Quentin made it easy to want to explain her story. “I guess,” she said. “I mean, that’s not always what I was looking for. But I dated this guy, Sid, for a long time and things were good with him. We were happy together for a while. And then it all just sort of faded away and fell apart.” She reached for more clothes to fold for something to do with her hands. “The breakup itself wasn’t that bad, but it was right around the time my dad had a heart attack, and the whole thing just kind of kicked me when I was down.”

She stared off into the distance for a second.

“Anyways.” She sighed. “I guess what I really want is just someone who can show me a good time.”

“Who really cares about you,” Quentin said at the same time.

“Oh,” he said with a little smile and a shake of his head. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed I knew what you were gonna say.”

“That’s okay.”

His laundry dinged and he went to switch it over to the dryer. Cat stared at his back for a moment. Her thoughts were caught in the spiderweb of what he’d just said. Someone who really cares about you.

It was something to think about, that when Quentin heard her story, he’d assumed that she would go looking for connection with someone. Was that what he would have done?

Was that what he was looking for?

“HEY, I THINK I’M gonna invite our neighbor over to watch with us,” Quentin said to Jared the next Tuesday.

After a lot of consideration, he’d decided to find a way for Cat to hang out with Jared. For one, he’d told her he’d do it and he hated going back on his word. Even though it was a nightmare to think of her becoming one of Jared’s casual hookups, he thought there was something kind of condescending about trying to intervene. He didn’t think that Jared and Cat would be good together, but that wasn’t for him to decide. That was for Cat to decide. He had a crush on her, but that didn’t mean he was allowed to screw around in her dating life. Besides, if she got to know Jared better and still wanted to hook up with him, then Quentin figured that he and Cat probably weren’t right for one another in the first place.

So this was him, sticking to his stupid principles on a Tuesday night, trying not to crack a molar as he ground his teeth.

“Huh?” Jared looked up from where he was stirring pasta on the stove.

“Our neighbor Cat, across the hall.”

“Who has a cat across the hall? When Lara wanted me to get that pet hedgehog you told me this was a no-pets building.”

“Jared,” Quentin said with a laugh, dragging a hand down his face. “Look alive over there. First of all, this is a no-pets building. Second of all, you can’t have a hedgehog in New York City. It’s illegal. Third, I’m talking about our neighbor whose name is Cat. I’m gonna invite her over to watch the movie.”