I woke up the next morning with Sam still asleep in my bed. She was laying on her stomach, the blanket draped low on her back. Her skin was bare, her sharp shoulder blades pinching together on each deep inhale. The blond hair that was styled in loose waves last night was now a chaotic mess of frizz that curtained over her face like a tumbleweed.

I couldn't help but feel responsible for the mess, for all of the times I had my fingers wrapped in her hair last night. Should I offer her my comb when she woke up? Or maybe an extra toothbrush? I didn't even have an extra toothbrush.

Hooking up with somebody so randomly was not something I did very often, so I wasn't really familiar with the etiquette of how the morning after was supposed to go. I stepped into a fresh pair of sweats, ran my fingers through my hair, and slid quietly out of the room to freshen up in the bathroom downstairs.

Of course, the door was locked when I got down to the second floor. I leaned against the wall of the hallway, listening to my stomach grumble with a desperate need for breakfast. There was an iHop down the street, probably packed with other hungover college students. Maybe I should offer to take Sam there?

With classes starting the next day, I had a lot to get done and didn't really want to wait in that line for mediocre pancakes. I honestly just wanted to scarf down a bowl of cereal and get started on organizing my notebooks and folders before the semester started. Then, I had to hit the gym, at least for a little while, since club soccer tryouts would be coming up soon.

But I didn't want to be a douche bag about the whole hookup situation. I wasn't going to just toss her out the door. Especially considering it was some of the best sex I'd had in a while, so I needed to maximize my chances on it happening again.

Just as I was looking up the price of getting pancakes delivered instead of dealing with the hungover breakfast rush, the bathroom door opened. Banks emerged wearing a long pair of plaid pajama pants and a plain black tee. His hair was mussed on his head and when he saw me waiting, his jaw hung slack in mid-yawn.

"Morning, Champ," he greeted me with a pat on the shoulder as he walked by. "Sounds like you had a good night, huh?"

I wasn't going to confirm or deny any assumptions, especially not with Sam still upstairs and possibly awake now. Although it wasn't exactly a secret what we were up to last night. She'd invited herself to sit on my lap for the last half hour of the party while we all took turns playing Mario Kart on Walker's Switch.

Everybody saw the way she giggled at me and how I had my hands boldly laying around her hips. They saw us make out by the fridge and I still remembered the whoops and hollers from both of our friend groups when I took her by the hand and pulled her upstairs.

I grimaced at the thought of what my roommates might have heard last night. My bed frame scuffing the wooden floors, Sam's moans that crescendoed to loud peaks when I learned the best ways to touch her. Neither one of us were that drunk, but there was enough alcohol in my system to stop me from caring about how those sounds might have carried to the other guys in the house.

"Sorry, if the noise was..." I grimaced, hating how awkward my voice sounded. I never had to apologize for making noise before. In the dorms, it felt like everybody's bed was knocking against my wall at least every once in a while. I never felt bad about letting my own bed knock when the time called for it. But in a house with only five people, it felt different.

Banks shrugged, his hands stuffed deep in the pockets of his pajama pants. "No need to apologize. Walker's way worse, that animal."

"I don't do that a lot," I blurted for some reason, because this entire scenario was so awkward that I didn't know how to react. I couldn't stop thinking about all of the noises we made last night, imagining those sounds getting amplified to all of my non-consenting roommates on the floor below us.

"I'm not the prude police, dude. Do what you want." He seemed amused by the pained twist on my face, an easy smile laying across his lips. "You want breakfast? I'm making bacon and eggs."

I motioned toward the stairs toward the attic with my elbow and said, "I think we might get pancakes?"

"Oh. She's still here?"

I nodded.

"Right on," he said with a short nod as he stood up straight and started walking back down the hall toward his giant room at the end. "I'll let you get back to it then."

I hurried into the bathroom without asking him what exactly he thought I needed to get back to.

Upstairs, Sam was waking up by the time I stepped back into the room.

"You want breakfast?" I mumble out, my voice still thick with sleep.

Slowly, she sat up and the blankets fell to her waist, revealing her bare chest as she stretched her arms above her head with a mousy yawn. "No, that's okay."

It wasn't weird that I was staring, right? Even if it was, I couldn't pull my eyes away until she found her tank top and pulled it over her head.

"There's an iHop down the street," I said dumbly as she ran her fingers through the tangles in her hair.

"Really, you don't need to," she said with a tired smile. Standing from the bed, she stepped into the denim shorts she wore last night and then into her sandals by the door. The same door that, last night, I had pressed her up against with my tongue down her throat and my drunken fingers wrestling with the button on her jeans. "I had fun."

"Me too." I awkwardly rubbed at the back of my neck just to have something to do with my hand. "I guess I'll walk you out?"

"You don't have to," she assured me, still with that unbothered smile. "Really. I'm not looking for anything serious right now, I hope that's okay? You know, with the breakup and everything, I'm just trying to enjoy myself." Her eyes drifted down to my bare chest, her smile twitching on her lips before her gaze met mine. "And I wanted to do that for a really long time."

"Wait, what?" I couldn't help but laugh at that. I'd only had a couple of conversations with Sam before last night and she'd never so much as made eye contact with me before.

She shrugged. "Couldn't do anything about it before, since I was dating Brad. But it was so worth the wait."

"So this was all pre-meditated?" I wondered, dumbfound by what she was saying.

Sam gave me a large, flirty grin and said, "And you played right into my hand," before she left the room and started walking downstairs.

I followed after her, still kind of reeling by her confession.

"Please, Liam," she laughed at my silence. "You don't have to pretend like you don't know you're hot. It doesn't come off as humble like I think you might be meaning. It comes off as delusional. You're hot. Embrace it."

