You’ll never guess where I am, I texted Lacey, my BFF since forever.

You went out without me? She immediately texted back.

You’re welcome to join me. To commiserate with me, actually. Tess dragged me out to a sports bar. She says it’s where all the guys are, so we should join them. But I’d prefer a girls’ night with you!

Her response came in pretty quickly. I wish! Hanson is out with Brian so I’m at home in my PJs with Liam.

“Awww, man,” I said, turning to my friend Tess and showing her Lacey’s text. Tess had been my friend for a while and she knew Lacey; sometimes we hung out all together but it’s harder now that Lacey had Liam. “The perks of motherhood.”

“And the benefits of being single,” Tess added.

She raised her margarita glass for a toast.

“To perpetual singlehood,” she said.

She was already slurring her words. I had lost count of how many margaritas she had been drinking. Guys just came up and bought us drinks all night long, which Tess had used as proof of the fact that her idea to come to a sports bar was a good idea. (“It’s full of guys, and they’ll all fall over themselves to buy drinks for the outnumbered lady.”)

She was right. Her plan had worked and we were kept as liquored up as we desired. I didn’t down them nearly as quickly as Tess did, though, because I was a lightweight who didn’t drink very often.

I toasted her with my glass, but scrunched up my face.

“I don’t know,” I told her. “I do enjoy being single, but I’m going through a real dry spell. It’s been forever since I’ve… you know.”

I couldn’t help but blush. I didn’t know why I was telling Tess this information. I guess I couldn’t hold it back any more. It was driving me crazy.

“Why not?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I haven’t had time to go on many dates, and whenever I do, they’re always a bust.”

She shrugged.

“Why do you have to go on a date?” she asked. “Just find a hot guy, and hook up with him.”

I looked at her like she had two heads. “Are you serious?”

“Sure,” she said. I noticed she was eyeing some guy in the corner. “I do it all the time. It’s the twenty-teens. Women are allowed to have lots of sex just like guys do, and no one can slut shame us for it.”

She winked at the guy in the corner. I guessed she was about to demonstrate her affinity for hooking up with strangers.

Tess thinks I should have a one night stand, I texted Lacey.

I tapped my fingernails on the wooden table, waiting for Lacey’s response. I expected her to be critical, to talk some sense into me. Instead, I bent over my screen when I heard a text notification come in, to read what Lacey had written me back.

Go for it! She said. One day you’ll be home with a baby like me, reminiscing about that time you fucked a hot guy in the bathroom stall.

Leave it to Lacey to joke during a moment like this. She was joking, right? I wondered. I couldn’t tell. I turned to ask Tess her opinion of Lacey’s text but the guy had approached our table and was saying “How you doing?” with an obviously fake—and cheesy—New York accent.

Come on, Tess, don’t fall for that, I silently willed her, but, the next thing I knew, his hand was on her thigh and her hand was on his shoulder. She was blinking at him as if something was stuck in her eye, but that was Tess’ way of flirting. Guys always thought it was adorable.

“Kina, do you mind if I…”

“Leave me in a bar all alone?” I asked her, smiling as if I was telling a joke. “No, go right ahead.”

If she noticed that my tone was dripping with sarcasm, she chose to take my words at face value. Seeing as how she let the stranger wrap his arm around her and pull her off the bar stool, she was anxious to leave and was just glad I wasn’t protesting.

“Okay, Love,” she said, kissing me on each cheek. “I really do think you should find a hook up buddy of your own. Try it! It’s fun! Trust me.”

“Have fun,” I told her.

As she wandered off, I looked around, considering whether there were even any options. My eye caught those of a guy who looked like he belonged on the cover of Sports Illustrated. Holy moly.

The bar was dark and his table wasn’t very close to where I was sitting, so it was a bit hard to make him out, but he was definitely hot. Tall with broad shoulders and a chest that looked like it was made to carry things. He looked really familiar.

He raised his eyebrows at me, and I squinted to make him out better. I found myself smiling at him despite myself.

Woah.

Was I really going to do this thing that Tess seriously recommend and Lacey at least jokingly endorsed? Was I going to hook up with a stranger?

As he smiled back at me, I felt a sudden flash of recognition, in my gut more so than in my memory.

Is that… Jacob Lawson?

No, it couldn’t be. I hadn’t seen him since high school, when he was my twin brother Kyle’s best friend.

Kyle and Jacob had played on the same football team back at the University of Miami and they had been close. Something had gone wrong between them when Jacob had been scouted while Kyle hadn’t, and they’d stopped talking.

I did a double take, and looking slightly to one side of him, I noticed someone who looked an awful lot like Lacey’s husband Hanson.

Looking down at my phone, I texted Lacey: Is Hanson at the Batting Cage?

I didn’t have time to get an answer, though, because I noticed that the stranger was walking over to me. Correction: he was swaggering over to me. And what a swagger it was.

As he got close to me, I noticed tattoos peeking out of his shirt, rising up to his neck, and also down on his wrist and hand. If it was Jacob Lawson, he certainly had become even more of a bad boy than he had been in high school. Which didn’t surprise me, because he was quite rebellious back then.

Oh, how I used to fantasize about Jacob. He barely noticed I existed, though. I was just his best friend’s sister, and he was too busy play football and chasing after cheerleaders to notice me. I was more of a band geek and academic nerd. My nose was always in a book and my head was always in the clouds, but sometimes I was thinking about him.

How it would feel for him to kiss me. “Feel me up,” as we used to say back then. I’d let him go to second base, maybe third. Maybe more.

I would even touch myself in my bedroom late at night, thinking about how I had seen Jacob earlier when he had come over with Kyle. I would imagine him putting his hand up my skirt, sliding it closer to my aching pussy, fingering me, fucking me. I would play with myself while thinking about how it would feel for him to suck on my nipples and then my pussy. I would make myself come by thinking of him putting his cock inside me.

And now, here he was, approaching my table.

All sense left my head. I decided to give in to my baser instincts, like everyone had been encouraging me to do. I would have wild, dirty sex with this hot guy who—as he got closer, most definitely looked like Jacob Lawson—and then I would never see him again. I’d never tell anyone, especially my brother, who is upset and resentful at Jacob due to their falling out back in high school.

I wasn’t sure what he was doing here in this bar, because he played for a team in Texas. Yes, I may have done some Internet stalking a while ago. Perhaps his team had training here, with the Sharks. That could be problematic, my brain told me, as he was almost within talking distance. Hanson might think I’m some slut, even though Tess claimed it was no longer acceptable to call me that.

But I’m sure Lacey would straighten up his backwards thinking. Tonight was my time to stop thinking about what everyone else would think, and start thinking about what I wanted. It was obvious my panties were dripping wet, and my clenched pussy was sending me the clear signal of what I wanted: to sleep with this hot guy I used to know in high school, and then move on, feeling empowered after having my very first one night stand.