“You know what I need after a good workout?” Julia asks me as she licks salt suggestively from off her hand. “More alcohol. It does a body good.”

She giggles and tosses her hair. I lean over and kiss her neck. She groans softly as I slide my hand up her knee, skimming the silky line of her thigh. This may be a dive bar, with a juke box blasting Johnny Cash and the crack of pool balls in the background, but right now Julia Stevens is all that exists for me.

I can’t remember how we got here. When did we lose Mike and the others? I should be more worried about it than I am, but my hand slides further up Julia’s thigh, right into the danger zone. Fuck yeah, Kenny Loggins.

“You two need to get a hotel if you’re gonna do that,” the bartender grumbles, pouring us two more shots of tequila. He’s an old man with eyes like a desert hawk and a moustache like Yosemite Sam if he stuck his finger in an electrical socket. “I don’t care if this is the Strip, this place is respectable.”

“Respectable me, then,” I say, dimly aware it makes no sense.

Hmm. I might be drunk.

I can’t remember what bar this is. I just remember a sign that had a neon cowboy throwing a lasso around a woman’s leg, and I thought, That’s where I need to be.

The old guy’s not giving up, though. Julia moans a little in disappointment as I remove my hand. Gotta respect the man’s wishes. He moves away, finally.

“Relax.” I nibble at her exposed shoulder. “Plenty of time later.”

“You’ve got great stamina.” She winks at me. “Much better than my ex. He used to be only up for twice in one night. And the second time would always be too quick.” She huffs and bites into a lime wedge.

“Fucker didn’t know what he had,” I whisper, pulling her against me and kissing her. She tastes like lime and tequila; a potent combination. Her lips part, and I flick my tongue inside her mouth. Her groan makes me rise to half-mast.

Down, boy.

“He especially didn’t like it when I started making more money than him.” She sighs and pulls away, leaning her cheek against her hand. “Romance writing was fun and sexy when I was doing it on my own, making five hundred bucks every six weeks on Amazon. He liked it ’cause he got to work as my ‘research,’ and we got enough extra cash for nice dinners a couple times a month. He was fine with that part. But as soon as my agent picked me up, and my career took off? As soon as I was pulling in contracts worth a couple hundred thousand? Bye.” She throws back another tequila shot. “Suddenly I was a workaholic bitch who didn’t give him blowjobs anymore. And I did!” she cries, slamming her shot glass onto the bar. “I gave him plenty of blowjobs! I’m a giving human being.”

She hiccups. Still sexy.

“He’d get along great with my ex,” I grumble. Phoebe appears before my eyes again, in a haze of alcoholic wistfulness. I can almost feel her small waist in my hands again, her long, creamy leg hiking up around me. I haven’t missed her in a while—no, I haven’t allowed myself to miss her—but just now she comes roaring back into my brain. I can see her beautiful face again, full of judgment. Full of disappointment. “Nothing was ever good enough for her. No, nothing I did was good enough.”

“Why do women not notice a good thing when it’s right in front of them?” Julia says. She kisses me back, and my erection is reaching urgent status. I break off gently.

“She does now. She’s got her soul mate.” I put the word into air quotes. “They’re so in love. Met at a fucking Cubs game. The Cubs, for fuck’s sake! Is that a bad omen or what? They’ll never make it to the World Series, you know?”

“I know,” Julia says, nodding sagely, like what I said made perfect sense. Which it did. Because I’m awesome.

“He works in the sales department of an air conditioner manufacturing company something or other.” Who can focus on details at a time like this? I put my hand on Julia’s knee. God, her skin is so fucking soft. “She left her practice, you know? On track for a partnership in Chicago, top law firm, and she quits to run out to Nevada with some asshole she just met.” I raise my shot glass. “Here’s to Hank Jessup. Good thing he’s an air conditioner man in a desert; he will never run out of work.”

I down my drink. Julia gapes at me.

“Are you kidding me? She went all the way out to Vegas just to be with some guy she met at a baseball game?” Julia strikes her chest. “I write romance, and even I think that’s a pretty fucking stupid thing to do.”

“’Cause you’re smart.” I lean in, my vision wavering slightly, enjoying the sight of her splitting into two Julias. Two Julias are better than one. Tyler swore he’d get me a threesome while I was here; I won the jackpot, buddy. “You’re so fucking smart.”

“No, you’re so smarting fuck,” she whispers, then kisses me. This is a debate for the ages. Being drunk with a stranger is the best present I could’ve given myself. Thank you, Mike and Stacy. I hope you have lots of scorching hot honeymoon sex.

