Love & Learn Read online

  As if in a daze, she walked up the two flights to her small apartment. It was dark and dingy, and she hadn’t done much to make it her own, but as she stood inside her door and looked around the studio apartment, she felt despair start to build inside her. She had nowhere to go. The money—still in her hand—wouldn’t last long, and it wasn’t enough for a deposit on a new apartment, even if she’d been able to find one.

  Damn it.

  She’d lived on the streets before and had hoped never to have to do that again.

  With a sigh, she started to gather her few belongings, stuffing them in a couple of duffel bags. She didn’t have much, which was kind of sad.

  There was a shelter she had stayed at before that was kind of OK. She’d have to call and see if they had a bed for her. Then she remembered her busted phone, and it was almost too much.

  She sat down on the armrest of her loveseat—that had never experienced any love for as long as she’d had it—and wept.

  Just think that she’d woken up in that amazing hotel room this morning. And tonight, she was going to have to sleep in a bunk bed at a women’s shelter, surrounded by strangers.

  The shelter was almost filled to capacity, but she was offered a bed and a locker. It would be fine, she told herself. It was just for a few nights. She’d find something else soon. She’d have to get another job to make some extra cash and save up for a deposit. It might take her a week or so. She’d done it before, and she could do it again.

  But the dormitory at the shelter was noisy and smelly, and Lizzie didn’t get much sleep. Bleary-eyed and hungry, she spent the whole next day looking for work, and an apartment or a cheap room for rent. She spent more money than she had to spare on the cheapest phone she could find, but everything else she skimped on. She walked or rode the subway instead of taking cabs or Ubers, and she didn’t eat any more than she had to.

  At the end of the day she returned to the shelter, no better off than she’d been this morning, but even more exhausted. She hadn’t thought it was possible.

  The second night was even worse than the first. A woman at the other end of the room was crying, a silent heart-wrenching sob that tore at Lizzie’s nerves. It was unbearable. It felt as if morning would never come. Lizzie went to get a shower, but there was no hot water. A quick rinse later, she came back into the dormitory. Most of the other women had left already, but someone was standing at the other side of the bunk bed where she had been sleeping. Or, not sleeping, as it were.

  A grating metallic noise made Lizzie suspicious. “Hey!” she said loudly.

  The woman jumped and backed away from the lockers between the bunkbeds. “What?” she said, avoiding Lizzie’s stare.

  Lizzie looked closer at the lockers. The one where she kept her few belongings had some markings around the lock. “Did you try to break into my locker?” she said and stared at the woman in disbelief. She couldn’t believe that anyone would stoop so low as to steal from another woman, as hard up as oneself. Then she noticed the woman’s twitchy tremor. Oh.

  Yeah, drugs made people do things that they otherwise wouldn’t do.

  “Get away from there,” she said tiredly. “There’s nothing there worth stealing, anyway.”

  The woman pulled herself up. “I wasn’t going to steal nothing!” she protested.

  “No, right,” said Lizzie. She walked over to her locker, opened it, and pulled out her two bags. That was it. The final straw. She couldn’t stay here. She hadn’t had a wink of sleep over the last two nights, and she would not be able to get a job and a new apartment staying in a place where she’d always be looking over her shoulder.

  Out on the street, she stopped and stared at the passing traffic. What had she been thinking? She’d been lucky even to get a bed at this shelter. It wasn’t as if any of the others were any better. So, where was she supposed to go now?

  She rode the subway to Port Authority and left her bags in a locker there. They were a lot sturdier than the lockers at the shelter, so she wouldn’t have to worry about losing her few possessions. But how was she supposed to get a job, looking like this? She looked a mess after her quick and cold shower, with unwashed hair and no makeup. What she wouldn’t give for a long, hot shower and a good night’s sleep. A decent meal. Clean, ironed clothes. And a résumé that didn’t reveal the fact that she had no skills, no home address, and no prospects.

  That old saying, fake it ‘til you make it, that was all good and well, but how was one actually supposed to do that? How did you fake having your life together when everything was a mess?

  She wandered through the lively terminal, looking at the people bustling around her. Especially the women. The well-dressed, professional-looking women on their way to work. She looked nothing like them. She would never get hired at a decent job, with a fair, living wage. And living in New York City was expensive. She needed to make good money, to be able to afford a halfway decent place.

  In the tunnel from the station, she passed a kiosk that sold silk ties and luggage. Then a coffee shop. A Thai food restaurant. A bookstore.

  And suddenly, there he was.

  Henry.

  Staring back at her from a huge portrait in the window display.

  She stared back at him. Damn, he was handsome. Clean-shaven in the photo, he looked completely different from the night she’d met him. But she’d have known him anywhere.

  NYT bestselling author Henry Brown, it said on the sign next to his portrait. And the entire window display on this side of the door only contained one book, stacked in lots of different piles, and arranged so that she could see the cover from all angles.

  He was obviously a big deal, as authors go. Lizzie didn’t know much about books, wasn’t much of a reader, but a NYT bestselling author probably didn’t have any problems making rent.

