“How long have you been staying here?”
“Three years this May.”
“How much do you pay monthly?” he asked.
She looked at him strangely. “Why are you so curious?”
“How much?” he asked again, undeterred by her stare.
“Sixteen hundred a month, including utilities.”
“Not bad for a place like this. Pretty near to where you work, too.”
She didn’t say anything. “Are you sure you want to see where I live?”
“And make breakfast and sleep and be lazy? Sure.”
She shook her head and took the key out, and it jangled with her other keys. “Oh boy, you’re not gonna like this.”
“Try me.”
She opened her door wide with lack of enthusiasm and Justin stood there for a moment with the sunlight filtering in from the window. He eyed the small apartment. His sisters’ playroom for their dolls had been bigger in England. But it was a quaint apartment, and he hadn’t expected her to be that neat. She even had a small flower pot by the windowsill.
He saw a poster in a frame, a vintage poster of My Fair Lady. He wondered why she kept that poster. It didn’t quite suit her…
“You like old movies?”
She nodded. “I keep what I can. I replace the posters when I’m bored. Right now it’s Audrey Hepburn. I think she’s really pretty.”
“So do I,” he said. Then he realized why the poster mirrored Mikaela. “Eliza Doolittle is like you, she curses a lot.”
She bit her lower lip. “Didn’t know you were that offended.”
“I just don’t curse,” he said mildly, walking around her the small space.
She had thought it was fine for two people, but now that he was here, towering over her, she realized her place was indeed small. She felt even more conscious about her living arrangements. It seemed like he was judging her decoration choices and her color schemes.
His eyes scanned the twenty-three or was it twenty-four square meter apartment and its contents. Obviously thrifted, some repaired, some bought on sale. Her loveseat had frayed corners, but she cleaned it well enough. Her dining table had two mismatched seats which added a certain likeable peculiarity to it. Her kitchen was tiny, with stains that were difficult to remove. He saw her single bed, partially hidden by a Chinese screen divider with its pale blue cotton sheets. Her closet was across it, a two-door closet that paled in comparison to his filing cabinets at the office.
He noticed she had no pictures of her family. Perhaps she had been too traumatized by it. He had expected to see pictures, better ones than from what the investigator had given him. She didn’t even display her awards or honor roll certificates.
She looked at him, wondering if he was turned off by it. She was ready for his onslaught of coldness, for his criticisms.
“It’s quaint, your place,” he finally said. “Shall we go for dinner?”
She nodded, feeling strange about the whole thing. Here he was, asking her out on a dinner date, but before that dinner date, he had asked her to let him see where she lived. And he said it was quaint? It sounded so British. Quaint. It felt like a cross between cute and bearable.
“Where are we having dinner?” she asked later on as they began to drive away from the street.
“Somewhere you’ll think is casual.”
She hoped he didn’t go through that effort to search for those cheap restaurants in an effort to be casual enough. Wait, effort was good, at least that was a mark of sincerity. Wasn’t it? She wondered where he was taking her. Burgers sounded like a good idea, coupled with large fries and maybe a milk shake for good measure. That wasn’t good for cellulite, nor was it a good meal to look all pretty in front of him.
They drove up to Marmalade Café. She had only eaten here once before, when Lynne had gotten promoted and she had thoroughly enjoyed it. She looked at him in awe.
“You know about this place?” she asked in disbelief.
He shrugged. “It’s not like it’s a secret.”