Chapter 3: The Aftermath of a Touch
The white roar of the industrial fan filled the silence Y/n had left behind. It was a sound like concentrated wind, stirring the air but doing nothing to calm the tempest in Margot’s head. She stared at the neat, rectangular wound in her wall, the exposed studs like bones. I really was on the phone with my mom. The simple, deflating truth of it made her want to laugh, or maybe crawl into the hole herself. All her flustered avoidance, her carefully timed elevator exits, had been built on a foundation of pure, self-important misunderstanding.
A firm, single knock came at the door twenty minutes later.
Margot’s heart did a foolish, adolescent leap. She smoothed her hair, took a breath, and opened it.
Y/n stood there, hefting a large, boxy fan. “Forgot the cavalry,” she said, a faint sheen of new sweat on her temple. She must have gone all the way to the basement.
“Right. Of course.” Margot moved aside, the fan’s hum growing louder as Y/n carried it into the living room. She positioned it expertly on the drop cloth, aiming the blast directly into the cavity, and plugged it in. A second layer of noise joined the first, a dissonant duet of drying.
Y/n stood, hands on her hips, surveying her work. Then she turned. Her gaze was direct, neither challenging nor soft. It just was. The city’s light framed her from behind, haloing her curls.
“You know,” Y/n said, her voice cutting through the mechanical whir, “you don’t have to be embarrassed.”
Margot opened her mouth to deflect, but Y/n continued, her tone pragmatic, as if discussing the leak.
“I get the feeling something… weirded you out. In the elevator. And you’ve been doing a pretty elaborate dance to not share a car with me since.” A tiny, crooked smile. “I notice things. It’s the job.”
The directness was a bucket of cold water. Margot, used to the layered subtext of Hollywood conversations, felt utterly disarmed. She clutched at the last shred of her dignity. “Nothing happened. I was on the phone. Bluetooth. Same as you.”
Y/n nodded slowly, accepting the words but not the sentiment behind them. “Okay.” She wiped her hands on her pants. “Okay. Just… if it was because I was in your space, or because you thought I was listening, I wasn’t. And if it was something else…” She trailed off, giving Margot a long, quiet look that seemed to see every contradictory impulse. “Well. My mom’s lecture was way worse, trust me. She can hold a grudge like a pro.”
The joke was an offering, a bridge back to neutral ground.
Margot managed a weak smile. “Noted.”
Y/n gave a final, satisfied nod at the whirring fans. “They should run for 24 hours. I’ll come patch it up tomorrow night, if that works.”
“Tomorrow’s fine.”
“Cool.” Y/n headed for the door. This exit felt different from the last—slower, or maybe Margot was just hyper-aware. She paused once more with her hand on the knob. “For the record,” she said, not looking back, her voice barely audible over the fans, “I don’t make a habit of getting into people’s personal space. Or letting them in mine. Just… in case that was part of the weird.”
Then she was gone.
The apartment felt cavernous with only the fans for company. Margot didn’t move for a full minute. The confession, for what else could it be, hung in the dust-moted air. I don’t let people in.
Who was avoiding whom?
The thought propelled her to the window. She watched the street below, and soon enough, Y/n emerged from the building’s side service entrance. She walked with a loose, long-limbed stride, not toward the trendy shops, but in the direction of the wholesale district. A woman completely at home in her own skin, yet fiercely protective of its boundaries. Margot had mistaken that protectiveness for something directed at her, when it was clearly a fortress Y/n lived within every day.
She looked at her perfect, damaged apartment. At the two fans howling at a hole. It was the most honest thing in the room.
The next evening, Margot cancelled a dinner reservation. She told her agent she was researching a role, which wasn’t entirely a lie. She changed out of her designer loungewear into simple jeans and a worn-in band t-shirt. She ordered Chinese food for two, just in case, and left the containers in the warm oven. Then she waited.
At 7:03 PM, a knock.
Y/n stood there in clean but faded work pants and a soft-looking henley, her curly hair damp, smelling of plain soap and the cool evening air. A small tool caddy was in her hand, along with a bag of joint compound.
“Right on time,” Margot said, sounding ridiculously formal to her own ears.
“Drywall waits for no one,” Y/n replied, stepping in. Her eyes went straight to the hole, assessing. The fans had done their job; the wood inside was pale and dry. She unplugged them, and the sudden silence was a physical relief, ringing in their ears.
She got to work without ceremony, sanding the edges of the cut smooth. The scritch-scratch of the sanding block was the only sound. Margot perched on the arm of her sofa, watching the careful, sure movements.
“You’re good at that,” she said finally.
Y/n shrugged, not stopping. “You do anything for ten years, you get okay at it.”
“Is that what you want to do? Construction?”
This time Y/n paused, glancing over. “It pays the bills. Lets me be my own boss. There’s a… satisfaction to it. Fixing things you can see. At the end of the day, something is different. Solid.” She resumed sanding. “What about you? You ever want to do anything besides… that?” She gestured vaguely, encompassing the penthouse, the view, the fame.
Margot laughed, a real one. “Sometimes. On the really long shoots, I dream about being a barista. Just making a latte perfectly, no one knowing my name, no one taking my picture.”
“I’d take your picture,” Y/n said, very focused on her sanding. “If you made a perfect leaf in the foam. That’s art.”
The casual, effortless kindness of it stunned Margot silent.
Y/n taped the seams, then began applying the joint compound with a wide knife. It was hypnotic, the smooth sweeps, the building of a new surface from nothing.
“You hungry?” Margot blurted out. “I have enough kung pao chicken to destabilize a small government.”
Y/n’s shoulders shook with a silent laugh. “Yeah. Actually. I skipped lunch.” She finished the last swipe and set the knife down. “Let me just clean up.”
She washed her hands meticulously at the kitchen sink, then leaned against the marble island as Margot pulled out the containers. They ate straight from the boxes, standing up.
“This is better than my mom’s pastelón,” Y/n said around a mouthful, closing her eyes in appreciation. “Don’t tell her I said that.”
“Your secret is safe with me.”
They ate in comfortable quiet for a moment, the city’s lights twinking on below.
“You were right,” Margot said softly, putting her fork down. “I was avoiding you.”
Y/n stopped chewing, listened.
“In the elevator… I thought you’d overheard my call. It was my agent. He was being… vulgar, about securing a role. Talking about me like I was a commodity. I was mortified. I thought you’d heard it all, seen the whole pathetic machinery.” She looked down at her hands. “And then I was ashamed that I was ashamed, you know? So I just… hid.”
Y/n nodded, swallowing. She didn’t offer empty forgiveness or downplay it. “That sucks. Your agent sounds like a piece of work.”
“He is. He’s also the best.” Margot sighed. “The weirdness wasn’t about you. It was about… the reflection I thought you saw.”
Y/n considered this, leaning back. “I get that. More than you might think.” She didn’t elaborate. She didn’t need to. The understanding was there, in the lines around her eyes, in the set of her shoulders. “For what it’s worth, all I heard was you saying ‘uh-huh’ a lot. Sounded bored out of your mind.”
Margot laughed, a release of pressure. “I was.”
Y/n smiled, and it was the warm, laughing one from the elevator, the one that transformed her. “Good.” She looked back at the wall, where the fresh mud was already beginning to dry. “Needs another coat. And sanding. I’ll have to come back.”
“I’ll be here,” Margot said, and she didn’t just mean for the wall.