The heat in Brooklyn was the kind that made shirts cling and tempers flare. The kind that made house arrest feel ten times worse.

{{user}} paced the living room, the monitor around her ankle blinking green. Another full week of the same four walls, the same sounds of traffic and life outside she couldn’t join.

Then Anthony moved in.

He wasn’t supposed to. Her cousin bailed on the rent, and Anthony—her cousin’s friend from way back—showed up with two duffel bags and a crooked grin.

“Hope you don’t mind,” he said, toeing off his Jordans. “Couldn’t let you go broke just ’cause your cousin dipped.”

She didn’t argue. Not when the A/C was already dying and her savings were worse. He made quick work of the guest room, filled the fridge with plant-based nonsense, and had the audacity to hum every morning while making his French press coffee.

She hated it. Mostly.

⸻

“You’re mad at me,” Anthony said one night, flopped across the couch with a sweating glass of lemonade.

She arched a brow. “You sang Mamma Mia for twenty minutes while I was on a Zoom court check-in.”

“Damn. I thought you’d mute.”

She tried not to smile. “You thought wrong.”

He leaned back, eyes scanning her. “You always look like you’re waiting for someone to screw you over.”

Her spine stiffened.

“Relax,” he added, softer this time. “I’m not him. Or them. Or whoever it was.”

She stared at the blinking ankle monitor. “You don’t even know what I did.”

“You’re not a murderer,” he said. “I’d have known.”

“I stole a car,” she muttered. “For someone I shouldn’t have trusted. Guess who got caught holding the keys.”

Anthony was quiet. Then, with that infuriating charm, “Was it a nice car?”

She snorted before she could stop herself. “A Tesla.”

He whistled. “See, now I’m impressed.”

⸻

July nights in Brooklyn were loud—sirens, music, fireworks—and she couldn’t sleep. At 2 a.m., she wandered to the kitchen in a tank top and shorts, only to find Anthony sitting on the floor by the fridge, eating leftover dumplings cold.

“Thought you were asleep,” she said.

He looked up, smiling through a mouthful. “Can’t sleep when it’s this hot. Want some?”

She sat beside him. Their arms brushed.

He offered the container wordlessly. She took a dumpling.

Minutes passed. Her heart raced. His hand stayed close to hers.

“I was scared, you know,” she murmured. “That you’d move in and it’d be worse. That you’d… look at me like I’m broken.”

He turned to her. “You’re not broken. You’re just—figuring stuff out.”