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“I didn’t know a wrong person to lay existed for Ty Winslow,” Remy muses, falling right back into the conversation as though we weren’t interrupted.
“I’m not an animal. I have boundaries.”
Remy scoffs, blowing a mist of his half-drink of beer all over the table in front of me. “Since when?”
“Since forever,” I reply with a scowl.
“Ty, you fucked one of the bridesmaids in the hall at my non-wedding.”
“You know about that?”
“Of course.” He rolls his eyes. “I know all the shit you and Jude get into. Flynn’s the only one who manages to keep his dick’s activity off the tri-county blotter.”
“The fuck you say. I’m not that bad.”
“Ty, I could open up the New York City phone book, point to a random spot on a random page, and probably still land on someone who had no more than two degrees of separation from a woman you’ve slept with. You alone have elevated the national average of sexual partners from six to seven.”
“Whatever,” I grumble, rubbing at the condensation on my water glass as the waiter interrupts once again. Remy, just like before, is laughing.
“Your shrimp cocktail and your Guinness, sir.”
I nod, afraid if I open my mouth to say something to the poor guy who just works here and is very obviously just doing his job, I’ll threaten him with the “family.”
I don’t have actual ties to the mafia that I know of, but when I was a young kid and people would ask about our dad, I always found it easier to pretend he’d been whacked for his role in the mob. I guess that sounds a lot cooler to most ten-year-olds than, yeah, he didn’t want to be around me anymore.
“Thanks.”
He nods and steps away again, and I chug a mouthful of beer before sighing at Remy. “Look, you might be right. Normally. But this is different. This is someone who’s really off-limits.”
He shrugs, the bastard. “So, leave her alone, then.”
If only it was that easy…
“I want to. I do. But the more time goes on, the deeper and deeper I seem to get.” His eyebrows rise, and I get defensive. “It’s not just me. She’s a willing party too. I just… I can’t figure out how to put an end to it without making us both miserable.”
“Ahh, I see. Your whole befuddled fuckboy thing you have going on tonight is starting to make more sense.”
I flip him off, and he laughs. “I just mean this is new territory for you. Very grown-up, in fact.”
“I’m almost forty, blowhard. I’ve been grown up for a while.”
“In age, sure. In maturity? Not so much.”
I narrow my eyes. “Do you have any actual, I don’t know, advice to contribute? Or were you just going to use this as an excuse to insult me all night?”
“Look, there’s not much I can say, bro,” he says, and his voice is calm and serious. “If she’s really off-limits, Ty, then I think you already know what to do. You just don’t want to do it. It’s up to you to figure out where to go from here.”
I know he’s right. Remy is almost always right, as much as I hate to admit it.
I need to find a way to distance myself from Rachel. To take things back to a professional level. And to keep them there.
Period.
Tuesday, January 29th
Rachel
Thanks to too much cake and gossip at the bakery last night, combined with staying up until five a.m. doing research for my thesis, I’m running late to my first class of the day. It’s my ENG 101 class with Ty, and because of some sort of convention that’s taken all my graduate-level professors to Cabo of all places for the rest of the week, it’s all I have on the docket at the university before going to the bakery for a shift later.
The lecture’s already started, I know it, and I’m just hoping I can sneak in and grab a seat without throwing Ty off too much—a goal in complete opposition to the wild woman I was yesterday. The one who shamelessly took back her panties and even asked for a little help putting them on.
Call it frustration or fun or whatever you want, but even I can’t explain my actions. My sister Lydia would probably say it’s totally something I would do—I’m not a wallflower—but it’s not a set of actions I would normally entertain exchanging with my boss.
Because that’s essentially what Ty is—an authority figure. I don’t have to agree with my dad to adopt and acknowledge that. As long as I’m in charge of my own destiny, I’m willing to recognize that and respect it. I think.
Today’s topic is usually a student favorite—sexual desires of women in early literature, a direct transition from their essays on Tolstoy’s level of misogyny—and I’ve heard legend of how unabashedly rowdy Ty lets them get. He’s popular for a lot of reasons, not the least of which being how hot the female undergrad population thinks he is while talking about early sexualization and the prominence of promiscuity.
