"Are you paying all of your bills?"

"Yes."

"Are you doing your laundry regularly?"

"Yep."

"What about your text books, have you bought those yet?"

"Yeah."

"Is your bed made? And your sheets washed?"

"Mom," I sigh into the phone. "I can take care of myself, alright? Everything is fine over here."

"I'm just worried that you're in too far over your head," She explains to me as if she doesn't tell me that same exact thing every single time that I talk to her. "Being an adult is really hard work, you know."

"I know," I agree, not wanting to start a fight or anything. I'm just going to let her lecture me yet again about the same things that she's always lecturing me about and get it over with because I know that no matter what I say to her, she'll never realize that I can actually take care of myself. "And we're handling it."

"Well, what about your dishes? They aren't stacking up, are they?" She wonders.

"I did the dishes this morning," I sigh.

"Only you? Doesn't Jasper clean up too? You know, you shouldn't be the only one doing work around the apartment," She tells me.

"We take turns doing the dishes," I say, "And he swept the floors. Is there anything else that I must be forgetting to do?"

"I know that you think I'm being too overprotective," My mother sighs, obviously able to detect my unstoppable sarcasm. "But it's only because I worry about you. This is just such a big step to make and it was just completely out of the blue."

"Not for me, I've known about it for months," I inform her. "It's only out of the blue for you."

"Which I am still unhappy about by the way, and we didn't even get time to talk about it," She huffs and I don't tell her that the only reason we couldn't talk about it was because every time we spoke after I told her about Atlanta, she would just try to convince me to stay and that was it. "Anyway, have you met your landlord in person?"

"Yes," I say. "She's very nice."

"And you're doing your grocery shopping? Eating healthy?"

"Mom, I gotta go," I decide, realizing that this third degree about responsibility could last for hours and I don't want to just sit here and listen to my mother doubt me for that long. "So I'll call you later. Love you, bye."

I hang up before she can start talking again, to nag me about my hair getting too long or my blankets being too wrinkly. I love my mom to death, I really do, but she's driving me insane even though she's across the country from me right now. Even though I'm here, proving to her that I can take care of myself, she just won't wake up and let go of me being a little girl. She won't realize that I actually don't need her to spoon feed me anymore and it's becoming offensive.

"Are you busy tonight?" Jasper asks me when he sees that I'm off of the phone now. I'm standing in the kitchen so I walk over to the living room where he's sitting on the couch with his laptop in front of him.

"Not that I know of but I'm assuming that's about to change," I say, sitting down beside him to see that he's looking at a website for some sort of night club.

"Feel like going out?" He wonders. "I found a gay bar downtown and it looks pretty cool."

"Why don't we ever go to straight bars?" I ask him.

"Because you don't even like straight bars," Jasper reminds me with a small laugh. "You say that the guys are too desperate, remember?"

"Oh, yeah, you're right," I agree. "Well, sure we can go there. We haven't been out in a while."

"I know but I figure that we're pretty much settled in now and we haven't really been downtown yet, so we might as well go check it out," He explains with a shrug.

"What time do they open?" I ask, looking at the clock to see that it's eight now so I probably won't have that long to get dressed.

"Eleven," Jasper tells me, looking closer at the web page that he still has open. "So you have time."

"Alrighty, lets do this," I grin, eager to go do something exciting tonight instead of just sitting in the apartment all night like a lumpy potato, which is what I'm usually doing here with Jasper. We'll usually just sit down here and watch movies in the dark until about two in the morning. Not that I don't love our midnight movie marathons, it's just that maybe we should be enjoying the city instead of staying in our apartment every night.

Three hours later, I'm walking down the spiral staircase from my room to where Jasper is waiting for me in the living room. It takes me a while to get down the stairs since I'm wearing strappy black stilettoes and I have to be careful that I don't trip and fall over the railing. That'd sure put a damper on the evening.

"Wow, somebody's hoping to get lucky tonight," Jasper jokes when he sees that I'm wearing a tight high waisted lacy black mini skirt with a pink crop bow top that looks like a bow covering my chest but it doesn't cover much else. I know that it's revealing a lot of skin but I like it. I think that I'm pretty skinny and I have a good sized chest and I'm proud of my body. I don't think that there's anything wrong with showing it off sometimes.

