Bleeding Heart

Evie didn’t look even close to ready as she looked at Seth, at the building behind them, and back at Ryan.

‘Ready.’

Seth stayed on the curb as they got into the truck. Ryan shot him a grin. ‘Don’t go climbing up any fire escapes.’

Once they were gone, Seth felt shittier than he had expected.

It wasn’t that he was losing lovers in Ryan and Evie, with whom he had been screwing around for the last month before it all blew up. He could get laid any time he wanted to, as his foray into online dating sites – specifically sex sites – had taught him.

He was losing his only friends.

It came upon him with a sickening roll in his stomach before belching up and settling in his chest, hardening at the back of his throat.

When the hell did this happen? he wondered as the moving van turned the corner and disappeared. Where the hell did everyone go? When his wife was alive, they’d been fairly reclusive but they still had their social circle.

Christ, the last time everyone had been together was for Rita’s wake just over two years ago. They came in clusters after that, bringing food (‘just some leftovers, and I know you like…’) and taking discreet looks around his apartment like they thought its cleanliness was an illusion to mask the decay he’d created in the wake of Rita’s death. The conversation wasn’t the same. It wasn’t just the absence of Rita’s foul-mouthed chatter. He could tell that they didn’t want to be there, that they didn’t know what to say to him.

Then came Evie and her little blue teapot. She knew about Rita and, while she always had apology in her eyes when she asked about his wife, she would still ask. He was going to miss their talks.

He turned from the street and looked down the walkway to the foyer, where the newest tenant of Winsloe Court was setting up a small fort of boxes along the stairwell. She looked so funny, a tiny woman in a yellow sundress and scuffed sneakers running her little folding trolly down the walkway.

He met her halfway. ‘Don’t you have movers?’

April stopped and leaned forward on the handle. Her pale skin was painted with a flush that made a map over her cheeks, shoulders and chest, complete with shining lakes of sweat on her brow and neck.

‘I have a couple of friends. They’re bringing the furniture after they get off work – and then I have to unbox it and put it all together.’

‘Brand-new?’

‘Every bit of it. Like I said, it’s my first place.’

‘My first place was nothing but hand-me-downs.’

She shook her head. ‘I had some money socked away. My place is going to look like an Ikea showroom, but it’ll look fabulous.’

In his head, Seth was picturing white stuffed furniture with colour-coordinated throw pillows and curtains, like something you’d see on a television show about single girls striking out on their own in the city for the first time.

He tried to hide his smile but failed, particularly with her beaming back at him. He grinned and gestured to the beat-up red hatchback overflowing with boxes and cloth shopping bags.

‘Need a hand? I can probably take twice what you’re taking.’

A prickle went along his spine as she gave him a quick but thorough once-over. If he had blinked, he would have missed the hunger in her expression.

‘You don’t want to do that,’ she said, her cheerful voice softer now, and a little thick with the remnants of that look. His body responded in kind, blood quickening and beginning that ache in his groin, but he was quick to banish it as she had seemingly done. ‘I saw you out here helping your old tenants move. You must be about done for the day.’

‘That was nothing. I don’t have anything else to do today except stick a label on your mailbox. Come on. We’ll get the stuff in the foyer out of the way and then come back for the rest.’

‘Oh, thank you.’ She smiled, and along came another ravenous flash, followed by something else that made him uneasy: expectation.

He cracked his knuckles and she led the way to the car. She was almost half his age. He didn’t want to go messing with that sort of trouble, even if that trouble did have a round ass beneath that dress he’d love to fill his hands with.

I just need to get laid again, and soon, he thought as he took three boxes from the trunk of her car.

Still, as April beamed at him he had the feeling that a hard screw wasn’t going to shake off the tingle in his chest.

Chapter Two (#ub1906fb1-8f13-5851-89a7-8aa2dd02f24e)

April had a plan when she went to bed the previous night.

On her first Saturday in her new apartment, she’d sleep until noon, when the timer on her coffee-maker was set to start gurgling some of that expensive coffee she’d bought herself as a moving-in gift. She’d drink it in bed while reading the latest Sophie Clairmont book. After an hour of sword-wielding bad-assery soaked in sex and gore, she’d shower and grab groceries at that little market around the corner, make a second run to the liquor store so she’d be stocked for tonight, and she’d finish unpacking.

The first hiccup came even before she opened her eyes. Snuggled beneath the duvet, she was roused by a repetitive sound.

Squink!

Squink!

Squinksqui‌nksquinksquink!

She pushed up onto her forearms and cocked her head to listen.

‘Look, right there. Get it.’ Squink! ‘My turn. I said, my turn. Ow–ow! No biting, you little fucker.’

It took her a moment to recognise the deep voice.

Hot landlord.

Still, his hotness did not negate the fact that he had torn a hole in her perfect Saturday morning. She slipped from the bed and grabbed her robe from the footboard, then knelt on the bench beneath the window. She couldn’t see anything, so as quietly as she could she removed the screen and poked her head out.

She could barely see him through all the iron of the fire escape, but through a crack she caught just enough. Sitting in his window with a slinky black cat between his legs, he held what looked like a small tablet computer between his big hands.

Though the screen was fuzzy from so high above, April could see something scuttling across the surface. The cat leaped at it with both paws, then again and again as Seth laughed.

‘You missed. My turn,’ he said, and held his hand over the screen. The cat pounced, and Seth hissed as he shook free. ‘Next time I’m going to bite you back.’

April bit down to keep from laughing.

So, her gorgeous and somewhat terrifying landlord liked to play iPad games with his cat. She supposed that, on a scale of weird, this wasn’t even midway – as long as she didn’t find out he dressed the cat in Renaissance garb on Saturday nights.

The cat leaped as a trill rang out. So did Seth, and, as he cursed and tapped at the screen, April guessed that it wasn’t a tablet at all he held but a phone – one he had no idea how to use.

‘How the fuck – shit – how do I answer this goddamn thing?’

She thought about calling down but didn’t want to give away that she had been spying. Instead she clapped her hand over her mouth to keep her giggles in as she watched him try and fail to answer the phone.

‘Damn it. Christ. How the –’ He held the phone to his ear, then hissed again as he looked back at it. ‘Where the hell did the numbers go? Jesus.’

The fire escape rattled as he got up to go inside. April did the same. She remembered that, when they’d done the walkthrough, Seth had an old-school flip-phone holstered at his waist, and as he’d taken a call she wondered how those thick fingers could possibly navigate the number pad without mashing all the keys at once.