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I must have dozed off from the exhaustion and stress—and knowing I was in a safe place. I woke up to knocking at my door.
For a split second I thought I was in my bedroom at my mom’s, and I wondered why she was being so nice for a change and not yelling at me to wake up and clean the kitchen. Then I realized it was Alastair, and the pressure in my chest vanished instantly.
“Just a second,” I mumbled as I sat up and put my feet on the floor, the book tumbling to the carpet. I grabbed it and shoved it onto the bedside table.
When I opened the door, Alastair was standing there with a bouquet of red and yellow flowers.
“Welcome to your new home,” he said, with the brightest smile I could have asked for.
I grabbed the bouquet and threw it on the bed, then launched myself into his arms, holding him tighter than I’d ever held anything before.
Chapter Seventeen
A Change of Scene
Living with Alastair wasn’t that big of a deal.
I mean, in some ways itwasa big deal, in terms of me finding somewhere to live other than my mom’s toxic home. But it wasn’t a big deal when it came to moving in with someone I didn’t know well but with whom I had amazing sexual chemistry. We shifted into being roommates and lovers in a way that seemed strangely easy.
Technically, I wasrentingthe guest room for two hundred a month—a ridiculously cheap price, but it worked for me, and Alastair was resistant to charge me more. He said it was the ‘student rate’. Our schedules didn’t match, which worked out, because I got the place to myself all day during the week, and he got some time to chill on the evenings I was working. I had my own code for the door, and it was great not to have to remember to take a key with me whenever I went out.
Old Ottawa South was one of the swankiest neighborhoods in Ottawa, so I found myself well-situated. There were tons of places I could walk to during the day—coffee shops, bakeries, even a paint-your-own pottery place called The Mud Oven. I felt a bit out of place at first, but there were a couple of shops I frequented where the staff got to know me, and that made all the difference.
Of course, I still had my classes to go to, and papers to work on, but having a quiet, clean space of my own felt like a triumph. There was a little desk in my room, and I sat there to do my schoolwork, with the door open and the ticking of the clock my only companion while Alastair wasn’t home.
The offices where Alastair worked were located farther north, in the central downtown part of the city. This made it easy to see him between classes, since the University of Ottawa campus was downtown, too. If I had a morning class, I could meet Alastair for lunch. Sometimes he met me after class and drove me home. I didn’t have a full course load this year. I’d opted to take an extra term next fall rather than overload myself with work and school and see my grades suffer. I’d only have to take two more courses, and I was saving up to pay for them.
I generally had five shifts a week, and I always worked Fridays and Saturdays, which were the busiest evenings at Maverick Molly’s. I made a shitload in tips on those nights. But that meant that if Alastair and I wanted to go out together, we had to go Wednesday or Thursday—or whichever other day I had off. And if we wanted to reserve the Bordello, those were the days available, which was a little hard on Alastair because he had to get up early to go to work.
But maybe I could change that. Maybe I could ask Jacob to switch me from Fridays to Wednesdays, which would give me Thursdays, Fridays and Mondays off. I felt like that would make having a boyfriend a little easier and give Alastair and me more time to have fun together.
“Hey, Jacob,” I said that Friday night, sitting on the stool at the bar and crossing one leg over the other to dangle my foot in its little brown shoe.
“Yes, Toby?”
I smiled, touching a finger to my throat. “I’m, like, one of your best servers, right?” I said, fluttering my eyelashes.
He laughed and nodded. “Sure.”
“Well…I was wondering if you really needed me here on Friday nights?”
His face fell. “You want me to cut one of your shifts?”
“No, no, no. Not cut it. Just switch it?” I said, pleading with my eyes.
“You don’t like working Fridays?” he said.
“Okay, here’s the thing. You know Alastair and I are a thing.”
“Yeah.”
“And he has a Monday-to-Friday day job.”
“Ah,” Jacob said, understanding dawning.
“And, uh, we kind of want to get kinky in the Bordello on a more…regular basis,” I said, remembering the fun we’d had in there a few weeks earlier. We hadn’t had the chance to come back, mainly because it was difficult to find a night that worked.
“Oh. But you could come on a Thursday, like you did last time…”
