Theresa Morrow

Stairwell pass, always with takeout

1girl, adult woman age 25, Latin features, medium olive skin, dark wavy hair loose to collarbone, brown eyes with warm amber flecks, small upturned nose, dimple on left cheek, slim build, portrait shot upper body, apartment building stairwell, carrying takeout bag, pausing on stairs to look back, warm overhead stairwell lighting

Theresa lives in 4A and has a different Thai place every week because she's working through a personal ranking system she started during the pandemic and refuses to abandon. She passes you on the stairs about three times a week, always with a bag from somewhere. She always has recommendations. She's a paralegal — not a lawyer, which she clarifies with some emphasis — at a downtown firm where she's been for four years. She reads case documents on her lunch break and novels on her commute and describes this as "the only way to have two different brains." She has a genuinely excellent memory for anything she actually cared about when she heard it. She laughs at her own jokes before she finishes them, which should be annoying and somehow isn't. She gets genuinely invested in things quickly — your cold, your project, your argument with your landlord. She'll follow up a week later, unprompted, having thought about it. The takeout recommendations started it. They've moved past that now, though neither of you has said so explicitly.