“And what was her name, sir?” she asked, her tone softening.
“Um, Terhune. Harley Terhune,” I said.
I could swear I heard a gasp on the other end of the line.
“Is this… Dominic?” she asked gently. “…Nicki?”
“You— You know me?” My voice was shaking even to my own ears, and my finger hovered over the end call button.
“I knew your mother well, Nicki,” she said. “My name is Rhiannon. I worked with your mother for several years.”
The room started getting blurry, and I realized with a start that tears were filling my eyes.Fuck. I had to keep it together. I sat down on the chairs at the kitchen table.
“I haven’t talked to anyone who knew her for a long time,” I said. “I mean, except for my dad.”
“Does your father know you are calling, Nicki? May I call you Nicki? I heard so much about you from Harley, Ifeellike I know you,” she said.
“Um, yeah, sure. I don’t mind,” I answered. “And— no, he doesn’t even know I’m— I mean, he doesn’t know where I’m at.”
“From what your Mom told me, that— that’s probably wise, Nicki. Xander— Alexander Young is the attorney representing your— your mother’s estate,” she said, her soft voice kind as she spoke. “I know he would want to meet with you as soon as possible. He’s in Maine this week, but he is scheduled to be back in Akron next Wednesday. Could we set up an appointment for you to meet with him then?”
“Sure,” I responded. We scheduled an appointment for 9 a.m. Wednesday and she gave me directions to their offices in downtown Akron. I scribbled everything down on the back of the legal notices and couldn’t keep myself from sniffling.
“If you have time, I’d love to meet you myself if you are available before then,” Rhiannon said. “Maybe we could have lunch one day?”
“Th-that would be nice,” I said, knuckling my eyes to clear my sight.
“Your mom was a special lady,” she said. “She was a good person. I can’t wait to meet her son.”
I hung up the phone and the tears began in earnest. It took a little while, but I eventually got my emotions under control. I had a lot of things to do that day, but I already felt exhausted.
I finally pulled myself together and made my way outside. We needed a few things from the grocery store, and I’d told Vivian I’d pick them up. There was a small mom and pop store not far from our apartment building, and we tried to buy from local stores whenever we could.
I checked my pockets to make sure I had my keys, wallet, and phone, then took the stairs to the first floor. I was stepping through the doorway, reading through my notifications on my phone when my feet crunched on glass. I looked down to see a scattering of glass on the concrete porch. It looked like light bulb glass…
Shit. I looked up at the light over the porch and realized that was where the glass had come from. I forgot I was going to call the building owner and let them know that the light was out, but if the problem was just the bulb, I could get a new one at the store.
I was just adding the light bulb to my grocery list when I stepped on something else and realized I had a bigger problem. The item I had stepped on had once been a piece of reflector from my bike. The same bike that now sat in the parking lot, completely destroyed.
I stared at the cracked bones of my bike, dumbfounded for a moment. My mind couldn’t seem to connect the dots and make sense of the whole picture. The tires were slashed, the inner tubes pulled out of the rubber like intestines. The spokes on each of the rims looked like fingers that someone had crushed with a sledgehammer. The handlebars were mangled, and the frame looked like it had been run over by a truck.
I was staring at the remains when I heard someone come up behind me.
“Shit, dude. Was that yours?” I heard a voice ask. I turned and looked at the source of the voice. Next to me stood a smoking hot guy in black jeans and a black tee. If I hadn’t been so flabbergasted at the destruction of my primary means of transportation, I might have been turned on by him.
He had shoulder-length dark-brown hair held back from his face with a pair of mirrored sunglasses. A jacket was slung over one arm and the part of my brain that Vivian was trying to take over made a mental note to try that kind of outfit on my own, because he looked damn attractive.
He was the same height and build I was, but that’s where the similarities ended. He looked over at me over the rims of his glasses, and I noted he appeared to be in his late twenties. His silvery gray eyes had a decidedly Asian cast to them, and his lush pink lips were framed by a dark goatee. If I wasn’t still in knots over Kaine, I think I would have really wanted to see what those lips tasted like…
“Um, yeah, it was my bike,” I said. Fuck. Ofcourse, it was a bike. Like, who couldn’t have seen that? Points for the obvious, Nicki…
“Wow… who didyoupiss off?” He asked, whistling as he surveyed the damage. “This looks personal. Hey, I’m Micah. Micah Asano.”
He stuck his hand out to me, and I stared at for a minute without moving. He looked at me and raised an eyebrow, a half-smile lurking at the corner of his mouth, as if daring me to take it.
“Nicki,” I responded, finally taking his hand in mine. “Nicki Terhune.”
“You and the girl with the long brown hair moved into 3B a few weeks ago, right?” he asked.
