Night Owl by M. Pierce

super strong Long Island Iced Tea. I should have been asleep before my head hit the pillow.
    But Matt wasn't answering my calls. And then there was the weird encounter outside of the bar. Call me crazy, but as I tossed and turned in bed I began to feel like I had broken my Matt spell with that intense jolt of attraction.
    Like I said, call me crazy.
    Still, it kept bothering me. There were plenty of good-looking guys at the bar, some of them eyeing me, and I wanted nothing to do with them. I wanted to dance and think about Matt. Matt watching me, Matt touching me, Matt whispering in my ear.
    Fuck.
    No one ever made me shiver with desire the way Matt did with his voice alone—until a stranger outside a bar made me feel the exact same thing.
    So it wasn't something special about Matt. It wasn't Matt and I together, insane chemistry. It was just me being horny. God, I couldn't stand to cheapen that feeling... that feeling I got when Matt's voice faltered with need...
    I have to. I can't help it. Hannah... god, do it. Come with me.
    I sat up in bed and checked my email. Nothing. I opened Safari. What was that weird phrase Matt said on the phone? Optima ... something. He said it was Latin.
    I Googled "optima latin phrases."
    There it was. Optima dies. Optima dies, prima fugit. The best days are the first to flee.
    My eyes began to sting.
    Why would he say that? Was it some kind of hint? Had he intended all along to drop me like a bad habit when I reached Colorado? The best days... the first to flee.
    Matt said he was scared to have me close. He told me not to make plans. Suddenly, I knew it was over. Whatever it was—our silly flirtation—was over.
    I looked at the webpage again. The quote was from Virgil, popularized as an epigraph in My Ántonia by Willa Cather.
    Huh. Cather. Why did that name sound familiar?
    After racking my brain for a few minutes, I Googled "M. Pierce epigraphs."
    I knew it. The epigraph to The Silver Cord was a Willa Cather quote: "Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past." And it was from the novel My Ántonia . What a weird coincidence.
    Did Matt read Virgil or Willa Cather? Or both? He obviously read quite a bit. And given our collaborative story, I knew he liked to write.
    My phone chimed and I jumped.
    Who the fuck was texting me at 1:00 a.m.?
    That was my first thought.
    My second thought: please let it be Matt.
     
Come outside.
     
    I swallowed thickly. I couldn't move. Come outside...? Oh... my god.
    Matt was outside. Either Matt was outside, or he was weirdly ordering me to have an orgasm on the lawn. Fuck. Obviously Matt was outside. Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck . Brain, work!
    I scrambled out of bed and stumbled toward the door. I was wearing a pair of Aerie boxers that barely covered my ass and a lacy white cami with a shelf bra. Oh, and the blue satin thong, because on some pathetic level I still wanted to be wearing it when Matt called.
    I grabbed one of dad's old coats and threw it on before going out by the sliding door to the patio.
    Fuck fuck fuck. Matt had come over. He was here. I was about to see him. If he was ugly as sin, what would I say? Um... hi... yeah... I need to sleep.
    Awesome plan. And way to have the shallowest thoughts ever, Hannah.
    I was on autopilot as I padded around the side of the house. I wanted to see Matt before he saw me. That turned out to be easy, because Matt had his back to the house and his hands braced against a black Lexus. Holy fuck.
    This was textbook sketchy. Black car, strange man, middle of the night. Maybe I was about to be abducted. Maybe I was about to become one of those news stories that makes people say, "I feel bad for the girl, but she was asking for trouble."
    Was I asking for trouble?
    Tonight, trouble was a beautiful body standing next to a beautiful car right outside my house, waiting for me.
    I didn't feel a single twinge of fear.
    I felt raw elation.
    I hadn't broken the spell. Screw the hottie