As before, this has not been proof read, so I'd appreciate any help with grammatical mistakes that I might have made. Once again, thanks so much to KieraPSI for the corrections.

Thank you so much for all of the love and support that everybody has shown for my humble story. I love seeing when I get a new review, a favorite story notification, or a follow notification. :)

Even though the temperature was well in the 40's when Sarah woke up the next morning, the first thing that she did was to hop into a freezing shower. As she stood, shivering, under the icy spray, she rubbed at her eyes with the heel of her hand in order to try to remove the images that had already been burned into her mind.

Sarah was no stranger to sexual encounters; like most young women, she'd had her share of them when she'd gone away to college. So why did one little wet dream leave her feeling so jarred?

It's the subject, a voice whispered to her. Jared. Jared. Jared.

Like a broken record, Sarah's soft moans from her dream replayed over and over in her mind.

She didn't want to even be thinking about it, let alone to have it on instant replay in her mind.

With an annoyed sigh, Sarah shut off the water, since the cold shower didn't seem to be helping much besides making her shiver. She got out and took her time drying herself, and even went out of her way to use her hair dryer, just to have something to do. She was sad, for once, that it was the weekend, and she didn't have school to distract herself. Then, she went into the kitchen to see what she could cook up for breakfast when somebody knocked on the door.

Sarah sent a silent prayer to whoever might be listening that it wouldn't be Jared. "Heeey, girlfriend," Ashley exclaimed when Sarah opened the door. The red-head held up a bag of take-out, and a holder with two cups of coffee. "You know, it's funny, because I met your neighbor, Mrs. Kelley, down in the lobby, and she just about talked my ear off," Ashley said as she stepped into Sarah's apartment.

"Yeah, she'll do that," Sarah said with a quiet laugh.

"That's not the funny part, though," Ashley said with a glint in her eye. "Mrs. Kelley said that you've gone off and gotten yourself a boyfriend!"

"A-ashley," Sarah stammered, her face red. "It's not like that."

"Sarah, sweetie, we're best friends, and you know that I'm possibly the last person on earth to judge you for getting a designated booty-call guy."

"No!" Sarah protested quickly.

Ashley raised an eyebrow. "Friends with benefits?"

"No!" Sarah said again. "He moved into the building on Monday, and he asked if I'd accompany him to dinner since he didn't know any place around. And then he kissed me in the elevator as we were coming back, and blabbed to Mrs. Kelley the next morning about how he's my boyfriend."

"Are you sure about that? Because that's not what Mrs. Kelley told me," Ashley said dryly.

"I-i…" Sarah stammered out, and was more than a little relieved when somebody else knocked on the door. She didn't even really care that it might be Jared; anything was better than awkwardly trying to explain her relationship with him to her friend.

It was awkward for two reasons: the first being that Sarah had no words for her relationship with Jared. They'd gone out twice, and she wasn't even certain if she wanted anything more from Jared or not.

The second was mostly because the dream was still fresh in Sarah's mind. And every time she thought about Jared, she thought about the dream. The way that he'd touched her all over, made her moan his name over and over… Jared. Jared. Ja…

"Hi!" Sarah exclaimed overly bright as she opened the door to the man in question. Her face, which was already flushed, started to burn. She nervously cleared her throat and brushed her hair out of her eyes.

"Good morning, precious," Jared said with a slow smile. "I didn't want to wake you up too early, but I see now that my fears were for nothing. After all, you need your sleep, since I kept you up all night on Wednesday."

"It's not like that, is it?" Ashley asked a bit sarcastically as she walked up behind Sarah.

"God, Ashley! It's not what you think!" Sarah protested. She threw Jared a death glare as he came into her apartment, and presented her with a cup of coffee. "Jared is an author, and he loaned me one of the novels that he wrote. I ended up staying up all night and reading it. That's all. Nothing more!"

"Oh, wow," Ashley said. "All of this…" She motioned towards Jared. "And you write, too? Tell me, hot stuff, do you have a brother?"

"Ashley!" Sarah groaned, her head buried in her hands in complete mortification.

"I have five," Jared said casually.

"Five!" Ashley exclaimed.

"Yes, but they're all married," Jared went on.

"Aw, that's too bad," Ashley said with a pout, but perked up a second later. "How about cousins? You seem like the kind of guy who's got a lot of cousins. Some of them must be single!"

