My phone beeps with her message. I think this move will be wonderful for you. Best of luck, dear. Please call if you need anything.

I haven't needed anything since my heart was broken and I left home for college. I don't need anything or anyone. I may have a few fails under my belt, a few too many tubs of ice cream too, but I'm still here, still standing. Or lying down, actually.

I get to my feet and slide the last several years of my life into labeled boxes. My clothes fill a couple of suitcases and my books fit neatly into reusable bags, crates, boxes, and bins.

I fall asleep reading about how the love interest in my book won the third sister back by being so purely honest in his affections, words, and deeds she found herself deeply, madly in love. Of course, they lived happily ever after.

I wake abruptly to a wrapping on my front door-the singular door aside from the pocket door to the bathroom. I scramble out from under the heavy comforter, wipe sweat from my brow-the heat is cranked. Odd that I didn't throw off the covers in the night. The romantic notion that they were like a lover's embrace sweeps into my thoughts as I face plant on the floor, my foot twisted in the sheets. All the while, the knocking continues.

"Coming," I call. I only have to take a few strides to reach the door. I peer through the peephole at a stout man wearing a hat that says Morty's Movers.

"Morning, Miss Carrington," he says, glancing at a piece of paper. "Katya Kalonje sent me here to collect your things."

"Oh. Oh!" I repeat. "If you don't mind giving me a minute."

He taps his watch. "Listen, I'm doing her a favor and I'm double parked. I can literally only give you a minute."

I exhale and then toss my bedding into a black trash bag, my remaining toiletries into a shopping bag, and then pull on my boots, jacket, and gather the other random items scattered around the small space, stuffing them into yet another bag.

Another mover appears with the greeting, "We have to hurry up. Can't get another ticket."

I shuffle past them, hastening down the stairs with boxes, not at all grateful for the rude awakening, but extremely thankful that I don't have to figure out how to get my stuff to the new place.

When the guys from Morty's close the doors on the back of the moving truck, I do, however, have to figure out how to get myself to the apartment. In my pajamas with the polka dots on the bottoms. I catch my reflection in a car window. Bad, terribly, hideous bedhead. I call after the truck, but with a puff of exhaust that makes me cough, it pulls into traffic, accelerating so they don't lose the yellow light.

I'm glad I had the presence of mind to remember my purse and laptop. I hurry past a coffee cart, not counting on anyone loving me for the fine lines around my eyes, my crazy hair, or general dishevelment, much unlike the sweet couple in the book I devoured last night.

I hurry to the subway and like the moving truck, the train pulls away without me. I wait on the platform, smooth down my hair, check my breath, cringe, and pull out my phone.

I text Katya The eagle is on its way.

It's not until the next train arrives and I'm sardined inside, inhaling mega morning breath-mine has nothing on the guy reading The Times-that she replies.

What eagle? It's too early in the morning to speak in metaphor or is it simile?

Code I reply. I was using code. Thank you for sending your moving guys for my stuff.

You're welcome. I didn't want to see you trying to get your mattress across town. How was your last night in your apartment? I'd tell you mine was filled with fond reminiscing, but I only just arrived and it's already empty. ;-) Do you mean you spent the night elsewhere? I ask, knowing exactly what I'm in for. Kat loves to recount her conquests.

She doesn't answer and the slinking fear that I misread her eyeing Carrick pushes me through the suctioning subway doors, up the steps, and back onto the street.

Katya stands under the awning of our new building and brightens when I approach.

"Good morning, sunshine."

I level her with my gaze.

"Cloudy with a chance of laser eyes?" Anyone else would have looked away with the warning. Instead, as fearless as ever, she says, "Why are you still in your pajamas?"

"The movers woke me from my slumber."

"Ah, sleeping beauty. I hardly slept." She fans herself. "Oh, but before I tell you all about that... Who. Was. That. Sexy. Beast?"

"What sexy beast?"

"The one who hugged you on the street last night? Practically mauling you with his massive honey guns," she says, flexing her arm. "The one that gave you that look."

"The I hate you so much look?"

She elbow checks me. "No, the I want to lick you look. The I want to fuck you look. The I love you look."

My face squishes up as if she splashed me with cold, icy, slushy wastewater from the streets of Manhattan. "First, that's not at all true. I'm pretty sure he hates me." I hate me after what we did. "Second, you didn't sleep with him?" As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I feel stupid and even more childish and undersized standing next to the elegantly towering figure of Katya Kalonje.

She laughs as she goes up the stone steps of our new building.

"It's as cold as the dark side of the moon," she says, one-upping my last it's as cold as joke. "I think your brain is freezing. Let's go inside." The look she gives me suggests this isn't a joke. When the heater over the door adequately blasts us she says, "Navy, he looked like a kicked puppy when you ran off, and I know you'd never kick a puppy."

"Carrick Kennely is neither sexy nor a puppy. But yes, you could say that he is a beast," I huff.

Chapter 3.

The Boyfriend Book The realization that this building, with an elevator (!) is my new home floors me. The tile and woodwork is classic and clean. The decorative plants are green and alive. There's no boiled cabbage smell permeating the air or crying baby echoing from the hall. A fresh pine scent and lemon-scented polish covers nearly all of the surfaces. I can even see my reflection in the gleam of the elevator door.

"Welcome home," Kat says. "There's no doorman, but there is this," she says, stepping inside the carriage and pressing the seven button.

When we reach our floor she says, "While you shower, I'm going to get us breakfast, but first, you have to see this place."

I follow her down a carpeted hall, passing three other apartments, and around the corner. While she fumbles with a key, the door behind us opens. A woman, wearing a little black dress-with walk of shame written all of over it-, scuttles toward the elevator and slips inside before the doors close.

