I cover the arm with the sock and the liner and affix the stump into the arm socket. From the dresser I pull out another pair of jeans and a plain gray T-shirt. The shirt slides easily over my head. The jeans are another story. I stick the prosthetic into the jeans leg and then repeat the process I conducted for my arm. Sliding the other leg in, I’m dressed.

After four years of this, it’s as habitual as brushing my teeth and just as routine, but it’s a chore. One of the biggest changes post-injury was how long it took me to do even the most ordinary of tasks. The hand and arm prosthetic, no matter how great the advancements, are still tools and not real limbs. Ironically it was my injury that made me realize I have opinions about how my home is set up and what kinds of clothes I like. I prefer big furniture with plenty of places to put my feet up, and soft clothes without many fastenings. I also know who I want in my home. I want Natalie and not because I need help putting on my clothes.

The only reason I want Natalie here is because I want her with me. Not to help me dress or pick out my clothes, but because I want to watch her sleep, watch her wake up, watch her writhe on my sheets. I want to take her in the shower and put her ass up on the highboy dresser at the perfect height for my mouth.

And yes, it’s a strange yearning I’m experiencing. It took me a couple of years after surgery, after wearing the artificial limbs, to truly feel comfortable in my own skin again.

I’d met my share of women who had a fetish for amputees and then a few who wanted to smother me with well-intentioned care, but I wasn’t interested in playing someone’s charge. I wanted a partner and preferably one who didn’t try to ride my stump. I shudder at the memory of that night gone wrong.

But there were plenty of women who didn’t care. Some just wanted a guy who knew how to use his equipment and who cared if they had an orgasm. Natalie isn’t a fetishist and she’s not looking to be my mother. But she’s not quite in the “I just want to fuck” category either.

To be fair, I suppose some of the women I dated in the last couple of years wanted something more meaningful, but I wasn’t interested. Now I am. Real interested.

But if I don’t get my act together and pull up my big-boy pants, I could lose her before I even have her.

With that, I set off to find Sabrina. If I’m going to convince Natalie to move in here, I’m going to need to make some changes.

“Hey, sleepyhead,” she greets me, but doesn’t move from the center island where she’s chopping up a pineapple.

“Good morning, Bri.” I kiss the top of her head, which isn’t that much shorter than mine. Bri’s a tall girl. “You got some coffee left over?”

She jerks her head toward an already filled cup, the steam rising indicating it was freshly poured. I take a big gulp before thanking her. “You’re an angel.”

“Late night, huh?”

“Something like that.” Talking about sex with my baby sister has always made me uncomfortable. This time is no different. I can still see her in diapers. I was thirteen when she was born, and my feelings toward her are more paternal than brotherly, which pisses her off. As she regularly reminds me, she already has a father.

But she’s twenty-two and knows exactly why I was late coming home last night.

“I hope you practiced safe sex,” she smirks, also knowing exactly how uncomfortable it makes me.

I rub a hand over my face and then into my hair that I’ve forgotten to brush after I showered. It’s probably a mess, but I don’t care. I’m debating how much to share with Sabrina about Natalie and not just because I want to move Natalie into the townhouse.

“You busy today?” I ask.

“I’ve got two morning classes and then I’m done. Why?”

“Want to go shopping?”

She squeezes her eyebrows together in confusion. “Are you offering to take me shopping? You hate shopping. You hate spending money.”

“I don’t hate spending money,” I protest. “I object to being wasteful. Spending two hundred bucks on a pillow that I’m not allowed to use because the sequins might rub off is wasteful.”

She waves her hand in the air as if my argument has no merit. “I am not buying your new girlfriend anything.”

“I asked you to do that one time.”

“Three times.”

I take a long sip of coffee that’s cooling fast. “I didn’t want to give a gift that was thoughtless, so I went to my dear sister for advice, and you did a great job. Which is why I’m coming to you again. Competency generates a repeat performance request.”

She rolls her eyes. “So what is it going to be? Clothes, jewelry? You know I do not do lingerie. That is still a hard limit.”

“Of course not,” I say with mock indignation. “If, hypothetically, I were to give you a photograph, could you re-create the room in the picture on the third floor? How doable is that?”

“What? You don’t like what we’ve done to it already? When we were decorating it four years ago, you said nothing too bright and no flowers. This is a totally gorgeous space!” Sabrina exclaims. “People would pay lots of money—lots of frivolous money—for what we did in this house.”

I scratch my head and wonder how my intention to bring Natalie here has turned into an indictment of the decorating taste of my mother and sister. I think it’s lack of sleep. If I’d stayed at Natalie’s place, I would have slept better, longer, and I would have had good-morning sex. Then I wouldn’t be making these obvious missteps.

“I have this friend—”

“Is this for the journalist? I thought you broke up with her?”

Gathering the reins of my rapidly shredding patience, I repeat, “I have this friend—”

“If it’s not that one chick, then who?” She taps a finger against her lip. “You were out late last night, and Victoria said you didn’t talk to anyone at the club when you were out with Ian and her. Was it that lawyer lady from Mom’s charity dinner the other night? She didn’t seem your type.”

While Sabrina runs down her short list of suspects, I refill my coffee. Leaning against the counter, I watch her with some amusement. She is going to be surprised, but in a good way, I think. Natalie and she would get along. Sabrina has a lot of creative energy she seems to try to suppress because she thinks we want her to fit into some business mold. Mom and Dad have told her that she can do whatever she wants, but Sabrina’s headstrong. Once she gets an idea in her head, you can’t shake it from her. So it doesn’t matter that she loves music, she thinks she’s got to be a banker or investment fund manager or do something that makes her a “real living,” as she calls it.

Kaga is one of those ideas. For some reason she thinks she’s in love with him, but like the business thing, once she wakes up, she’ll realize the error of her ways. But until then we all watch out for her to make sure she doesn’t butt her head against too many brick walls.

At the table, Sabrina gasps and slams a hand down on the pine surface. “Oh my God, I heard that Laura Severson got a divorce recently. Do not tell me you are getting back together with that bitch.”

I blink in surprise. “I didn’t know she was getting a divorce.”

“Not getting, already done. Finite. Quickest divorce in New York State. I guess they could not stand each other.”

After I broke it off with Laura, she wasted no time in hooking up with a friend of mine. At the time I’d thought he was too good a friend to be comforting my ex with his dick, but after I’d gotten out of the military I realized that I had almost nothing in common with the guys—and girls—I’d hung out with as an arrogant trust fund kid at Columbia.

“Wait, if you didn’t know she was getting a divorce, then were you sleeping with her while she was married?”

Sabrina looks as scandalized as if she’d found out I’d been caught having sex in Central Park.