The night may have been young, but I wasn’t getting any younger, that was for sure. I glanced at my phone for the tenth time, checking to see if I had a message before looking at the time, my patience slowly but surely getting chipped away and revealing a shiny jewel of frustration underneath. I never got stood up for a date. Granted, Zane and I never set up an official date, but still, you’d think he’d show up for one drink at the very least. I’d laid out the tantalizing bait: five-star grub and beer. My company would have obviously been a plus, too. Who would have turned an offer like that down?

But nope, nothing. My phone had zero alerts—oh wait! Nope, just an email from Bergdorf Goodman advertising some Prada coat (which looked really nice actually… fine, I’d buy it).

When I was done placing my order, the waitress had come around with an offer to refill my beer mug. I nodded with a smile and turned my attention back to my phone. I was sitting outside on the patio of the bar, my feet dangling from the barstool, the cold temperatures being pushed away by the huge heating lamps set throughout the outdoor area. The place was pretty packed, with couples and groups of friends claiming the nine tables outside. The din of conversation competed with the loud sounds of the surrounding city. The bar was located in Upper Manhattan, right across the street from Central Park. During the warmer months, the bar had a beautiful view of the blast of greenery that pulsed in the center of the city, but the cold had stripped away the leaves and left behind barren trees, which still had a beauty of their own, don’t get me wrong.

I sighed and tried to get distracted with people-watching as they walked past holding the front of their coats tighter against their chests, talking to their friends as steam floated out from their lips. It was around eleven, so some people were just starting to go out. Others were already waiting for Ubers to get home so they could find refuge from the cold. I didn’t mind being cold; I preferred it way more than being hot. I tended to get… well, let’s just say the heat brought out the swamp in me. Yeah, I’d much rather be walking with a coat on than walking with a layer of sweat on. In fact, a walk home tonight sounded really nice.

Except I don’t want to do that walk alone.

Another sigh. I had to stop that. This negative wave that was falling over me needed to get pushed back. Shake it off. Like my mom would say: “Chiodo scaccia chiodo,” an Italian phrase for “a nail drives out another nail”—basically, one rusty nail can get pushed away by a shiny, much better nail. Or, in more blunt terms, get the fuck over it; someone else is going to come along, and chances are they’re going to be better than the last.

So, I took my mother’s advice and texted an old fling. Maybe he wasn’t exactly a brand-new nail, but I knew I’d get a good nailing out of it, so that was worth something, right?

He lived around the block, and I knew he’d be down for some drinks and fun, so why not? Zane wasn’t showing up, and that was fine. He wasn’t interested, no big deal. I didn’t care.

“Chiodo scaccia chiodo,” I murmured to myself before taking a big swig of beer.

“I seriously can’t believe you said that to her.” Eric was leaning over the table, his eyes locked with mine. We were already four drinks in and I was feeling it, and it looked like he was, too. His eyes looked a little cloudy.

Nothing like Zane’s…

Nope. No, not going there.

Why was I so obsessed with Zane all of a sudden? I couldn’t remember another man who had captured my attention so fully in the span of thirty minutes. It felt almost as if those thirty minutes had lasted the entire span of my lifetime. I felt like I knew Zane from the start. And yet, on the same token, I knew nothing about him. I had no idea what he liked to eat, or where he was from, or what he did with his free time. I didn’t know what his biggest aspirations in life were or what fears he was haunted by.

I wanted to know it all. But I knew that the chances of me learning anything were slim to none. It was something I had to accept. A new, shiny nail can hammer down a rusty one.

“What else was I going to do?” I exclaimed, leaning back in the chair and looking out at the dark park across the street, pushing Zane out of my mind. “When another attorney comes at me, I’m going to fight right back. Merda,” I said, throwing around one of my preferred curse words.

“I guess it’s why you’re one of the best lawyers in New York.”

“Guess so.” I took a drink of my Moscow mule. It felt weird hearing that out loud, no matter how many people reminded me about it. I grew up being far from number one, so it all still felt sort of dreamlike. Even though I was confident in myself and my abilities, I still held on to all my insecurities like a five-alarm hoarder. The kind of hoarder that keeps cat poop for years, not just old notes from high school. I had to lean how to put on a good front, strong enough to hide those insecurities.

“So, anything big you’re working on now?”

I looked back from the park and my breath hitched in my chest for a split second. There was a man walking down the street wearing a heavy black coat and a navy blue beanie pulled down tight, and for a very brief moment, I thought it was Zane showing up two hours late.

Is it… it can’t be.

