Autumn in Rivendale — Chapter 1

The lease agreement was two pages long, and exactly one clause in it was going to ruin her entire year.

She read it twice, certain she’d misunderstood, then a third time, slower, in case the words rearranged themselves into something less catastrophic. They did not. Shared kitchen access, the clause read, in the flat, indifferent language of landlords everywhere, effective the first of the month.

She did not have to guess who else had signed this lease. She could hear him through the wall right now, humming something off-key while he rearranged what had, until yesterday, been her walk-in fridge.

“You’re standing very still,” he said, without turning around, “for someone who just found out we’re roommates.”

“We are not roommates,” she said. “We are two adults who will be sharing one kitchen and actively pretending the other does not exist.”

He finally turned, and had the audacity to look amused about it. “I give that plan a week.”

She gave it four days, and spent every one of them furious about how right he’d been.