When the doorbell woke me the next morning, I stretched lazily and smiled. The night’s sleep had left me perfectly refreshed. What a crazy night. It had definitely been too long since I’d gotten laid.

“James, answer the door!” a woman screamed from the back porch: my sister.

I stretched again when my feet hit the floor. My mouth was dry. I always forgot to have a glass of water before falling asleep after drinking.

A groan from behind me on the bed sent me jumping to my feet. I turned and saw Evan, naked, hard, and sprawled out on the bed. I stared at the glorious sight until my sister rang the doorbell several more times in a row.

Shit.

After sliding into the jeans I’d been wearing the night before, and doing a quick, futile search for a shirt that didn’t smell, I hurried down the stairs and opened the door.

“Good morning, Jillian.”

She set Jeffrey on the floor where he quickly scurried to the living room, looking for the box of toys I kept for him under the coffee table.

“Oh my God, Jimmy,” she started too loudly and dropped to a near whisper. I hated when she called me Jimmy. It made me feel like I was twelve. “That asshole.”

She opened the fridge as if she’d said enough.

Making what felt like a safe guess, I asked, “What did Rick do this time?”

Rick being Jeffrey’s father was bad enough. Unfortunately, he was also a fellow cop, and general prick. The combination of the three frequently made my life a living hell.

She slammed the orange juice bottle onto the counter and snapped at me. “That fucker cancelled.”

I held a finger to my lip, pointed to her son in the living room, and tried not to laugh when Jillian shook her fists at the sky. “Sis, pretend I don’t know what you’re talking about and tell me what actually happened.”

“He was supposed to watch Jeffrey for me this weekend—”

I knew how this story ended. “But something came up at work. He has to go out of town.”

She pushed me squarely in the chest. “How do you know that?”

“Dude, we work together. I was in the meeting where he volunteered to represent us at the meeting in the capital when our normal rep for those things had to cancel. Better him than me.”

There I went, putting myself squarely in the middle of another one of their constant fights again.

“What the fuck? He said the chief made him go,” she said as if accusing me of being involved in Rick’s shenanigans. I shook my head and shrugged. I regretted opening my stupid mouth. “So he deliberately lied to me, and now…”

Jillian trailed off when Evan shuffled into the kitchen in just his underwear. His pants, shirt and hoodie were tucked under his arm. At least his erection had gone away, but the tight boxer briefs left nothing to the imagination. I blushed at the memories from the night before. In the light of day, everything seemed raunchier. Rather than making me want to give up on him, though, I decided that I needed to find a way to get Evan back into my bed again despite his big talk of not wanting a relationship.

I was always up for a challenge.

Without a word, Evan set his clothes on the counter and poured some orange juice into a glass. He drank the entire thing before looking at us and saying, “Hey.”

I would have laughed at how obvious it was that Evan was not a morning person if I hadn’t felt my sister squeeze my elbow, silently demanding an explanation.

Evan rubbed his eyes and yawned. He managed to make even that look sexy.

“Yes, sorry, that’s Evan. Evan, this is my sister, Jillian.”

“Good morning, Evan,” Jillian said giving his body another quick up-and-down before turning to raise her eyebrows at me. “You seem to have forgotten to wear your pants over to my brother’s house.”

Evan looked down at his mostly naked body. I took the chance to do the same.

He had to clear his throat before any words would come out. “Yeah, they’re dirty and I just have to walk next door so…” he shrugged to indicate that was all there was to say about his state of dress.

“Of course,” my sister said, indicating that she didn’t agree one bit.

They all needed to get out of my house before things got any more awkward.

Evan nodded at me and Jillian. “All right. I should get going. Thanks for last night, James.”

I took a step toward him before realizing that he had no intention of kissing me goodbye.

How did I manage to fuck a guy but never get around to kissing him?

If I did manage to talk Evan into another date—well, technically a first date, I supposed—I would make sure to correct that oversight.

As soon as Evan closed the door behind himself, Jillian cleared her throat.

“So, he seems nice.” With the rising pitch at the end of the sentence, she left a million questions unasked.

“Yep. Good guy.”

“Certainly not shy about, well, not wearing clothes.” She wasn’t going to let this go.

Deciding not to make it any easier for her, I answered, “Nope.”

Trained by a lifetime of hiding potentially awkward information from each other, she decided to go nuclear. Turning to face me squarely, with her hands on her hips, she asked, “Did you fuck him?”

When I was younger, I would have lied. At thirty years old, what would be the point? If anything, I was proud that I’d managed to end up with such a hot man on my first try. “Yep.”

“Good?”

“Mmhmm.”

The clicking of the clock hanging on the wall in the kitchen marked the passing of time as we continued to stare, waiting for the other to flinch.

“Well, then. Congrats are in line, I suppose. We’ll have to talk about this some more sometime soon, but now I have to get to work. As always, thanks for watching Jeffrey.”

“My pleasure. Have a good day at work.”

I started prepping my coffee machine.

“Okey-dokey,” Jillian said as she backed out the door, her face full of questions.

I’d have to give her real answers eventually, but at that moment, I was full of just as many questions of my own. The first of which was how to talk Evan into that second date that I needed so badly. The quick fuck had been what I’d needed last night, but now that he was gone, I wanted so much more from him.

I knew it was ridiculous to expect anything after just one...well, it wasn’t even a date. But why go out looking for someone else, when there was someone perfectly great next door.