"I'll just leave you to your breakfast, ladies," Jared said smoothly.

"Aw, don't go on account of me. I've probably bought enough food to last the two of us through lunch!" Ashley said.

"I thank you for your offer, but I have work that I've been avoiding," Jared said smoothly. He then turned and quickly showed himself out from Sarah's apartment. Ashley rounded on her friend as soon as the door had closed behind him.

"Sarah Jennifer Williams!" she exclaimed. "Are you out of your mind? What kind of girl says no to… that!"

"I told you last Friday— I don't do one night stands."

"Sweetie, the way that he came here and brought you coffee tells me that that glorious, fantastic, completely amazing piece of ass is after you for far more than just a solitary roll in the hay."

"I don't know if I-" Sarah started, but broke off when Ashley pressed her hands onto either side of Sarah's cheeks, and gently smooshed her friend's face.

"Sarah," Ashley said with all seriousness. "You were complaining to me last Friday how you wanted to find the one."

"I was a little tipsy, Ash," Sarah protested.

"Yes, but remember Dean, Sarah?"

"You promised me that you would never bring that up, even under threat of torture!" Sarah screamed at her friend. She yanked her head away from Ashley's hands and turned around to the kitchen counter and started to rummage through the bag that Ashley had brought.

"And when you've been drinking, you tend to become overly honest! That has not changed one bit since college!" Ashley said with a laugh. "So when you told me that you were lonely and that you wanted to find the one, I knew that it was really you."

"Shut up and eat a pastry," Sarah said with some venom in her words. She grabbed a danish from the bag and roughly shoved it into Ashley's mouth.

After Ashley had left, Sarah cleaned up the mess that they'd made of her kitchen. Then, she washed out the mug of coffee that Jared had brought for her, before she ventured up two flights and knocked on his door. There was a slight scrambling sound before Jared opened the door.

"Sarah, come in," he said as he gestured for her to enter. She hadn't seen inside his apartment since Monday, but now, it looked as if he'd been there for months, years even, rather than a week. The floor was scattered with papers, and there were dirty dishes piled up in the sink and on the counter. And not a single box to be seen. "Please, pardon the mess. I've been working very hard on my latest novel recently," Jared said as he scooped up some papers off the sofa.

"Well, that's why you moved to New York, right? To become inspired?" Sarah asked.

"Yes, that's correct," Jared said after a brief pause.

"To be fair, if I wasn't at school for most of the day, my apartment would probably end up looking like this, too," Sarah said as she put the mug on the counter. "Although I'm not quite sure how you managed to make your apartment look so lived in in such a short amount of time."

"It's an art," Jared replied with a cocky grin. Sarah rolled her eyes.

"Well, I won't disturb you any further if you're in the middle of something," Sarah said. "I just wanted to return your mug since you seemed… overly touchy about it the other day."

"It's just a mug," Jared said. Sarah raised an eyebrow at him and was about to comment before she thought better of it and turned on her heel to leave.

"I have papers to grade, anyway," she said.

"I was unaware that drama teachers gave out essay assignments."

"It's a new government mandate that teachers have to incorporate as much math, reading, and writing into their lessons," Sarah said. "It's such a pain, but the principal seems to really take this to heart." Sarah pulled a face. "It's not like my students don't already hate coming to class enough as it is, but then their teacher asks them to write a reflection paper on what acting means to them."

"They're complaining about that? It's not even hard; just write some bullshit about how it makes you feel and turn it in."

"I know, right?!" Sarah exclaimed. "But they're teenagers, and the world is quite literally out to get them. They'll find a way to complain about everything." Another roll of her eyes.

"You could always come up here? Plenty of coffee," Jared proposed with a grin.

"Alright, fine," Sarah said. "Just don't blame me when I annoy you to death with what my students wrote," Sarah said. She went back down to her apartment and came back up to Jared's with her backpack. In the few short minutes that she'd been downstairs, Jared had pulled his writing desk away from the window and into the middle of the room. It was some gigantic, heavily ornamented thing, and lord only knows how he had even managed to get it into the door, and forget about the logistics of trying to fit it into the elevator. It, like much of the living/kitchen area, was cluttered with papers, but a heavy, antique type writer sat on one corner, and Jared had cleared off the opposite corner for Sarah to work on.

