looked like that. When she turned to get in and he caught sight of her bare back for the first time, he had to remind himself how to close his own mouth.
Fidelia noticed, of course. She always noticed. She just let him have his moment before sliding into the passenger seat with a small, satisfied smile.
Left behind in the half-finished apartment, Alex tried to keep working through the boxes on her own, but the motivation had gone out the door with her friend. It had been a long day, the cemetery that morning, then Aria at the mall, and now an empty apartment full of things that still needed a home. She gave up on the last few boxes and wandered out to the bedroom balcony instead, hoping the air would do what the decorating hadn't.
The view took the edge off almost immediately. Lights scattered across the skyline like something out of a postcard, the city quiet in this part of town, far enough from the main roads that she could actually hear herself think. She put her headphones in, let a familiar song settle over the ache in her chest, and let herself feel, for a minute, exactly as tired and homesick as she actually was.
"I don't have a handkerchief," a voice said from somewhere in the dark, close enough to make her jump half out of her skin, "but I'm told I'm a decent listener, if you'd like to talk about it."
She spun toward the sound, heart hammering, and found nothing but shadow where a voice should have had a face attached to it. "Who's there?"
"Your new neighbor, most likely. No one's used that balcony in years." He didn't bother answering her actual question, which she noticed and chose not to press.
"I'm sorry if I disturbed you."
"Why would you be? You're on your own balcony, minding your own business. If anything, I'm the one intruding." Something in his voice shifted, lighter now. "I come out here myself when I need to clear my head. Usually alone. Good company tonight, for once. I take it you're out here for the same reason."
She didn't answer right away, unsettled by how little she could see of him and how easily he'd read her anyway.
"What if we traded," he offered. "I'll tell you what's bothering me, you tell me what's bothering you, and between the two of us we solve both problems. Efficient, don't you think?"
"What makes you think anything's bothering me?" Alex said, arms crossing on instinct. "Maybe I just like the view."
"No view is quite that beautiful. Not beautiful enough to explain the state of your face right now, anyway."
She hadn't realized how visible her expression still was, even in the dark, even from this distance.
On the other side of the railing, the man watched her with an attention he wasn't used to giving strangers. He wasn't, by nature, someone who bothered with small talk, let alone with people he had nothing to gain from knowing. His family knew a warmer version of him than almost anyone else ever got to see, his sister especially, but outside that narrow circle, most people who crossed his path came away thinking of him as cold at best.
And yet here he was, negotiating with a woman whose face he couldn't even see properly, genuinely curious how she'd respond. Interesting, he thought, mildly surprised at himself. So I can actually be curious about someone, when the mood strikes.
He waited in the dark, patient, for whatever she'd decide to say next.
Alex turned back toward the skyline instead of answering right away, buying herself a moment to decide how much of tonight she was willing to hand over to a stranger she couldn't even see. It had been that kind of day — one confession already made to Ethan over dinner, another to Fidelia in the car, and now apparently a third opportunity presenting itself to a man standing in the dark on the other side of a low dividing wall.
"It's family," she said finally, deciding there was something almost easier about talking to someone whose face she couldn't see. Less to manage, less to perform for. "I visited my mother's grave today. And my grandfather's. And then, completely by accident, I ran into the family that made sure I'd never want to visit either of them again."
"That sounds like an efficient way to ruin a pleasant afternoon."
"You have no idea." A small, humorless laugh escaped her before she could stop it. "What about you? What's got you out here talking to strangers instead of sleeping like a normal person?"
"Work, mostly. And a father who's decided my personal life is now his personal project." There was something wry in the way he said it, self-aware in a way that surprised her. "Apparently I'm expected to have my entire future sorted out on a schedule that isn't mine."
"Sounds familiar. Family's good at that. Deciding things about your life without bothering to ask you first."
"They usually think they're helping."
"They usually aren't." She wrapped her arms a little tighter around herself against the cool night air, aware, distantly, that she was having an easier conversation with a voice in the dark than she'd managed with most people she could actually see. "Is that why you're out here instead of home dealing with it?"
"Something like that. I find it's easier to think when no one's watching my face for a reaction." A pause, thoughtful. "Apparently that includes tonight, given the circumstances."
She smiled slightly at that, unseen in the dark, and found she didn't mind the strangeness of the whole situation nearly as much as she probably should have. There was something oddly comfortable about a conversation with no stakes attached, no image to manage, no fans watching for a slip. Just two tired strangers on adjoining balconies, trading small honesty back and forth.
"Well, neighbor," she said, "for what it's worth, you're a better listener than most people I know who can actually see my face."
"High praise, from someone I've known for approximately four minutes." Amusement colored his voice now, warmer than it had been at the start. "I'll try to live up to it."
They stood there a while longer, the city humming quietly below them, neither one in any particular hurry to end the conversation or reveal anything more than they'd already offered. It was, Alex thought, the strangest kind of comfort — talking to someone whose name she didn't even know, in the dark, about the one thing she'd spent all day trying not to think about.