One Night and Other Lies

Chapter 6: The In-Between

Sloane woke up at seven-fourteen on a couch that wasn't hers, in a sweater that wasn't hers, with the unmistakable feeling that she had made a series of very bad decisions and didn't regret a single one.

Julian's couch was leather, worn soft in all the right places, and the blanket he'd draped over them smelled like him—sandalwood and old paper and that faint, clean musk that was just him. She lay there for a minute, eyes open, listening to the quiet of the apartment. The record player was off. The kitchen was dark. There was a mug in the sink—the tea he'd made and never finished—and the rain had stopped sometime during the night, leaving the city outside wet and glistening and quiet.

She sat up, blanket pooling at her waist, and looked around. The apartment looked different in the morning. Less mysterious. More... lived-in. There were dishes in the sink, a stack of mail on the counter, a pair of reading glasses perched on a manuscript like a dead insect. The facedown photograph was still on the bookshelf, still facedown, and Sloane looked at it for a long moment before forcing herself to look away.

Don't snoop. She stood up, joints creaking. You're not his girlfriend. You're his neighbour who slept with him twice. That's it.

She found her shoes by the door, her jacket draped over a chair. Her hair was a disaster, her makeup was smudged, and she was fairly certain she had a hickey on her collarbone that her turtleneck wouldn't quite cover. She looked in the mirror by the door and winced. Professional. I look like a professional book editor who made a very unprofessional decision.

She was reaching for the doorknob when she heard it—the shower. Running. In the bathroom. Julian was awake.

Leave now. Before he comes out. Before this gets awkward.

Her hand was on the doorknob. She could leave. She should leave. That's what she did. That was the rule—well, the rule had been no sleepovers, and she'd already broken that, but the spirit of the rule was leave before morning, leave before feelings.

She turned the doorknob.

The bathroom door opened.

Julian stood in the doorway, towel around his waist, water dripping from his hair, chest bare and still damp from the shower. He looked at her—hand on doorknob, jacket over arm, guilty expression on her face—and didn't say anything for a beat.

"Leaving?" he asked.

"Yeah. I—work. Deadline." She gestured vaguely at the door. "I should go."

"Okay." He didn't move. He just stood there, water dripping onto the floor, and looked at her with an expression she couldn't read. "Sloane."

"Yeah?"

"Last night—"

"Didn't happen." She said it too fast. "I mean—it happened. Obviously. But it doesn't... change anything. We're still—"

"Neighbours." There was a faint smile on his face, but it didn't reach his eyes. "Right. Just neighbours."

"Right." She opened the door. "I'll see you around."

"See you around."

She stepped into the hallway and closed the door behind her. The carpet was cold under her bare feet—she'd forgotten to put her shoes on—and she stood there for a second, leaning against the wall, breathing hard.

That was fine. That was normal. Neighbours who have s*x and then pretend it didn't happen. That's a thing. People do that.

She put her shoes on and walked to her own door. It was closed. She'd locked it when she left last night. She fumbled in her jacket pocket for her keys, and that's when she saw it—an envelope, slipped under her door, plain white, no name on it.

She picked it up. Inside was a key. Her key. The one she'd dropped in the hallway on moving day and never found. Taped to the key was a note, scrawled in messy handwriting:

Found it in the stairwell. —J

J. Not Julian. J. Like J. Vale. Like he was testing her. Like he was reminding her that he was both people now—the man she'd slept with and the author she was reviewing—and there was no separating them anymore.

Sloane stared at the note. Then she unlocked her door, went inside, and dropped the key and the note on the kitchen counter with the rest of her life.

The review was due Friday. It was Wednesday morning, and Sloane had 1,200 words that she hated and a deadline that wasn't going to move.

She sat at her desk at The Margin Review, coffee in hand, and stared at the screen. The opening paragraph was still the one she'd written—the one about invisibility and self-portraits—and it was still good. It was the rest of it that was the problem. She couldn't write about Half-Light without writing about Julian. Every sentence felt like it had a double meaning. Every observation about Elias felt like an observation about the man next door.

Elias is a man who has built his identity around absence, she'd written. He is defined not by who he is, but by who he refuses to be.

That's not about Elias, she thought, deleting it. That's about him.

She rewrote it: Vale's protagonist is a study in self-erasure—a man who has chosen invisibility as a form of self-protection.

Better. More professional. Less personal. But still, underneath the words, she could feel him—Julian, standing in his kitchen, saying I don't trust anyone, his hand on her face, his mouth on hers.

Her phone buzzed. Mia.

How was morning after? Awkward? Sexy? Did he make you breakfast?

Sloane typed: Awkward. He was in a towel. I left. He found my key and slipped it under my door with a note signed "J".

"J"??? Mia sent a string of screaming emojis. He's FLIRTING with you. Via KEY DELIVERY. That's ROMANCE NOVEL behaviour.

It's neighbourly. He found my key. He returned it. That's what normal people do.

Normal people don't sign notes "J" when they know you know their full name AND their pen name. He's being MYSTERIOUS. He's COURTING you.

He's not courting me. We had s*x. Twice. That's not courting. That's... biology.

Keep telling yourself that, babe.

Sloane put her phone down and tried to get back to the review. She managed three sentences before her phone buzzed again. This time it wasn't Mia. It was an unknown number.

She frowned and opened it. A text: Your coffee order is oat milk latte, extra hot, no sugar. Correct?

She stared at it. Who is this?

The reply came instantly: Your neighbour.

Julian. She felt her face heat up. How did you get my number?

