"Ah! Ha ha ha ha! Oh fuck me - ha ha! Aahhh! I can't - ahh!"

My mouth twisted sideways in annoyance and I pulled my ear away from my phone. "Are you done, Harper?"

"No!" was her elated response, followed by more hearty laughter. Suddenly my phone buzzed with a video request and I pressed 'accept call' with annoyance. Since her blonde hair was pulled back, I got a clear view of her sky-blue eyes streaked with tears and her full, pink-glossed lips cracked open into the biggest smile.

Two years ago, I couldn't have imagined I called Harper anything that wasn't a profanity. A lot of time, apologies almost entirely from Harper's side, tears, and even a few sat in sessions with Dr. Sterns where even more tears shed, we were friends again. Even without the physical distance, we weren't at the same level of friendship we'd been in high school but I'd realized she'd gotten me through moments that were some of my darkest.

"Fuck me sideways, that's the funniest thing I've ever heard. You and Adonis. Roommates. And after two years of you internet stalking him, now you're married on paper in a fucking one-bedroom apartment. How does this shit even happen, Ellie?"

Harper's synopsis skills are... something else.

"Harper." My tone indicated how my new roommate situation was anything but funny to me. "I did not internet stalk him."

I have a long list of emotional responses to this situation but amusement is definitely not on it.

And it was just one picture... that Grace sent me.

I wasn't sure why but last year Grace tagged me in a picture for some Seventeen magazine article. I hadn't read the article because every time I'd never gotten past the picture of Logan in his dark blue and gold Aggie's uniform. His helmet was off, his hair stuck in random directions, and for some reason he'd lifted up his shirt with what looked like water streaked down his ridiculously chiseled abdominal muscles. His facial expression was weird, almost like he was uncomfortable, but to anyone else I guess he just winked at the camera.

It's not stalking if his Mom sends me a picture. More like... gawking and drooling.

"Sorry, I don't buy that for one second." My phone cracked while she gasped for a few breaths after she no doubt saw my pissed off expression. "I had to see your face to know if you were joking or not."

"It's not a joke!" I whisper-yelled into the phone. "Keep it down, okay? The one bedroom thing I'm kinda freaking out about and I'd rather he not hear about that."

As if I didn't have enough to overthink about.

"Wait..." Her laughs ground to a halt and she stared at me. "He's.. there? Like right now?"

Awkward was an understatement when Mom and I arrived back at the apartment. Logan opened the door dressed in more formal clothes, a thin, sky blue polo shirt and pressed khaki shorts. At my raised eyebrows, he rolled his eyes and clarified, "Alumni golf event tomorrow, wanted to make sure my preppy clothes still fit."

"I..." My eyes roamed over him shamelessly. "Didn't know you played golf."

Even preppy he's hot.

Snap out of it, Ellie.

"I'm terrible. Wes is the golfer." His handsome face broke out into a sheepish grin. "I'm just there to look pretty and drive the cart."

"Ahh, okay." I nodded and hugged my box into my stomach until an awkward silence filled the air space between us. My feet hadn't gotten the memo to walk so, like a bump on a pickle, I just stood there pretty useless and looked at Logan.

"So..." His voice faded and he looked at me expectantly. "Are you coming in or... not?"

"Yes, I'm coming," I blurted out, then mentally facepalmed myself for my words' double meaning as my face heated up. "I mean, I'm coming in here. I mean, inside."

Oh gawd. Don't look at him, Ellie, don't -

My eyes betrayed me right away and embarrassment flushed through me further at the gleam in his eye that looked like sunlight sparkled off the ocean.

"Logan's... somewhere," I admitted to Harper. "He's helping bring up boxes from Mom and Dad's car."

My heart skipped a beat faster at the mental reminder of how Logan's toned biceps flexed while he easily carried two to three boxes at a time up three flights of stairs before a single bead of sweat appeared on him.

In contrast, Mom and I panted like we'd wandered around a remote desert for a week. By the time we got to the third floor, our hands clasped the railings at the top step like the 'oh shit' handles on the UW buses.

I hadn't forgotten about Logan's husband classification and hoped that was some misunderstood assumption and not some technicality we had to abide by. That question was near the top of my list once Logan and I were alone.

Charlie and I might have some words too because we're definitely not married either.

Mom and I were both shocked and slightly horrified when we saw how the tiny apartment only had one bedroom. What the place lacked in space, it made up for in charm. The high, crisp white walls and ceilings looked freshly painted, the wood floors were worn and welcoming, large windows provided a lot of natural light, and the double bedroom doors were made of glass.

