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parked and I got out my knees were shaking, and not just from unbridled lust and pre-orgasmic tremors caused by a car so sexy I could suddenly understand those internet weirdos who marry inanimate objects, like their blenders or a highway overpass.
    Once I got out of the car, however, I realized I was very nervous. I lifted my chin and tried not to show it. “This way,” I said, and led him to one of the ground floor units. Pulling out the spare key Rose had given me, I opened the door.
    “Hello?” I called into the empty apartment. It was a courtesy, nothing more. Rose worked late every day of the week, and on the weekends. I'm pretty sure some days she didn't even sleep. I honestly didn't know how she did it. Just thinking about it exhausted me.
    So, as always, there was no answer. I opened the door wide and stepped inside, flipping on the lights.
    Kent entered behind me, so I was able to hear the low whistle that escaped from between his lips. “Wow,” he said, looking around.
    “Wow what?” I asked him as I trudged over to the couch where my meager worldly possessions sat. Half of them were still in their original garbage bags. Just the two. I didn't have a third hand to help me when I'd hauled them up here.
    “I'm just impressed at how clean this place is,” he said. “I thought Rose worked full time. Is this your doing?”
    I nodded. “Yeah, it wasn't in the best shape when I got here a week ago, but it wasn't too bad. You know, since she's a lawyer she works all the time. She's never here.” I started gathering my precisely folded dirty clothes and stuffing them back into their bags. There was really no point in separating them out—I'd worn most of the clothes I already owned and I didn't have any coins for the laundry and I really didn't feel comfortable asking Rose for anything else.
    “Mm,” he said. “I work all the time and my place is a pit.”
    I stuffed my laptop and power cord in between a couple of soft shirts. “That's because you have better things to do than clean,” I told him. I had hobbies once, but most hobbies require resources.
    “I don't know,” he said. “Most of the stuff I do feels pretty pointless, honestly.”
    I looked up, surprised. He was so tall, especially from my spot here on the floor next to the couch. He loomed in the dim twilight—I hadn't realized it was so late. The worn carpet under my hands made me think of rug burn and all the delicious ways one could get it.
    Licking my lips I turned back to my task, standing up and surveying the apartment to see if I'd left anything.
    I suddenly, horribly, realized how much I had lost in the past few years. I had no books and no movies with me—some of them were digital, sure, but well-worn copies of favorite books and old DVDs that had been given to me as gifts by well-meaning relatives who snapped up the fullscreen editions of everything—those were all gone now. I'd sold them off dozens at a time for money. Food, rent, my boyfriend's weed and MDMA habits... all of that gone down the drain. I'd spent some of it too, on alcohol, before I'd realized I was heading down the path of the barflys in the bars I tended.
    Even when I'd finally landed a good job at a trendy bar, somehow all my money still managed to be eaten up and sucked down the drain. There was never enough to go around. I'd been struggling for years, I realized, bits of me falling away until my entire life could fit into two trash bags. I hadn't even left much behind when I left, and I'd been too upset to realize how little I actually had at the time.
    Shit , I thought.
    Lost, I cast about the room, staring at the clean surfaces, the well-polished woods and the cleaned baseboards. I'd even scrubbed the walls down and cleaned the cabinets, but other than that I'd left nothing behind except the absence of dirt and filth.
    "I... I don't think I have anything else to get," I said after a moment.
    Kent made a noise that I couldn't really place. "Not even a