I leaned against the counter and said, “I’m absolutely stunned. How do you feel about this?”
Gabriel smoothed back a stray lock of hair and said, “A few weeks ago, I wouldn’t have been able to accept an offer like this. In fact, I was too worried about taking advantage of our friendship to even ask him for business advice. But now, I’m actually considering it. He’s trying to do this out of the goodness of his heart, and there’s no real reason to turn it down.”
He gestured at the note and continued, “He really wants us to go see the building, whether or not we choose to take the apartment. It’s still in escrow, but he says the real estate agent is fine with us accessing it, since it’s totally vacant. Why don’t we stop by and take a look after we pick up the rental truck?”
I nodded and said, “That’s a good idea.”
Less than two hours later, we pulled up in front of a fairly plain, rectangular, cream-colored building near Fort Mason, and Gabriel whispered, “Can you believe it? My company has its own warehouse.”
The two-story structure sat off by itself and looked like it probably dated from the 1920s. It had a fresh coat of paint, a small parking lot to its right, and a large cypress tree to its left. There was a wide rolling door at the front of it, and we went around to the side and let ourselves in through a smaller door.
Almost the entire ground floor was wide open, except for a small office and a restroom. When we went upstairs, I said, “Your company doesn’t just have a warehouse, it has a headquarters.” The right side of the second floor consisted of three good-size offices, which were fronted by a glass wall. Opposite them was a solid wall with a single door in the center of it.
There was a note tacked to the door in Sawyer’s handwriting, which said: Welcome home, Gabriel and Riley! He’d drawn two stick figures holding hands, one of which had shoulder-length hair.
Gabriel turned the key in the lock, and as we stepped into the apartment, we both murmured, “Oh wow.”
It was a huge, sunny, wide-open space, and two walls were lined with tall windows. A basic kitchen was tucked into one corner, and a bathroom took up the opposite corner. The floor was worn wood, and there was exposed ductwork in the high ceiling which gave it an industrial feel, but it also felt inviting and comfortable. Gabriel whispered, “It feels like home.”
It really did. I turned to him and said, “Are you sure you’re not going to feel guilty saying yes to this place? I don’t want anything to get in the way of your friendship with Sawyer, so if you think it’s going to make things weird between you, we can go back to apartment-hunting.”
“I think this is where you and I both belong, Riley. As soon as I walked in, I pictured you with your makeup tables beside the window, and me sitting over here in what’s going to be our living room, sketching some new designs for my lingerie.”
I said, “I can see it, too.”
“I know I’ve had such a hard time letting people help me in the past, but this feels different. I get that it’s not Sawyer saying ‘I didn’t think you could manage to afford an apartment yourself, so I went ahead and got you one’. It’s also nothing like Roger leasing a shop without consulting me first and trying to spring it on me.” We’d both been relieved when Roger had been able to find a tenant for that shop within a matter of days, and he was actually going to end up making a profit in his new role as a landlord. But that was definitely an experience neither of us ever wanted to see repeated.
I said, “You’re right, it’s not even sort of the same situation.”
He turned to me and asked, “What about you, though? Would it feel weird living here? I don’t want you to feel like you’re indebted to Sawyer forever if we move into his building.”
“I really like him and trust him. Alastair, too. I don’t think this would make things awkward between us. He’s buying the building regardless of whether we move in here, and he won’t be renting the apartment to anyone else if we say no, so it’d probably just end up as a storage room or something.” I chewed my lower lip for a few moments before saying, “I’m really not used to things just getting handed to me. I barely know how to react.”
“Same here. But let’s say yes to this, Riley. Later on when we’re more established, we’ll get a place that’s ours alone. But this makes sense at this point in our lives, when you’re just about to start a new job and my business isn’t off the ground yet.”