The Wall of Winnipeg and Me - Mariana Zapata Page 0,39

out again? I knew better. I really did. “I drank about as much wine as my liver could handle last night just to get through two hours. I’m good.”

She made a “meh” noise. “There’s no such thing as too much wine.”

“Is there something I should know about?”

“I don’t know. Is there?”

“I don’t know, Betty Ford. You tell me.”

The person who was almost as much of a sister as she was my friend, barked out that familiar loud laugh that was about as close to home as possible. “Fuck you. I only drink two, maybe three times a week.”

“If that’s your way of trying to convince me you don’t have a drinking problem, it isn’t working.” I laughed.

She blew out a raspberry. “I don’t even know why I talk to you sometimes.”

“Because no one else likes you but me, your brother, and the boys?”

Di made a genuine thoughtful noise. “That’s probably it.”

We both burst out laughing at the same time.

“When are you free?” I asked. I hadn’t seen her since she’d dyed my hair.

“Oh, ah, let me get back to you. I have plans with Jeremy.”

Yeah, I might have rolled my eyes a little. “Well, let me know when you don’t.” I let the Jeremy thing in one ear and out the other.

“I will. I wanted to try a different color on you. Are your roots showing yet?”

I was in the middle of mulling over how she hadn’t asked if she could dye my hair again when three sharp knocks rattled my door. “Hold on one second.” Turning off the stovetop range, I made my way toward the door. It wasn’t either of my neighbors; neither of them knocked hard enough so that the door rattled on the rare occasion they dropped by.

With that thought, I knew exactly who it was before I even made it to the peephole.

“Fart breath, let me call you back later. I, uh, someone’s knocking on my door,” I explained abruptly. I still hadn’t told her, or anyone, about Aiden coming by to ask me to come work for him again, much less tell them that a week ago he’d asked me to marry him so he could become a permanent resident. I had thought about calling Zac, but decided against it.

“Okay. Bye.” I didn’t get a chance to say bye before the dial tone filled the receiver.

“Who is it?” I asked, even though I would have bet twenty bucks I already knew.

“Aiden,” the voice on the other side of the door answered just as I went up on my tippy-toes to peer into the peephole. Sure enough, a tan complexion with chocolate-colored eyes and a familiar, tightly pressed mouth greeted me through the glass.

It wasn’t until I opened the door that I realized he had a hoodie on and over his dark hair. I raised my eyebrows at him as he stood there, resembling his nickname as his shoulders took up the doorframe. He really did look like a damn human wall. “You’re back.” I blinked. “Again.”

While I grudgingly accepted that sometimes I didn’t have a backbone, I was also well aware that once you gave me a reason to stop liking you, it was nearly impossible to win yourself back into my good graces. You could ask Susie. While I could get over Aiden being a grumpy little B, the Trevor thing had gotten him into irreconcilable territory. Basically, he’d made it to The Land of the Forgotten. When it came down to it, he’d hurt me.

He gave me a look I wasn’t sure how to interpret before slipping inside my apartment—without an invitation—his chest brushing against my arm in the process. He was radiating a massive amount of heat, and I didn’t need to look at the clock to know he’d just gotten out of a training session. He also smelled like he’d skipped a shower in the locker room.

I had just closed the door when Aiden stopped in the hallway, hands on his hips, giving me a hard glare that I didn’t understand. “You live with drug dealers.”

Oh.

I shrugged a shoulder at him. “They leave me alone.” Sure, I’d had to tell them “No thanks” about a dozen times, but I didn’t clarify that point.

“You know that they’re drug dealers?”

I shrugged again, deciding right then that this judgmental ass wasn’t going to find out some of the people in the buildings on either side of mine were in a notorious gang that hung blue bandanas out of their pockets. So I went