"It's been a while," I defend with a small shrug as I grab my phone, ID, and credit card from the table where I'd put them all earlier. "Are you ready to go?"

"Yeah, let's get going," He agrees and then he grabs the keys and we're walking out the door to go to the club. "I feel like you're doing this just to prove to me that you're not into Scott."

"Do you?" I wonder with raised eyebrows. "We've gone out before, you know, and it was way before I even considered seeing Scott again. And I don't have to prove anything to you because I know that you trust me."

"I do," Jasper says quickly. "Of course I trust you. You're right. But you know that this whole Scott thing has me worried."

"I know that but you don't have any reason to be worried," I say as we get into his truck and he starts driving us downtown.

"I just think that you're going to end up hurt," He admits. "Because you have this idea in your head about who Scott is and he isn't the guy that you built up in your head. I'm not saying that he's not a nice guy, I just think that you're falling for the guy that you've imagined him to be and not the actual Scott, you know?"

"I'm not falling for anybody, Jas," I assure him with an easy laugh. "I promise that I'm fine, alright? We're just friends and we're just getting to know each other again. Everything is fine."

"Alright," He appeases me. "As long as you're sure."

"I'm super sure," I say to my best friend.

When we pull up to the club, it's already packed and it takes Jasper fifteen minutes to drive around downtown to find a parking spot but he eventually gets one by the curb on the busy street and then we walk down the block to the club. There's a ten minute wait to get through the doors and when we get to the bouncer, I give him my ID and then he gives me wrist bands that are a symbol that I'm underage so that the bartenders don't give me anything alcoholic to drink.

Jasper, however, has his fake ID (I have no idea how he got that thing) so he doesn't get the wrist bands and then once we pay our five dollar fee to get in, we follow the line of people into the dark, crowded club. There's a loud remix blasting over everything and there's people dancing everywhere.

"You're DD, right?" I yell over to Jasper.

"You're the one with the wristbands, kiddo," Jasper grins at me teasingly.

"That's so you can buy me drinks," I say with a pointed look. "And it's your turn. I did it last time."

"Fine, you're right," He easily concedes and I grin back at him as he goes to the bar and orders a drink. He holds it as we walk farther into the club so that we're far into the mess of dancing drunk people before he hands the drink over to me and keeps a cup of water for himself so that the bouncers don't see me drinking the alcohol.

We're basically pros at this by now considering once we were both eighteen, we went to clubs almost every weekend back home. Usually, we wouldn't hook up with people, we'd just go to dance and have fun but sometimes we would, most of the time it was Jasper hooking up because we were at a gay bar and it's easier to find gay people than straight people there most of the time. However, there are also a lot of straight people who go to gay bars with their gay friends and those are my kind of people.

Once I finish that first drink I start dancing with Jasper to whatever club remix is booming over our heads. Around us, there's a lot of fist pumping and grinding and one girl throwing up in the corner by the stage and two guys making out right to Jasper's left.

It's basically just like the club back home.

We dance for a while just me and Jasper until a rather attractive guy approaches Jasper and asks him to dance, which he accepts, so then I'm dancing by myself for a while. But then, another guy comes up to us and then he hands a drink to the guy dancing with Jasper so they obviously know each other and then he looks over at me and grins.

I offer him a flirty smile and wait for him to come to me. It's not like I think that guys have to be the ones to initiate something like this, it's just that I don't want to hit on him if he ends up being gay and in a gay bar, those chances are very high.

He says something to the guy dancing with Jasper and then he takes a few steps toward me so that I can hear him over the thumping music and then he yells, leaning closer to me, "Dancing alone?"

"I got ditched," I explain, leaning closer to him as well so that he can hear me and I motion towards Jasper, who is now really getting into the dancing with the stranger and soon, I'm sure that they will be one of those couples making out on the dance floor.

"That's my brother," The guy explained, motioning to the guy who is grinding with Jasper.

"That's my best friend," I say with a girly laugh, putting on my charm for maximum affect and I notice that he's wearing the lime green wrist bands which means that he's not too old for me because he's within the ages of 18 and 20 so that's good. "Do you want to dance?"

He grins at me and then nods before he grabs my waist in his hands and pulls me close to him.

I start to sway my hips to the beat of the song as the strange starts swaying with me and then I lift my arms to rest on his shoulders. "I'm Jo," I tell him, my lips only a few inches from his ear so that I don't have to yell again.

