Once again, Nora’s brain went directly to the most adolescent possible thing for a good two and a half seconds before she was able to blink herself back to sanity. To decency!

“Pardon me?” she said, because sounding stuffy seemed like good insurance against further thoughts regarding Will’s unit. Do not look down, Nora thought, with the determination of a person standing on a very narrow ledge of a very tall building.

“Did you put something in there? Something that would smell?”

Her eyes widened, and his narrowed.

“You did,” he said flatly.

“No!” she said, but it was a too-quick no. A guilty no. The no of a person who definitely had discussed the dead-fish idea at least once. But she hadn’t actually done it.

“I promise I didn’t,” she added, which was also probably a hit man’s first line of defense. It sounded unconvincing even to her own ears.

“Your face got all red. As soon as I said it.”

She resisted the urge to uncross her arms, to press her palms to her hot cheeks. “It’s probably a stress rash. From your aggressive knocking.”

“Just tell me where you put it, and quick. I don’t get the sense that it’s the kind of smell that stays local, if you know what I mean.”

Yikes, that didn’t sound great. She hoped to God it wasn’t something with the building’s septic system. She had a sudden and unpleasant memory of the details Nonna had provided—during one of their regular Sunday night phone calls—about a street-wide issue involving sewers about five years ago.

“I didn’t put it anywhere, because I didn’t do it.” But already she was shoving her feet into the sneakers she had by the door, because if there was a smell seeping its way through this building, it was her responsibility, even if she hadn’t made it happen. “What’s it smell like?”

“Like hell’s toilet bowl.”

Yikes yikes. That did sound septic in nature. She straightened, grabbing for her phone and shoving it in her back pocket. There was a whole corner in her contact list related to building maintenance, and also a whole corner in her brain that was well aware of how much it cost to get repair people to come on short notice.

“A poetry reading is one thing,” he said.

“Will,” she snapped, pushing past him and closing the door behind her. “I did not put anything in your apartment. I wouldn’t do that.” She could feel the heat of his body beside her, and the reaction of her own—a gut-deep desire to lean into him—was so sharp, so acute, that she practically flung herself down the hall to get away from it.

“Would anyone else?”