Noel snorted. “Well, we were supposed to invite a girl to help compete on the female side, and Aspen wouldn’t be caught dead at a campus event. Besides, I wouldn’t let her come. All you assholes would never be able to take your eyes off her legs, and we’d definitely lose to girls, then.”
As if on command, Ten’s gaze went straight to Caroline’s legs as he snorted. “I didn’t invite a chick.”
Noel muttered a curse and pushed Ten about a foot backward. “Eyes in your head, fucker.”
“What?” Ten cried, stumbling along behind Noel. “Why’d you bring her if you didn’t want anyone looking at her?”
I flushed because I’d been looking too, but Noel didn’t scold me. He must’ve known I wasn’t having any dirty thoughts about his sister.
“I brought her because she needed to get out of the house. She closeted herself up all summer long and with classes starting Monday, I was hoping she’d make a friend or two over in girl camp.”
Glancing after Caroline again, I hoped that Cora took her in and befriended her. I wasn’t sure what had happened to Noel’s sister to cause him to uproot her and his two younger brothers from their hometown and move them all to Ellamore at the end of the last school year, but Ten knew about it. I’d caught him and Noel discussing her, worried about how she was healing. The few times I’d met her, she’d seemed fairly quiet and reserved, except I don’t think that was her usual behavior. I think something had beaten her down, and she was still working through whatever haunted her.
When I saw her approach Cora, I smiled. My girl was bright and bubbly. She’d take care of Noel’s sister, no problem.
I got back to work, and Noel joined Ten and me at our station. Other members of the team would float over to greet him, and sometimes Ten. I would occasionally get a head nod or brief, “Hey,” but no one said much else to me except maybe how good Cora looked in her bikini, which perplexed me. Why were they telling me, like I owned her or something? They should tell her if they thought she looked nice. And if they wanted to make me jealous, they were wasting their time. I wasn’t the jealous type.
But I nodded at their praise and kept on in my silent way. I’m pretty sure my quietness skeeved people out. Noel and Ten seemed to be about the only two members on the team who didn’t care that I rarely talked.
Actually, we worked well together on the field and off, since we all three worked at the same nightclub as bartenders. Noel had actually been the one to get me the job there, for which I’d be eternally grateful. I’d been living in the dorms my freshmen year, but I hated dorm life. I was so not the communal resident type. So many people, crammed into one building, parties all night long, no privacy—it’d been hard for me to handle.
But with the money I made at my new job, I’d been able to rent an apartment off campus as soon as the semester had ended. This summer had been nice, having my own space to myself. It didn’t even matter that Ten had invited himself over and moved in with me a few months ago when he’d given up his apartment with Noel, after Noel had moved himself and his siblings in with Aspen at her place. Ten was loud, obnoxious, and annoying, but he wasn’t a bad roommate. He respected my privacy, didn’t mess the place any more than I did, and he didn’t treat me like a freak. He was actually a pretty great friend, and had a way of making me feel like a normal person whenever I was around him.
Happy that I’d been able to form such a good relationship with both Noel and Ten, I glanced toward both of them working on the opposite side of a little red car as me. I had more than just friendship and a place to live to thank them for. If it hadn’t been for Noel getting me my job, I probably never would’ve met Cora. And I’d no doubt still be a hopelessly shy virgin to this day.
“Shit,” Ten muttered, glancing across the car lot. “The chicks are getting more business than us.”
I looked up and yep, the line on their side was growing. “We need to step it up, boys,” Ten called as he made a show of slowly peeling his shirt off over his head and tossing it aside before shaking out his damp hair.
One car full of women waiting in line with their windows rolled down hooted in approval. Noel followed suit and lost his shirt, but Ten took it to extremes by not so accidentally getting soap suds on his chest and blatantly staring at the women as he wiped them clean. “Oops. I’m such a mess. Oh, damn. There I go again.”
Then he made sure to flatten his entire front against their window as he reached across the roof of their car to wipe it down. They got right back in line to get their car re-cleaned as soon as we were finished with them.
“Come on, Ham,” Ten called to me. “Lose some clothes. Help us out here, man.”
I just smiled and shook my head no. So Ten felt compelled to give me a “wetter look,” as he called it, right before he sprayed me with water.