A/N: If you haven't seen that episode where the prostitute gets off'ed and the shit hits Nicky, you won't recognize that some of the italics are direct quotes. Which is why I'm letting you know.
It's been six months, and he doesn't remember what she looked like anymore, but he remembers the way her hips swayed as she walked into her house, turned around and cupped his face with all the tenderness of a professional.
'It's a big city, Nicky, and when you run into a guy three times by chance, you gotta think there's something to it.'
He dated a prostitute, because she was different, she was getting out –
'Is that what she told you? She was getting out of the business? She was going to college to recruit more girls.'
- and then she died. And he had thought that she was so sincere, all childlike innocence and fundamental good that he could let his eyes unfocus and see her colors, shocking whites and golds like perfection, but he never bought into that aura crap, anyway.
'I can't even cry anymore' she told him, and a smarter man would have walked away, so he held her and shared her bed (not sticky, slick sex but love like violins in a cheesy romance film, because he's known her for twenty-four hours, at least, so of course it's love) and thought of Hollywood endings.
(Wake up, this isn't Pretty Woman.)
So it's been six months now, and he doesn't remember what she looked like anymore, but he remembers the lilt of her laughter, the tone of her voice when she lied to him and screamed his name an hour before she died, and he remembers her cold blue lips on the autopsy table the morning after.