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first-rate location near the T.  It’s the middle floor of a three-family house in Cambridge, near Porter Square.  Three bedrooms, one bathroom, shared with a gay guy, a budding nursing student, and me.  We’re all terrible primps.
    The apartment is a conglomerated mess of surplus milk crates from my college days, plaid rugs and blankets from one roommate’s aunt in Nova Scotia and a Victorian couch my other roommate inherited it from her cousin in The Azores.  An eclectic mix of styles.  Shitty chic.
    “Here’s that black shirt you were looking for,” William says, tossing it at me.  “I wore it the other day.”
    William McEwan is twenty-five, like me, simply adorable, and is the typical fabulously clichéd gay best friend.  It is Boston, after all.  I met him at a bar literally crying into his beer about a relationship gone bad.  He needed a place to crash, so my other roommate, Mia Pimental, agreed he could stay.  Mia’s awesome whenever she’s around, which is never.  So, William and I have sort of become a “couple” ever since.  He’s the Will to my Grace, and he lands much more action than I could ever think of getting.
    I look at him standing in the doorway, a waif of a man.  “It sucks that you can wear my clothes.  I thought I’d lost this shirt in the murky underbelly of my room.”
    William cautiously enters and climbs over the gaping maw of my empty suitcase to plop a stack of clothes on my bed.  “I just took these out of the dryer,” he says.
    “You’re the best, Wills.”
    “And I accidentally dried this.”  He holds up one of my lace mesh underwire bras.  “I wasn’t supposed to, was I?”
    I shake my head, take the flimsy material, and pop him on the behind with it as he runs from me.  He squeals like a little girl and I hear Mia pound on the wall to her room.  “Shhh,” I say.  “Mia’s studying.”
    William stands outside my door—out of harm’s way—and fingers one of the two diamond studs he wears in his right ear.  “I’ve got to get to work soon, so if you need help, ask now.”  He works at Harvard University during the day and bartends at night at The Gray Gander (he calls it the Gay Gander) downtown.
    “Wanna pack all this up for me?” I ask.
    “Not on your life.  This room reminds me of the trash compactor scene in ‘Star Wars.’  I’m afraid something will pull me under.”
    I throw a pillow at him.  “You’re a dick.”
    “No, I’m not, but I do love them.”
    I roll my eyes and then gather up another load of clothes and go down the back stairs to our storage area in the basement where we have a washer and dryer.  The basement looks like the one from the “The Blair Witch Project”—creepy as hell!—and I always expect to see someone with a video camera in the corner screaming bloody murder.  I hate going down there after dark.  I try to focus on kittens, bunnies, and puppies as I switch on the overhead light and pull the knob to start the water flowing into the washer.
    Furry creatures hop and scamper out of my mind and a clear visual of Kyle Nettles morphs into plain view.  He looked so incredible walking down the hall at work yesterday in his Tommy Hilfiger slacks and a black button-down.  Images of those strong, masculine arms wrapped around me instigate tingly sensations in my stomach and below.  What am I thinking?  He’s a colleague.  A manager.  Someone I have to travel with.  Besides, no matter how amazingly handsome he is, he’s Jiles’ corporate lapdog and I loathe suck ups.  I can’t be entertaining fantasies of...
    There’s a scurrying sound in the back corner and my heart starts hammering away.
    Shit!  What was that?
    I choke on my scream when I hear a shuffle behind me followed by a creepy Hannibal Lecter-type, “Hello, Vanessa.”
    It’s our landlord, Dan Paulsen, a fifty-year-old work-from-home accountant with obsessive-compulsive disorder.  He lurches toward me holding a garden hose in his