You wrote it on a pizza box. Left it at my place. —J

She had. She remembered now—drunk, ordering pizza, writing her number on the box in case the delivery guy needed to call. She'd left the box at his place after the first night. He'd kept it. For a week.

That's not creepy at all, she typed.

I prefer "resourceful." Coffee on your desk in ten.

She didn't have time to reply. Ten minutes later, the receptionist appeared at her cubicle holding a coffee cup and a paper bag. "Delivery for Sloane Carter," she said, looking amused. "From a... no name. Just 'the guy in 4A.'"

Sloane took the coffee. It was oat milk latte, extra hot, no sugar. Exactly right. The paper bag contained a croissant—almond, her favourite, though she had no idea how he knew that—and another note:

You said you skipped breakfast. Don't. —J

He's courting me, Sloane thought, and then immediately hated herself for thinking it. He's being neighbourly. Neighbours bring each other coffee. That's a thing.

But neighbours didn't remember your coffee order. Neighbours didn't slip notes signed with their pen name initial. Neighbours didn't look at you like you were the only book they'd ever wanted to read.

She ate the croissant. It was the best croissant she'd ever had. She hated that too.

By Thursday afternoon, the review was done.

Sloane read it through one last time—1,400 words, balanced, fair, professional, no mention of the author's real identity, no hint that the reviewer knew him personally. It was a good review. Maybe her best. It praised Vale's prose, analyzed the structure, noted the autobiographical undercurrents without naming them, and concluded:

Half-Light is not a perfect novel. Its pacing falters in the third act, and its secondary characters are thinly drawn. But it is a human novel—raw, honest, and unafraid to sit in the messiness of what it means to hide from the world and long to be found. J. Vale has written his best book yet. Whether he'll ever write as himself is a question only he can answer.

Whether he'll ever write as himself. She'd written that line and then stared at it for ten minutes. It was the closest she'd come to saying I see you, Julian without actually saying it. It was a question. A challenge. An invitation, maybe.

She should send it. It was due tomorrow. Margaret was expecting it. The whole publishing world was waiting for The Margin Review's take on J. Vale's new book.

She hovered her cursor over the send button.

If I send this, everything changes. The thought came unbidden. The review comes out. People talk. Maybe someone connects the dots. Maybe Julian's identity gets out. Maybe he gets angry. Maybe he gets scared. Maybe he leaves.

Or maybe nothing happens. Maybe it's just a review. Maybe he reads it and understands. Maybe he writes back. Maybe—

Her phone buzzed. A text from Julian: Hallway. Now.

That was it. No explanation. No emoji. Just Hallway. Now.

Sloane stared at the text. Then she saved the review as a draft, closed her laptop, and walked to her front door.

The hallway was empty when she stepped out. She looked left, looked right. Nothing. Then Julian's door opened, and he stepped out holding two glasses of wine.

"It's Thursday," he said, by way of explanation. "I open a bottle on Thursdays. Old habit."

"You want me to have wine with you in the hallway?"

"I want you to have wine with me in my apartment. But I figured asking you in the hallway was less likely to get me slapped." He held out a glass. "Five minutes. Then you can go back to ignoring me."

Sloane looked at the wine glass. Looked at him. Looked at the wine glass again.

Five minutes. That's harmless. Neighbours drink wine together. That's a thing.

She took the glass. "Five minutes."

They went into his apartment. He didn't close the door all the way—left it ajar, like he was giving her an escape route, like he knew she needed one. They sat on the couch—same couch, different day, different everything—and drank wine in silence for a minute.

"The review's done," she said. It came out before she could stop it.

He didn't look surprised. "Good."

"You're not going to ask what I said?"

"No." He swirled his wine. "I trust you."

You trust me. The words hung in the air. Three days ago he'd said I don't trust anyone. Now he was saying he trusted her. Sloane felt something shift in her chest—something warm and dangerous and very, very bad.

"You don't even know me," she said.

"I know enough." He looked at her, and his eyes were steady, serious. "I know you write reviews that make authors cry but you're secretly a romantic. I know you order almond croissants and pretend you don't care about them. I know you have three rules and you've broken all three and you're terrified of what that means." He paused. "I know you listened to me type through the wall the other night. And I know you pressed your hand against the plaster."

Sloane's mouth went dry. He knew. He knew I was there. He walked to the wall because I was there.

"How—"

"The floorboards creak. Your side of the wall, right by the bedroom. I heard you get up. Heard you walk over. Heard you stop." He took a sip of wine. "I walked over too. I stood there for, like, five minutes. With my hand on the wall. Like an idiot."

"Like an i***t," she echoed, and laughed—a real laugh, surprised and warm and a little shaky.

"Yeah." He smiled, and it was the first real smile she'd seen from him—not the half-smirk, not the amused twitch, but a full smile, crinkling the corners of his eyes, and it made him look ten years younger and infinitely more dangerous. "So. Five minutes are up. You can go."

Sloane looked at her wine glass. It was half full. She looked at the door—ajar, escape route wide open. She looked at Julian—smiling, open, waiting, not pushing.

She set the wine glass down on the coffee table.

"I'm not going," she said.

And then she leaned over and kissed him, and he made a sound—surprised, pleased, hungry—and pulled her onto his lap, and the door stayed ajar, and the wine got warm, and somewhere in the back of her mind Sloane knew that the review was still sitting in her drafts folder, unsent, and that everything was about to change, and that she didn't care.

Rule number four, she thought, as his hands slid under her shirt. No rules.