"The hottie in 7G," Katya sighs.

"Huh?" I ask, as she opens the door to our new residence.

I lose her answer as I pass the wall of boxes to enormous windows spilling generous amounts of soft winter light into the living room.

Katya gently knocks into me with her shoulder. "What do you think?"

I spin in a circle. My mouth hangs open at the full-size kitchen open to the main living room, the rustic brick wall, the polished wood floors with wide planks, and the windows. Have I mentioned the windows? Lost in a Manhattanite's dream apartment haze, I drift down the hall. The bathroom hosts a restored claw foot tub. At the end of the hall are two doors nearly opposite each other. Katya opens one with a grand, sweeping gesture.

My bed rests in the middle and I leap onto it, squealing with joy. I spread my arms and legs wide like a starfish and say, "I'm in love!"

"It's about time. I knew he was a sexy beast, but glad to know he's dating material."

I bolt to sitting and make a gagging face before shaking my head. "Carrick? No. Never. Katya, I'm in love with our apartment. Is this for real?"

"Of course it is. It's almost a duplicate of my last apartment except I had a loft and this one has two rooms."

This is true.

"I want to stay forever. I'm never moving." As soon as the words are out of my mouth I realize that Kat has never stayed in the same apartment for more than a year, a year and a half tops. The uncertainty crashes down on me. I want my closet back, poorly calibrated heating system and all. "Kat, what's going to happen when you're ready to move again?"

She inhales, sits down next to me, folds her elbows onto her lap, and leans forward, bracing her head in her hands. She's quiet until she says, "For all my glitz and glamour, I didn't start practicing yoga for nothing. I know what you're thinking. It hasn't escaped my notice either."

"Kat, I can't afford this on my own," I whisper. "When you leave-"

"I'm working on commitment, Navy. Promise."

If I have to move in a year, it might mean back to my parents' house. Unlike the other properties in their neighborhood, they don't have a guesthouse and since my mother plans on converting my bedroom into a sewing room, I'll be in the basement. "I can't go back to my parents' house."

"I don't intend to move."

"You've said that before, every time. I should have stayed in my apartment." Tears inch their way to my eyes. This was a mistake. A beautiful, airy, spacious mistake.

"Have you ever heard the saying, fortune favors the bold?"

I nod.

"Or nothing ventured nothing gained?"

"Of course."

"I wanted you to move in with me because you're my best friend and Mew's favorite auntie, but also because it's time for you to stretch."

"Kat, I've tried your yoga classes; I'm not very flexible."

She cocks the severest of eyebrows in my direction. "Yes, I know."

"Remember the time I fell onto that lady when I was trying to do tree pose? Or when I passed out during Savasana and was snoring? Or when I farted?!" I say, humiliated anew by the memory.

"Yes, and that nice lady is one of the partners at your old agency-she deserved getting knocked down a peg. You fell asleep because you were working sixty hour weeks and needed the rest, and the time you farted, well, everyone does it. You laughed it off and what is life without levity?"

"You don't fart."

She inclines her head. "My life coach has ingrained a strict practice of chewing my food to liquid and avoiding cruciferous vegetables and beans so no, I don't generally fart, but give me full fat dairy and I am a methane making machine."

I giggle despite myself.

She leans back, bracing her hands behind her on the bed and crossing her legs elegantly. "I've never told you this before, but when I was at teacher training in Bali, I was eating all kinds of mushy foods I'd never had before."

"You've definitely told me about the salads, coleslaws, and sauces..."

"Yes, I raved about what an amazing culinary experience it was, but that wasn't the whole story. At first, let's just say I experienced some gastrointestinal discomfort during an important spiritual lecture with a highly esteemed monk."

I resist the smile cracking across my lips. "Your delicate toots have nothing on my mega farts. Sorry, Kat, but it's true."

She shakes her head and laughs. "The earth shook, Navy. They started calling me Angi."

"What's wrong with that? We know an Angie from that creative writing course we took."

"You took. I hooked up with the guy across the aisle. Not Angie, like Angela, Angi like the Balinese Angin, short for wind. As in passing gas, farting, breaking wind..."

"Oh."

"Yep." She goes on, "Every now and then I get emails from my classmates or someone pops into one of the studios where I teach and they're all like, 'Angi, how's it going?'" Her cheeks tint a faint rose.

"I've never known you to be embarrassed."

"I wasn't embarrassed. I owned it. Katya Angi Kalonje. Actually, if you say my initials with a high enough pitch, that's what it sounded like. Kak! Kak!" she shouts, imitating her fart.

We both burst into snorting laughter and I only stop to say, "Your middle name is Aphrodite."

"Kak! Kak!" she repeats.

We both flop on my bare mattress.

"So, this is home now," I say when I catch my breath.

"For as long as you need it to be."

"And you?"

"Whether my middle name is Aphrodite or Agni, I'm committed to our friendship and seeing you out of this funk."

"Funk?" I ask, sitting up. "I should shower."

"You've been Navy-blue for too long. You need love in your life. And not the fictional kind." She sashays through the door and down the hall, calling, "You took a chance on this apartment, sight unseen. Take a chance on love," she pauses, and I hear a few boxes shuffling, "or at least sex."

I hope that the walls are thick and the neighbors didn't hear. Though I don't imagine she'd mind if the guy in 7G overheard.

"Do you mean like a blind date?" I ask, following her.

From behind the wall of boxes she says, "I mean like any kind of interaction with someone you find attractive and has the potential for passion. I saw you smile last night on the street. The big dimpled one."

"Carrick?" I freeze, wrapping my arms around my chest. My heart feels colder than the inside of the dark side of the moon.

She nods. "Navy, I just want to see you," she sighs, "I want to see my best friend happy."

"I'm-"

She shakes her head.