  Even when he was away on a book tour that was going to last months, and his apartment would be empty while he was staying in all kinds of fancy hotels in one exciting location after another.

  Lizzie stared at him. Those eyes that had been caressing her, feasting on her naked body, as she had feasted on the food he had ordered for her. Those lips that had tasted her, suckled her, made her come in that magnificent four-poster bed. Just thinking about it made her ache for him.

  It had been a business transaction. He had paid her to dance for him. Not for the sex.

  She had done the sex for free. And if he’d appeared in front of her now, she’d have gone with him again. To a hotel, into a back alley, anywhere. In a heartbeat. She’d never experienced anything like her night with him, and she didn’t think she ever would again.

  Henry was long gone, somewhere on the other side of the word, promoting his book, living his successful and glorious life. He had probably forgotten all about her already. She’d certainly never see him again.

  But she knew where he kept his spare key.

  It was surprisingly easy to find out where he lived. His address or phone number wasn’t listed, and she couldn’t remember what he’d told the cab driver, but one of the articles on him that she read on her new phone’s small screen mentioned that he lived on the Upper West Side, and another mentioned a small park nearby. In a third article, there was a photograph of him standing outside of a beautiful old apartment building. Once she had found the park and walked back and forth a few blocks in a couple of different directions, she found herself standing on the pavement outside of the building in the photo.

  He had posed for the photo leaning against the ornate pillars that decorated the entrance, with his arms casually folded, and his gaze directed out into space somewhere to the left of the photographer’s head. He looked like a man without a worry in the world. A man who had everything he would ever need. And she knew that he lived alone. Otherwise, why would he have asked a neighbor to get his suitcase for him?

  An empty apartment. A key in a flowerpot.

  And she desperately needed a place to stay.

  It wasn’t as if she’d be breaking in
.

  He’d never even know that she’d been there. She’d be super careful, leave no trace.

  Just for a night. Or maybe two.

  Normally, she would never even consider something like this. But right now, she was on the verge of giving up. She was more tired than she’d ever been. More alone.

  She needed a safe place to sleep and regain her strength. Life had thrown her for a loop lately, and she needed a break to get back on her feet.

  She kept telling herself that it wasn’t as if she’d be breaking in.

  An older woman with a small furry dog exited the building and started walking up the street. The woman had a tight perm and large glasses with bright red frames. The dog had a hair clip keeping the fur out of its eyes. It looked as if she was taking her floor mop for a walk. Lizzie watched the large, heavy front door slowly starting to close behind the odd couple.

  Without making the conscious decision to act, her feet began to move, and before she knew it, she was standing in a grand foyer. There were some mailboxes on the wall to her right, but that was the only thing that this foyer had in common with the one in her building.

  Her old apartment building.

  Where she had lived.

  She hurried over and checked the mailboxes. Everyone had a printed name and an apartment number on a neat label. Not like in her old building, where people’s names were added on whatever they had at hand, like torn-off pieces of envelopes or the backs of receipts, and stuck on with tape, that barely stuck to the metal.

  There was his mailbox.

  Brown. 4C.

  The name didn’t suit him. It was too ordinary. Too nondescript. Henry Brown was anything but.

  She walked over to the elevator and pressed the button. The doors opened right away, and she stepped inside, pressing the button for the 4th floor.

  When the doors opened again, she stepped out into a long, bright hallway. Apartments A and B were to her left. C and D to her right. At the end of the hall was a window, with a neat row of potted plants that looked well cared for. Two of them had flowers, round yellow ones. The other three were leafy green.

  She walked down the hallway, holding her breath. The second flowerpot from the left, that’s what he’d said. It was one of the yellow-flowered plants in a large, decorated terracotta pot.

  What if Henry’s neighbor hadn’t put the key back?

  But there it was.

  Lizzie turned and stared at the door. The apartment number—4C in brass letters—sat just beneath the peephole. She almost lost her nerve. It wasn’t too late to turn around. She hadn’t done anything wrong up to this point. She could just go back and get her bags from the locker at the station. Call the shelter and ask that they held a bed for her.

  She could do that.

  But her feet walked over to the door, and her hand stuck the key in the lock, and when she heard a door open somewhere in the building, she opened the door to apartment 4C and stepped inside.

  11

  Henry

  The flight had gone by in a flash. He had slept most of the time. He couldn’t remember when he’d last slept so well, and in a public place too. Sure, the seats reclined into actual beds in first class, but he usually spent his flights reading or writing, unable to relax surrounded by strangers.

  He felt relaxed now, though. Still. Even as he was walking through the crowded terminal at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport. This was just a quick stop at a couple of book fairs, before going on to Asia and Australia. The main European leg of the tour would be toward the end, in almost two months.

  He hated the publicity part of being an author, but what he hated more was when the publicity was spread out over time. Every time he had to leave New York, he lost momentum with his work. This time, he had insisted that his publishers set a travel schedule that included all the countries, all the book fairs, all the main cities, in one go. This time, he would be on the road constantly for a little over two months. But then, he wouldn’t have to do any traveling, any interviews, until the next book came out sometime next year.

