Five of Us at Christmas, But They Only Ordered Four Cookies novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Landing

Hannah sits on the stairs outside her apartment and the neighbor across the landing feeds her chili and lends her his shirt; her mother's voicemail says she is driving down in the morning.

I put the milk in the refrigerator, and the preview from Zelda's phone was still on the inside of my eyes.

Do NOT let her see this chat.

Four people had a chat with a name, and I had been the "her."

I closed the door and walked out of my own apartment.

I did not slam it.

I only wanted air that did not have four people in it.

The landing outside 3B has one bare bulb and a radiator that has never worked.

I sat down on the top stair with my coat on my knees.

The wall was cold through my scrubs.

Behind me, through the door, I could hear Tobias saying, "She'll calm down," and Chad saying something low.

Nobody opened the door.

I let the silence sink in.

I had been sitting there maybe ten minutes when the door across the landing opened.

Emmett Garrick stood in it in a gray flannel shirt with the sleeves pushed up, holding a dish towel.

I had known him for three and a half weeks.

He had moved in on the third of November and knocked on my door to ask which breaker box was ours.

When my radiator died, he showed up with a wrench and fixed it without being asked twice.

Tonight I had thanked him for it by sitting on his doormat.

"Sorry," I said. "I'll move."

"You're fine." He looked at the door of 3B, then at me. "Have you eaten?"

"I said I wasn't eating tonight."

"That's not what I asked."

I opened my mouth to say fine.

I shut it again.

"No," I said.

"I made too much chili," he said. "It's always too much chili. Come in or don't. The door stays open either way."

His apartment was the same layout as mine, reversed, and it was warm.

There was one lamp on, a table with two chairs, and a pot on the stove with the lid off.

He put a bowl in front of me and a spoon next to it.

Then he sat down across from me and ate his own without waiting for me to start.

I watched him do it.

"What?" he said.

"You didn't wait."

"For what?"

"For me to be ready."

"I was hungry," he said. "That's the rule at this table. You eat when you're hungry. Nobody waits for anyone."

I took a spoonful.

It was good, hot, and heavy with beans, and my eyes stung for no reason I wanted to explain.

He did not ask what had happened.

He tore a piece of bread in half and pushed one half across the table, and that was all.

"My cousin lives with me," I said eventually. "Lacey. She told everyone I was moving out."

His expression shifted, then went completely still.

It was brief, a stillness across his forehead, and then it was gone.

"Are you?" he said.

"No."

"Okay."

"That's all you're going to say?"

"If you're staying, you're staying. Eat."

I laughed, once, and it came out cracked.

The bowl was empty before I noticed.

When I got up, the cold from the landing had gotten into my shoulders and I shivered.

He took the flannel shirt off the back of his chair, the one he'd been wearing a minute before, and set it around me from behind.

His hands stayed on the shoulders of it for a second.

It was warm from his back.

"Door's open," he said. "Any time. Not for a reason. Just soup."

"Thank you," I said, and I meant it more than I'd meant anything all night.

I went back across the landing wearing his shirt.

The apartment was quiet.

Somebody had cleared the kitchen table and the box was gone.

Chad's door was shut, and so was Zelda's, and the light under Lacey's was on.

My door was the only one that stood open.

I took the shirt off in my room, folded it, and set it on the desk instead of the hamper.

My phone was buzzing on the bed.

It was a voicemail from Mom, left an hour ago.

I played it standing up.

"Hannah, it's Mom. Lacey called me crying, honey."

"She says you've been talking about leaving the family. Tell me that isn't true."

"I'm driving down in the morning, and we're going to sort this out, all of us together."

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