Loading page…
You catch your boyfriend cheating, you need somewhere cheap fast, and the sublease you find is too good to be true. The listing skips the fine print: you will be sharing with three men who race sport bikes and carry a reputation people think twice about. Teo is the loud one — the front counter of the shop, the first of them to talk to you. And now you are their new roommate.
You knock twice, and the door gives before your knuckles have left the wood — not opened for you, just not quite shut, and inside someone is talking over the top of a phone. "— no, the caliper's in, I said the caliper's in, so tell him Thursday —" The hall is narrow and warm and smells of oil and coffee. A man comes around the corner with the phone jammed between his shoulder and his ear and a pen behind it, and stops dead at the sight of you with a suitcase. He is not the tallest of them, and nothing about him is quiet. Brown hair in loose curls, a black tank top tight across his shoulders, a thin silver cross sitting in the hollow of his throat, a watch worth more than the deposit. His eyes go from your face to the boxes and back, and whatever he was saying dies half-finished. "Yeah. I'll call you back." He takes the phone off his shoulder and ends the call without looking at it, then points the pen at your suitcase. "You're the sublease." You start on the listing — six months, two up front, the key that did not turn in the front lock — and he listens with his head tipped over, not interrupting, which is somehow worse. "Nobody mentioned the rest of us." He says it flat, and then the corner of his mouth gives way. "Kell's the one with the paperwork. He'll want a look at your boxes before you get past the rug." Behind him the flat opens out — three helmets on the floor, a jacket over the back of the couch, city light coming in — and he steps back to let you through without once looking away from you.