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Krista answers the door this time while I brace myself for whoever is on the other side. Who knows what this prospective tenant will be? A convicted murderer in chains? A cannibal? A fire-breathing dragon? At this point, nothing would surprise me.

But the woman standing in the doorway looks…normal.

She doesn’t have piercings going through every bit of loose skin in her face, she isn’t wearing any robes or tinfoil hats, and she isn’t trying to drill a hole in our wall. She’s got straight light brown hair that hangs loosely around her face and simple hoops in each of her ears. She’s around our age—maybe thirtyish—and she’s dressed in blue jeans and a hoodie.

“Hi.” She flashes an endearingly nervous smile. “My name is Whitney Cross.”

Krista beams back at her. “Hi, Whitney. I’m Krista, and this is Blake.”

Whitney sticks out a hand, which we both manage to shake without her having any psychic visions of a bloodbath in the living room—a good sign. This is already going much better than any other interview. “It’s great to meet you both,” she tells us politely.

“So we’re looking for someone to move into the single room upstairs as soon as possible,” Krista says. “Would that timeline work for you?”

Whitney bobs her head. “Yes, my lease ended at my last place, and I’m…um…in between apartments right now. I saw the ad you put up at Cosmo’s Diner, where I work, and it was like a godsend.”

“You work at Cosmo’s?” I ask. It’s a Greek diner about ten blocks from here that I’ve walked by many times but never entered.

“Yes. I’m a waitress.” She smiles politely. “What do you both do?”

“I manage a dry cleaner,” Krista says.

Now Whitney is looking at me, waiting for my answer. Even before my promotion, I used to be proud of what I did. Now I just mumble, “I’m between jobs.”

Krista, the master of subject changes, says, “Would you like to try a cookie? They’re homemade.”

Whitney scores major brownie points by accepting one of the chocolate chip cookies on the dining table and gushing about how delicious it is. She then follows us to the living room and makes all the appropriate oohs and aahs as we show her around.

“This is our fish, Goldy,” Krista says proudly, like she’s our child who just graduated from Harvard. But I can’t say I don’t have a bit of pride over how Goldy does those little loop-de-loops around the bowl. Do all fish do that? I think Goldy might be gifted.

“Cute!” Whitney says, leaning down to look closer.

Krista moves the tour to our kitchen, which is pretty standard, although the way Krista talks about it, you’d think it was a prize on The Price Is Right . She missed her calling in sales.

“Oh my God, a dishwasher would be heavenly,” Whitney sighs.

“You don’t have one now?” I ask, surprised.

Krista shoots me a look, but it’s a reasonable question. Who doesn’t have a dishwasher in this day and age? Is that a red flag?

Whitney hesitates for a moment, then shakes her head. “No, just the sink.”

“I didn’t have one until we moved in together either,” Krista confides. “Blake here doesn’t understand how the other half lives.”

The two of them share a laugh at my expense. But I don’t even care, because Whitney seems nice . First impressions can be misleading, but she seems so harmless. Not a cannibal—I’m, like, 99 percent sure.

Maybe this will actually work out.

After we show her around the first floor, we head upstairs. The stacked washer and dryer are at the top of the stairs, and Whitney’s eyes fly open at the sight of them. “Is that what I think it is?”

“You got it!” Krista says. “It’s a washer and dryer. Compact but still way better than lugging your clothes to the laundromat.”

“Oh my God, yes .” Whitney rubs her hands together. “The last time I was there, someone took all my clothes out of the dryer and threw them on the floor! It’s a jungle in there.”

I’m not thrilled about the idea of sharing my small washer and dryer with yet another woman. Krista already washes what seems like a month’s worth of clothes in a single week. Still, we can’t rent out the room and expect the tenant to take her clothes to the laundromat two blocks away when there’s a machine ten feet from her bedroom door.

There is one bathroom as well as two bedrooms on the second floor of the brownstone—the master bedroom that Krista and I share, plus another smaller room. I had fantasized about filling our extra bedrooms with children, but that seems like a lifetime ago. Now we have to hand over one of those bedrooms to a stranger, and if I don’t find a job soon, the other one might be up for grabs as well.

