Does The Sublet Have A Happy Ending?

"Don't move!" Coming home late from work, I was sneaking a shower in the shared bathroom of my rental when a warm body suddenly pressed up against me. His rough palm clamped over my mouth, pinning me against the cold tile. He held me there against the damp wall, his skin burning hot against my back as he let out a low, gravelly threat. "My guys are right outside. Just try and scream." Instead of panicking, I leaned back into him, shifting slightly. I tilted my head back and breathed softly into his ear. “So… you want everyone hear? I don't mind… we can give it a try.”

Max Walker, a charming but untidy chef, is the last person Grace Chen, an uptight editorial assistant, anticipates when she finds herself in dire need of a roommate. He is spontaneous, gregarious, and utterly unorganized everything she is not. Despite their apparent inability to live together, their desperate financial situation compels them to attempt. What begins as a personality conflict gradually changes into something neither party anticipated. Grace and Max learn that sometimes the one who makes you feel at home is the one who drives you crazy as their walls fall down. But when their new connection is threatened by past relationships and job chances, they have to choose between their planned life and their newfound love.

During the two months that I was away for a competition, my neighbors insulted me in the neighborhood’s common group chat. [The girl living on the ninth floor, you look like a decent girl. Why are you bringing so many men back home every day?] [Can you moan a little softer? I don’t care if you’re a sex worker, but if you keep making loud noises until midnight, don’t blame me for calling the police!] [Don’t call the police yet. I haven’t had my turn. How much are you charging, Charlene?] My heart sank. Before I left for my competition, I had asked my boyfriend, Jacob Smith, to take care of my luxury river-view apartment. That way, he could keep an eye on my expensive paintings. What was happening? I rushed home in confusion, but when I opened the door, I was further dumbfounded. My 3,000-square-foot apartment had been partitioned into 30 rooms. Meanwhile, Jacob’s childhood friend, Prissy Black, was holding a string of keys as she collected rent money. When they saw me, everyone started laughing. “What? Are you here to rent from Prissy after learning that she’s providing cheap rooms in such a pristine location? “Too bad everyone knows that you’re eyeing her boyfriend. You won’t be able to benefit from doing such a thing!” I was extremely furious as I approached Jacob to talk about it. However, he told me that it was Prissy’s dream to be a landlady. He asked me not to pay it any mind and to treat it as doing a good deed. “You’re rich anyway. Don’t be so calculative. Everyone’s happy now, so what’s wrong with that?” The keys tinkled in Prissy’s hand as if they were taunting me. “This house doesn’t welcome stray animals like you. You have yourself to blame for not having such a nice boyfriend.” The two of them acted all lovey-dovey in front of me, and I immediately called the police. “Someone’s trespassing on my property, and my painting that’s worth 15 million dollars has gone missing. What type of punishment would this entail?”

“Three hundred dollars for rent just went through. Thanks, Claire.” A text popped up on Claire’s phone from a contact saved as “Mark.” I grabbed the phone before she could react and froze. “Rent?” I asked. “You’ve been telling me every month that money was from your side job.” Her face went stiff. She reached for the phone, trying to take it back. “He was my sister Emily’s husband,” Claire said quickly. “After Emily died, he was left with two kids. I was only trying to help.” My hand brushed against the anniversary gift in my pocket, and something inside me went cold. “Which apartment is he paying rent for?” Her lips parted, but it took her a long time to answer. When she finally did, she gave me the name of a neighborhood. My ears rang. It was the downtown apartment my parents had left me. A spacious unit that could rent for ten thousand a month at market rate. And she had leased it to her widowed brother-in-law for the absurdly low price of three hundred dollars.

My roommate was Rachel Travis, and something about her behavior always felt… off. On social media, she hit the like button on every single person’s posts, except mine. Whenever she asked for help, I was always there. However, the one time I asked her for a pad, she wrinkled her nose and called it "disgusting". For my birthday, I invited the whole dorm to dinner. When hers rolled around, she invited everyone, except me. Then, I saw my boyfriend, Ryan Cooper, at her birthday party. That’s when I finally snapped and confronted her. She looked at me, wide-eyed, all innocence. "What? Everything’s fine. Why are you acting like this? You’re just too sensitive." Even the other girls in the dorm piled on, saying I was overreacting and telling me I needed therapy. So maybe I was "too sensitive". Fine. Then, I would treat her exactly the way she treated me. Let’s see how she liked it.

My roommate, Quinn York, is a nice person who knows how to pay one's act of benevolence back. At the orientation party, a classmate gives Quinn a cheap lipstick. She insists on repaying that classmate by giving her my expensive custom-ordered dress. When the supervisor of the girls' dorm gives Quinn a bottle of water, Quinn tells me to treat the entire class to a meal at a five-star hotel. When the campus bully, Kendrick Olsen, helps Quinn out of a sticky situation, she has the audacity to deliver me to his bed just to thank him. Because of that, I'm infected with STDs. That's when Quinn posts the report on the Internet purposefully. Since then, everyone views me as a loose woman who has zero love for herself. Not wanting to suffer from such humiliation, I decide to take my own life by jumping off a building. When I open my eyes again, I've returned to the orientation party. Since Quinn likes repaying others that much, she should be the one doing the actual repaying!