"Is this alright, precious?" Jared asked with a grand gesture towards the desk.

"Yeah," Sarah agreed. Jared gestured towards the chair that he'd brought over for her. Sarah sat, brought out the massive stack of essays from her bag, pulled out a rainbow array of pens, and then looked expectantly at Jared. He sat down at the type writer, but only picked up a piece of paper that was right next to him and started to read through it.

For the next several hours, the room was silent except for the soft sounds of a pen on paper, the clack-clack-ding of the type writer, and every so often, Jared would ask for a word substitution or Sarah would read out loud something that one of her students had written.

Finally, Sarah put her pen down and just rubbed the bridge of her nose in complete frustration. "What is it now, precious?" Jared asked, his fingers poised above the keys.

"Listen to this," Sarah said as she picked up the essay that was on top of the stack. "'I think that drama is important to me because I would like to meat celebrities.' And meat is spelt like m-e-a-t. He goes on, a little bit later down the page: 'Pinocchio is like a painted flower; it never wilts. The flow of flowers wanted the TRUTH!' What. The. Fuuuck!"

"I know that I said to bullshit the essay, but I didn't mean to just write whatever nonsense words popped into their heads," Jared said with a slight laugh.

"This kid is a senior; he's going to be graduating in May, and will probably go on to be president or something," Sarah said. She put her head down on the stack of essays and groaned loudly. Jared got up and moved silently around to where Sarah was sitting. He put his hands on her shoulders, and she jumped a little at the contact, but then relaxed a moment later as he started to massage her overly tense muscles.

"It's only just now 3, but maybe we should put this aside for some other time. Go do something else," Jared said, his voice low.

"Yes, alright. I need to stretch my legs. Let's go walk around the block or something; get some fresh air."

Jared agreed, and followed Sarah downstairs so that she could grab her jacket and her purse. Then, they made their way downstairs, where they proceeded to stroll casually down the sidewalk. "If it's this cold in the tail end of October, I can't image what it'll be like come winter," Sarah said.

"Yes, but don't you just love the fall, precious?" Jared asked. "The crisp in the air, the vibrant colors of the leaves, the angry tourists who come to leaf-watch." Sarah rolled her eyes.

"In case you hadn't noticed, there's like one tree in this immediate area, and it's a pine tree," Sarah said.

"Fair enough. But I'm sure that since you were raised here, you know what I mean."

"Well, not close around here, but in upstate New York, yes," Sarah agreed. "Every damned year, the people from lower New York would come up just to gawk at the trees. They're just leaves, and they literally do the same stupid thing every damned year!"

"It's probably a good thing that we went for a walk, if you're getting this worked up over the leaves," Jared said with all seriousness.

"I'm sorry. I'm just incredibly frustrated with some of my students. …Most of my students. Well, I'm sure that you figured that out." Sarah looked slyly up at Jared, who offered her a small smile. "What are you working on? Salacious, infuriating, bewitching, just to name a few of the words you asked about."

"I think that I'm going to try my hand at romance again," Jared said.

"I thought that you said that it didn't work out for you?" Sarah asked with a raised eyebrow.

"It didn't, but that doesn't mean that I should abandon the genre," Jared said with an absent shrug.

"Can I read it?"

"Perhaps."

"I meant sometime before you send it off to your publisher."

"I know."

"You are incredibly frustrating; you know that, right?"

"So I've been told," Jared said with a slight laugh.

"Why do you use a type writer? Wouldn't it be easier to use a laptop?"

"Not for me. Technology and I… er… how should I put this? We don't always get along. There's too much that could go wrong. For example, what if the computer dies and takes with it the only copy of my novel?"

"Judging by what your apartment looks like and how you just threw your finished pages all over the room, I'm surprised that you've never lost pages before."

"True, it's not exactly ideal, but wouldn't it be better to lose a single page rather than the entire story?"

"I suppose so, yes."

"Besides, there's something thrilling about the noise that a typewriter makes. It makes me feel like the older authors."

"If you want to be really old fashioned, maybe you should get a quill and some ink."

"I've done that; it's not nearly as fun as you might think it would be."

"What, are you serious?" Sarah looked up at Jared, who only looked down at Sarah with a blank expression.

