“It’s not Laura,” I answer, puzzled. I hadn’t seen—or talked—to Laura in about two years, unless you counted that time we ran into each other by Rockefeller Plaza. I had popped into the LEGO store to buy Megan’s oldest a Harry Potter set, and Laura must have been buying out every store around the rink, because her hands had been full of shopping bags. She’d given me a kiss on the cheek and told me to call her. I promptly forgot her number. At the time I was still seeing the journalist or “Ms. Snoopy,” as Sabrina liked to call her.

“So who is she? And why doesn’t she like how the third floor is decorated?” Sabrina asks with impatience.

And apparently a thousand questions are what I’m going to have to pay to get this favor done.

“I have a friend,” I start again, only to be interrupted.

“Is that what we’re calling them now?”

I cut to the chase. “Sabrina, what is it going to cost me to get you to do this for me?”

She sits, knees drawn to her chest, looking like the baby girl I used to push on the swings at the park. “You know what I want.”

“Ask for something else.” Anything else. The implacability in my tone makes her frown, but wisely she doesn’t press.

“Fine,” she huffs. “I want you to be there when I tell Mom and Dad about my new job.”

I reach over and squeeze her hand. “I would’ve been there anyway. Ask again.”

“Tell me,” she implores and grips my fingers. “Tell me exactly what your objections to Kaga and me are. Don’t say it’s our age—I know that can’t be it.”

I drag my prosthetic down my face in frustration, wondering if the carbonite fingers would make it more or less painful when I poke my eyes out. “You’re right. It has nothing to do with your age difference.” It would make me extremely hypocritical, given that Natalie is probably ten years younger than me. “The issue is more complicated than your age. And it’s not my story to tell.”

“But you won’t even let me talk to him, so he can’t tell me the story.”

“Let it go.”

She turns away so I can’t see her hurt, but I know it’s there. It’s painful to see her distressed, and I blame that all on Kaga. It seems that it wasn’t so long ago I could coax her out of a pout with a trip to Dylan’s Candy Bar or an ice cream in Bryant Park. That ship has sailed. Now she wants to have a relationship with one of my good friends, whose personal life is more fucked up than a Bravo reality-TV show. No, I don’t want her involved in that. If that makes me an asshole older brother, then so be it. I’ve been called way worse for lesser infractions.

But I stay quiet as she gathers her composure and makes up her mind about my favor. “I’ll do your little decorating project. I’ll reserve my reward to be named later.”

“Done,” I agree with relief.

“So when does this need to be accomplished? What’s my deadline?”

“Today.”

“What?” she screeches. “I can’t accomplish this today. Are you high?”

“I need it done today. Or at the latest, tomorrow morning.” I pull a credit card out of my pocket and slide it across the table. “Whatever it costs.”

“Who are you and what have you done with my brother? The last time we decorated this house, you wanted to buy everything used because you could not believe that a sofa could cost more than a couple grand.”

“I still don’t. I think that the furniture you made me buy was highway robbery. But I’m not asking you to buy furniture. I’m asking you to re-create a couple rooms.” I pull up the pictures I’ve taken on my phone and show them to her.

“Did Barbie decorate this bedroom? I’ve never seen so much pink outside Victoria’s Secret.”

I shrug. I kind of liked it. It was different than anything I had and it fit her. It made me feel like . . . I was trespassing into something solely her own and making my own mark.

Sabrina sighs. “I’m going to assume you are redecorating for a woman and not a child. If you’d shown me this earlier, I would have scratched Snoopy off my list right away. She does not look like a woman who sleeps in a Disney princess bedroom.”

“What is the kind of woman who sleeps in a Disney princess bedroom?” I ask, curious. Natalie’s a grown woman who writes gritty science fiction novels and plays video games in her downtime.

“Someone who didn’t get enough time to play with dolls as a kid.”

I wonder if that’s true. Maybe Oliver forced her to play catch with him. Whatever her reasoning was, it didn’t bother me. My dick didn’t get any less erect in her sweet-smelling bedroom filled with lace, pink, and ruffles. In fact, if this is what a Victoria’s Secret store looked like, I’d have to stay away, because the association would get me instantly hard.

“I want to know more about this chick. You’re going to spend thousands of dollars re-creating two rooms for her. I might only be twenty-two, but I’m not dumb. You want to bone this girl. The question is why you have to redecorate rooms that already exist in your own house just to have sex with her.”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but I don’t have to do any of those things just to have sex with her.”

“Oh.” She nods knowingly. “You’ve already been in her pants and want to continue to do so. Got it.”

“My friend”—I emphasize the word—“suffers from severe anxiety. She’s living in a place that I don’t think is very safe. There are threats against her life. I’d like her to come and live with us for a time. In order to make her comfortable, it makes sense to provide her with familiar surroundings.”

Sabrina slaps the table. “Why didn’t you just say so? Geez. Men.”

I watch her pocket the credit card and stomp off. When she gets to the door, she stops. “I’m happy to spend your money and I’m happy to re-create this Barbie Dreamhouse on the third floor, but I’m not happy with your explanation. And I’m telling Mom,” she ends ominously.

That went well.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

NATALIE

I wake up to an empty bed and a text message.

You were sleeping when I left. Text me or call me when you wake.

I reach over to feel the side of the bed that is as empty as it is cold. And there is no indentation, no sign that he spent even a minute in bed after we had sex.

I sit up and look around. There are pillows strewn everywhere and I’m not even under the sheets. Instead, Jake wrapped me up like a burrito.

I have a choice here. I can be hurt because he ran off like I was some one-night stand from a club or I can take it for face value—that we were two people who satisfied a sexual urge with no promises of commitment.

And we’re more than two people. We’re at least friends. The things we shared last night were too wonderful and too intimate to be the words of a smooth operator who wanted an easy lay.

He didn’t leave me exposed, but covered up. Bundled into a cocoon of blankets. And even if I was some conquest, then so what? I opened the door last night. Well, technically Jake opened the door, but I unlocked it, and I didn’t freak out when he came inside. That’s a huge win.

So I’m not going to be upset that I woke up alone. I’m going to be happy that I was brave enough to have a new friend in my apartment and that I had amazing orgasms with a man, not a vibrator.