Read Chapter 2: The Cheap Lease

The flat smelled of damp plaster and someone else’s failed ambitions. Jazz stepped over a pile of discarded pizza boxes and tried not to touch the wall where a suspicious dark patch bloomed near the skirting board.

“So,” the letting agent said, a woman named Priya who had clearly given up on enthusiasm two viewings ago, “as you can see, it’s a blank canvas.”

“It’s a ruin,” Jazz muttered.

Tom, standing by the bay window with his phone held up to the light, turned with an infuriating grin. “It’s got good bones.”

“It’s got good *nothing*. The boiler is from 1998, the kitchen has one working hob, and I’m fairly certain that’s mould.” She pointed at the dark patch.

“It’s condensation,” Priya said quickly, not looking at it.

Jazz shot Tom a look that said *help me out here*, but he was already pacing the length of the living room, his long strides eating up the cramped space. She watched him stop at the far wall, press his palm against it, and nod like he was communing with the plaster.

“Two reception rooms, but we can knock through,” he said. “Open plan workspace. The second bedroom can be a studio for you. Kitchen’s small but functional.”

“The second bedroom is the size of a shoebox.”

“It’s got a window.”

“It’s got a *skylight*. Looking directly into someone else’s bathroom.”

Tom’s grin widened. “Good for light. Bad for privacy.”

Jazz crossed her arms. She’d been up since six, had a seven-minute phone call with her landlord confirming her rent was going up another two hundred a month, and had spent four hours since the Marcus Chen disaster trying to salvage what was left of their credibility. She was tired, she was wired on her third coffee of the day, and the last person she wanted to be standing in a mouldy Zone 3 flat with was Tom fucking Ashworth.

But here she was.

“Marcus gave us thirty days,” she said, low enough for Priya not to hear. “Thirty days to get two hundred hosts, a thousand bookings, and a demo that doesn’t crash. We can’t do that from our separate kitchens. We can’t afford co-working space. And if we don’t sign something by tomorrow, I’m paying market rate for a one-bed in Hackney that I cannot afford.”

Tom’s expression shifted. For a moment, the cocky grin flickered, and she saw something else underneath—something careful, almost concerned. It vanished before she could name it.

“So we make it work,” he said.

“We hate each other.”

“We *disagree*.” He shrugged. “There’s a difference.”

“Name one.”

Priya coughed delicately. “I’ve got another viewing at noon. Are we interested or not?”

The flat stared back at them. Peeling linoleum in the tiny kitchen. A bathroom with a shower that dribbled, according to Priya, “with character.” Two bedrooms—one bigger and one barely that—connected by a narrow hallway that smelled vaguely of curry from the restaurant downstairs. Outside, a bus rumbled past, rattling the windows in their frames.

It was a disaster.

It was eight hundred pounds a month, bills included. A third of what any other option would cost them. And it was available immediately.

“Let’s talk,” Jazz said to Tom, jerking her head toward the corner by the window.

They huddled there, shoulders almost touching. Jazz kept her voice low. “I looked at four other places yesterday. This is the cheapest by two hundred, and it’s the only one that allows us to use it as a registered business address. We have no other option.”

“You’ve been looking without me?”

“I assumed you were too busy wining and dining investors.”

“I was—I had a call with an angel from Berlin. She said she’d consider a follow-up if we have traction.” Tom’s jaw tightened. “Which we won’t have if we keep paying four hundred a week for that WeWork flex desk we can’t use past six PM.”

Jazz almost smiled. Almost. “So we agree. We take the flat.”

“We take the flat.”

“We move in tomorrow, make it an office by day, and—please God—manage to sleep in our separate rooms at night.”

“Separate rooms,” Tom echoed. There was a strange weight to the words.

Jazz ignored it. “Fine. Let’s sign.”

---

Priya had them fill out forms on the cracked lid of a washing machine that served as the hallway table. The lease was three months, with an option to renew. Jazz read every clause, her pen hovering over each signature, her brain running calculations she already knew by heart: deposit divided by two, her share of the eight hundred versus her current rent, what she’d have left over for groceries if she ate noodles for the next ninety days.

The numbers were tight. But they worked.

She signed. Tom signed. Priya photocopied their IDs and gave them keys on a ring that held two identical silver keys and a cheap plastic fish keyring with the flat number on it.

“Welcome home,” Priya said, with the first genuine expression Jazz had seen on her face. It might have been pity.

Later, standing on the pavement outside, the November wind biting at her ears, Jazz looked at the building’s front. A launderette on the ground floor, a shuttered south Indian restaurant next door, and above it all, their new home: a grimy sash window on the first floor, the net curtain twisted at an angle, a single dead plant on the sill.

“We did it,” Tom said.

“We ruined ourselves.”

“Same thing, different framing.”

Jazz laughed despite herself. The sound surprised her—it came out scratchy, unused. Tom’s expression caught it, softened.

“I’ll pick up the keys to a van tomorrow morning,” he said. “Eight AM. Bring boxes.”

“I don’t have that much stuff.”

“You have an entire studio’s worth of equipment. Three monitors, a 3D printer, that enormous drafting table. I’ve seen your social media.”

She raised an eyebrow. “You follow my social media?”

“I keep tabs on the competition.”

“We’re co-founders, Tom. Not competition.”

His gaze held hers for a beat longer than was comfortable. “Right. Co-founders.”

He looked away first, shoving his hands in his pockets and rocking back on his heels. The bus groaned past again, spitting exhaust into the damp air. Jazz watched the flat’s window, where their dead plant stood sentinel, and felt the weight of the key in her coat pocket.

Three months. It was only three months.

Whatever happened, she could survive it.

---

Her phone buzzed as they parted ways at the bus stop—Marcus Chen, no doubt, checking in on their progress, or her mother, who had a sixth sense for when Jazz was about to make a terrible financial decision. She fished it out, ready to dismiss it.

It was neither.

**Tom:** *Checked the water pressure again. It's worse than I thought. But we have heating. Small victories.*

A photo followed. His hand against a radiator that was, indeed, giving off a faint, promising warmth.

Jazz stared at the message for a long moment. She should reply something short, professional. *Noted.* Or a thumbs-up. That was the right move.

Instead, she typed:

**Jazz:** *If you've been back in the flat without me, I'm charging you double for the smelling-salt fund.*

She hit send before she could stop herself.

His reply came through seconds later.

**Tom:** *You're adorable when you're budgeting.*

Jazz felt the heat rise to her cheeks and shoved the phone back into her pocket without answering. Her hand brushed against the flat keys, the plastic fish digging into her palm.

Tomorrow, the van. Tomorrow, boxes. Tomorrow, three months of twenty-four-seven proximity with the man she’d spent four years convincing herself she hated.

She turned her collar up against the wind and walked home, the weight of the keys a constant reminder that there was no backing out now.

When she finally reached her own flat, she sat on the edge of her bed and opened the small notebook she kept in her nightstand. The same one where she’d written the dangerous line—*Do not fall for him again*—in ink so harsh it had scored the paper.

Underneath it, she added, in smaller, shakier letters:

*Three months. Don't be an idiot.*

She closed the book just as her phone buzzed again. Tom again. She shouldn’t look. She looked.

**Tom:** *Kidding, obviously. But I'm making tea at the flat tomorrow. Bring your own mug. I don't share.*