“I know, I know,” I tell her, trying not to think about it. “He explained.”

“And then you fucked,” Steph says with a nod.

I eye her. “That we did.”

“Well,” Nicola says, staring at me with big, eager eyes. “How was it?”

I lean back against the seat. “It’s hard to say.”

“What?” Steph asks incredulously. “You mean you’re not about to wax on about his Hulk penis?”

Old Kayla would have waxed on about any Hulk penis she may have encountered, but this Kayla…this Kayla didn’t feel like talking about Lachlan that way.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I tell her.

“That bad, huh?” Nicola says sympathetically.

“No,” I say quickly. “No, no. It was the opposite of bad. It was…” I shake my head back and forth, trying to think of the right word. “Earth shattering. Life changing. His cock has ruined me for all other cocks on earth.”

Nicola and Steph exchange a look.

“Uh,” Steph says. “Wow.”

“Yeah. I’m so scared.” So screwed.

A lengthy pause.

“So there was a Hulk penis,” Steph goes on.

I give her a look. “His dick is ridiculously proportioned to his body, and he’s already a huge man. That’s all I’m going to say.”

“Good thing you’ve had a lot of practice to loosen you up,” Nicola says with a smirk.

“Shut up.”

“So now what?” Steph says.

“What do you mean?” I ask carefully.

She shrugs and takes a swig of her beer. “Well, he’s leaving.”

“Yes, I know.”

“So…are you going to see him again before that?”

I fish my phone out of my pocket and glance at it. “I have two hours before I’m meeting him at his apartment. This will be the last time you’ll see me until he leaves. Does that answer your question?”

“Got it,” Nicola says.

“Kind of a bummer, huh?” Steph muses. “I mean…you’ve finally got him…and he’s going.”

I sigh heavily and brush my hair back from my face. “Yeah, thems the breaks though, right? I mean, heaven forbid I actually get a chance with the first guy I’ve fallen for ever since Kyle.”

Both of them stare at me with open mouths and it takes me a moment to realize what I’ve said out loud, what I haven’t even admitted to myself.

“Oh my god,” Steph says. “Are you saying that you’re in…”

I eye her sharply. “No.” I clear my throat. “No, I’m not. Obviously. I don’t know him. It’s still just a crush, whatever.”

“This is way more than that,” Nicola says. “It’s okay to admit it, Kayla. It’s about time you felt something for someone.”

“Is it about time?” I challenge. “Because this is shitty timing. I don’t want to feel anything more for him than just seeing him as a vehicle for awesome sex. Really. So let’s forget I said anything. I’ve got one week to have my mind blown and then he’ll leave and I’ll go back to being me again. Fuck. It’s better than nothing.”

Nicola’s lips scrunch together, looking stupidly sad.

“What now?” I ask, rolling my eyes.

“You’re going to get your heart broken.”

“What?” I exclaim, slapping my palms on the table.

“Nic,” Steph admonishes. “Way to be optimistic.”

The blood is rolling in my head so loudly that I can barely hear Nicola. “I’m just saying that if I were you,” she explains, “and I finally started to have feelings for a guy, and I only had a week with him, I’d be heartbroken.”

“That’s because you’re a sap,” I tell her snidely. “Even though you weren’t such a pussy before Bram got his dick in you.”

“He was the right dick,” she counters. “And this is your right dick.”

“Look,” Steph interjects. “We’ve all got the right dick right now. But Kayla and Lachlan are way, way different than Linden and I. Or you and Bram.”

Somehow I’m finding a way to take offense to that. “Oh yeah, how so?”

Steph’s brows raise to the ceiling. “Well. As you just said, you don’t know Lachlan. He doesn’t know you.”

“True.”

“And he’s leaving, so you don’t even have the time to get to know each other.”

“True,” I say, dragging the word out.

“And even though you seem a bit softer around the edges these days, you’re still you, Kayla. I bet even if he wasn’t leaving, you’d find some excuse to pull back and extract yourself. So actually, contrary to what Nicola thinks, I think this relationship, arrangement, whatever it is, is tailor-made for Kayla Moore.” She raises her beer in the air and looks me hard in the eye. “You go and screw the hell out of him this week. For those about to fuck, we salute you.”

Nicola grumbles something but raises her glass.

I don’t have a glass, so I can only nod at them. “Well, all right then. To fucking.”

“To fucking,” they say in unison.

***

When eight o’clock rolls around, I park in his empty space and sit in the car for a few minutes, just wringing my hands together and working up the nerve to go upstairs. It’s not that I’m scared. But I am nervous. I don’t even know why, but I am. Since I left the girls at the Lion, I’ve been thinking about Lachlan, about what we did. About what we might do again. I feel like I’m pining over a celebrity, someone larger than life, someone who makes me feel completely out of my element. It’s surreal.

“Get a fucking hold of yourself,” I say out loud and crane my neck to look up at the floor-to-ceiling windows of Lachlan’s apartment building, trying to count floors and see which one is his. I anxiously open my compact and dot more lip stain on my lips, wondering how fast it will be rubbed off once I get into his apartment.

Is he going to kiss me right away?

Will this be a Netflix and chill night?

Immediate fucking?

The possibilities have me on edge.

With a deep breath, I get out of the car and walk over to the entrance. My finger hovers at his apartment number. I take a moment to eye myself in the reflection of the glass doors. I sped home from work to change into a strappy black dress, something like the nightgown trend of the nineties, with hot pink platform heels. No bra. No underwear. What’s the point?

I press the buzzer and wait a few moments, my pulse pounding in my wrist. Lachlan’s distinct voice comes through, slightly drowsy and smooth as butter. “Kayla?”

“Hi,” I say. I’m about to say something else, probably something awkward, but he immediately buzzes me through. I exhale loudly, trying to release tension, but I remain a fidgety mess all the way up the elevator. Last time I was in here, we’d just rescued the dogs. He was shirtless. He’d felt so close at that time and yet oh so far away. To think that now, now, after I’d had my hands and lips all over him, my need for him was stronger than ever.

I knock on his door, biting my lip in anticipation, until it swings open and I see him leaning casually against it. The dulcet tones of Fiona Apple’s “Slow Like Honey” drift in from the room.

“You shouldn’t be wearing that,” he says, a faint smile on his lips. God, I’ve missed those lips.

“Why not?” I ask with a raise of my brow. In a second, all my nerves smooth out and I realize how easy it is to talk with him like this.

“You’ll make it impossible to get through the appetizer,” he answers, moving back and letting me inside. He’s back to casual wear—a white thermal shirt that’s partially unbuttoned just enough to show a glimpse of tanned skin, chest hair, and tattoos, a necklace with a small wooden cross, green cargo pants. I like him like this just as much as I like him in a suit.

I walk in, my heels echoing on the tiles. “I thought I was the appetizer,” I tell him, looking around. The two dogs are on the couch, curled up next to each other like sleeping mice. In unison, they both lift their heads to stare at me. The pit bull gives a thump of its tail but the scruffy mutt shivers slightly, showing teeth.

“Don’t mind them. They’re still adjusting,” he says, closing the door then gesturing to the table by the kitchen, where I had done my interview with him last week. “That’s the appetizer.”