Boy, hadn’t it. “Yes, it has.”
“Look, about tomorrow...” When he paused, I knew he was going to cancel. Damn. This had to be a record; I’d bombed my date before even going on it.
“Something came up...” Yep, I knew it. Something came up...unavoidable...maybe some other time...blah, blah, blah. We can still be friends. Don’t call me, I’ll call you. “So do you think we could just meet there at, say, seven thirty?”
It took me a moment to realize what he was asking. I’d been expecting the usual brush-off. Meeting there totally threw me for a loop.
“Oh! Uh...sure. Wait, where exactly are we meeting?”
“The Forbidden Nightclub. It’s on Second between Grand and Admiral. Huge place. Amazing drinks. I think you’ll like it.”
I’d never been there before, hadn’t even heard of it, and clubs were definitely not my thing. But I agreed because I’d already bought a dress for the occasion and I wanted—no, I needed—a reason to get my mind off a certain student of mine. “That sounds great. I’ll see you there.”
CHAPTER NINE
"Few people dare now to say that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet it is in this way that love begins, and in this way only.” - Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
NOEL
The club was more crowded than usual. I swiped a white towel across the beading sweat on my brow as I glanced at the swarming bodies swamping the other side of the bar.
When a waitress appeared with a round tray full of empty bottles, I lifted my chin to her in greeting. “Tips any good tonight?”
“Oh yeah.” She wiggled her eyebrows before tossing the empties into the nearby trash. The familiar clink and shattering glass almost comforted me because it had become so common. But that was the only comfort I felt this evening.
I should’ve had the night off, yet in the past nine days since the twins had quit, I’d been stuck behind the bar of Forbidden all fucking nine of those days. I’d had plans to meet up with Tianna and her friend, Marci, at the frat party for my long-overdue threesome tonight. It’d been almost six weeks since I’d been inside a woman. That was a dry spell for me.
It was probably what had me thinking dirty thoughts about my English professor too. Lately, I thought about her just before I went to sleep. When my head was nestled deep in a pillow and my eyes had just fluttered closed, there she’d come, wavering into my subconscious until I’d officially had way-more-than-one wet dream about her.
I still couldn’t believe I’d almost kissed her in her office yesterday morning. It had to be the most embarrassing, horrifying thing I’d ever done.
It was impossible to tell whether she’d played dumb afterward, or if she honestly hadn’t had a clue how close I’d come to leaning in and devouring her mouth. I was just grateful she hadn’t made an issue of it.
But it heaped on one more reason why I really, really, really needed to find a woman for a nice, satisfying release. And soon. Except, Jessie, damn her, just had to call me into work. With Ten out of town visiting his family and the new guy, Lowe, doing something or other with his girlfriend, that left me and Pick unwillingly dragged in on our nights off.
“What can we get you, sweetheart?” Pick asked the waitress as she rested her elbows against the bar and drew in a deep, bracing breath as if she needed a day off too.
“Need a double rum and Coke with two Coors in a bottle. And I’ll take some valium if you have any.”
“Aww, it can’t be that bad.” Pick reached across the counter to massage her temples for her while I snagged a tumbler to make her order.
I chuckled. “Yeah, you should try working ladies’ night for us sometime. Then I’ll listen to you talk about a bad shift.”
She cocked me a dirty look only to close her eyes and moan when Pick hit a sensitive area. Shaking my head over how effortlessly he always made the girls sigh, I set the rum and Coke on a cocktail napkin and fished the beers out of the cooler.
Holding the neck of the two bottles in one hand as I flipped off the lids with an opener, I glanced toward Pick and the waitress just as a woman crossed my line of sight between people directly behind them. I barely caught a glimpse of her profile, but it was enough for me to crane my neck some more and try to catch another.