One Night Stand

by Brooks, Sarah J.

  As I finished my drink, I knew that I had no more excuse to hang around; I should get out of there and make sure that Erin didn’t arrive back early and catch us in the middle of something we might have trouble explaining. Logan seemed to have the same idea.

  “I guess I should kick you out now …” He cocked his head at me.

  “I’m not sure it counts as kicking me out if you made me coffee afterward,” I told him, and he moved towards me and slipped his arms around my waist.

  “I wish you didn’t have to go,” he murmured, planting a kiss on my neck, and nuzzling against me.

  “Me too,” I agreed, and despite everything we’d already done that day, I wanted to go straight back to that bedroom with him and fuck him all over again. Maybe I could be the one to take control this time. See how he liked it.

  “I should get out of here.” I headed for the door. “We can catch up again soon, right?”

  “Maybe I’ll pay you a visit,” he said with a grin.

  “Booty call your neighbor?” I cocked an eyebrow.

  “Well, you’re right downstairs, and I’m going to be thinking about what we did all night …” he remarked, and he kissed me on the cheek again like he couldn’t get enough of me. I knew how he felt. I just wanted all of him, every part, and walking out this door would feel like pulling apart two sides of a chocolate bar; sure, you could do it, but why would you when they were so much better together?

  I finally went to pull the door open, but before I could get my hand on the handle, a key scraped in the lock. I turned to Logan, eyes wide.

  “Who has keys to your apartment?” I demanded, but I had a feeling I already knew the answer to that question. Panic was pulsing through my body, and I saw the same thing written on his face, too.

  “The only person who has keys to the apartment …” he began fearfully, and then the keys clicked, and the door opened, and I found myself face-to-face with my best friend.

  Chapter 12

  Logan

  “What the fuck?” Ant exploded as soon as she opened the door, and I had to practically grab her and yank her over the threshold before she could alert every single neighbor in this place as to what was going on with Nina and me.

  “Ant, keep your voice down,” I ordered her firmly, and her eyebrows shot up, and she glared at me.

  “I’ll shut up when you tell me that I’m misreading this fucking situation,” she gestured between the two of us, and I glanced over at Nina who looked as though she was considering making a dash for the door and just getting out of there. I couldn’t blame her. We had both seen Ant angry before, and we knew that it wasn’t a good time.

  “Ant, come on, take a seat,” I told her, trying to soothe her. I was her big brother, after all, and she should listen to me more than she would one of her friends. She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at me.

  “Are you guys hooking up?” she demanded, and Nina and I exchanged a look. This wasn’t a conversation I’d imagined having to have with her or anyone this soon into the relationship. I still didn’t know precisely what we were, and I didn’t want to assume anything, but it seemed like we were going to have to come up with something if I was going to get my sister off my back.

  “Yes,” Nina finally stepped in, and Ant turned on her, fury blazing in her eyes.

  “And long has this been going on behind my back?” she demanded.

  “Not long,” Nina replied truthfully. “It’s just … I’m sorry, Ant, we didn’t want you to get upset so we didn’t tell you—”

  “So you were just hoping that you could date away and then I’d be fine with it whenever you decided to tell me?” She shook her head. “Sorry, that’s not how this works. There’s a reason I’ve been keeping the two of you apart so long; don’t you understand that?”

  “It’s not your job to keep me away from anyone,” I told her, a little annoyed at the notion that she could have been sticking her oar between us all this time. Maybe she had been right to, or maybe, for once, my sister could have kept herself to herself and let what happened just go down.

  “Please tell me this is nothing serious,” she demanded, planting her hands on her hips and glaring at the two of us. I felt as though she was a parent, and Nina and I had been caught in the act. But I was her big brother, and we were a pair of consenting adults, and we could do what the fuck we wanted without her getting involved.

  “Look, Ant, we don’t know what this is yet,” I told her, getting seriously irritated now. “And it’s none of your business to figure this out for us, so you don’t need to—”

  “Let me just get this straight.” She held her hands up, letting out a long sigh and taking a seat at the table as though she could hardly keep herself standing. Nina was shifting her weight from foot to foot, clearly understanding that she had been dumped in the middle of some family drama and that she was the root cause of it. She had her arms wrapped around herself, as though she was hoping she would just vanish out of existence and leave this argument to the two of us. As though Ant would let her out of here without what she deemed a decent explanation.

  “The two of you are sleeping together,” she shook her head. “Please tell me that you’ve at least kept Erin out of it?”

  A dawning look of realization passed across her face, as something clicked into place. “Wait, that night that I couldn’t come to sit with Erin and you were here,” she pointed at Nina. “Were the two of you at it that evening?”

  “It doesn’t matter when and where,” I told her. “What matters is that we’re doing this, and it’s got nothing at all to do with you, alright?”

  “Okay, look, I’m just trying to look out for the both of you,” she said shaking her head. “I know you both better than I know anyone, and there’s a reason I’ve made sure you didn’t meet before now, alright?”

  “Then come out with it,” Nina challenged her, staring down at her expectantly. “What could be so bad that you never wanted us to meet?”

