Alexis The idea came to me after my eighth shot of tequila, which was how I knew it was a good one. Because everybody agrees that tequila is the good ideas alcohol. So it didn’t matter that it was two in the morning, or that I kept losing my balance because the stupid ground kept shifting underneath my stupid feet. Tonight was going to be the night I got an answer, one way or another. So I marched right up to his apartment, banged on his door, and after six thousand, one hundred and fifty three days of waiting and wishing and wanting, I finally kissed Joel Bennett. Joel To Whomever Has Found My Body, Ethan did it. With his bare hands, most likely. In my defense, his sister kissed me. In his defense, I did the opposite of stopping her. That is until I realized the whole thing wasn’t some sort of lucid wet dream, that it was very real, and she was very wasted. And then I pulled away—I had to, because non-dream, real-life Alexis Milani was ten thousand unattainable shades of off-limits. So I did the right thing: I went against every instinct and overwhelming desire, and I stopped it. Here’s the thing with Pandora’s box, though: once it’s open, there’s no going back.

Ethan and I did not get off to a great start in our… well in anything, really. He thought I was a burglar who’d broken into his penthouse in the middle of the night, I thought he was a sexy serial killer who was there to scary-movie-murder me… you get it. And that was just the beginning. A teaser if you will. Because a mere seven hours later, the loon slipped an arm around my waist, looked me dead in the face, and called me “sweetheart” in front of his grandmother. With, like, no warning whatsoever. So obviously, when he made me the insane offer of five hundred thousand dollars just to hold his arm at a few family events and play pretend, I politely declined. Because I’ve always made really good, healthy life choices and have fantastic self-preservation instincts. Especially when it comes to suspiciously attractive, wealthy men I barely know making promises that are way too good to be true. Oh wait, no I don’t. And I definitely said yes. But it’s fine. I have this all under control. I’m going to be able to pay off my loans, pay back Peter and Jo, and everything is going to be just fine.