“Sit down and drink up,” I tell her. “But if you cough once, you forfeit the dare.”

“All right,” Paige says, wanting to be a good sport. She sits down and I slide the drink her way. She sniffs it before picking it up. Right before she has a sip her eyes catch mine. “Wait, if I cough, what happens?”

“We don’t know yet,” I tell her smoothly, leaning in close so that my knee brushes against hers. It feels all too easy to do this, to pick up a chick. It’s just as much fun as a good shag or two. But at the same time, there’s something prickling the back of my skull, telling me this probably isn’t a good idea. I think that’s the same part of my brain that doesn’t like me to have any fun. I call it Logic.

I watch as Paige has a sip of her drink. To her credit though, she doesn’t flinch. She gulps it down with a smile. I imagine she’d swallow my cum in the same way.

Now Logic’s friend Guilt decides to pop up. I’m not sure why, there’s nothing wrong nor different about my thoughts. Nicola couldn’t give a rat’s arse what I do or who I sleep with. I’m just her neighbor, her landlord, and maybe, just maybe her friend.

For now, anyway.

And perhaps that’s what’s stopping me from going home with Paige. The very minute possibility that one day down the road, I could be with Nicola. It’s unlikely but I’m suddenly unwilling to put it in jeopardy, not until I know for sure that the two of us have no chance together, not even for a hot fuck.

So, though I spend the rest of the evening talking and flirting with Paige, it’s all in good fun. I don’t see Nicola again, nor do I see Linden, so at the end of the night I ask if she wants to split a cab. She enthusiastically agrees, talking about how I must owe her something from drinking the drink so well.

But the only thing I owe Paige is the cab ride home. When we get in the back, it’s quite apparent from the way she’s rubbing my leg just what she thought we were doing and where we were going. I mean, I had told her something about fucking her earlier, hadn’t I?

Tonight, maybe for one of the first times ever, I end up being a cunt-tease. I get the cab to take her where she needs to go but when she gets out, she’s stunned that I’m not following.

“I have to get an early start tomorrow,” I explain, which is completely true now that IKEA is in the cards.

She looks pissed off and I can’t blame her. But still, she thanks me for the ride and tells me I should call her when I don’t have something – or anything – to do in the morning. Though she put her number in my phone earlier, I have no intention of calling her any time soon.

When I get home, the events of the day have taken some kind of toll on me. I feel a million different threads of want and need inside me, but more than that, this nervous, buzzing energy that has no outlet. I start thinking that maybe it was a mistake to drop Paige off, that she could be sucking my cock right now and distracting my mind. But who am I kidding? I wouldn’t be thinking of her at all and I know that it would make things worse.

I hear Nicola’s door open and the small chatter of her and Lisa next door, muffled through the walls, and I wonder if I should go on over. I almost do. I get up and go to the door, one hand on the handle. I want to make sure IKEA is still on. I want to make sure she’s okay. I want to thank her for the drink. I want to touch her hair, brush it behind her ears and get lost in her lips. I want to know what she tastes like – her mouth, her skin, her sweet little cunt. I want to experience every last drop on my tongue.

I’m lacking courage tonight. I stay in. Naturally the night turns into epic wank-fest part two and this time, this time I am loud. I don’t hold back and I don’t drown it out in music. I hope she can hear me.

I hope she likes what she hears.

CHAPTER NINE

Nicola

When I came home last night, I was in a bad mood. I guess it’s not much of a surprise that I wake in a bad one too. This was one of those cases that sleep did nothing to erase the worries of the day before. It’s still all there, simmering, and I don’t even understand why.

Luckily Ava gets up bright and early so I’m used to getting out of bed around seven am. I have no idea whether our IKEA excursion is still on for the day and I’ve regretted asking him since the moment it came out of my mouth.

I especially regretted it when Linden introduced some hot blonde to him and she immediately had his rapt attention. I don’t know why it bothers me so much. I guess because for a second, I thought maybe there was something more between us.

And yes, I know, something more is something bad. Always will be. But when his fingers brushed against mine, sending warm currents up my limb and down the middle of my back, when his eyes seemed so focused on me that I could almost see lightning in those grey clouds, I couldn’t help but imagine, just for a second, what it would be like if he were mine. Mine in bed, mine outside of it, it didn’t matter. But the thoughts – the lust – was there.

Unfortunately he ruined that pretty fast. I know what Linden was doing too, wanting Bram to stay the hell away from me. I couldn’t fault him and maybe I should have appreciated it. But for once, for damn once, I wanted to make all the big, bad mistakes.

The ugly, foggy light of a San Francisco morning puts things in a different perspective though. I try and shove those angry feelings away and wonder if Bram meant it when he said he would take us to IKEA. I heard him last night, moaning away. I actually went outside into the hall for a second, almost hypnotized by his cries, as if I were going to act out my fantasy for real this time. But I never knocked on his door, never opened it.

There’s a knock on my door now, though. I have to blink a few times, discerning if it was in my head or in real life. Then Ava says to me, through mouths of scrambled egg, “It’s the door, mommy.” Her eyes get bright. “Maybe it’s Santa.”

“Oh, I think you’ve gotten those letters mixed up there,” I say under my breath and get up to answer it. I give myself the once over in the mirror and decide, in my sleeping shorts and camisole, my hair greasy and my face dull, that I can’t possibly look any worse. I sigh before opening it.

There’s Satan all right on the other side, dressed in dark jeans, converse and white dress shirt that’s the kind of thin material you wouldn’t want to wear in the rain. Well, I wouldn’t want to wear it in the rain, he can gladly do so.

He looks me up and down but there’s no judgement in his eyes, only this slow burn, like a subtle version of the look I got last night. “You do remember we have a date right?”

I give him a look, back on my defenses. “It’s not a date. It’s a favor.”

“I’ve been on many dates that were favors and many favors that were dates.” The corner of his mouth quirks up. “Mind if I come in?”

I gesture to the apartment. “Come on in. I haven’t gotten around to the coffee yet.”

“You must be superhuman,” he says, striding past me as I close the door. He stops by the table, his palm out for Ava. “High five, little one.”

She smacks it and giggles as he goes into the kitchen and starts making coffee like he lives here. “So, Ava,” he says, his back to us. “How does that song of yours go?”

“Bram, no,” I warn. But it’s too late. She’s yelling it again at the top of her lungs.

“You know,” I tell him, raising my voice to be heard over her racket, “it’s lucky that you’re at least one of my neighbors. I have a feeling the old man to the left of here is going to complain about her singing one day.”

“He can complain all he wants, sweetheart, I’m the one in charge here.”

While he puts water into the reservoir, I can’t help but ask, “So, how did it all go last night?” I try to sound as breezy as possible but I feel it’s a mistake saying anything. I don’t want him to think I care. I don’t care. “I’m just curious,” I add in, as if that will make a difference. Because I am just curious. Nothing wrong with that.