“Sorry, guys. I’ll clean this up.”

Mara whirled around, her ubiquitous bleach spray in hand. “You should have cleaned up last night.”

“I know. I screwed up.”

Toni, pouring coffee from a French press into a chipped mug, didn’t look up. “If you’re hungry at four A.M., go to a diner.”

Nat remembered Miguel’s suggestion to that effect. But she barely had enough money to cover her next tuition installment, and it wasn’t looking good for her rent. Even a burger would have broken the budget. Miguel would have paid, she knew, but his finances had to be tight, too. She hadn’t wanted to feel beholden to him, so she had offered to cook. And then, they’d ended up in bed.

“Toni and I aren’t comfortable with all the guys you’ve been bringing home,” Mara said, attacking the tomato sauce on the table as if she were cleaning up a chemical spill.

Nat felt her cheeks flush, a combination of humiliation and anger. All the guys? She could count on one hand the number of men she’d brought home since she’d been living there. Nat was not promiscuous; she was twenty-one. And her roommates weren’t exactly virgins. Mara had had a fling with one of her TAs just last year. And Toni used to have noisy sex with a hot computer science student, back when she drank wine and watched The Bachelor, and laughed, on occasion. Both her roommates needed to lighten up, probably needed to get laid.

Nat kept her voice calm. “I don’t bring home many guys.”

Toni smirked. “Really? Isn’t there a guy in your bed right now?”

“No,” Nat lied.

“We heard his voice last night,” Mara sniped.

“It’s not what you think,” Nat retorted. “A friend from work walked me home. Friday nights are crazy at the bar, and we were hungry and exhausted, I made us some pasta and invited him to crash.”

It might have been true. She was still wearing her panties, after all.

She watched the other women exchange a look. Was it doubt? Skepticism? Or guilt? Yes, that’s what it was. They felt bad for accusing her when they didn’t have all the facts. Nat hammered the nail in.

“I’d appreciate not being slut-shamed when I was only helping out a colleague.”

“Sorry,” mumbled Toni, dunking her lips into her coffee.

Mara kept scrubbing, probably formulating an articulate apology.

That’s when Miguel walked into the kitchen—rumpled from sleep, hungover, handsome. And stark naked.

“Is everything okay out here?” he said, hands inadequately covering his crotch. “I heard banging. . . .”

Nat observed the expression on her roommates’ faces. This time, it could not be misconstrued.

Validation. And disapproval.

2

The Commute

On Monday, Nat took the subway into Manhattan. Outside, it was a brisk February morning, but the press of bodies in the car precipitated a drastic rise in temperature. She unfurled the fuzzy gray scarf from around her neck and lowered the zipper on her thrift-store wool coat. She kept her knitted gloves on. Public transit was crawling with germs.