Chapter 1

Piper's POV

The mailbox key stuck the way it always did, and I had to jiggle it twice before the little metal door swung open and dumped a coupon for a pizza place I was never going to order from into my hand.

And an envelope.

Red letters. NOTICE.

I knew what it was before I opened it. I opened it anyway, because apparently I enjoyed hurting my own feelings.

Rent past due by one full week. Failure to remit will result in termination of your lease per the terms of your agreement.

I folded it in half, then in half again, and shoved it down into the front pocket of my apron, which already smelled like bacon grease and the lemon cleaner we used on the tables.

"Good," I said out loud, alone in the lobby. "Great. Perfect. Eight hours on my feet, one hundred and forty-seven cups of coffee, and I come home to an eviction notice. Best day of my life."

The elevator had been broken since before I moved in, so I took the stairs.

How did I get here. Genuinely. How?

"Writing's a hobby, sweetheart. Not a career." My father had said it with his fork still in his hand, mid-meal, like he was commenting on the weather. My mother had gone more practical. "And what about health insurance?"

I'd graduated four months before that dinner. I had a degree, a duffel bag, and one payment from a literary magazine for a short story about a woman who drowned her husband in a lake. Eight hundred dollars. I'd taken it and gotten on a bus and come here, to Oakhaven, where nobody knew my parents or what I'd said to my father on my way out the door.

For a while it worked. It actually worked. The rent got paid. My fridge had real food in it. I bought a lamp.

Then the writing dried up and the bills got braver, and now I was the kind of person who worked a day shift and a night shift and still had to decide which one of them I was going to lie about on applications.

I pulled my phone out on the landing and leaned against the wall while it loaded the KDP dashboard.

KDP, Kindle Direct Publishing, is the reason I can call myself a writer at all. I upload the file myself, Amazon puts it on the store, and readers who pay for Kindle Unlimited get to flip through it, and I get paid by the page. Which means my income is a number on a graph.

But the graph had been a slide for six weeks, and the last seven days were the steepest part of it. My newest book was dying in a very specific place, and I knew exactly where: chapter eleven, page reads dropping off a cliff like they'd hit a wall and given up. Sixty-two people had made it to chapter ten. Nineteen had made it to twelve.

I scrolled down to the reviews. There were good ones. There was "I read this in one sitting, please write faster," which made me feel like a real author for about four seconds. There was "the tension between them is unreal."

And then there was this:

"The sex scenes read like a nun's diary. He puts his hand on her waist and my brain starts playing Christmas carols. Please, for the love of god, go experience the real world."

I read it three times. Then I backed out of the app and stared at the wall, which was painted the color of oatmeal.

They were right. I never did it before.

I was twenty-four years old and I had never had sex. I'd written four books about it. Four. I'd researched it. I knew the vocabulary. I could describe the mechanics of it in three different positions across two separate subgenres and I had still never been touched anywhere below the waist by another man with intent.

And now the thing I couldn't do was the thing paying my rent, except it wasn't paying my rent, which was the whole problem.

My phone buzzed in my hand.

Roni: new club on Main opens tonight. come out. i'm told the talent is outstanding

Roni: like. outstanding.

I sent her back a sad face. Then I screenshotted the review and sent that too.

Three dots. Then a string of laughing-crying emojis so long it scrolled.

Roni: they're not wrong though

Roni: i love you but they're not

Me: thank you for your support. truly the most solid foundation a person could ask for

Roni: i'm serious. piper, i've known you since we were fourteen. every relationship you've had since then stopped at kissing. every single one. you cannot write a sex scene because you have never had sex

Me: i know

Roni: so come out tonight and fix it

I leaned my shoulder into the wall and typed slowly, because I'd never actually put this into words for her before, not the whole of it.

Me: i just think love and sex should mean something. that's all. i don't want to just get it over with some random guy

Roni: prude

Me: i know

Me: but what am i supposed to do about it now. it's too late for me.

I was still looking at my phone when the sound came from the end of the hall. Cardboard dragging across the floorboards. Then a low exhale, the kind someone lets out when they've been holding their breath to lift something heavy.

I looked up.

2A was wide open. The unit across from mine, the one that had been empty since March, now had a man in it.

He was bending over a box with his back to me, both hands under the flaps, and his white t-shirt was soaked through with sweat and stuck to his spine. I could see the shape of him through it, the shoulder blades moving under the fabric as he pulled, and there was a line of muscle running down each arm that wasn't gym muscle. That was the kind of build you got from doing things with your hands.

He straightened up and dragged the back of his wrist across his forehead, and then his head turned and I got the side of his face. Straight nose. Sharp jaw. Dark hair pushed back off his forehead by sweat.

I stopped breathing. Then I started again, too fast.

Oh my god, how can someone be that hot? That's not fair.

Except it was extremely fair, actually, and my body was reacting to it like a dog hearing a can opener. My underwear had gone from normal to a problem in about four seconds flat.

And he was my new neighbor. He was my new neighbor.

I lifted my phone and took a picture of him before I could think about whether that made me a criminal. Just his side, the wet shirt, the arm, the narrow line of his waist where the shirt came untucked.

Me: this is the guy who just moved in across the hall from me

The three dots appeared, disappeared, appeared. Two screaming emoji. Then three. Then a shirtless-fire one that felt like overkill but I understood it.

Roni: where did you find him. do you have any idea how lucky this is

Me: i'm thinking he could be a model for the guy in my next book

Roni: forget the club. i have a better idea

Roni: him.

Me: what do you mean him

Roni: i mean him. sleep with him. do it once, get the experience, write the chapter, watch your numbers come back up

I read that twice and my face got hotter, which I hadn't thought was possible.

Me: that's insane

Roni: it's efficient

Me: it's not just about me wanting to. it takes two people

Roni: it's just one night. i'm not telling you to marry him. you need real experience and you are standing in a hallway looking at that man's back and i can tell through the phone that you're already into it. stop pretending to be a prude and think about your bank account. think about that review.

I looked at the review in my head. Go experience the real world.

Then I looked at the envelope in my apron pocket, folded into quarters, with the red letters showing through the white.

My cheeks were still burning. My stomach was still doing whatever it was doing. I swallowed, and I could hear it, that's how quiet the hallway was.

She wasn't wrong. Bills did not pay themselves. I needed to be practical about this.

I typed: okay. but i have a problem.

Roni: of course you do

Me: i don't know how to hit on a guy who's that hot.