The smell of fresh paint always takes me back to my first apartment in Washington, D.C., a three-room efficiency in a squat brick building that hissed like a radiator after a summer rainstorm. Somehow, I’d convinced my parents that living off campus would be cheaper my junior year. Maybe it was. But it was my yearning for a solo shot, a chance to prove my growing independence from them in a way I didn’t feel was possible living in the …