It’s bothered me ever since. I saw her twice more after that and it was the same. The cold nod, the death glare, like I had wronged her in a past life. When I saw her at my brother’s wedding, I thought maybe she’d come around. I kissed her when I shouldn’t have, but I just had to see. And for a split second I thought maybe I could win her over. I saw something in her eyes that was wild and free and I just wanted to let it loose like that damn tight-arse hairdo she had going on.

That didn’t happen. My dick got the better of me.

Now I think she really hates my guts. I’m pretty sure she saw me take that chick into the bushes and I’m pretty sure I pissed her off to a point she’ll never come back from.

Still, when I said last night that I could help her, I wasn’t just trying to make her like me, to make up for past misdoings. All right, maybe that last part a wee bit but really I’m coming from a good place.

But if she doesn’t call me, she won’t ever see that. Now I’ve got Astrid naked from the waist up and on the floor of my apartment, wiping the remains of my cum off of her and I don’t know how to get her out the door.

I zip up my pants and give her an exaggerated yawn. “You know what, I think I’m going to take a nap. I have a lot of work to do this evening.”

She gets to her feet, her tiny, perky breasts bobbing in front of me. For once she doesn’t look vapid, but annoyed. It’s a nice change. “So, you invite me over for this and now you’re throwing me out?”

“I’m not throwing you out,” I tell her as I grab her shirt and chuck it at her. “You may want to put that on, though.”

She scowls out me. “You’re a pig,” she says, quickly slipping it on through a huff of anger.

“More like a hog,” I correct her. “They tend to be bigger.”

“First you invite me out to a party and you end up spending it in the hospital.”

I frown at her. “Hey, no one asked for that to happen.”

“Well, it did,” she says, going for the door. “And I’ve had enough. Don’t call me.”

The door slams behind her.

No worries on the calling part. Most girls don’t last more than a week with me before they’ve also had enough. They may act all dumb and easy-going, but I know they all have their limit and I’m pretty good at dragging them to it every time. Some might call that a sad way to get through life, but when it’s just your life, you learn to accept it.

I pick up my phone off the counter and stare at it. No missed calls, no texts. I don’t even have her number, so I can’t call her.

I can call my brother, though. If he’s not out flying the chopper for the chartering company, that is.

He answers on the third ring, but the connection is a bit fuzzy.

“Aye, what do you want?” Linden shouts.

“Don’t tell me you’re in the air and answering your phone all willy nilly.”

“Just about to take off. What’s up?”

I clear my throat, wondering how to phrase this without him getting the wrong idea. “How is the girl? The wee one?”

“Like the child, Ava?” he asks, his voice rising above the rotors I can hear starting. “She’s okay. Diabetes they said, like some kind of shock. You were there.”

“I know I was there. I mean, how is she now? And how is her mum?”

“I guess she’s fine as she can be, I don’t know. I know Steph is at her place right now, helping out. She’s worried as hell. You know how she can dote on people.”

That I do know. Steph’s like the mother we never had. I don’t tell Linden that or he’ll balk at the Freudian implications.

“Do you have her phone number?”

“Nicola’s?” he asks. “Not on my phone. I have her Facebook. Why?”

“No matter,” I say, then pause. “Tell me something about her.”

“What, why? Wait. No, Bram. No,” he commands, like I’m some rangy pooch.

“No, I’m not asking because of that.”

“Right, you’re not asking because you don’t want to stick your dick in her.”

“I honestly don’t,” I tell him. “I think she’d cry if she saw a dick in real life.”

“Nice,” he says dryly. “Anyway, she’s off-limits to you. She’s gone through enough. She doesn’t need my arsehole brother fucking up her life anymore.”

“Arsehole?”

“Yes, Bram,” he says, tiredly. “Look I have to go.”

He hangs up and I mutter a swear at the phone.

There’s only one thing to do.

Soon I’m parking the car in an above-ground garage near Union Square and walking several blocks over into the heart of the manky Tenderloin neighborhood. Other than good music venues, the place is crawling with crazies. It’s not that bad during the daytime. I mean, it ain’t pretty but the people just really annoy you to death with their begging and aren’t dangerous. But if I were Nicola’s parents, or even friends, I wouldn’t want her living there. The thought of fuckheads outside her apartment at night makes me strangely pissed off.

By the time I reach her place, I’ve been asked for change by eight different people and was told I “smell like crunchy toast” by a random running down the road with a severed parking meter under his arm. I’m not sure if I do smell like toast, but it is hot out. I’ve been warned how San Francisco’s seasons don’t follow any rhyme or reason.

I take off my suit jacket, run a hand through my hair in an effort to look respectable, and buzz her apartment number having remembered it from last night. Borderline stalker-ish, I know.

“Hello?” I eventually hear her voice come through the crackly intercom.

“Nicola, it’s Bram.”

More crackle. Silence. Maybe she’s hung up.

“From last night,” I go on. “And other times.”

“Uh, hi…”

“Can I come up?”

I can sort of hear Steph in the background, “Who is it?”

“Tell her it’s her brother-in-law!” I yell and then I’m disconnected.

I stare at the door wondering if I’m being told to fuck off when it buzzes and I go on up.

The funny thing about Nicola, the thing I’ve gathered from what little I know about her, is that if there’s anyone that shouldn’t be living in a place like this – bars on the doors, mildew on the stairwell walls, stains on the carpet – it’s her. Maybe some hipsters could make it work, or James and Penny, Linden’s friends on the alternative side who might call this type of living as “being real.” But Nicola seems too stiff, prim and proper for this place, like she should have been born in a palace instead. From the way she was talking, well blubbering, in my car, I have a feeling she might have been.

Just before I’m about to knock on the door, it opens and Stephanie is staring at me with a suspicious twist to her lips.

“What are you doing here?” she asks, blocking the door.

“What are you, her guard dog?”

“Well, I am a bitch sometimes,” she says. “Woof, woof.”

“Can I come in?”

She shakes her head, her skull earrings rattling. “Why?”

“I want to know if they’re okay.”

A line slowly forms between her brows. “They’re going to be okay,” she says in a drawn-out tone. “Sorry, Bram, not used to you caring about people.”

I guess I deserved that. “Can I talk to Nicola? Alone?”

Steph flinches. “What?”

I look over her shoulder and see Nicola appear just beyond the door. She looks like shit. Her hair is greasy and pulled back, her face sallow, her eyes puffy and red. Other than sad, though, I can’t really read her face and tell if she’s happy to see me, or pissed off, or indifferent. I’m betting it’s the latter.

“Hey,” I say to her. “I just wanted to check up on you. You never called,” I add.

Steph looks between the two of us. “He gave you his number?”

“Business card, actually,” Nicola says wryly.

Steph folds her arms across her chest and I try my damndest not to stare at her cleavage. Damn, Linden is a lucky guy. Good thing I think of her more as the mother type. “What did I tell you?” Steph whispers harshly to her.

I raise a brow. “What did you tell her?”