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Noel gifted me with the hint of a smile. Then he ducked his face and headed from the room.
Once he was gone, I felt bereft. Setting my hand over my heart, I sank back into my chair and blew out a long, shaky breath. Okay, so my crush on a student had just grown to epic proportions. Wonder what my flawless, judgmental mother would have to say about that?
CHAPTER FOUR
"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun.'" -Groucho Marx
~NOEL~
Tenning was loitering in the kitchen when I came through the front door of our apartment. As I kicked it shut behind me, he appeared in the opening next to the breakfast bar, barefoot and shirtless with his track pants hanging low around his hips. He only had to look at my face to know something was up.
A smug leer spread across his features. “So...how’d your meeting with Kavanagh go?”
I sent him my best fuck you glare and dropped my bag heavily on the floor before slumping spine-first onto the couch. “Feels like I just had an hour-long session with a head shrink. I swear to God, who knew literature was all about feelings and emotions? God damn.”
Tenning chuckled. “So, is she going to let you rewrite a new paper or what?”
“Actually, yeah. Freaky, huh? But only because her boss has a hard-on for me or something and forced her to give me a second chance.”
“Really? Did you have to go down on him to make that happen?” Tenning leaned against the wall and waggled his eyebrows suggestively.
“What?” Swiping up a throw pillow that had been lumped behind my head, I threw it at him as hard as I could. “Jesus, Ten. You’re such a crude asshole, and you completely annoy me.”
Catching the cushion to his chest, he snickered. “Damn, I love you too, babe. Hey, I bet if you offered to teach the dyke to bat for the right team, she’d change your grade to an A without you having to worry about writing another paper for the rest of the semester.”
I sighed and decided to ignore him or he’d only get worse. But the douche had hit a nerve. If he ever realized I actually thought about her in that way, he’d never let me live it down. Talk about utter humiliation.
Focusing my attention on the ceiling, I noticed a new water stain growing in the corner. Swell. The worst part was I couldn’t mention the leak to our landlord or he’d just raise our rent again, as he had this winter when we’d asked him to fix the central heating system. Repairs aren’t free, he’d said.
“Hey, quit daydreaming about banging your teacher, dickwad.” Ten kicked my feet off the end of the couch as he passed, making his way toward the hallway that led down to our separate rooms. “It’s ladies’ night. We got work to do. I call dibs on the shower first.”
I groaned, completely having forgotten what day it was. Every Thursday was ladies’ night at Forbidden, the bar where both Ten and I worked. That meant only the male employees had to clock in, and since all five of us guys were bartenders, some of us had to switch over and play waiter for the evening.
My tips went through the roof when I waited tables on ladies’ night, but damn, drunk women could get freaking frisky. Not that I didn’t mind a little grab-ass from a table full of cute co-eds. But after a couple hours of it, my butt cheeks grew chaffed.
And that was only from the women who went for the back door. I’d taken to wearing a cup a couple months back due to all the hungry hands grabbing my junk.
Yeah, it was that insane.
An hour later, I was following Ten out the door, decked out in a tight black T-shirt and blue jeans, which was the regulation uniform for the men of Forbidden. Since I didn’t own my own set of wheels, I climbed into the passenger seat of Ten’s truck as he slid behind the wheel.
Five minutes later, we parked across the street from the nightclub and took a minute to stare at the quiet building before slipping out of the truck. In an hour, the place would be banging, and the peace we had now would be no more. But...it paid the bills and helped me send home some extra funds to Caroline so she could pay those bills too.
“You ready for this?” I asked, pushing open my door.
Ten snickered. “I was born ready, motherfucker.” As he followed me to the front door, I shook my head, wondering if he’d ever not been able to come up with some po
litically incorrect answer to any question a person asked him.
After unlocking the door and slipping inside, I glanced around the interior for the other three guys who were supposed to work tonight.
“Where is everyone?” Ten and I were rarely the first to arrive, and we weren’t even running early.
“Well, Pick’s always late,” Ten said, taking a chair off the first table he saw and tucking it upright underneath. “And the twins are...” He glanced around and scratched his head. “Huh. The twins are never late. Where the fuck are the twins?”
As if answering his question, the door to the manager’s office opened, and the owner of Forbidden’s oldest daughter, Jessie, strolled out followed by a stranger—a dark-haired guy, my age, about the same height and size...which could mean only one thing.
New employee. One of my coworkers must’ve quit.
