Room For One More

The first thing Natalie did was clear out the guest room closet. Not that it was overflowing, it was just a few suitcases, an old space heater, and a pile of boots she hadn’t worn since before the divorce. He was going to be living her now though, and he would need the room for his own stuff.

Her fingers paused on a soft knit throw, brushing it, unable to deny memories that came with it from her old home. A previous life. The coming reality felt more real with every empty hanger.

She didn’t regret saying yes. Lisa had sounded so grateful, so relieved. “The dorms are just making the cost of college so much more expensive,” she’d said. “He just needs somewhere stable to live and study.”

And Natalie could use the help. Sure, she didn’t need a two bedroom, but it was originally supposed to be a home office-guestroom combo. The office never really got used though. Neither did it get used as a guest room. The only person that’d come to use it was a college friend, for one weekend.

The new city, the rent, and the mild panic of watching her savings thin out while she waited for a promotion that may never come, meant the modest monthly payment they’d agreed on wasn’t nothing.

But still. A 20-year-old. A boy? A man?

She leaned in the doorway, arms crossed, staring at the freshly made bed. The sheets were new. So were the towels. She’d even swapped out the nightstand lamp for something a little more masculine, not that she thought he’d care. But something about sharing space again made her suddenly, irrationally aware of the details. The angles. The proximity.

She hadn’t lived with a young man since she was in her twenties, newly married, and trying to build something solid. That had been a long time ago. She was 32 now, divorced, and focused on work. Trying to rebuild in a new city, in a new apartment, with a new routine she was only just getting used to. Yoga in the mornings, occasional late nights of work to show her commitment, finished up with wine and reruns until her brain slowed down.

She moved through the apartment assessing everything. What had been her place for nearly a year, was about to be his home, too. At least for a little while. She scrubbed the stove, rearranged the contents of the fridge, bought an extra towel set.

It was like she was nesting all over again.

But now? She wasn’t sure what to expect.

She remembered the last time she saw him, barely seventeen. All awkward shoulders and posture, and shaggy hair. Lisa said he’d grown up, that he’d filled out. “You’ll be impressed,” she’d said with a wink, half-joking, not knowing how strange that would come across. Natalie had laughed it off, but it lingered. She wasn’t expecting him. She was expecting company, noise, a warm body in the hall. Someone to fill the silence she only recently realized was becoming overwhelming and a constant throughout the house. At first it was welcome, in contrast to the fights her marriage had turned into. But lately, it seemed ever-present and lonely.

She walked to the kitchen, opened the fridge, then shut it again without taking anything. She already felt the shift, and he hadn’t even arrived yet. It would be nice to have someone around again. She told herself that. Repeated it. Just… she wouldn’t have expected that someone to be a 20-year-old.

Heading back to the guest room, more out of an anxious energy than anything else, she sat on the edge of the bed and let out a breath.

“I can handle this,” she said aloud. “It’s just someone to share the space.”

But even as she said it, her eyes drifted to the hallway where the closed door to her bedroom suddenly felt just a little too close to his.

This wasn’t just a week or two. Lisa had said through college. Suddenly that felt so undefined. What did that mean? Two years? Would he be expecting to stay here if went for his masters? Aiden would come and go, sure, classes, internships, but the reality was he’d be living here. In her quiet, post-divorce space that she had finally made her own.

She was used to hearing only her own footsteps. To dancing barefoot through the kitchen with wine and music. To not worrying about someone else hearing her cry in the shower on bad days.

That life was starting to feel normal. And now she was about to share it with the 20-year-old child of her best friend. One who, if she was honest, she barely ever knew in the first place.

Still… it would be nice to have someone around again. Even if it wasn’t someone she wouldn’t’ve expected.

“I can handle this,” she said aloud. “It’s temporary.” She wasn’t actually sure if she believed that, especially not after her conversation with Lisa on the phone last night.

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