“She doesn’t want to talk to you.”
I slip my hands into the pockets of my overcoat and nod. “I understand she feels that way but –”
“There’s no but. She doesn’t want to see you, and I don’t blame her,” she cuts me off. “You’re an asshole, and you need to leave.”
She moves to slam the door in my face, but I throw my foot in the crack, preventing her from closing it. She looks at me with fire in her eyes and a murderous expression on her face. She raises herself to her full five-foot-three height and puffs up her hundred-pound body, glaring hard at me – making it difficult for me to keep from laughing. She’s as intimidating as a box of kittens. But I choke back my amusement out of respect.
“You need to move your fuckin’ foot and get out of here,” she growls. “Or I’m going to call the cops.”
“I see that temper is a family trait.”
If she clenches her jaw any harder, she’s going to crack her teeth. “I mean it. I’ll call the cops.”
“Go ahead and call them, then,” I shrug. “I’m not going anywhere until I speak with Berlin.”
“What part of ‘she doesn’t want to speak with you’ do you not understand?”
“Oh, I understand perfectly well,” I fire back, irritation starting to seep into my voice. “I just don’t care. If she really doesn’t want to speak with me, she can be an adult and tell me herself.”
I pitch my voice loud enough to be sure Berlin can hear me. Judging by the building, I’m sure the apartments aren’t very big. My voice carries, so I should be good on that count. A moment later, Nadia turns away from me, and I hear a whispered voice coming from behind the door. She turns back to me, and with a look that could melt steel, she turns away and walks deeper into the apartment. Berlin steps into the breach, her expression not all that different from her cousin’s.
“I thought I made myself pretty clear yesterday,” she snaps. “You know; when I told you that I never wanted to see you again.”
“Sure, but that was hardly fair,” I respond. “You can’t drop a bombshell like that on me and expect me not to take a minute to gather myself and process it all. I mean, that’s a pretty big fucking deal, Berlin.”
“You were pretty clear that you weren’t interested –”
“How would you know what I was thinking or feeling in that moment?” I growl. “You never even gave me a chance to speak.”
“The look on your face –”
“Oh, so you’re going to convict me based on your interpretation of a facial expression?” I mock her. “Tell me, how would that go down in court? Can you convict somebody based on your interpretation – or rather, misinterpretation in this case – of my expression?”
I see her eyes narrow and her cheeks growing red. I can feel the tension rising and a dark, angry energy crackling in the air around us. This is going off the rails quickly. I need to quickly defuse this situation before it gets out of hand and we both end up saying something we’ll regret later. Or at least, something I’ll regret later.
“Berlin, one thing I know about you is that you’re fair,” I begin. “You didn’t give me a real chance to talk yesterday. You just blew up and stormed out. I think we need to talk about this. Together.”
Her eyes shift to the floor, and she chews on her thumbnail nervously. I can see her processing my words for a long moment.
“Or you can just listen to what I have to say,” I continue. “And at the end of this conversation – or monologue – if you don’t like what you hear, I’ll never darken your doorstep again. You have my word.”
She chews on her bottom lip thoughtfully for another moment before finally looking up at me and nods – of course, she’s still got that murderous gleam in her eyes. But hey, baby steps, right?
“Fine,” she sighs. “If listening to you will get you off my doorstep, let me get my coat.”
She closes the door. I have to wait a few minutes before she returns with a thick coat on over her yoga pants and hoodie. After closing the door behind her, she pulls a scarf from her pocket and starts to wind it around her neck, prompting me to chuckle.
“It’s not that cold out there,” I observe. “The way your cousin was staring at me made me feel frostier.”
She says nothing but walks toward the elevator, as if she expects that I’ll follow – which of course, I do. I step into the car, and she crowds herself on the far side, well away from me. A short time later, we’re out on the street in the night air that’s going from cool to cold. It feels like it dropped twenty degrees in the time I was inside Berlin’s building. I slide on my gloves and slip my hands back into my pockets.
“I guess you were right,” I start casually. “Maybe a scarf would have been a good idea.”
She walks along, swallowed up completely by her oversized coat, her arms crossed over her chest. The lower half of her face is covered by her scarf. In terms of non-verbal communication and body language, Berlin is about as closed off as Fort Knox.
We walk down to a coffee cart that’s sitting beneath the awning of a pastry shop, and I grab us both a cup of hot cocoa. She murmurs her thanks as I hand her a cup.
“Do you want to go inside where it’s warm?” I ask. “Grab a pastry, maybe?”
“No, I just want you to say what you came to say so I can go home and get out of the cold.”
I sigh, my breath coming out in a thick plume of steam. “Okay.”
I lead her over to a bench in the small green
