“Okay,” she says, “now you can drop your pants.”
“Oh, one more thing,” she says.
I scoff. “You know, for such a free-thinking group, you’ve got a lot of rules.”
“They’re rules to ensure mutual respect between everyone,” she says. “Which leads me to this: the occasional erection is just going to happen. However, in the event of an erection, your hands are to stay at or above the surface of the water, you’re not to draw any attention to it, and you’re certainly not to stand closer than two feet away from anyone while you’re facing them with a boner. When possible, you are to stay in the water until the situation has resolved itself.”
Of all the things I thought I’d be doing tonight, this is absolutely beyond and outside what I could have imagined.
“All right,” I tell her. “Where is the bathroom?”
She points to a door on the other side of the pool.
“The showers are in there, too,” she says. “After you’re done peeing, don’t forget to at least give yourself a good rinse. You can drop your pants now.”
I laugh and do as I’m told.
The air is pretty warm in here, so I don’t make a bad showing. I can only hope that the shower water isn’t too cold.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Butterfly
Leila
It’s been a week since I left, and I’ve just been trying to keep my mind on my job.
While I was an intern, I figured that I was learning enough on top of my college education to just be able to walk onto any broker job without any adjustment period.
I was wrong.
My first day, I’m pretty sure I almost got fired when I gave a bad tip to a client. That may sound like a silly thing to get fired for, especially on one’s first day, and it would be silly if the tip didn’t lose my client about $350,000 in 20 minutes.
That was a tough explanation to my boss.
I think I’m starting to get acclimated to everything, but it’s a stressful job.
It’s not helping that I can’t stop thinking about Dane and the way I left things.
I wonder what he’s doing tonight.
Oh well. Tonight, I’m going out with Annabeth.
I’m a little nervous that, in preparation for our night out, she bought me a white cotton shirt and told me to sleep in it for three nights then put in in a sealable sandwich bag. While I’m not sleeping in it, she told me, I have to keep it in such a bag and store it in the freezer.
I really don’t know why I go along with these things.
The knock lands on my door around 8 o’clock, and I invite her inside to see the apartment.
“Nice place,” she says dismissively. “Have you been wearing the shirt?” she asks.
“Yeah, but I don’t know why—”
“Is it in the freezer?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I tell her.
“All right, then grab it and let’s go,” she says. “We’re running late.”