"Noah," He says into my ear and I can feel his warm breath fan around the side of my neck.

We dance for a while and as the time passes, the dancing gets even more intense until our bodies are pressed against each other and occasionally, Noah will pepper a light kiss on the side of my neck, which makes my breath momentarily hitch.

His hands that are still on my waist start to travel lower. At first, he's hesitant as if he's waiting for me to stop him but I don't do that, and then he keeps going lower until his hands are resting on my rear end, pulling me even tighter against him.

And that's how I know that this is going to be a really good night.

Waking up the next morning feels very odd, like most mornings like these do. On one hand, I feel really crappy due to the hangover that's pounding in my skull and churning my stomach. Yet on the other hand, the sheets feel softer against my skin and the heavy breathing beside me sounds like music. Maybe it's because it's been a while since I've done anything with anybody but waking up with Noah beside me, still asleep, and with the memory of everything that had happened last night, my post coital good mood almost makes my hangover disappear.

I get out of bed and slip on some panties and the shirt that Noah was wearing last night, which is a dark gray button up shirt with sleeves that were rolled up so that when Noah was wearing it, the sleeves were rolled up to his elbows and had fit him snugly but the sleeves are about three-quarter sleeves on me and it's pretty baggy on me and drops down just low enough to hide my underwear.

After leaning over and kissing Noah's forehead, I go downstairs and brush my teeth and make myself look presentable in the bathroom before going into the kitchen to start a pot of coffee.

"Smells like coffee down here," Jasper slowly trots down the spiral stairs to meet me in the kitchen just a few minutes later as I'm looking through the drawer in the kitchen where we'd put our medicines and I find some Aspirin to help with my hangover.

"Yeah, I just started a pot," I say, turning around to greet him after swallowing the medicine. He's not wearing a shirt at all but unlike me though, he's wearing pants- sweat pants hung low on his hips. "Long night?"

A smirk spreads across his face. "The longest."

"Slut," I joke as he walks into the kitchen to stand beside me.

"I could say the same about you," He counters teasingly.

"You could," I agree with a long sigh. "Is your friend still here?"

"Conner. He's getting dressed," Jasper says with a nod. "We're going out to breakfast."

"Wow, breakfast," I say with a small smile. "Where'd you guys even go? I didn't hear you come inside," I say. Last night after we decided to all come back to the apartment, we all got in the truck (I sat on Noah's lap and Conner sat in the middle) but Jasper and Conner had stayed out here when Noah and I went inside.

"We laid in the back of the truck," He explains and when I give him a wide-eyed look, he rolls his eyes at me. "We didn't actually do that. We just talked most of the time and also made out a lot until I figured that you were asleep and then we went inside and made out some more. I guarantee that my night was more innocent than yours."

"It sounds romantic," I tease him. "I'm glad that you had a good night."

"I'm glad that you had a good night too," He chuckles. "Assuming that it was good."

"Oh, it was good," I assure him with a pervy grin of my own.

The coffee finishes brewing behind me so he grabs two cups of it and then turns and goes back upstairs and then about fifteen minutes later, he comes back down, fully clothed this time, with the guy from last night, Conner, right behind him.

"Bring back pancakes," I tell Jasper as they go for the door and I'm mixing creamer into my own coffee, which is in a Seattle mug that Sienna had sent to me one time.

"Chocolate chip or blueberry?"

"Surprise me," I decide and then I hear them leaving through the front door but I'm facing the counter with my coffee so I don't see them.

I'm downstairs by myself for a while because apparently, Noah's a late sleeper, so I take my coffee into the living room and start watching TV until I hear footsteps coming down the staircase.

Noah comes downstairs without a shirt on (obviously) and wearing his jeans from last night with his black hair disheveled on top of his head.

"Good morning," I greet him.

"Hey," He gives me a tired side grin.

"I made coffee earlier. I can warm it up if you want?"

"Yeah, that sounds great," He nods before disappearing into the bathroom.

I turn the TV off and go into the kitchen to put a mug of coffee in the microwave to heat it up again. When Noah comes back out, his hair is less messy and I'm assuming that he found a way to brush his teeth like with using toilet paper as a toothbrush, which is something that I'd had to do before when staying the night at somebody else's house.