We show Whitney the small bathroom with the shower that we will apparently all be sharing, since we only have two bathrooms, and the one downstairs is a half bath. Finally, we make our way up the narrow stairs to the top floor of the brownstone.

The third floor has lower ceilings than the rest of the house. I always feel like I need to duck down even though we measured the ceiling height at six feet five inches—a full half a foot greater than my height. This floor contains one furnished bedroom as well as a wide-open space that Krista and I argued we could one day turn into either a playroom or a man cave. (Guess who argued for the latter.)

The furnished bedroom has been serving as a guest room until now, although we haven’t yet had one guest. It contains a double bed, a dresser, a half-size bookcase, and a large closet.

“We also have a room that’s unfurnished on the second floor,” Krista adds, “if you’d prefer that.”

“No.” Whitney’s gaze rakes over the furniture that I spent far too much on, back when I had money to burn. “This is perfect . I don’t have any of my own stuff.”

What thirty-year-old woman doesn’t have a scrap of furniture to her name?

Whitney’s eyes are shining as she walks over to the closet and throws open the door. It’s not a walk-in closet, but it’s a decent size. As I watch her make plans for our spare bedroom, another thought hits me:

Whitney is pretty.

Okay, it’s not like I didn’t notice when she first walked in. I mean, I’m a thirty-two-year-old guy, and I have eyes. But now that I can see her in the light from the large window in the guest bedroom, I realize she’s even prettier than I thought. In jeans and a hoodie, without makeup on, she’s a nice-looking girl. If she made even the slightest effort? Well, she’d be really hot. And she’s just my type too.

I glance over at Krista, wondering if the same thought has occurred to her. Is she worried about a really pretty girl moving in with us? Is it the kind of thing that might give her pause?

But no, she doesn’t look worried. She’s smiling. She trusts me.

Even though fifteen minutes ago, she looked concerned I might stab her to death in our living room.

She should trust me though. It’s not like I’m going to mess around with the girl we live with right under my own fiancée’s nose. I’d have to be not only the world’s biggest asshole but also a complete idiot.

Whitney turns to us, her face glowing. “I love it. I don’t know if you have anyone else interested, but I’m interested. Very interested.”

Krista arches an eyebrow at me. She’s asking my permission to offer Whitney the room.

I take a deep breath. I don’t want to rent this room to Whitney, but that has nothing to do with Whitney herself. I don’t want anyone to have this room. I want my old damn job back so I can pay the mortgage myself, without having to open our doors to a stranger. But that’s not ever going to happen, so I have to be realistic. If we don’t bring in some cash soon, we’re going to lose the brownstone entirely.

And Whitney is nice. You can just tell. She’s not a weirdo, she doesn’t seem like the type who would blast heavy metal in the middle of the night, and she’s polite. She’s head and shoulders better than anyone we’ve interviewed so far.

So I look back at Krista and nod.

“Actually,” Krista says to Whitney, “we haven’t found someone yet. We’d love to offer you the room.”

“Really?” Whitney’s face turns pink with happiness. “Oh my God, that’s amazing. Thank you! I’ve got a check on me so I can give you the first month’s rent and the security deposit and—”

“Nope.” I hold up a hand. “Before you move in, we need to do our due diligence. We need your Social Security number to do a credit check, and we’d like at least one reference.”

The smile instantly slips from Whitney’s face.

That bothers me. Is there a reason why she’s worried about a credit check? Why wouldn’t she be able to provide a reference? A little alarm bell sounds in the back of my head.

If she can’t give us a Social Security number, she’s out of here. I don’t give a shit how nice or pretty she is.

“It’s just a formality,” Krista adds quickly. “It’s not a problem, is it?”

The smile quickly returns. “Of course not,” Whitney assures us. “I can give you whatever you need. I’m just so excited to live here, and I want to move in as soon as possible.”

I let out a breath. Okay, she’s just eager—that’s all. She’s going to give us her social, and we’ll run a credit check and a background check, and it’ll be fine. God knows we need the money. If she can pay us the first month’s rent and security in advance, that will give us some breathing room.

Except… Why does this voice in the back of my head keep telling me to get rid of her right now, while I still can?