But as the man drew closer, my hopes were quickly thrown into the shredder. It was just a random dude with a really hot jaw line and slightly similar build to Zane’s broad-shouldered frame. I turned my attention back to Eric, who shot a glance over his shoulder.

“See someone you know?”

“No,” I said, sure that he could hear the disappointment in my tone. “Thought I did.”

“Oh, cuz that big guy was looking at you like he recognized you.”

“Huh?” I hadn’t even noticed the bigger man standing behind the Zane-wannabe. But when I looked up, the man had turned and walked away, a dark hoodie thrown over his head. I finished the last of the Moscow mule, trying to keep my mind from snapping back to picturing Zane walking down the street.

“I’m working on one big case now, yeah. But enough about work.” I gave my shoulders a little shake and rolled my neck, releasing some of the tension I held in my muscles and feeling my bones pop.

“What, um, are you watching on TV nowadays?” Eric asked, tilting his head. I had to hold back a sigh. This was one of the reasons why Eric and I could never work together. He was a dud to talk to. I had more stimulating conversations with the label on a Vitamin Water bottle.

It was a common thread running through all my past relationships. No one really stimulated me, not in a way that made me want to stick around. Not after Ryan.

I thought I’d found a good one though. Oh how fucking wrong I was about that one. It took me some time to drive out that old nail. What he had done to me messed me up for a good year. But after some time, I dove back into the dating pool, only to find it was a really shallow pool. I remember being on the third date with Eric and still talking about favorite colors and TV shows. And that happened with the four guys who came before him, too. I wasn’t sure if it was just my roll of the dice or if I was somehow attracting these guys. Was it my cologne? Cazzo, something was going on.

“I haven’t had much time for bingeing these days, but I was watching the one with the kids and the alien thing.”

“Oh yeah, that’s a good one.”

“Yep.”

“How’s your drink?”

“I finished it.” I lifted the glass, giving it a twirl. “You know what, maybe we should head out.”

I glanced at my watch. It was already twelve. I could have stayed out for a few hours longer, but honestly, I just wanted to get back inside and have my fun with Eric and then get to sleep. I didn’t want to keep seeing familiar faces in passing strangers. I didn’t realize just how disappointed that mix-up made me until I suggest heading home. It felt as if, by going home, I was officially admitting defeat, and I just wanted to get it over with. If Zane didn’t show up tonight, he wasn’t interested. Simple as that. And that was fine—we’d keep a professional relationship and prove that Ricardo was innocent. Then I’d go on with my life, and Zane would go on with his.

It was the truth, and the only way this situation would play out.

So why does that make me feel so shitty?

We closed out and paid the check. I grabbed my coat from the back of my chair and put it on, buttoning the front to shield my chest from the cold. I buried my hands in the deep pockets and followed Eric through the gate that led out onto the street, leaving the warm refuge provided by the huge heating lamps. He looked cute in a bright blue puffy coat, his cheeks flushing pink from the chill.

My house was only five streets away, so we decided to walk it, both of us enjoying the cold after enduring a particularly hot summer. I managed to avoid some of it by taking a trip to Italy with my mother so we could visit family. Over there, the temperatures were much more tolerable and didn’t have me feeling like a sweaty mess in a suit, which was exactly what I looked like every time I stepped outside the courthouse. Seriously, it was like a conditioned reaction. My body would instantly open the floodgates as soon as the stifling heat touched me. Sometimes even looking at the weather report would give me the precursors of swamp ass, and that, as everyone knows, is the worst kind of ass around.

“Did you see the news?” Eric asked, lifting his head, the tip of his nose turning a light pink. “About the Unicorn?”

I nodded. A chill crawled down my spine, and it wasn’t from the cold. Everyone knew about the Unicorn, especially those in the gay community. He terrorized us for years, making every single gay person I knew look over their shoulders twice and triple-guess every Grindr hookup they had. We had thought it was all over when someone was found dead and the police said they’d found matching DNA, but it looked like everyone had been wrong. The Unicorn was still out there, and he wasn’t done.

“I did see it,” I said as we turned into a quieter street bordered by tall brownstones on either side of the street with barren trees lining the sidewalks. “Merda’s fucked-up. Just have to keep your eyes open and hope the sick bastard gets caught.”

“For real,” Eric said. Our breaths were coming out in puffs of steam, drifting up toward the starless winter sky. “What if someone like that asks you to defend them?”

I opened my mouth but found it shutting without an answer. As a lawyer, I wasn’t constitutionally bound to take on any client. It wasn’t like I was a doctor; I didn’t have to save a killer’s life. But then my job wasn’t to render judgment, either. I was trained to be objective and see an entire picture as opposed to just one fragment of it.