“If I could find your ex, I’d kick his ass all the way downtown,” I mutter against her lips. Not even sure that makes sense, but screw it. Screw everything.

Julia pulls away a little, a wry little smile quirking up her lips. “The feeling’s mutual,” she purrs, trailing her fingers along my jaw.

“I hate men who turn into mewling bitches because their wives make money,” I say, feeling my annoyance at whatever jackass she was married to rising. “Don’t give me shit about your fucking fragile masculinity. Get a better job, asshole. No one’s stopping you.”

I’m serious about that, too. I’ve seen men come into my office whining about how their wives are parasites who stay home all day and drain them of their hard-earned money. Then, a second later, other guys show up bitching about how their wives are emasculating them by working for a living. I mean, make up your mind, dickwads.

“Thank you,” Julia moans, tilting her head back and exposing her beautiful throat. “God, it’s so nice to hear that all men aren’t cavemen.”

“Unless we want to be,” I murmur, kissing down her neck and sliding my hand into her dress. I slip under her bra, feeling her nipple peaking and getting hard. “Unless we want to grab a woman by the hair, bend her over a table . . . ”

“That sounds good,” she murmurs, breathless. She moans as I squeeze her nipple, her luscious lips parting with need.

“That’s it,” the cowboy bartender says, slamming our bill onto the bar. “Out.” He folds his arms over his gingham-plaid shirt, and spits a stream of tobacco juice into a bucket under the bar.

This is a classy establishment, as you can see.

We pay and wander back onto the street, Julia hanging onto my shoulder. The Vegas air is a warm embrace even in the middle of the night. The sky above is soft, black velvet, the world around us awash and hazy with city lights. Julia kisses me again, wrapping herself around me. Damn, I want to get her back to the hotel and into my bed. I kiss her, harder and more demanding, but she pulls back.

“Wait. You said your ex is in Vegas? You ever get tempted to call her while you’re here?” she asks, running a hand through my hair.

“Why? Jealous?” I ask, grinning as I lean in for a kiss. But she denies me again.

“Don’t you wanna, like, give her a piece of your mind?”

“Nah,” I say, shrugging. Like it’s easy. Though it feels easy right now, with Julia in my arms. “She’s got her air conditioner and her fucking parrot. She loved that thing. Peebles was the one nice thing about her moving out; no more parrot shit on everything in the living room.”

“Hold on,” Julia says, putting a hand on my chest. Her smile stretches out, impossibly wide. “What would you say to a little home invasion?”

I blink, not understanding. But when she explains her plan in depth, I can’t stop grinning either.

Is this legal? Abso-fucking-lutely not. But tequila, man. Tequila’s a helluva drug.

“We are the world’s greatest parrot-nappers,” Julia hisses at me as we climb out of the Uber. The driver looks over his shoulder at me, a querying expression on his face.

“This is being done for the good of the nation,” I tell him, giving him my best lawyer face. I can feel it; the muscles in my cheeks go slack every time. The guy only nods and lets me out.

As the car drives away, we do our best to walk in a straight line to the door. I only veer into a bush once, which means I am fucking golden, and I am going to break into a fucking house tonight.

Phoebe and her soul mate live in a subdivision out in the seemingly endless suburbs around the Las Vegas strip. Similar looking houses, probably beige and cream in the daylight, stand watch all along the street. The streetlights buzz like, like, uh, like buzzing things. Yeah. Buzzing things that watch people.

Watch this, you suburban pricks.

“What if they’re home?” I stage whisper to Julia as I follow behind her. My eyes trail to her perfect ass. Maybe we can get back at Phoebe by fucking right here, in the driveway.

She swats my hand away when I go after her. A woman who’s all about business; I can get behind that.

“We’ll pretend to be Jehovah’s Witnesses who forgot their pamphlets. I’ve done it before in high school,” she says, peering in through the window. “It’s how I got a look inside rich people’s houses. They had chandeliers and no shag carpeting!” She sounds awed by the memory. “Wonder how we can figure out if they’re here.” She puts her hands on her hips. Very nice hips.

I come up behind her, placing my hands on her waist. I sweep her hair aside and kiss her neck. She gasps a little.

“I think they’re gone,” I whisper in her ear, and nod at the drive. “This is a one-car garage. Phoebe’s Beamer always sits out here; I know because she bitched about it in one of our last breakup emails. If it’s gone, so are they. Probably having a night on the town.” I try to keep the mockery out of my voice. I don’t succeed.

Julia spins around, throws her arms about my neck, and kisses me. I want to keep going—maybe have a quick good luck fuck before breaking in. Like you do. But she pulls away. Dammit.