  “Well, let’s start with you, huh?” Ant shot back at Nina, her voice bladed. “You hate kids. You’ve always told me that.”

  “Yeah, but things change.” Nina shifted on the spot again and shot a look at the door, as though she was considering making a break for it.

  “Oh, so you’re telling me you’re totally fine with having Erin around?” Ant tossed her hands in the air. “Come on … I know you. I know what you’re like.”

  “You don’t know everything about me,” Nina replied, clearly annoyed, and she shot a look at me as though appealing for me to get involved and stop my sister talking to her like that, but I knew that there was no way I was going to change her mind. If Ant had something to say, the only way to get through it was to let her talk it out and hope that she forgave you by the end of it.

  “So you’re seriously telling me that you can be a mother to Erin?” She raised her eyebrows at her. “Come on, tell me.”

  “We’re not at that stage yet—”

  Ant held her finger up to quiet her. “Yeah, well, that’s the stage you’re always at unless he’s just straight hiding you from his daughter.” She shot a harsh look at me. “And if he’s been letting you sit for her, that’s clearly not the case.”

  “So what if I’m taking care of her?” Nina fired back. “It’s not serious. I’m just helping out where I can, same as you.”

  “Nina, you’ve got to listen to me.” Ant looked pained for a moment. “I’m not saying … I’m not saying you’re a bad person, but with everything that’s happened, everything I know about you, I just … I don’t want you to get all up and involved with something you can’t deal with. And I don’t want my niece getting hurt because of it.”

  “You really think I’d let anyone near Erin that I thought was going to hurt her?” I interjected, and Ant homed in on me. The pain was gone, replaced by anger instead.

  “I think you’re thinking with your dick, and you’re making some dumb-ass choices,” she replied. “How long has it been
since you dated anyone, Logan? Remind me?”

  “That’s not what’s important here.” I shook my head. “You can’t expect me to just wait around till Erin’s left home before I start having a life of my own again—”

  “Nobody was asking you to do that,” she pointed out. “I just don’t think that you’re giving this the proper thought. I love Nina, but she’s not…”

  Ant turned to her friend, and I could tell she was trying hard not to insult her.

  “What am I not, Ant?” Nina demanded, and I could see the hurt on her face. This entire thing was a mess, from start to finish, top to bottom, all of us lashing out at each other and getting nowhere because of it.

  “You don’t want children,” she repeated again. I wondered how many times Nina had expressed this to Ant, that it had imprinted itself so firmly on her memory. “And I just … if you get involved with Erin, and then you leave …”

  She trailed off, and it suddenly clicked what was going on in my sister’s head. She was imagining my daughter going through what the two of us had gone through when we had lost our parents. I was still mad at her for barging in on the two of us like this and flapping around like she owned the damn place, but at least this made the remotest bit more sense.

  “It’s not going to be like that,” I assured her, and Nina furrowed her brow and glanced between the two of us, playing catch-up as best she could.

  “How do you know?” Ant asked, her voice dropping, suddenly going small. “You can’t know. If she ends up where we were …”

  “That’s never going to happen,” I told her firmly. “Whatever happens, I’m around and you’re around, right? It’s never going to be like it was for us.”

  Realization dawned over Nina’s face, and she reached over to touch Ant’s hand, but she whipped it away as soon as their fingers connected and glared at her. She wasn’t done yet.

  “And why didn’t you tell me about this?” Ant demanded once more, firing back up into fury mode.” How long were you guys planning on hiding this from me?”

  “This wasn’t about hiding it from you,” Nina protested. “We just … we’ve not been doing this long; we didn’t want to put any labels on it, and we knew you’d be mad—”

  “And none of that gave you pause for even a minute?” She glared up at her friend. “You never thought that maybe I actually had a damn point?”

  Nina and I looked at each other, and I could tell that she was thinking the same thing I was; that we could never have predicted how intense this thing had gotten, that if we had, we probably would have gone ahead and done it anyway. I couldn’t imagine having a chance to do this over and choosing anything different. I liked her, so much, having her around made things better. Even this was bearable because she was standing right there opposite me, a unit against Ant.

  “I think you thought you were doing what you believed was the best thing for the both of us,” I told her gently, speaking softly and slowly the way that I had back when we first moved to the city together and she needed me to guide her through the worst of what followed our parents’ deaths.

  “But you don’t have to worry about us,” Nina assured her. “Really. I know you were trying to help, and maybe you just—maybe you just made it so that we met at the right time when we could actually make something of this.”

  As she said the last few words, Nina looked into my eyes and smiled a little. I smiled back. She reached out to take my hand, and I let her, even though I knew we were risking more of Ant’s wrath by daring to show the barest hint of physical affection in front of her.

  Ant got to her feet, shaking her head. “I just can’t believe the two of you wouldn’t say anything to me,” she muttered, and she headed for the door, pulling it open sharply and letting it close behind her with a crash that seemed to run through the whole house. I thanked God that Erin hadn’t arrived halfway through that conversation, and suddenly realized just how quiet it was now that Ant was gone.

