There was a drawer.

In the bathroom. Cabinet under the sink, right side. Her hairbrush, a small bottle of something, the lip balm she'd left the first night she stayed long enough to need it. I'd cleared the counter space at some point. Neither of us had said anything about it.

Three weeks in.

---

She'd been at my apartment four nights the previous week, maybe five. I'd stopped counting. She used my shower. She'd told me what was wrong with my shampoo — same flat delivery as the coffee critique. Tuesday she'd pulled me into the bedroom before I'd put my bag down. She had my jeans open and my cock in her mouth before I'd gotten my shoes off, her hands on my thighs, her head bobbing fast and wet. She sucked me until I came in her throat, swallowed, wiped her lip with her thumb, and said, "What do you want for dinner?" Dinner was late.

At the gym Thursday, she put two fingers on my lower back the same way she'd put them on my knee four weeks ago.

"Same problem," she said. "Different joint."

I pulled the deadlift the corrected way. She wrote something on her clipboard. Same professional satisfaction as the first time. Amber the trainer and Amber who had a drawer in my bathroom. One of the funnier things I'd run into in my adult life. She didn't find it funny.

---

The email arrived on a Wednesday.

From: Hartwell Facilities ([email protected])

Subject: RE: Chair Replacement (Overdue) - Apologies for the Delay

The body was apologetic. Someone had taken a call from above. A replacement ergonomic chair was coming Thursday. Deep apologies for how long this had taken.

I had not escalated the chair tickets. I'd submitted three of them and watched them sit in the queue. Indefinitely, pending. I hadn't called the building manager or facilities or any specific human.

She was at my apartment when I got home. I showed her the email.

"I had three tickets open," I said. "They weren't moving. Now I'm getting an apology and a Thursday delivery window."

She looked at the email. She looked at me.

"The chair was wrong."

"It was. It's been wrong for six weeks."

"Now it's going to be right."

She looked back at me. She'd solved a problem. She didn't understand why a debrief was required. Nine hundred years, and somewhere in there was a method for resolving an open facilities ticket at a mid-size logistics software company. She'd used it. Now I was getting a new chair on Thursday.

"I accept the chair," I said.

"Good."

I didn't ask what she'd done. I wasn't going to be able to reconstruct it anyway.

---

Saturday evening she was on my couch reading her phone. I went to the kitchen for water. When I came back with two glasses she already had a full one on the end table.

I looked at it. She didn't look up.

I hadn't refilled it. She hadn't gone to the kitchen while I was in the kitchen. The glass was full.

I sat down. Drank my water. Put the extra glass on the counter.

Chair resolved. Counter cleared without discussion. Dinner ready when I got home. Glass full when I didn't know it was empty. She read what I needed and acted on it before I said anything, and she'd been doing it long enough that she didn't seem to notice she was doing it.

---

Vermont Avenue on a Wednesday. Marcus had the good table in the back, two beers already on it.

"So," he said, after we'd established that we were both fine and work was work. "The Hartwell girl."

Not a question.

"Yes."

"That's the one you brought to the office."

"That's the one."

He picked up his beer. Marcus is Korean-American, slightly taller than me, looks about six years younger than he is. We went to the same school. He ended up in LA nine months before I did. He knows my actual voice.

"She's a trainer," he said. "I got that from how she looked at the pull handles."

"She works at the gym where I have sessions."

"And."

"And what."

He sat with that. "Why are you being weird about it."

"I'm not being weird about it."

"You're being weird about it in a specific way where you answer every question directly and give me exactly what I asked for and nothing else, which for you is weird."

I drank my beer. He was right on all counts. "She's a personal trainer. I met her at the gym. She's incredible."

Marcus looked at me for another second. He doesn't push when pushing's not going to work.

"Okay."

We talked about his job and my job and a movie one of us had seen. I didn't add anything unprompted. He texted me three blocks from my building: *She sounds real.* I sent a thumbs up.

---

Twelve minutes from the bar to my building.

She's a succubus. She'd picked me as a target and whatever was supposed to happen hadn't happened, and now she had a drawer in my bathroom and had fixed my chair and the previous Tuesday she'd pulled me into the bedroom before I'd put my bag down.

She drinks my coffee with the face of someone being mildly wronged. She has a tail that curls around my ankle when she falls asleep, and she doesn't know she does it. She'd asked a follow-up question last Tuesday about freight routing software that proved she'd been listening to the first answer. She fixed my chair. She cleared a space on my bathroom counter and neither of us said anything.

I was falling in love with her. I didn't have a plan for what to do about that.

The lock took two tries. Four flights. My door.

Same apartment. The drawer was in the bathroom.

I wasn't complaining.