“Well,” I started, thinking out my answer. “Defense attorneys never know for sure whether their client did it or not, even if they say they did it. It’s impossible to truly know. So, if someone were to come to my firm and say they’re being accused of being the Unicorn, but they know they aren’t, then yeah, I’ll take the case. It’s my job to defend. I put together the best facts for a defense and then let the jury do the rest.”

“I guess that’s a good way of thinking about it,” Eric said.

“It’s really the only way of thinking about it,” I said with a chuckle. We were almost to the intersection when I felt someone behind us. And not “down the street” behind us. I felt like someone was right on our backs. Way too close to be comfortable or normal. I steeled myself and glanced over my shoulder.

No one. I was losing it.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, thought I heard something.”

“Does someone get scared of ghost stories?”

“The Unicorn isn’t exactly a ghost story,” I pointed out.

“Fair enough,” Eric said. He was a good guy, albeit a little boring. He was going to find an equally good guy to settle down with, I didn’t doubt that. Started making me wonder if I would ever find someone to settle down with.

We made it to the intersection. My penthouse wasn’t far now. It was a beautiful, massive space that looked out onto the city from the top of a historic building. Buying the place was one of the first things I did when I started making the big bucks (after I bought mamma a new car). It was close enough to the firm that I could walk on the days when I wasn’t inviting swamp ass or icicle nuts. It was also blocks away from Central Park, which was one of my favorite hangout spots. I liked getting lost on the trails, watching the squirrels battle it out for nuts and the rats for pizza slices.

The light turned red, but no one in New York waited for the crosswalk sign to click on. If there were no cars coming, New Yorkers marched right across the road, regardless of the light. We didn’t have time to wait; we were always on the move, always running to catch one subway train or another.

We stepped onto the street when I noticed something from the corner of my eye. This was definitely not in my head, either. I turned to look, and that’s when the fist connected with my bottom jaw. My head spun to the side, away from the assailant’s fist. I fell onto Eric, who caught me and moved us backward as the man threw another fist, this one flying through the air without landing.

“What the fuck!” I spat, the iron taste of blood biting at my tongue.

“You fucking asshole.” It was a man, bigger than I was, but only because he was overweight and stretching out the dark black hoodie, stained with who knew what. “You’re the reason my wife’s behind bars, fucking queer. I saw you at the bar, and I wanted to make you understand what you did to me. My wife. To my fucking family.”

I could feel Eric next to me shrinking backward. My mind was reeling, trying to put the pieces of this sudden puzzle together. “What are you talking about?”

The man looked like he was in a rage with his bloodshot eyes reflecting the light from the streetlamp above. His pupils were blown, big black saucers staring me down. He kept reaching into the front pocket of his hoodie.

“My wife. You implicated her in the Yuma robberies. If you never brought her up, no one would have ever figured out she did it.”

Merda. I knew exactly what he was talking about. I had a client wrongfully accused of robbing their employer, and that robbery happened to be a million dollars worth of precious stones. It was a case that happened to hit close to home for me, one mirroring a similar incident from my childhood. I found irrefutable evidence pointing to another woman and won the case for my client. Obviously, things didn’t go well for the other lady.

“Listen,” I said, putting my hands up. I wiped at my lip, my thumb coming back red with blood. “We can talk this out.”

Inside, my body felt like it was boiling. I wanted to ball up a fist and send it crashing against this guy’s skull. He had caught me by surprise and was continuing to piss me off. But that pocket of his—it made me nervous. I didn’t want to do anything that could make this worse.

“Nah, I don’t think so.”

That was when my worst fear became realized. He pulled his hands out of his pocket, but this time they weren’t empty. He raised a jet-black gun into the air. It was so black, it seemed as if it were sucking in all the light around it. I immediately had tunnel vision, and it centered itself straight down the barrel. Time slowed down to a crawl. My body froze, but my brain was running at a mile a second.

Things were definitely worse.

“You fucked up my life, so I think it’s only fair I fucked up yours.”

“No, you don’t want to do that.” I was surprised I still had the ability to shape words. My mouth was ash dry. I could feel my knees trembling, but I focused on steadying myself. I couldn’t pass out. I couldn’t show fear. I was going to get us out of this alive. It was the only option.

The man’s fingers moved to hover over the trigger. I felt like I was looking at it all through a magnifying glass. I could practically see the skin cells on the tips of his fingers, the miniscule beads of sweat that formed where the pad of his pointer finger met with the cold metal of the trigger.

This was bad. Really fucking bad.