  “I should go,” Nina dropped her gaze to the ground. “I think we both need some time to think.”

  “Agreed,” I nodded, and I opened the door for her. I wanted to say something, something to let her know that I still … hell, that there was still something there between us, no matter what my busybody sister had to say about it.

  “Nina?”

  “Yeah?” She turned foot on the top step already.

  “This is going to be alright,” I promised her, and she nodded back.

  “I know.” She smiled, and with that, she turned and headed back down the stairs. I ran my hands over my face and wondered what in the name of holy fucking hell I had gotten myself into.

  Chapter 13

  Nina

  It was awful, those few days after Ant had burst in on the two of us together. I knew that I had to give her time to cool off, that if I moved too far too fast that she was going to cut me out for good, but I missed my best friend and hated more than anything in the world that she felt like I had betrayed her. I supposed I had—she kept Logan and me apart for a reason all this time, and we had basically just gone and laughed in her face and proved that we didn’t give a damn what her motivations were or why she was doing the shit she was as long as we got to do what we wanted.

  She had seemed so upset when she left Logan’s apartment. When she brought up what happened with her parents, it all seemed to make a hell of a lot more sense. She was so worried about Erin being left with an absent parent figure, and the thought of putting that little girl through the hell that the two of them had been through, no matter if it was in a much-reduced fashion, scared the hell out of her. I couldn’t blame her. The thought scared the hell out of me, and I barely even knew the kid.

  The next day, we sat down at opposite ends of my couch when Erin was at school and an hour before Logan was due to leave for work, so we couldn’t get distracted by just hooking up, and tentatively padded our way around the question at hand. Eventually, we came to the decision that it was best for me to be the one to handle Ant for the time being. If he came to her finger-wagging and telling her how it should be and how she needed to treat us, she was unlikely to take that sitting down. But if I came to her, as her equal and her best friend, and told her the truth, then maybe, just maybe, she would be able to take it from me.

  Logan and I talked about what the hell had been going on between us all this time, which I suppose was a good thing. I mean, if I could, I would have quite happily dawdled in that grey area we had been inhabiting all this time, but I knew he was right to want to figure out one way or another between us.

  “So,” I managed to smile at him, even though I was so nervous it felt as though my heart was going to come bursting out my chest. “What … what are we?”

  “Jesus, I have no idea.” He shook his head and offered me an apologetic grin. “What do you want us to be?”

  “Honestly, I’m just out of a relationship where I got fucked all the way around for so long,” I admitted. “And I thought … I thought when we met, it would just be a little bit of fun to get my mind off what I was going through. I didn’t think I’d be in a place where I could date for a long time, but …” I trailed off and bit my lip. My heart was leaping in my chest, and part of me wanted to just blurt out and say that I wanted to be with him, that he made me happy in a way that nobody had for what felt like a lifetime. He reached over and took my hand, and as soon as our skin connected, I felt a flood of relief wash over me.

  “Look, Nina, I haven’t dated anyone in so long.” He shook his head. “Since Erin came along. So I don’t know if I’m going to be any good at this, but I’m willing to give it a try if you are. I have no idea what it’ll look like for the two of us, but …” It was his turn to run out of words now, and I knew how he felt; there was just this roadblock in the way of either of us coming out and saying what we meant.

  I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and accepted that I was going to need to be the one to come out with it. “Logan, I really like you, and I want to d
ate you,” I told him firmly, looking into his eyes and managing a smile. “How does that sound?”

  “Sounds pretty fucking good to me,” he agreed, and he leaned over and kissed me, softly, on the mouth, and my whole body just ached to curl into him and forget about everything else that was going on out there in the real world. Why did any of it matter when he was right here with me? How could any of it matter?

  And knowing that whatever was between us now was real, I knew that I had to go and speak to Ant about it. She couldn’t just duck it and hope that it went away or that we lost interest in one another; we had made it unequivocally clear that Logan and I were a real thing now, a relationship with a capital R. And either she could hate us for it for the rest of her life, or she could actually listen to me, and we could figure this out once and for all.

  I called her a bunch of times in the week after she first came across us, and she ignored all my calls and sent them to voicemail; instead of crying or begging down the line, I would just calmly ask her to call me back and stop playing games with me. And eventually, she did, her number popping up on my phone as I was making dinner one evening. I snatched it up and pinned it between my shoulder and my ear as I stirred a pot.

  “Hello?”

  For a second, I thought that I had disconnected the call because there was no response, but then I realized I could hear her on the other end of the line and that she was just waiting for me to start explaining myself. I opened and closed my mouth, panicked, not sure how to start this.

  “Where are you right now?” I asked, and Ant sighed.

  “My place,” she replied. “Why?”

  “Come over to mine,” I told her. “I’m making dinner. We can talk.”

  “I’m not going to go over there and find my brother stripped to the waist again, am I?” She asked, and there was a flicker of humor in her voice; just the tiniest hint of it, but it was enough for me to grasp on to, a reminder that the real Ant was there underneath all this.