"Exceptionally, my dear," Jared said evenly. Sarah gave him a lingering puzzled look before she absently shook her head. "Anyway, your friend from this morning…"

"Oh no," Sarah groaned. "Listen, don't pay any attention to Ashley, because she is a horrible flirt. She'll probably have completely forgotten all about you by tomorrow."

"Well, it's a good thing that I wasn't going to consider my single cousins," Jared said with a slight laugh. "I don't think that Ms. Ashley would find them overly agreeable, however, and that's why I didn't. Not that I find your friend disagreeable at all."

"Well, you clearly don't know her very well." Sarah looked up at Jared. "Is it true that you've got five brothers?"

"Yes, and six sisters," Jared said. Sarah quickly did the math, and then her jaw fell open.

"Holy shit! Are you serious? You've got eleven brothers and sisters?"

"Yes."

"Your poor mother. Wait… You mean that you've got a bunch of half-siblings and step-siblings… right? Not full-siblings."

"No, they are all the children of my biological parents."

"The only thing that comes to mind is: Why? Just why? Why would anybody want to have that many children?"

"To fully answer that, I'd have to delve into the social-economic and psychological situations of my parents as they grew up, as well and the circumstances that surrounded their marriage, not to mention…" Jared trailed off and offered Sarah a sheepish smile. "Maybe you'll meet my mother some day, and then she can explain it to you."

"And your father?"

"He died. A long time ago."

"Oh. I'm sorry," Sarah said quickly.

"It might be the reason why I'm the youngest of 12 instead of the middle child of 30," Jared said with a quiet laugh. "But you have a younger half-brother, do you not?"

"Um, yeah. How did you know that? Did Mrs. Kelley tell you?" Sarah asked as she looked sharply to Jared.

"Yes, something like that," Jared said with an air that lead Sarah to believe that there was more than what Jared said.

"My mom walked out on my dad and me when I was little, and then my dad remarried. To a very horrid woman named Irene. Toby came around a year later. I used to hate him when he was little, but then I guess that I decided that he wasn't so bad."

"Oh? What made you change your mind?" Jared asked casually. Sarah stopped walking abruptly; Jared walked a couple of steps ahead of her before he realized that she was no longer at his side, and turned around to face her.

"You know… It's funny," Sarah said slowly. "I remember hating Toby one day, and then the next, I think that I just loved him to pieces. And I think that there's something important that I'm forgetting, but for the life of me, I just can't remember." Jared frowned at Sarah, but didn't offer anything. Sarah shook her head slowly. "You know, it's not important. That was a long time ago; Toby started the fifth grade this year. When I last spoke with him, he was really excited because he was going to start learning how to play the trumpet. Dad, on the other hand, was less enthusiastic about the entire thing!"

They'd walked a couple of blocks away from the apartment building, and now faced a park. Despite the chilly temperatures, there were still plenty of children that ran around, and barely-dressed joggers that ran down the paths. "Look, trees," Jared said in a teasing manor.

"Yeah, alright. I guess that they are rather pretty," Sarah said reluctantly. A small smile played around her lips as they crossed the street and went into the park. The second that they set foot on one of the winding paths, Sarah jumped a little and muttered a soft word of complaint.

"What's wrong?" Jared asked with an air of concern.

Sarah wordlessly shook her head. "I… I don't know. Something shocked me really bad." She rubbed at her lower back absently and looked around, as if she could spot the offending build-up of static electricity.

"Are you alright?" Jared asked with a raised eyebrow. Sarah nodded, and then they continued on. The two of them approached a small stand that was selling flowers, despite the off season.

"Where I'm from, it was easy to find the most beautiful flowers," Jared told Sarah as they got closer to the stand. "Here, not so much."

"What's wrong with the flowers here?" Sarah asked. "I think that they're nice."

"Oh, they are nice. But it was better back near my home." Jared produced a crisp five dollar bill from his pocket, which he exchanged for a bouquet of mixed flowers; he presented them to Sarah. "It's only just 3 now, and I think that I know where the theater is. Do you want to catch a movie, and then grab some dinner?"

"Alright," Sarah said as she looked up from smelling the flowers. "I don't even know what's playing right now."

"Me neither. So we can just pick something at random. And if it's bad, then we'll suffer through a bad movie together."

"Alright," Sarah agreed with a small smile.