I mean, I knew I wasn't challenged in the looks department. My body was muscular from all the years of playing soccer and working out at the gym. I was tall, which girls liked. But nobody had ever admitted to secretly wanting to sleep with me while they had a boyfriend. Or walking into a party with the grand scheme of seducing me.

Granted, I didn't make it very hard for her. Sam was beautiful and her confidence alone made my stomach warm.

I could hear something sizzling on the stove in the kitchen at the back of the house that I chose to ignore for the time being. "We should do this again sometime," Sam suggested. "I'll get your number from Beth?"

Before I could offer to give her my number myself, she was stepping out the door and trotting down the front stairs of the porch onto the sidewalk.

Banks was alone in the kitchen when I walked through to make myself a bowl of cereal.

"So, no pancakes?" he wondered with a short laugh without turning around from his eggs. I pulled open the fridge to get the milk and then to the cupboard for a bowl.

"Change of plans," I explained shortly as I poured my cereal. To change the subject so that we weren't talking about Sam again, I asked him, "How are you adjusting to Tate?"

"Can't complain." He flipped his eggs. "Except for this sport marketing class, but Ollie mentioned that I might be able to bribe you into helping me with that one. So, we'll see."

"With Dorian at nine a.m.? I'm in that class too. Why are you taking it if you're not into sports?"

"I'm a marketing major and it was the only elective left with any spots open when I enrolled," he explained with a long sigh.

"Dorian is a good professor, I think you'll be fine." I twisted around with my cereal bowl in my hand to lean my hip into the counter as we talked. I didn't get to know him that well yesterday and since we'd be living together for the entire school year and he was close with Ollie, I should put in some effort here.

"Hey, so what's with Walker and Beth?" he asked randomly after a few silent moments.

"Um. What do you mean?" Milk dribbled down my chin and I quickly wiped it away with the back of my hand.

"She's clearly way out of his league," he commented as I stabbed a spoon into my bowl. "Did he make some sort of blood sacrifice to the gods or something?"

"He's just a good guy," I said with, admittedly, more force than necessary.

"Jeez, okay." He looked taken aback by how hard I snapped, but hardly bothered by it.

"Sorry," I said quickly, even though I wasn't really that sorry at all. I was just that non-confrontational that I'd apologize even when I didn't mean it, just to keep the peace. "I think we're all pretty tired of those jokes though. They've been together over a year now, Walker's heard it all a million times and it's old."

Sure, Beth was more conventionally attractive than my short, scruffy friend with child like round cheeks. Beth was tall, curvy, with a model-like face symmetry and all of the charisma to go with it. That didn't mean that Walker was unworthy of his girlfriend though. Anybody had to watch them together for just thirty seconds before they could tell how disgustingly in love they were with each other. Somehow, even though they had completely different interests most of the time and their personalities were somewhat opposite, it all just made sense.

"Usually, Ollie's the protective one," he remarked with a half-smile. "My bad, I wasn't trying to be offensive."

"I think we're all protective of Walker," I said. He was the most shy, the most awkward, and the easiest target for cruel comments out of the four of us. So yeah, we banded around him when we needed to. Even though most of the time, we didn't need to because he could handle himself just fine.

"Hey, slut," Ollie joined us in the kitchen with a tired grin as he patted me hard on the shoulder. "I'm pretty sure I officially have the worst room in this house."

"Wanna bet?" I scoffed.

"I have Walker on my right and as his friend, I am truly so happy that he's having so much sex but as his neighbor, I could strangle him," he grumbled irritably before shooting daggers at me and then jabbing a finger in my direction. "And you are right above me. I need not explain more."

"Sorry," I grumbled with a bite full of cereal. "But it's not like it'll happen all the time."

"Um, not if Sam has anything to say about it. I saw the way she was looking at you like a piece of meat last night," he mumbled, starting a pot of coffee. Banks slid the two eggs onto a plate and then cracked two more onto the hot pan. "And by the sounds from last night that are now my nightmare fuel, you exceeded her expectations."

I flashed him a glare before my eyes dropped to my cereal. "Maybe we should have a ground rule for the whole house, girls only allowed on weekends?"

Ollie and Banks flashed each other a smirking look, like they were in on a joke that I didn't get, and then they both burst out laughing.

"What a brilliant idea," Banks agreed with me as he slid the first two eggs into Ollie's waiting plate before cracking two more into the pan.

"That's hasty," Ollie complained.

"Unless you'd rather just trade me rooms? That works too," I offered him, even though I knew it would never work.

"Absolutely not, bro," he responded with an easy laugh, flashing me a look of sympathy. "I wouldn't even be able to fit half of my record collection in that shoe box of a room."

Banks absently scratched at the tattoo on his forearm. From my angle, it was hard to see but it looked like a snake or lizard. Definitely something with scales. "And that's after he left half of it at home."

Ollie nudged his cousin with his bony elbow and then asked him, "What are you doing up this early anyway?"

"I'm always up this early," he said slowly. "But also, I have an interview with that smoothie place in the student union in an hour."

"Oh shit, I forgot about that. Hey, Liam, when are you hitting the gym today? I think I might come with."

Without missing a beat, Banks flashed me a side way and quick grin. "Didn't you get enough of a workout last night?"

Ignoring him, I answer Ollie's original question. "Before dinner probably. Why? You never come to the gym with me."

He shrugged, taking the plate of eggs that Banks already finished. "Feeling motivated, I guess."

Banks cackled with laughter, leaning toward me to say, "Tory beat him in an arm wrestling match last night."

"She cheated!"

"Did Morgan see you lose the arm wrestling match?" I asked him with my own teasing laugh.

Ollie crossed his arms over his chest. "Doesn't matter." But the look of humiliation on his face made it perfectly clear that it did, in fact, matter a whole lot.