“Hold on,” Julia says, taking off her shoes and throwing them onto the lawn. “Give me a boost.”

“For what?” I ask, though I cup my hands and let her step onto them.

There’s an overhang above the porch, and Julia climbs up on top of it with my help. She crawls over to the window overlooking the street. The roof above is slanted, and I’m afraid one of the shingles is going to slip and she’ll go tumbling off and onto the ground. That fear creates a surge of adrenaline or testosterone or some chemical that reminds me how out of control this could be.

“Are you crazy?” I whisper, blinking rapidly.

Yes, she is crazy. And so am I. Some sane part of me is coming back and yelling in my ear, telling me that, as my lawyer, he advises me to get the fuck out of here. But Julia jimmies the window, and it slides open. She pumps a victorious fist into the air.

“Vegas, baby!” she yells, and then tumbles into the blackness of the open window.

Well, fuck. Better go after the fair drunken damsel. I pull myself up onto the overhang—dead lifting in the gym is useful after all—and slide in after Julia.

I blink, trying to focus my eyes in the darkness. Neither of us is quite drunk or stupid enough to start turning on lights. But I hear her rummaging around somewhere down the hall. I landed in the master bedroom, which still has boxes left to be unpacked.

Six damn months later, and Phoebe’s still putting shit away. There was a time, when we first moved in together, that she had to have us scrub every corner of the condo before we could even think of putting our boxes in. And then everything was unpacked within twenty-four hours. Living with air conditioner man has made her sloppy.

Or happy. Maybe it’s just because she’s happy and doesn’t need everything on the outside to be perfect, to make up for what isn’t there inside.

It’s like a bullet to the chest, and I crouch on the floor just to breathe the pain out. The tequila’s ripped all my internal walls away, allowing my thoughts to be heard, no matter what they are. I tell myself that my tight-ass, angry phase started after she left, but I know that’s not exactly the truth. I could always be a little domineering. A little judgmental. A little arrogant. After all, when I first met Julia I dismissed her based on her fucking suitcase. What kind of asshole does that? I could’ve missed a connection with a warm, sexy, gorgeous woman simply because she liked shiny purple things.

Maybe I’ve been using Phoebe’s leaving to ignore the things I never liked about myself.

And then I hear Julia knocking around somewhere in this house, and my mood lightens a bit. Fuck this self-reflective moment. I’m having an adventure right now. An adventure in stupid shit. It’s not the time for soul searching.

“Where are you?” I say, getting up and stumbling to the door.

“In here!” Julia calls. I follow down the hall, careful not to bang into anything. The darkness tilts and whirls in front of me, like a tilty whirly thing, and it’s a little hard to remember what’s up and what’s down.

In front of me, Julia exits the bathroom, two rolls of toilet paper in hand and a mischievous grin on her face. At least, I think her expression is mischievous. It’s still pretty fucking dark in here.

“What are you doing?” I ask, catching one of the rolls as she chucks it to me.

“We’re going to do a little redecorating,” she giggles, and walks past. She throws her toilet paper up over some light fixtures in the hallway, decorating the lights with reams of fluffy white. Then she breaks it off and ties some paper around the bedroom doorknob.

I smile. Fuck it; it’s time to be stupid.

“Watch,” I grunt, and toss my roll into a sweeping arc through the air. It spins gracefully, pillowy sheets of paper trailing behind it like streamers. The roll bounces down the staircase, leaving a delicate trail behind. I stumble down the stairs and grab the roll again, heading into the kitchen for more extensive design.

Above me, Julia cackles.

In the kitchen, I hear the familiar squawk of a familiar pain-in-the-ass parrot. “Hey Peebles. Glad to hear you’re alive and kicking, you little bastard,” I whisper, draping lines of toilet paper over the rustic looking chandelier they’ve hung in the ceiling.

The bird continues to squawk and move in its cage. I head over and open the door, reaching inside. I can see a dark shape rustling around, and wince as something pecks me. Fucking animal.

“Here, Peebles. Here, you little feathery asshole,” I mutter, and I grab the bird. Peebles shrieks and whistles, but I pull him out, grinning down at him in the light from the streetlamps outside. Julia stumbles into the kitchen after me.

“Okay. I’m outta TP. I think we should hit the road.” She looks down at her feet. “Where are my shoes?”

“Outside,” I say, grabbing her up around the waist and kissing her. I’ve never felt so alive, with a beautiful woman in my arm and a parrot in my hand. Peebles reminds me of his shitty existence with another peck. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”