Page 31 of The Final Faceoff
Take that, Hailey, I win.Not sure what, but I feel like I got the upper hand here. Maybe not. Our friendship is not a competition, but if it was, she’d be winning everything.
“Oh, right, now you have a chef.” She crosses her arms, eyes narrowing like she’s mentally tallying all the things wrong with my life choices. “Did you actually pick anything in here?”
“I decided to let Scottie handle some of it, the rest . . .” I don’t tell her that the rest is up to her, like usual.
“That’s not the same as picking your own stuff, Leif.”
“I feel like it is.”
Hailey lets out a long-suffering sigh, pacing the open floor plan like she’s assessing a fixer-upper on one of those home renovation shows. “You know what this place is?” she finally says, turning to face me.
“Stunning? Sophisticated? A way to say, look I’m a responsible adult?”
“A staged photo in a real estate listing.”
I flinch. “Ouch.”
She gestures to the cavernous space around us. “Nothing in here looks like you. Where’s the personality? The evidence that an actual human being lives here? Do you even own a blanket?”
“Probably in the linen closet? I have one on my bed.”
Her eyes narrow. “A real blanket, or some overpriced ‘decorative throw’ Scottie forced on you?”
“ . . . Pass.”
Hailey shakes her head like I’m a deeply disappointing case study. “This is worse than I thought.”
I sigh dramatically. “I get the feeling you’re about to make suggestions or just go online to fix my problems. You need my credit card?”
She brightens. “Oh, absolutely.”
I nod toward the view. “And this? Should we just move to some home in Brooklyn?”
For a second, she doesn’t answer. She just looks out over the city again, something unreadable flickering across her face. Then, finally, she exhales and nods. “Hey, let’s not make rash decisions. The view stays.”
“How generous of you.”
“But,” she adds, lifting a finger, “we’re fixing everything else.”
I tilt my head. “We?”
“Yes,we. Because, clearly,youcannot be trusted to do it alone.”
I sigh, rubbing a hand down my face. “I’m regretting this already.”
She grins. “No, you’re not.”
She’s right, but I won’t say that out loud. I’m not letting her win . . . whatever this is. A few hours later, Hailey’s stuff arrives, and I realize I have made a colossal mistake. I had assumed it’d be a couple of bags. I had forgotten all the stuff we shoved in that storage room when she decided to stop leasing that tiny apartment in Queens.
There are books now, framed photos. Half a dozen blankets. A collection of random objects that defy logic but somehow make complete sense for her.
I watch in quiet horror as box after box fills the guest bedroom, my brain struggling to comprehend just how much stuff one person can own.
“We didn’t pack all this stuff into that storage unit, Hailey Bean.” I glare at her.
“Well, there are things I buy while traveling. Then, I store them when I come to visit . . . you don’t think I’m going to stop living just because I don’t have a place, right?”
Hailey, of course, is completely unbothered. She flips through a stack of books, tossing them onto my very expensive, very not-designed-for-books couch like she’s stocking a personal library.