  It was a price he was willing to pay.

  It wasn’t as if he had someone waiting for him back home.

  In the Arrivals hall, many of his fellow travelers were met by loved ones, who laughed and cried and jumped from joy. He couldn’t imagine what that would be like. People seemed to be obsessed with other people, needing other people, in a way that felt strange to him. His parents had been nice enough people, but they hadn’t been overly affectionate. They had been middle-aged when he came along, and it seemed to him that they had probably been more surprised than happy about the addition to their little household. By the time he was sent to boarding school, his father had been retired, and by the time Henry graduated, he’d been dead. His mother had drifted around aimlessly in their big house for a few years, but at soon as he was settled in Oxford, she’d sold the family home and moved into a small bungalow on England’s south coast, and spent her last years there. Every time he’d visited her, more out of a sense of obligation than actually missing her, she’d sat at the window, looking out at sea.

  After graduation, he had moved to the States, settling in New York. The only time he’d been back during his first ten years had been for his mother’s funeral. Since then, whenever he visited the UK on book promotion tours, it felt like any other country. It certainly didn’t feel like home, whatever that felt like.

  He moved through the lively Arrivals hall toward the exits, more or less on autopilot. He’d done this before, and there was no one here waiting for him.

  Suddenly he spotted her, a little bit ahead of him. A moment later, the woman turned to her travel companion, and he saw that it wasn’t her.

  Of course, it wasn’t. How could it be?

  And why would he even care, if it had been?

  But as he stepped outside the revolving doors and turned toward the taxis, his heart was racing, and his hands were trembling.

  He’d thought it was her. Lizzie. The woman from last night. And the idea of seeing her again had made him all excited.

  What was that all about?

  12

  Lizzie

  She stood for a long time in his hallway, just waiting.

  Waiting for what, she wasn’t sure.

  Waiting to get caught. For someone to step out of the shadows in the empty apartment and point accusingly at her. For sirens and police officers and jail and …

  Something.

  It didn’t seem right that it could be this easy.

  That she could just walk into someone’s apartment like this.

  Slowly, she broke out of her paralysis and walked further inside the apartment. It had lovely tall ceilings and was tidy. There wasn’t much furniture, but the pieces that were there were beautiful. There were several doors in the long wood-paneled hallway, and she checked the rooms one by one.

  Straight ahead was a large living room, with plenty of bookcases and a couple of large leather armchairs opposite an over-sized matching sofa. A dining table over by the windows, facing the street.

  The next room was a kitchen, with no food in the cupboards, but plenty of natural light, and a small breakfast nook.

  A master bedroom with a big bed—unmade—and some clothes on a chair. An ensuite bathroom with no bathtub but a large shower with an unreasonable number of showerheads at all levels.

  An office with an antique-looking desk with two sizeable switched-off computer screens taking up most of the space and a computer tucked away out of sight, underneath.

  The second bedroom had been re-purposed as a home gym slash storage space, with an exercise bike and a treadmill on one side of the room, and some boxes stacked against the wall on the other side.

  There was also a guest bathroom with a shower and a laundry room.

  She returned to the hallway and stood there for a while, looking around her. The building was so quiet, after the noisy streets and the chaotic shelter, and she almost wanted to cry but wasn’t sure what
it was she wanted to cry about. The fact that the door had locked behind her when she came in, and right now, she was safe, in a private space, for the first time since her life had fallen to pieces two days ago? Or the fact that she had no idea how to get her life back on track again?

  There were so many things to cry about.

  But perhaps it was just the fact that this apartment would be empty for months, while there were so many homeless people in this city. It made her so tired.

  So very tired.

  She knew she couldn’t stay here. She realized that. But if she could just get one good night’s sleep, she’d feel so much better in the morning. She’d be much better equipped to solve all her problems

  Just for one night.

  And then she’d leave. Put the key back in the flowerpot. Henry would never know she’d been here.

  No one would ever know.

  And that one night might not make a difference, in the long run, she knew that on some level.

  But perhaps it might.

  Once the decision had been made, she felt better. Relieved, even. She went into the master bedroom and peeled off her clothes. His complicated shower washed away the past couple of days’ grime and frustrations with plenty of hot water, and then she crawled naked into his unmade bed and curled up under his heavy comforter.

  She could smell him on the pillows. It felt nice. He smelled of manly things, musk and forests, and adventure.

  Stupid really. He was an author. Not an adventurer.

  But he was traveling the world right now. That was something of an adventure.

  She couldn’t remember where he’d said he’d be right now. But maybe London. Or Singapore.

  One day, she’d like to go there, wherever it was. She’d never been anywhere.

  But right now, she just went to sleep.

  When she awoke, sometime in the early hours of the morning, it took a while for her to figure out where she was. It was so quiet. Not like the shelter, with its constant symphony of misery. Not like her old apartment, with its tissue-thin walls and neighbors who only paused their fighting for the make-up sex. This building was so quiet. As if no one lived here.