Page 65 of Lucky Strike

Ross, who was crossing the patio, glanced between them before shrugging his shoulders. Luna wasn’t against all help as she accepted assistance from Fireman Ryan with a glittering smile when he helped get the couch downstairs. Sam pulled his hat lower on his head so he could block it. The alternative was shooting eye daggers at the guy, which wasn’t professional landlord behavior.

Then she was gone.

For a couple nights, Sam lay in his bed, facing an unused pillow. She hadn’t occupied the space long, but his bed felt empty all the same. He regretted saying anything to her when he had returned from the bathroom. If he’d been smart, he would have pulled her into his arms so that they could simply be. His ears strained for the familiar sounds of someone moving around in the apartment upstairs, but there was nothing. The box of condoms was pushed beneath his bed to gather more dust.

A few days later, he didn’t have the luxury of avoiding apartment seven any longer. Business dictated it was time to move on. When the key clicked in the lock, and he bumped his shoulder to force the door open, he was hit with the warm, welcoming scent of Luna’s home, the same cozy, spicy fall smell it always had. The furniture was missing but everything else she had done to transform the place remained. The walls had the added color, the shades were on the window, the kitchen still had its modern facelift. In fact, the place was as pristine as it had ever looked, as though a cleaning crew had already been there. Sam would still hire someone, because the law dictated he had to, but he didn’t want to destroy her work. He took apartment pictures as is. What his dad didn’t know couldn’t hurt him, which in this case meant extra work.

Back in his own place, he added the photos to an apartment listing rental, and published it to all the standard channels before leaving to do work at his mother’s place.

“Is everything okay, Sammy?” his mother asked.

His phone had buzzed with a call for the third time, but not recognizing the number he returned the device to his pocket. “Yeah, fine.”

“I want to show you this new cute thing I bought—”

“What?” Sam couldn’t stop the agitation from infiltrating his voice. “Mom, you need to stop. This is all hard enough. We’ve been working at this for weeks now and have barely gotten anywhere. I feel like I’m in an uphill battle and my own mother is working against me.”

He stopped when her large gray eyes turned watery. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m really sorry. I-I’m just tired today is all. What did you want to show me?”

Sam felt even worse when his mother showed him a desk organizer in the shape of a raccoon. It sat in a crowded landscape of chaos but she showed him how she’d used it to organize some of her pens because she was tired of never being able to find one.

“I’m really trying,” his mother said. “You believe me, right?”

“I know you are.” He wasn’t sure how either of them would ever come out on the other side of the hoard, but he did his best to push those thoughts aside, giving her a small smile. “I like it. It’s really cute.”

After a few hours of negotiation over things his mother couldn’t let go of, Sam had had enough. He left to return home, realizing his phone had several voicemails and even more emails, all in regards to the new apartment listing. Schnell Ridge had never been overwhelmed with interest like this before. Obviously, whatever Luna had done to the place made it in high demand.

He set up appointments over the next several days but he had to do one thing first and purchased new paint. Out of all the potential tenants who came by, only one asked him why the outside door was red when all the other doors were white. It was a single mom who’d recently gone through a bad divorce, and Charlene eyed him warily. He realized it did appear odd but maybe he’d eventually paint everyone’s door a different color. When Sam explained the meaning behind the red door, her eyes glittered with unspent tears, with one spilling over as she looked at Luna’s decorating vision. A feeling of pride went through him.

More surprising was finding his dad’s car in the parking lot a few days later when he pulled in with his motorcycle after getting groceries. He hadn’t seen his dad for a good year and a half, although they talked about business fairly regularly. The overly tanned man sat in a patio chair, sporting a trimmed beard with his hair swept back and wearing a Hawaiian shirt and sunglasses.

“Dad?” Sam said as he approached.

“You’re still riding that thing? I bet that makes your mother unhappy.” His father jerked a chin in the direction of the motorcycle.

“Yeah. I…I didn’t know you were coming.”

“I see you’ve made a few changes. You decided to go ahead with the plants.”

“I used my own money.” Sam adjusted his baseball hat. “The tenants like it.”

“Yeah, I bet. It’s like free food included with the rent.”

While the little garden was producing some stuff, it wasn’t as though the tenants, or Sam, could forgo going to the grocery store, made clear by the bag he held in his hand. “Well, you always hated wasted space. And now it’s no longer wasted.”

His father eyed him. “So, you rented out that new vacancy pretty quickly I see.”

Sam’s stomach dropped. There was no way to hide the red door, and it only hinted at what was hidden inside the apartment. He tried to play it cool because what was done was done. “Yeah, pretty fast.”

“I got curious because we received some emails on the Sunderland Properties website, people asking to be put on a waiting list for Schnell Ridge.”

“Oh, yeah?” Sam feigned surprise despite experiencing the same thing on his end. “Sorry about that. It’s been a little busy. Is that why you’re here?”

His dad sighed. “I saw the pictures. After several emails, I had to look up your listing to see what all the buzz was about.”

“Okay.” Sam didn’t have anything else to say.

“Can I take a look inside?” the older man asked, as if Sam had any choice in the matter.

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