"Ah. I’ve never felt a bed this comfortable!" Steven exclaid, shifting around and making himself even more comfortable.
It was the first ti he had ever slept on a bed like this. The mattress seed to conform to his body, and the sheets were cool and smooth against his skin. It was like floating on sothing that had no business existing in the sa world as the foam slab he had been sleeping on for the past four years.
He allowed himself to revel in it, staring up at the ceiling with a quiet smile on his face, letting the novelty wash over him for as long as it would last.
After a while, he reached into his pocket and took out his phone. He had been aning to call his forr landlord since he left the apartnt, but the drive and the move-in had pushed it clean out of his mind.
"That also reminds ," he muttered, pulling himself up slightly against the headboard. "I forgot to request the purchase clause for the lease agreent."
He had planned to have it added during the signing, but between the excitent of the mont and his focus on the paynt amount, it had slipped through entirely. He wasn’t worried about it. It wasn’t sothing that needed to happen today, and now that he was living in the building, requesting it would only be a matter of contacting Andrew directly. That could wait until things had settled.
He opened his call app and dialled his forr landlord’s number.
It rang several tis before the call was picked up.
"Good evening, sir."
"Good evening, Steven. You called this late." There was a brief pause, and when the man spoke again, the concern in his voice was unmistakable. "Did sothing happen? Are you in a tight spot? If you need the rent money back, I can arrange that. Just say the word."
Steven smiled. That was the man in a nutshell. Rough around the edges, direct to the point of sounding harsh sotis, but underneath all of it, genuinely decent.
"Sir, nothing’s wrong. I’m calling to let you know that I’ve moved out of the apartnt."
A silence followed. Longer than Steven had expected.
"Steven." The man’s voice had shifted slightly, quieter now, careful. "I want you to know that I’m not chasing you out. You take a while with the rent sotis, and I give you grief for it, I know that. But I’ve always considered you like a son. If you’re moving out because you feel pressured, there’s no need for that."
"It’s not that," Steven said. "I already found a place. I moved in tonight, actually."
"You found a place." It wasn’t quite a question. More like the man was turning the information over. "Which neighbourhood? Fifth Ward? Kashre Gardens?"
"River Oaks."
The silence that followed was different from the first one. Longer. Heavier.
"River Oaks," the man repeated.
"Yes, sir."
Another pause.
"Steven, I know you. I’ve known you for four years, and in all that ti, I’ve never once seen you lie or get yourself into anything that slled wrong. So I’m not going to question you." He exhaled slowly. "I don’t know what happened or how things changed so quickly, but I’m glad for you. Genuinely. Just be careful out there. Money has a way of changing situations and people, and not always in the direction a person expects."
"I will," Steven said. "And sir — I an it when I say this. I’m grateful for everything. The patience, the extensions, all of it. I know it wasn’t always easy on your end."
"You don’t owe anything for that."
"Still. It ant sothing."
The man was quiet for a mont. When he spoke again, his voice had that particular gruffness it got when he was trying not to sound moved.
"You doing well is enough for . That’s all I need to hear." A short pause. "Alright. I’ll let you go. Call if you ever need anything. Door’s always open."
"Sa goes for you, sir. Don’t hesitate."
"Sure, kid."
The call ended.
Steven set his phone down on the bedside table and lay back, staring at the ceiling again. The room was quiet, the kind of quiet that cost money, he now understood. There was no sounds from neighbours through thin walls. No distant traffic bleeding through single-pane glass.
His mind drifted, as he starred thinking of his life till this very mont.
He had lost his father at eight. A work accident on a construction site. The details had always been sparse, because his mother had never been able to bring herself to go through them in full. What Steven rembered most from that period wasn’t a single mont but a feeling — the way the apartnt had felt different when he ca ho that day, like sothing integral had been quietly removed from it overnight.
His mother had held everything together for the eight years that followed. She had worked two jobs for stretches of that ti, cooked every al, attended every school event she could manage, and never once let him see her fall apart, even though he understood now, as an adult, that she must have. She had died when he was sixteen. A stroke. Sudden and without warning, the way those things tend to go.
He had been alone since then. Not entirely without support — there had been neighbours, a teacher or two, the landlord he had just hung up with — but fundantally alone in the way that mattered. No one to call when things went sideways. No safety net. Just himself and whatever he could figure out.
He had spent years surviving on the money his parents had left behind, stretching it carefully, making decisions with the quiet and lack of joy of soone who couldn’t afford mistakes. There had been no room for anything extra. No room for ambition beyond the imdiate. Just the next week, the next month, the next bill.
Until yesterday.
He thought about the system, about the mont it had appeared in his vision after the car hit him, about the way everything had shifted in the hours that followed. He still didn’t fully understand it. He wasn’t sure he ever would. But it had co when it ca, and he was here now — lying in a bed that cost more than three months of his old rent, in a building where people kept Lamborghinis in the basent, with $1.7 million sitting in his account.
Steven exhaled slowly and let the thought settle.
His stomach interrupted the mont with a low, pointed growl, and Steven laughed softly to himself.
He hadn’t eaten since the chicken salad at lunch. With everything that had followed — the agency, the dealership, the move — dinner had simply never happened. He considered ordering sothing, then decided against it. He would go to the superstore in the morning and stock the kitchen properly. Eating out when he had a kitchen like the one sitting twenty feet away felt like a waste.
He reached over and turned off the bedside lamp.
The room dimd to near darkness, with only the faint ambient light of the city coming in through the floor-to-ceiling windows. From where he lay, he could see the upper edges of other buildings and the low orange glow of the skyline pressing against the night sky.
He had a view now.
That thought almost made him laugh again. He had a view.
He pulled the sheets up, closed his eyes, and let the bed do what it was clearly built to do.
Sleep ca faster than it ever had in the old apartnt.
***
The next morning, Steven opened his eyes to natural light filling the room. He lay still for a mont, and then the smile ca on its own, the sa one that had been finding him since yesterday afternoon.
He sat up and stretched, rolling his neck slowly. His body felt rested in a way that went beyond just the hours slept. The physique upgrade had been subtle, but he noticed it again now.
There was now a baseline ease in how his body moved, like everything had been tuned slightly better than before.
His stomach growled, making its position clear imdiately.
"Alright," he said to no one. "I hear you."
He got up, went to the bathroom, and went through his morning routine. When he stepped back out, he dressed in a fresh set of clothes, picked up his car key fob and apartnt key card from the bedside table, and left the apartnt.
The hallway was quiet. The elevator arrived quickly and he rode it down to the garage in silence, still adjusting to the fact that this was simply his morning now.
He stepped out into the garage, spotted the Aston Martin, and walked toward it. The neighbouring Porsche caught his eye briefly as he passed it. He glanced at it once and kept walking.
He got in, started the engine, and listened to it co alive beneath him.
Then he pulled out of the garage and headed for the superstore.
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