The old building's windows and thin walls made for a noisy environment. Thankfully, our apartment faced South and not 15th Street, which looked like a loading zone for both UW's and Seattle's public buses, and garbage trucks. The Southern exposure gave us both a pleasant view of a couple of downtown blocks, the Lake Washington Ship Canal. While currently the nighttime made everything pitch black, I assumed we'd have a warm, inviting glow of afternoon sunshine in the apartment.

While the single bedroom would have fit my and Charlie's cheap, 'only for college' twin-sized beds, Logan's queen-sized bed and tall, five-drawer dresser took up most of the room's foot space. For now, my bed's small frame stayed in Mom and Dad's minivan with the mattress strapped on the roof and wrapped up in plastic. Mom was on the phone with Dad about an alternative option and I cringed when she said the words 'air mattress' and looked at me.

Logan and I hadn't discussed sleeping arrangements and, since Mom was here, we hadn't discussed much of anything. But he'd said half the closet and three of the dresser drawers were mine, which oddly felt intimate. And my cheeks had definitely turned pink when I saw his top drawer was crammed full of white socks and his underwear.

He still wears boxer briefs.

The mental image of how his underwear left nothing to the imagination sent an odd pulse of excitement through me. I'd just slammed the drawer shut right when Harper had called to see if we'd made it up here yet.

At my words, Harper's laugh faded and her face froze. For a moment I thought my wifi had glitched but then she mumbled, "Boxes, huh?"

"Yes..." My eyes narrowed as I carried my phone in both hands to the bedroom and most likely made Harper's view look like I experienced an earthquake.

While I had no idea how we worked the sleeping arrangements past how I preferred the floor over the living room sofa, Logan really had cleared out half the closet for my clothes. I opened the door to a pleasantly large closet filled with an incredibly pleasant smell. The fresh, clean scent of whatever detergent Logan used filled my nose and sent a surprising round of tingles through me. His clothes neatly hung on one side with his shoes lined up on the floor underneath.

While Logan had actually given me more than half the space, my eyes skimmed over his stuff in the closet. Past an assortment of T-shirts, some longer sleeved shirts, a coat, jeans, and sweatpants hung two full-sized suits. Upon closer inspection, one was a three-piece suit and the other closer to a tux. Both looked sharp, crisp, and tailor-made.

"Uhh..." Even on my small screen, Harper's nose cringed slightly. "You might want to unpack some of those boxes on your own then."

"What?" My mind flashed back to the last day I'd seen her, when she'd helped me sort through my closet for what to pack.

Unlike me, Harper's sense style was, well, existent. I'd invited her over to help me pick which clothes I should bring and instead all I'd gotten was a lecture about my lack of sexy underwear options. Instead of helping me pack stuff into boxes, she'd flopped down onto my bed, moaned about granny panties, and cursed me to be a virgin through college.

I'm technically not a virgin, but I still don't appreciate the... concern.

"Correction, you might want to unpack one of those boxes by yourself." Her lips curled upwards into her knowing smirk, which immediately set off all my internal alerts.

What did she pack?

"Harper," I whispered hoarsely. "What did you do?"

"Should be obvious," she replied coyly. "I wrote a message on the outside."

"Which one?" I glanced around at the pile of boxes near my feet, then scanned my phone over the pile like a digital scanner. "These?"

"No," she replied and I whipped the phone back up to my face.

"Hey Ellie?" Logan stuck his head into the room. As soon as I saw his furrowed eyebrows and downturned mouth corners, my eyes dipped down to his hands. A relatively small, brown box rested in his palms. On the outside, written in thick permanent ink, was 'LOGAN' with a gigantic heart around his name.

"Uhh, this was in your Dad's car?" His voice raised up like he asked a question, but equal parts confusion and curiosity filled his eyes as he handed the box over to me. "Oh, sorry. I didn't see you were on the phone."

"It's just Harper." I flipped my phone over to show Logan to her. "Who's having quite a laugh at our expense right now."

"Holy fucknuts," my phone barked out as Logan gave her an awkward wave. "Did you grow more muscles, Adonis?"

"I uhh..." His eyes flickered a shade darker before they looked up at me. "Worked out a lot more. Followed Ellie's meal plan too."

Wait... He did what?

For some reason his words spread a sense of warmth in my chest. My warm fuzzies were quickly snuffed out by Harper's incredibly smug voice when she added, "Congrats on your upcoming SI article, by the way. Enjoyed that as much as Ellie enjoyed your wet dream picture from Seventeen."

She did not just... she did.

Logan's eyes shifted from my phone to my most likely curious look. In a rare moment of embarrassment, his cheeks turned a little pink but his mouth curved into a smile. "Uhh, thanks."