"Jasper and the guy..." I trail off, forgetting the other guy's name already but I don't put too much of the blame on myself because Noah's abdominal area is very distracting and his jeans are low on his hips so I can see the V of his hips.

"Conner," He fills in for me and I hand him the cup of coffee.

"Right. They went to breakfast," I say, leaning by back against the edge of the counter. "And creamer is in the fridge. Sugar is right there."

"I drink it black, but thanks," He says with that charming half smile. He takes a drink of the coffee and then makes a big deal of leaning over me to put the mug on the counter behind me.

"You know," I breathe. "You're pretty straight for being found in a gay bar."

Noah laughs, a grin brightening up his face. "Yeah, my brother guilted me into going with him since he always goes to the bars with me. Plus, he has a fake ID so he can buy us drinks. What about you?"

"Straight guys are really just too much to deal with, especially in big groups," I say with a long, quiet sigh. "And Jasper likes them too so it's a win-win type thing."

"Considering I found somebody as beautiful as yourself in the club, which I wasn't expecting at all, I can say that it was a win-win on my part too," He grins at me.

I smile back at him and then lean forward, pressing my lips to his. "Well, look at us win-winners."

"I should probably get dressed before they get back," Noah suggests, his lips brushing against mine as he speaks.

I look a little confused for a moment because he's already pretty much dressed but then I realize, "Oh, you want your shirt back."

"Yeah, I'm going to need that back at some point," He says with a small laugh.

"Well, then take it," I say with a mischievous little smirk on my face as I look up at him from between my eyelashes.

He flashes me that half smile again and then steps closer to me so that his body is pressing mine into the counter behind me and then his lips are on mine and then we're making out.

I feel his hands move from my waist to the top of the shirt where he starts to unbutton the first button and then slowly moves to the second one as his knuckles gently brush against my skin.

He's about to move to the third button when we both jump out of our skin as there's a pounding knock on the front door.

"I should get that," I whisper, trying to catch my breath as Noah steps back so that I can walk over to the door. I look through the peep hole first and when I see that Scott is the one standing on the other side, I wonder what I should do. I'm half naked with an equally half naked guy in my kitchen and I really don't want him to see me like that but he also drove thirty minutes to get over here so it could be important.

I open the door a little bit and peek my head out, keeping my bottom half hidden by the door. "Hey, Scott, what's up?" I greet him, my breath still coming out a bit shallow.

"I just need to talk to you but is this a bad time?"

"Kinda, yeah," I mumble, my face turning a bright red. I'm never ashamed of my sexual escapades even though I know that many people think that I should be but I learned a long time ago to only worry about what I want. But right now, with Scott's scrutinizing gaze, I feel more humiliated than I ever have before. Like I just got caught by my mother doing something awful and I'm about to get the grounding of my life. "Is it important?"

"I guess not, no. You just weren't answering your phone and I was in the neighborhood," He explains with a shrug. "It's fine, we can talk later."

"No," I say quickly and I don't know why I say that because I should have just let Scott walk away and leave but for some reason, I just felt bad about sending him away. "It's fine, come on in."

And that is just the biggest mistake of my life because I swing the door open and Scott says, "Are you sure?"

There's my chance to retract my invitation. Just say no and tell him that I'll call him later. He doesn't need to see this, to know that I'm the kind of person who has one night stands. And yet, I think that my mother's lessons in manners have really backfired because I just say, "Absolutely."

And then he walks in the door and immediately, he notices the one thing that I was hoping that he wouldn't notice, although I knew it was kind of inevitable. I don't have pants on. And also there's a shirtless guy in my kitchen. I'm sure he can put two and two together.

I feel so humiliated that I think that I'm going to throw up or cry or something. I just swallow all of my humility and try to pretend like everything is normal and fine though.

"Um, well this is Noah and this is my friend, Scott," I mumble, still feeling that amount of shame that I feel when my mother scolds me about something. I feel like I'm a little child getting caught stealing a cookie from the cookie jar or something except that I never felt this bad about things when my mom caught me breaking her rules.

I don't know why I feel so childishly guilty about Scott seeing me like this but I just feel so small. So ridiculously pathetic.

