“If he asks for sex, he’s coming to live with you.”

“That’s a little extreme,” I said. “Make him live with the parents.”

“He’d be too close,” she said, groaning. “If I had to see his face, I’d kill him.”

“He’s probably already asleep,” I assured her, trying and failing to take her seriously. “Just go get in bed and get some rest while you can.”

“Fine.” She hung up without saying good-bye, and I grinned as I dropped my phone on the couch beside me.

Ani was one of the best people I’d ever known. She’d also been right. I would have called her once I’d had a few beers. I wanted to bitch about Sean not paying for dinner, and I still couldn’t get over the way Sarai had shot me down so easily, and I wanted to tell Ani about it. She’d laugh her ass off.

I knew that I wasn’t God’s gift to women or anything like that, but I did pretty well with the fairer sex. I’d never in my life been told no flat out when I’d asked a woman to have dinner with me. I’d heard excuses and had women give me the brush-off, sure, but never gotten a plain “No.” If I was being honest, that had burned a little.

I stripped down to my boxers and grabbed a six-pack from the fridge before settling back down on the couch again. Since I didn’t have anything going on the next day, I was going to drink every single one of those beers and burn off some frustration by killing some video game zombies.

Before I turned on the TV, I flipped through my text messages until I found one from Sean and replied to it, You owe me for dinner, fuckface.

Chapter 2

Sarai

School was going to kill me. I’d been working all day on a paper, and I finally had the rough draft written, but I still had to outline the next paper before I could go to sleep. Neither of them was due until Monday, but I had plans tomorrow that I really couldn’t cancel. I rubbed at my forehead, where a headache was forming.

“I know, Auntie,” I muttered, staring at her through the computer screen. She was complaining again about the distance between us. She didn’t understand why I’d gone all the way to Missouri for school when there were plenty of good schools in New York. Why couldn’t I live at home and go to school? Was I trying to get away from her? How was she supposed to check on me? I was twenty-six—wasn’t it time for me to settle down and give her some babies to hold?