"Are you taking steroids?" She asked bluntly. "Because that shit will totally shrink the size of your -"

"Okay, Harper." I flipped the phone back to my view, then mouthed 'enough' at her. "Thanks for the colorful... insight."

Suppose I should be glad she got that far into the conversation without mentioning some form of male anatomy.

"I can't be the only one who appreciates the irony in this situation." Her smirk never wavered. "And yes, that's the box. You should open it, right now. Really. Right. Now. While Muscles McGee is still standing there."

Whatever it is, if she wants to see his reaction then I definitely don't want to see his reaction.

"Did I leave something at your place?" Logan's frown shifted between mine and down to the box with a spark of interest in his eyes.

"No..." I scowled. "Housewarming gift from Harper, who I'm hanging up on now, thank you very much."

"No fucking way -" I cut off Harper mid-sentence, then tucked my phone into my jeans' pocket with a sigh. My fingers lightly brushed over his while I took the box from him. "Logan, do you have a knife or scissors?"

"I'll go get something." He turned with one more curious glance at the box. I set it down on the floor, then swept both my hands at Logan until he got the hint and left the room.

As soon as Logan was gone, I nudged the door closed with my toe, then practically pounced on the box like a cheetah on a gazelle. My hands tore at the tape like a frantic, rabid animal and my mouth dropped open when it's contents stared back up at me.

"Oh no..." I reached in and grabbed eight layers of soft, delicate lace. Upon further inspection, they were all forms of sexy bras and underwear, like buttfloss-resembling thongs and worse, crotchless options. My fingers poked through the center of one option and I groaned, then stuffed everything into the kangaroo pouch on my sweatshirt before Logan came back.

As I picked up the box, the weight and rustle of something still in there caught my attention. My eyes flipped open wide as I pulled out a smaller box with a card attached.

I'm half-interested, half-terrified.

My fingers flipped open the card.

I know you'll probably spend the second half of college holed up doing homework, so Logan jr here should give you some stress relief. You're welcome.

-Harper

Oh no. Not this.

This is going straight to the dumpster.

Before Logan and I dated, when I was in my 'do I, don't I?' phase about him, Harper decided that my best boy option was none at all. After she showed up at my house with not one but twenty dildos, she'd dumped them all over my bed and selected a small, yellow one since that was my favorite color. Then she'd had the nerve to jokingly name it Logan. After we broke up, she'd brought it up again and renamed the dildo Logan Junior.

For the record, I've never considered even thinking about using it.

My stomach dropped and everything internally groaned when I opened the small inner box and now, in my hand and wrapped in its original plastic wrap, was that very same dildo. The curved silicon's small, slender, and yellow shaft slid right into my palm between my thumb and index finger, then slightly curled over to the side in defeat. To my sheer horror and embarrassment, Harper had scrawled the name 'Logan JR' on the outside of the package with a winking smiley face.

I will kill her. I'd choke her with this if only she wouldn't get some enjoyment out of that.

"Ellie?" Logan stood over me, his eyes wide and a pair of scissors in his hand. "Do I even want -"

"No!" My cheeks burned like molten lava since there was no ambiguity in what I held in my hand. "It's a... Well, you know what it is."

Mortifying, that's what it is.

"I do." His eyes shifted the longer we uncomfortably stood, three feet apart and me with a dildo in my hands, until his irises were two shades darker. "But I didn't know you were into that stuff."

"Shut up!" In my frustration, I squeezed my hand into a fist around the dildo and inwardly groaned when it flexed slightly. "Harper just... Oh, I'm not even sure I can explain it."

"Hey, no judgement what you do in the confines of your bedroom." He held up his palms to me then took the empty box from my hands. "Although, now that it's our bedroom -"

"Don't..." I warned him with a glare, then cringed at how I pointed the dildo at him. "Finish that sentence and you can sleep in the hallway tonight."

"I actually came in to say, since it's late, your parents can have my bed," he offered. "I'll crash with Wes and Charlie."

A quick glance at my phone showed that he was right, the time was past ten pm and my entire body felt the twenty hour drive, Dad's harassment at the Admissions Office, and how Mom and I hauled up my stuff.

"Thanks," I replied with a smile. "I'll crash on the sofa here then."

He just nodded but I caught sight of his signature smirk flashed across his lips as he left the bedroom. Just when I thought I was in the clear and shut the door, he nudged it back open with his butt. The arrogant prick absolutely couldn't help himself and threw me a suggestive wink.

His voice was full on cocky when he added, "For the record, we both know that the real Logan junior is a lot bigger."

"Out!" I snapped at his teasing. My entire face and neck felt like I'd stuck them inside a bonfire while I shut the box, closed my eyes, and sighed.

Only Harper.