"Anyway, I'll go get dressed and I'll be right back," I say in a quiet, rushed voice before I practically run for the stairs to hide from Scott if only for a few minutes to put on some yoga pants and a baggy tank top so that I at least look presentable.

I go back downstairs and both guys are standing where they had been before I left, not speaking to each other and looking pretty awkward.

"So, where's Jasper?" Scott wonders curiously, trying not to make a big deal out of the situation but I could tell that he was judging me. I could see it in his gaze.

"Oh, he won't be back for an hour or so," I say, thinking that at least I have that on my side. At least he doesn't think that I'd mess around with a guy when there were other people around. "Anyway, I made coffee, do you want any?"

"No thanks," He shakes his head at me.

"Should I leave?" Noah wonders from where he's standing in the kitchen.

"No, it's totally fine, Scott's just a friend," I say quickly, flashing him an apologetic smile. Also, we both knew that he had nowhere to go considering his only ride home is Jasper's truck, which is currently not here. "Let's all go sit in the living room so we can talk."

"You know, I'm just going to go get all of my stuff packed up upstairs," Noah speaks up, going towards the stairs and I don't stop him so it's just me and Scott sitting on the couch and I wish that I could just get swallowed by a big black hole instead of just sitting here like a complete idiot.

"Okay, so what'd you want to talk about?" I ask Scott.

"Right, um, well there's this fundraising fair coming up for the humane society that my mom is in charge of and there's going to be a lot of games and rides and everything and I'm in charge of finding people to volunteer for the dunk tank so I thought that maybe you and Jasper would want to volunteer," He explains and I think that his cheeks are flushing a little bit too.

I can't stand this amount of humility. I'm not used to not feeling sure of myself. I'm always so sure of my actions and how I carry myself. I'm never ashamed of the things that I do, even things like spending the night with a guy that I hardly know. I've always just been so confident in myself regardless of what anybody else judged me for. Which is why I can't figure out why it matters to me so much that Scott found out about how I'd spent my night. I don't understand why it's turning my insides into Jell-O.

"Sure," I finally answer. "Anything for the puppies, that sounds like fun. Sign Jasper up too, I'm sure he'll love it."

"Okay, cool. I forget the actual date of the thing but I think it's in a few weeks, just before school starts up," Scott tells me.

I nod but I can't take it anymore. I can't stand all of the unexplainable shame that's building up inside of my stomach and so I suddenly blurt out, "I don't do this a lot."

"What?"

"This whole thing," I said, motioning up to where Noah is. "It's not something that I like, do all of the time."

"You don't have to explain yourself to me, Jo," Scott tells me quickly.

"I know," I mumble. "I know, I just feel like I should. I don't know. Anyway, you can stay and hang out if you want. Noah has to stay until Jasper gets back though."

"What?" Scott says again.

"Yeah, Jasper is his ride home, so he has to wait until he gets back," I say slowly, confused as to why that's so shocking but then after a quick moment to process everything, I think I understand what's going on. "Scott, do you think that Jasper and I are like, a couple or something?"

"Um, well I did until you just asked me that," He says awkwardly. "You aren't?"

"No," I say, trying to hide a laugh. "Jasper's kind of on a date right now, actually. With Noah's brother."

"Oh," Scott says and then his eyes widen and his jaw slackens and I take that as his moment of recognition that Jasper is gay. "Oh."

"I'm sorry, I guess I never really made that clear," I say with another laugh. I just don't think that it's something that needs to be explained, Jasper's sexual orientation. Just like it'd be ridiculous for somebody to say 'This is my friend Robert and he's straight'. I guess that the way that I act with Jasper could be misunderstood since we sarcastically flirt a lot but I never even considered the possibility that Scott would have thought that.

"No, I shouldn't have skipped to conclusions," He says with a shake of his head. "Anyway, I think that this visit has been sufficiently embarrassing for both of us so I'm just going to go now and we can talk later."

"Yeah, that sounds good," I say quickly, standing up to walk him to the door.

He says a quick goodbye and then he's gone, eager to escape the situation. Even though he was acting awkward because he thought that I was cheating on Jasper, I still don't feel any better about him knowing that I was still mindlessly hooking up with somebody.

I can't think about that right now though, because I have a completely attractive nineteen year old in my bedroom who thinks that I'm beautiful so I go upstairs and I join Noah, trying my best to leave my unnecessary humility downstairs.