“Wow.”

“I thought you’d like it,” he said, smiling shyly. “Monument views like this are rare.”

“Is this some sort of guerrilla marketing attempt to sell me this home? Because, I have to tell you, it’s working.”

“Am I that obvious?” he joked. “For the low, low price of four million dollars, all this could be yours.”

“Four million, huh?” I said, surveying the private yard and swimming pool below. “That’s actually not as much as I would have guessed. I’d have to sell a hell of a lot of presets, though.”

“A lot of what?”

“Presets. They’re basically filters,” I explained. “I’ve been developing a collection of them, and, once I’ve launched it, my followers will be able to essentially adjust their Instagram photos to look just like mine.”

He drew his thick brows together in confusion. “Now, admittedly, I don’t know much about Instagram because—”

“The Russian porn bots,” I supplied helpfully.

“Yeah,” he said, grinning. “Those. So maybe this is a dumb question, but why would people want to make their photos look like yours?”

I smiled and shrugged. “For the same reason people buy Kylie Jenner’s lip kits and Michael Jordan’s sneakers. They don’t actually believe wearing Kylie’s branded lip color will give them a pout like hers, or that Air Jordans will enable them to dunk a basketball, but they want to believe in the dream. And the dream that I’m selling is a perfectly curated, perfectly aesthetic life.”

He tilted his head, warm brown eyes searching mine. “Is your life perfect?”

The honest answer was no. Of course it wasn’t perfect. Whose was? I was lonely and living in a basement and losing my mind over the sound of some tree branches. But that wasn’t the kind of thing I could say aloud to the adorable, thoughtful man who had presented me with a breathtaking view of the city. It wasn’t even the kind of thing I could say aloud when I was alone in my own home. Be as if.

“I don’t have too many complaints.”

He smiled crookedly, his expression telling me that he saw through my charade but was too polite to call me on it. Finally, he said, “Tell me more about these presets. How do they work?”

“It’s easier to show you,” I said, pulling my phone from my bag. I snapped a quick photo of the view, capturing the glowing obelisk of the Washington Monument on the right side and a border of the balcony’s foliage across the bottom, but otherwise taking a photo of the velvety twilight sky over the roofs of buildings. I glanced at the photo and then showed it to him.

“Very nice,” he said, nodding appreciatively. “You have an eye for composition.”

I looked at him out of the corner of my eyes to gauge the legitimacy of the compliment—that was the kind of thing Nick might have said mockingly—but he looked earnest. I smiled and quickly added my chosen edits. Instantly, the sky was an inkier blue, the plants a more vibrant green, the monument whiter. I held the phone out to Max for his inspection.