The Wrong Roommate

The listing said "female preferred." She read it fourteen times on the bus from New York. Wren Kessler has $2,200 in checking, a references section that's mostly fiction, and a career she left behind in Paris for reasons she's not ready to explain. The Fishtown rowhouse is $875 a month. Available immediately. She's not in a position to argue with the universe. The roommate is not female. Theo Dean blows glass until 2 a.m., leaves Post-it notes on the coffee maker, and fills forty-seven square feet of shared air with a laugh that makes her forget why she left Paris. He's chaotic where she's precise. He's open where she's sealed shut. He treats the apartment like a living thing and she treats it like a hiding place, and neither approach is working. She builds croissants with architectural precision because control is the only thing she brought from Paris. He makes art out of molten sand because beauty doesn't need a reason. They shouldn't work. The apartment is too small for two people who aren't together and too charged for two people who are pretending they don't notice. She came to Philadelphia to disappear. He's the kind of person who makes that impossible. Opposites attract. Forced proximity. A pastry chef and a glass artist in the smallest apartment in Fishtown.