I’m finally on my way back to my apartment about an hour after leaving the bar. I have the cab driver drop us off at Jess’s place, and I walk the few blocks home and take a mental inventory of everything I have to do tomorrow. I’ll get up at eight and do my fitness routine. If I get up at eight, that will give me a solid seven and a half hours of sleep. That’s perfect. I won’t be tired when I wake up, and I won’t be groggy like I always am when I oversleep.

Then I’ll have my egg white omelette and some juice. Then, I’ll get to work researching the newspaper. I’ll just need to do some reading up on the people I’ll be working with. I already read up on the people who interviewed me and the the man who will be my direct boss.

But even though I’m planning out my day and trying to forget what happened at the bar, I can’t stop thinking about Drew Anderson.

What was his angle? He just broke up with his girlfriend. He probably went home with some gorgeous blonde after talking to me and Jess.

I finally get to my apartment, and even though I’ve pushed any remaining thoughts of him out of my mind, I can’t shake the feeling he gave me. He is sexy, that’s a given. But he also looked at me like he knew we were surrounded by people and decided to pay attention only to me, but at the same time, strangely, like we were alone: just the two of us, no swirling nightlife around us.

I feel my insides stir again. I change into my pajamas and rest my head on my pillow. I’m going to bed alone, but I’m more than okay with that.

His words from the bar tumble through my mind as my fingertips slip just past the top of my panties. I close my eyes and imagine his words tumbling softly from his lips and into my ears as I slide my fingers down further. I’m already turned on, and as my middle finger traces slowly around my wet clit, I wonder if I’m really okay with going to bed alone.

What would he have done to me if I had let him? I recall my roommate from Junior year of college telling me she had sex with a guy once in the bathroom of a bar, and I wonder if Drew’s ever done that. I’m sure he has. I pretended to be distantly amused by my roommate’s anecdote at the time, but deep inside, I wondered what it would feel like to be a girl who would say yes to that. To just take an opportunity like that if it were to present itself.

My fingers slip past my folds and slide inside, my eyes squeezing shut. I bet Drew’s big, too. He’d have to be, with the big game he talks - right? I imagine him above me, his eyes drinking me in, his mouth consuming mine. My breaths come quicker and quicker as I move my fingers in and out and onto my clit. My body sharpens up as a wave of pleasure breaks inside me.

My eyelids relax as my body drifts away into sleep. I still don’t know if I’m okay being alone, but I’ll have to be.

I wake up at 7:50 the next morning without my alarm having to wake me. But as I do my morning routine and get on my computer to start jotting down notes, I find myself researching Drew Anderson instead.

Jess was right. He certainly has it made in the money department. But I already knew that - it was obvious as soon as he stepped into my eyeline at the club. And as I look at pictures of him and his fiancee - ex-fiancee - I remember that he has it made in the looks department, too.

A strong nose and a jawline that makes him look like a cartoon prince, and deep, saturated green eyes. But unlike his good looks, he wasn’t born with his money. As Jess explained to me last night, his father started a real estate firm in the late ‘70s, several years before Drew and Eric were born. He didn’t start out wealthy. Like a real entrepreneur, he had a series of failures and setbacks before striking it big. But when he struck big, he hit gold.

He saved up his money and purchased a small stake in a residential building, and, trading his way up, finally wound up with holdings in the millions.

The boys, it turned out, weren’t always exposed to all that money.

Drew Anderson Senior started out in the city, the son of second-generation immigrants who settled in Brooklyn around the turn of the century. But Drew Senior met a woman from the Catskills, so it was farewell to the city and hello to selling houses as a broker at a small firm in a small upstate town.

Things ended up not working out between Drew Senior and Mrs. Elizabeth Anderson, and when the couple divorced, Drew Senior moved back to the city and their two young sons ended up shuttling back and forth between the city and the country, starting around the time they started high school. The couple thought it in their boys’ best interest to have them attend high school in their mom’s rural town, and spend the summers in the city with their dad.

And the boys excelled in high school - in everything. In sports, in academics - you name it, they could conjugate it, beat it in a cross-country race, calculate it or spell it.

When it was time for the two brothers to go to college, the older brother, Drew, pursued a double-major in architecture and economics, and then, a year later, Eric attended college for finance.

It was after the brothers were both done with their degrees that they went to work for their father. But not wanting to be in the shadow of one of the city’s biggest real estate moguls, they started their own firm, raising capital from investors who had faith that the two scrappy brothers from upstate New York would be able to turn a small cash investment into towers of money.

And they succeeded. I imagine their father’s name couldn’t have hurt.

And now, they are in the midst of a battle over the rights to some land, which both the brothers and another company believe they have the rights to.

The picture of the brothers on their official website doesn’t really do them justice. Maybe they just look better in what seemed to be their natural habitat: surrounded by beautiful women, expensive clothes and overpriced drinks.

And it looks like before he met Clarissa, Drew was used to having one short-term paramour after another, and there’s plenty of evidence online to prove it.

As I scroll down a list of articles, I imagine how I’d write the headlines a little differently.

Rich Real Estate Dude Beds Gorgeous Women all Over the City

Cocky Schmuck Brags to Young Woman in Bar

Young Journalist Struggles to Maintain Composure when Man Promises to Keep Her Up All Night

Woman Turns to Pile of Goo Imagining what Sexy Guy’s Tongue Can Do

I do a quick image search to see if there are pictures of Drew’s newly-ex-fiancee.

And boy, are there ever. The woman looks like she hasn’t worked a day in her life. She has a slim, almost waif-like look that I would never be able to achieve, even after six months of a low-carb diet. She looks like she survives on a diet of fashion magazines and dirty martinis. She has the kind of look you hear about and only rarely see, even in the city: the girl who thinks the sidewalk is her catwalk, the girl who has a kind of old-New York glamor that can only be achieved with the biggest designer sunglasses money can buy.

Apparently, this Clarissa person is the daughter of a generations-old commercial real estate firm with its name placard on the insides of office buildings and malls across the tri-state area.

Her father and the Anderson brothers’ father are old friends. Imagine that: two old rich guys being friends with each other, and having their children meet, fall in love and marry.

That’s an old tale if I’ve ever heard one.

There aren’t just pictures of Drew and Clarissa, though. There are also pictures of Clarissa and some other guy, and it looks like they were just posted within the last few days. And these pictures don’t make the other guy look like he is her brother or just a friend.

That’s cold. And it would certainly explain why Drew was already out on the prowl himself last night, trying to flirt and pick up a lady to spend a nice evening with.

Haven’t we all been there? Even though I’ve never been one for a one night stand after a breakup, it’s only because I never had the courage to make myself vulnerable again so soon.

Maybe I shouldn’t have judged him like I did.