First message
James was sprawled across the couch, one ankle resting over his knee while he worked on a tattoo sketch for a client balancing it against his thigh. The apartment smelled faintly like whatever Alyssa had burned in the kitchen, and he was only half paying attention to her until she casually tossed a sentence over her shoulder.
“My sister moved back to town last week.”
The pencil between James’s fingers slowly stopped moving.
“Your sister?”
“Yeah.”
That was apparently all Alyssa intended to contribute to the conversation.
James let the pencil fall onto the sketchpad and settled deeper into the couch, a grin already tugging at one corner of his mouth. He hadn’t seen Alyssa’s older sister in years. Not since he’d been a scrawny, painfully awkward teenager with a hopeless crush he was convinced he’d managed to hide.
He hadn’t hidden shit.
“Invite her over,” he said. “I’d love to see that hot ass in our apartment.”
Silence.
James’s grin widened. “What?”
Alyssa disappeared into the kitchen without answering.
He laughed under his breath, dragging a hand through his messy hair. He could already remember the way he’d used to stumble over his words around her, suddenly forgetting how human conversation worked whenever she walked into the room.
That had been years ago.
He wasn’t that kid anymore.
James picked up his pencil again, though the tattoo sketch had completely lost his attention.
“Seriously,” he called toward the kitchen. “Invite her over.”