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to hit the town with you tonight—”

“But?”

“But you know it’s my weekend with Skylar! I mean, last weekend, he had a big family thing, and the whole week before that, I was all tied up with a new sex-toy promotional thing going on down at the bookstore. Tonight we were gonna go out on his side of town—alone—and I planned to crash at his place. We’re still trying to, uh, figure out our whole relationship,” he adds as a quiet aside. “Connor won’t stop giving me advice about it. He’s in the other room.”

I give a glance at the French doors leading into Connor’s bedroom off the kitchen, which used to be a dining room. Unlike the other apartments in my building, Brett’s is a half-renovated mishmash of ideas that were never fully realized. He seems to adore it, blind to its flaws.

“So, I’m real sorry, man,” Brett finishes. “But I’m sure you won’t have a prob finding someone else to go out with tonight, right? I mean, you gotta know a zillion people.”

A zillion people.

Funny he says that. I do know a zillion people. I probably know ten zillion.

But I wouldn’t call a single one of them a friend I would want to go out with on a Friday night.

With business on my mind every hour of the day, I don’t have time anymore to keep friends, not like I used to. All of the contacts in my phone are business associates, clients, and nightclub owners.

I shrug. “Yeah, no biggie. I’m sure I can find somebody. Thought it wouldn’t hurt to ask you, since we already—”

“Work out all the time? Yeah, I know, right? Oh, and I’m sorry we, uh … haven’t even been doing that in a while, either,” Brett puts in. “It’s just that I’ve got so much going on between Skylar’s moving into the city—sorry, and not to mention his newlywed sister, and with my new responsibilities at the bookstore, and—”

I think this is the eleventh apology he’s given me since I stepped foot in here. The dude needs to seriously stop apologizing every five seconds before he starts apologizing for every breath he sucks into his lungs, converts to carbon dioxide, and lets out.

I squint at his fridge, then correct another tilted boob magnet. “Nah, no biggie,” I say in the middle of whatever he’s saying. “No need to worry about it. I’ve been getting my workouts in.”

“Oh, yeah? That hot trainer of yours got you running in circles around the gym?”

Who in the fuck am I going to go out with tonight? I pray my ass isn’t resorting to hitting up one of my snooty photographer colleagues, making up some false alibi of wanting to scope the scene for inspiration.

Which I guess, in some aspects, isn’t actually all that far from the truth.

It’s just one specific inspiration I’m in need of.

An “inspiration” that slipped right through my damned fingers.

“Yeah,” I answer him belatedly. “Trainer’s got me working hard. Something like that.” I pull out my phone, fretting.

Just then, the French doors pull open, and his young, bright-eyed roommate Connor appears in a t-shirt and jeans, which bunch up on a pair of red-and-white sneakers. “Wait a second,” says Connor, interjecting himself into our moment here. “Didn’t mean to overhear, but … you … you need a guy to hit the town with?”

“He needs a wingman,” Brett clarifies.

Connor gasps excitedly. “Hey, I have the perfect guy in mind for that!”

Brett and I look at each other, then stare at him expectantly, waiting.

He spreads his hands excitedly. “Me! I’m your guy! I’ll be your wingman!”

My eyebrows draw together critically.

Brett, however, sees no problem in his way-too-suspiciously-chipper roommate’s proposal. “Great idea! You were just complaining that Alan is busy with some kind of project tonight, and your dinner plans with him were canceled.”

“So really, you’re the one doing me the favor,” Connor points out to me.

I stare at him hard. “Actually …”

“There you go, Dante,” Brett decides with a slap on my shoulder—which, from the painfully loud smack and his wince, probably hurts his hand more than it did my shoulder. “Problem solved.”

I frown irritably at him.

Connor’s cheery face is in front of mine. “So when do we go? Aw, shoot, I need a minute or two to get ready. I still have that distinctively antiseptic Wales Weekly scent on me and could use a shower. Oh, what should I wear? Shit, are we doing more of a club scene thing, or a bar scene thing? It