“Heaven forbid,” she said. “Okay, you’re going to have to leave now. I’ve got stuff to do.”

I stared at her, bereft. “Stuff?”

She laughed at me. “Yeah, you know. Yoga class. A pedicure. Girl stuff.”

“When can I see you again?” I asked.

She made a show of thinking about it. “I dunno. Next week, maybe?”

“That’s too far away,” I said. “Tomorrow.”

“Well, I guess I could squeeze you in,” she said. “I’m a busy woman, you know.”

“Lunch,” I said. “Come over and I’ll cook for you. And yes, I do in fact know how to cook.”

She scrunched up her face. “You don’t have food in that apartment.”

I laughed. “Sweetheart, you’ve never been to my apartment. Trust me, I have plenty of food.”

“But—what do you mean, I haven’t been to your apartment? I was over there twice.” She frowned at me.

I was tempted to draw it out and watch her get more and more frustrated, but it probably wasn’t wise. I was, after all, still in the doghouse. “That’s my parents’ old apartment,” I said. “It’s on the market now. I don’t actually live there.”

I watched a variety of expressions pass over her face, until she finally settled on irritation. “That’s a really weird thing to do. Why would you let me think you lived there? I thought you were a serial killer or something. Jesus. Well, now it makes sense why you didn’t have coffee, or any furniture.”

“There’s a sofa,” I said. “And a bed.”

“That doesn’t count,” she said. “Okay, so give me the address.”

I did, grateful that she wouldn’t make me explain why I was telling her the truth now, and she wrote it down on a notepad. “Come over around noon,” I said. “Or whenever you get hungry. Is there anything you don’t like?”

“I’ll eat anything,” she said. “Except weird shit that isn’t really food, like snails.”

“No escargot,” I said. “Got it.”

“I’m going back to work,” she said. “By the way.”

My stomach dropped. I didn’t want her to. I knew what happened at the club, and the thought of those men pawing at her—

“I’ll just dance on stage,” she said. “That’s all. No private rooms.”

“You don’t have to work,” I said. “I’ll give you anything you need.”

“I know,” she said, “but I don’t want you to do that. It’s a terrible idea for me to start relying on you for money, because what happens when you get sick of me? If I keep working the whole time, then—”

“I am not,” I said, “going to get sick of you.”

“You can’t make that guarantee,” she said. “And I wouldn’t want you to, anyway. If you want to make this work, I can’t just, like, give up on life and let you give me an allowance. That’s pathetic. I don’t want to be your kept woman.”

“You didn’t seem to mind before,” I said.

“Yeah, that was before,” she said. “If you don’t want me to treat you like a client, don’t act like one.”

“Well,” I said. I couldn’t think of a rebuttal. “I suppose that’s fair.”

“Good,” she said. “So it’s settled. I’ll call Germaine this afternoon.”

“I still don’t like it,” I said. I knew her regulars would put pressure on her, and even if she managed to stave them off, the thought of all those hungry eyes watching her on stage made me sick to my stomach.

“Tough,” she said. “Deal with it.”

It was such a typical response, classic Sasha, that I started laughing. “You’re right,” I said. “Suffering builds character.”

“Yeah,” she said. “So. Okay, I really have to go now. My yoga class starts in half an hour.”

“I like the idea of you wearing yoga pants,” I said. I bent down and kissed her again. “Tomorrow, then.”

She smiled up at me, and I felt my heart contract in my chest, like a fist closing.

I would have to buy her some more flowers.

* * *

I bought a dozen red roses, and had them delivered to her apartment that evening. I knew when she received them, because she texted me: I like tulips better

I grinned at my phone. Demanding woman.

I could do tulips.

I woke up early on Sunday morning and went out to buy the things I needed for lunch, and picked up a bunch of tulips on my way home. The buds were still tightly closed, and I imagined them opening slowly in Sasha’s apartment, blooming over the course of several days while she went about her business.

The doorbell rang exactly at noon, just as I was taking the food out of the oven to cool. I went over to the intercom and pressed the button. “I’ll buzz you in,” I said. “Come on up. Top floor, unit 9.”

A minute later, I heard a soft tap at the door, and went to let Sasha in.

She smiled at me as she came into the apartment. She was wearing a blouse tucked into a knee-length skirt, and she had a purse slung over one shoulder. Not her usual uniform of cut-offs and a t-shirt: she had dressed up for me. “You look nice,” I said.

“Thanks,” she said, a little shy. She looked around the apartment, eyebrows raised, and then said, “Wow.”

“I’m not sure how to interpret that statement,” I said.

She dropped her purse on the bench beside the door. “Good wow,” she said. “I didn’t really know what to expect. The building doesn’t look like much from the outside, but then there’s… this.”

I shrugged. “I got a good deal, and they let me renovate as much as I wanted.” The apartment had originally been a small one-bedroom, but I gutted it shortly after I purchased it. Now, aside from the bathroom and a small office, the entire unit was one open space, lit by skylights set in the vaulted ceiling.

Sasha made a slow circuit of the apartment, looking at the framed photographs on the wall, examining the plants growing on the windowsill near the bed. I had put the tulips in a vase on the bookshelf, and she smiled when she saw them, and touched one of the closed buds. “I can see you living here,” she announced.