Just thinking about how he’d have to sit here and wait to hear back from Ben made him tired. The true exhaustion came when he thought about how, when he got in touch with Ben, he’d either have to plead with him to come to the East Bay to bring the key—if Ben even knew where the key was—or would have to pay God knows how much to get a ride into the city to meet him.

Theo thought longingly of his couch.

Any other night, he’d call Alexa, who’d pick him up, take him to City Hall, and smile her way past the security guard to get his keys, but she was out of town. Some romantic getaway with her fiancé. How inconvenient for her friends.

Maybe he could break into his apartment. Wasn’t that what a ground-floor apartment was good for? If he went around the side, he was pretty sure his bedroom window was open a crack. He could get that open and then . . . Yeah, sure, Theo, that was a great idea. He could see the headlines now, when his neighbors called the police on the black man trying to break into an apartment in Berkeley. How likely were the police to believe that he lived there? Or that he worked for the mayor? Would his brother come faster when he needed him to bail him out of jail?

He shivered. Sitting on concrete steps in a cotton button-down shirt and no jacket wasn’t all that comfortable. It had been so warm when he’d left home this morning he thought he wouldn’t need a jacket. Of course, that was before the sun went down.

He was going to have to walk the mile back to work, deal with the annoying questioning by the security guard who hated him, get his keys, and then walk home.

“Come on, Theo, this was no big deal.”

He stood up, and then immediately sat back down. It had been an awful day at the end of a stressful week, and this one last fuckup overwhelmed him. The last thing he wanted was to have to talk to one more person who treated him like shit.

He picked up his phone again and scrolled to Maddie’s number. He paused before he clicked on it; should he really call Maddie here? Their thing so far had been lots of fun, but they weren’t in the habit of doing each other favors, and this would be a huge favor. Plus, she’d never invited him over to her place; they’d only ever been at his place together, and he had a feeling that wasn’t just a coincidence.

Hell with it.

“Hello?”

He didn’t blame her for sounding confused. He’d be confused, too, if she had called him. A Friday-night text, now that made sense, but not a phone call. But he needed to plead his case.

“Hey. Are you home? Are you busy tonight? Can I come over?”

Okay, he sounded a little too desperate there.

“ Um . . .”

He really should have set this up better.

“I’m sorry, let me back up. I’ve had the worst day, I’m locked out, my keys are at work, the only other person who has the key to my place is my ridiculous brother, Alexa could get me into City Hall but she’s somewhere with Drew. Can I come to your place and sleep there tonight and buy you pizza or expensive wine or whatever the hell you want and figure out the solution to this tomorrow?”

There was a long pause. She was going to say no, he just knew it. And now he’d have to walk back to City Hall and throw himself on the mercy of the security guard with her “no” ringing in his ears

“Okay, sure. Do you know where I live?”

Oh thank God.

“You’re my savior. Text me your address. I’ll stop and get the pizza on the way.”

He hung up and sighed from relief. He should be at her house in thirty minutes. He couldn’t wait.

Shit shit shit shit shit. Okay, she had, what, thirty minutes before he’d get here?

Maddie turned in a circle and looked at her disaster of a home. This was why she had a whole separate space for her business, so no one would ever see what a mess she was.

She filled her arms with the clothes on her floor and pushed them into her already overstuffed closet. Cleaning like this unfortunately destroyed her system—the clothes in this corner needed to be folded and put in drawers, the clothes in that corner needed to be hung up, and the clothes on her bed had been worn but were still mostly clean. But she didn’t have time now to try to keep that straight. The dirty clothes all went into her hamper behind her bedroom door, and any other crap on the floor she kicked under her guest room bed.

She really should have said no to Theo. But he’d sounded so exhausted, and she’d had those nights. She couldn’t help but sympathize with him.

Plus, she already knew why he’d had such a bad day. Some asshole reporter had been mocking the universal pre-K campaign for weeks, and today had come out with a terrible article about how much money it would cost California and how worthless pre-K was anyway. That had apparently been the last straw for Theo, because he’d refuted the article with a point-by-point rant on Twitter that used a lot of all-caps words like “ACTUALLY” and “FURTHERMORE.” He deleted it five minutes later, but the damage was done: the reporter kept tweeting screenshots of it with “Looks like I hit a nerve!” and the Friday-afternoon-slow-news-day local press had a field day talking about how the mayor’s normally unflappable communications director had flipped his lid. Knowing Theo, he was mortified.

The bed! She dumped the books and clothes that were on top of her bed into her top dresser drawer and pulled all the bedclothes off her bed. She grabbed clean sheets out of the linen closet and remade her bed the fastest she’d ever made a bed. She ran into the bathroom, grabbed the many pairs of underwear and bras that she’d hung to dry weeks ago, and threw them, still on their hangers, into her bedroom closet to join everything else. After five minutes of straightening up, she sprayed some bleach in the toilet and the sink, and then lit a candle so her whole place wouldn’t smell like cleaning products.

The only room in her home that was marginally clean was her kitchen. Thank God for that dishwashing bet. But she devoted two minutes to sweeping her kitchen floor, then whirled through her living room and tossed everything on a surface into one of her many empty boxes from online orders, and then pushed it and the rest of the boxes into her guest room and shut the door.

Shit, she had like two minutes before he arrived.

She washed her hands and ran back into her room to change into . . . something. She really should have figured out what the hell she was wearing to this impromptu sleepover before she’d thrown all her clothes in her closet, shouldn’t she? She heard her phone buzz on the other side of the room as she pulled on leggings and the first tank top she could find.

I’m outside

She sprayed on perfume and dabbed a touch of blush on her cheeks, just enough to make her look like she always looked this refreshed when she was at home wearing leggings and a tank top.

Be right there

At least her hair looked presentable.

She glanced around her house before she went to the door. It actually looked pretty good. Maybe she should keep it like this all the time.

She laughed at herself as she opened the door.

“Hey.” Theo looked as exhausted as he’d sounded on the phone. He was wearing that blue pin-striped shirt she liked, but with no jacket. No wonder he’d stopped on the way for the pizza; he needed it to warm him up.

“Hey, you look freezing.”

She opened the door all the way to let him in. He dropped a kiss on her cheek as he walked past her.

“Thanks, I am freezing.” He held up the pizza, and she beckoned for him to follow her through the living room into the kitchen. “It was so warm yesterday that I didn’t wear a jacket today, and then I stayed at work for twelve hours, and when I left, the fog had descended on Berkeley and I froze the whole walk home.”

She took down two plates from the cabinet.

“Only to not have your keys when you got home.”

He set the pizza down on the counter.

“Only to not have my keys when I got home. Thank God you were at home tonight.”

She reached for a wineglass and poured him a glass of the red wine she’d been drinking.

“Here. Drink this. It’ll warm you up. Good timing on the pizza. I was just about to order some. Go sit down on the couch—you look like you’re about to collapse. I’ll get everything else.”

She put slices of the pepperoni and black olive pizza on their plates and grabbed a stack of napkins, a jar of red pepper flakes, and the bottle of wine before she joined him on the couch.

“You got my favorite kind of pizza,” she said.

He smiled at her. No, she refused to let that smile make her the slightest bit gooey inside. That’s not what this was about.

“It was the least I could do.” He picked up the bottle of wine and poured more into her glass.

“Not only are you letting me crash here, but you’re sharing your wine with me. Getting your favorite pizza toppings seemed necessary.”

She shook some red pepper flakes on top of her slice.