Sophia was dressed for the day. She wore a simple blouse and dark pants. A practical bag was slung over her shoulder and it rested on her hip. Adam knew she was a teacher at a nearby school.
She had started the job only a short time ago. She had moved into the apartment building a few months prior.
In that time he had learned her routine. He had also learned that she kept to herself. She did not speak much to anyone in the building. She was quiet and serious.
She finished locking her door. The click of the deadbolt echoed softly in the quiet hallway. She turned ready to head to work. Her gaze landed directly on Adam.
He was standing in front of his own door. He was frozen. He was looking straight at her. The moment their eyes met Adam reacted. It was an instant and panicked movement.
He abruptly jerked his head away. He turned his attention back to his own door. He acted as if he had been intensely focused on it the entire time. He began fumbling with his keys and the lock.
His movements were suddenly clumsy and uncertain. The key scraped against the metal plate around the keyhole.
Sophia watched him for a second. Her hand was still on her doorknob. A look of surprise crossed her face. In her mind Adam was a remarkably hardworking person. She did not know him but she knew his schedule.
Despite his youth he labored with a consistency that she admired in a way.
He seemed driven by a powerful force. Since she first moved in her schedule and his had become familiar counterpoints in the building's quiet life.
She would often see him leaving for work in the dim light of the early morning. He always moved with a sense of purpose. He was a blur of motion down the hall and then gone.
Then late at night long after she had returned and settled in she would hear the distinct sound of his apartment door opening and closing. That sound signaled that Adam had finally come home.
It was often past midnight. She would be in bed reading a book and the sound would be a small punctuation mark at the end of her day.
She had never spoken to him. Not a real conversation. But she knew his routine. She knew he worked more than anyone else she had ever met.
She had heard things about him. The landlady had mentioned him in passing once. "That boy in 21 never causes any trouble," she had said.
"Works harder than three men." A couple of friends she had made who lived on the first floor had also spoken of him.
"Have you met the kid upstairs?" one had asked. "He's got like three jobs or something. He's never home."
They all said the same thing. He worked all the time. But even with this secondhand information she had never managed to start a conversation with him.
From her perspective Adam always seemed to be ignoring her. Whenever they passed in the hall he would keep his gaze fixed on the floor or the wall ahead. His focus was always somewhere else.
His body was tense as if he was trying to make himself smaller and less noticeable.
She had concluded that it was likely because she was older than him.
Sophia had a complex about her age. She was almost thirty. She felt she was much older than she should be for her station in life. She felt she had wasted a significant amount of time getting to where she was.
She had switched her major in college twice. She had taken time off to care for a sick parent. Her path had been long and difficult.
In contrast Adam was so young. He could not be more than nineteen or twenty. Yet he was already working tirelessly. He was facing the world head on.
This comparison made her feel inadequate.
It gave her a sense of inferiority that kept her from initiating contact.
She assumed her age made him uncomfortable.
He was a young man. He would not be interested in speaking to an older woman like her. Because of this she never tried to talk to him. She just watched his frantic comings and goings from a distance.
But seeing him here now was different. It was the middle of the morning. It was an unusual hour for him to be home. He was not rushing out to a job. He was coming home. He looked flustered and defeated.
His shoulders were slumped. The frantic energy she always saw in him was gone. It was replaced by a quiet exhaustion. Something was wrong. The thought was clear and certain in her mind.
She broke her own established pattern of silence. Her voice cut through the stillness of the hallway. It sounded strange and loud in the small space.
"Adam?"
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