Jude: Hey, asshat, Flynn is not naming one of his kids after you.
Me: How the fuck would you know?
Jude: Because I know you, and I know that you’re a dick. People don’t name their kids after dicks.
Me: A dick who helped keep your party from being a boring disaster. Honestly, I should’ve been on your payroll as the MC or some shit.
Jude: Who do I make the check out to? John fucking Travolta?
Remy: Greased Lightning!
Me: Make it out to Ty Winslow Junior so I can put it in my future nephew’s trust fund.
Flynn: Not happening.
Jude: Anyway, I just wanted to tell everyone but Ty thanks for coming out Friday night. You made the launch a success.
Me: So, you and Soph sold a lot of sex badges?
Jude: The Secret Club doesn’t sell sex badges, but I wouldn’t expect you to understand anything about sex and intimacy. Don’t worry, I’ll dumb it down for you one day.
Me: Only if you promise to do it at another boring-ass party with an open bar.
Jude: Fuck you.
I laugh and put my phone away, shaking my head as I jog the rest of the way up the stairs to the second floor. I swear, life is fucking weird sometimes.
My brother and his wife are probably going to become rich from selling T-shirts and sex badges, and Friday night, a random woman left her panties behind—literally put them in my hand—like she was Cinderella at the ball.
And you kept them like some kind of pervert.
In my defense, I’ve never had a beautiful woman give me her panties and just…walk away…before.
I’ve had a woman take her panties off so I would fuck her. I’ve taken a woman’s panties off her body so I could taste her. I’ve even had a woman box herself up in nothing but panties and deliver herself to my apartment. But I’ve never experienced a panty-gift-and-dash.
She didn’t give her number or her name; all she left was an impression.
Hot, sexy, and completely entrancing, she’s popped into my brain one too many times since she left me standing alone on the dance floor with her sheer pink panties in my hand.
It might be one of the hottest mindfucks I’ve ever experienced.
Truthfully, the only thing that stopped me from chasing after her was my goddamn brothers bum-rushing me on the dance floor mere seconds after she walked away.
So, I slipped them into my pocket and tried to convince myself it was no big deal. Just a random, crazy encounter that meant nothing.
Problem is, it’s that very encounter that’s been screwing with your head all weekend.
Glancing down at my watch as I’m about to step inside my office, I realize I’ve fucked away so much time shit-talking with my brothers that I now only have about thirty seconds to make it to my appointment with Professor Rose on time. I abandon the idea of dropping off my stuff before I go and power walk to the other end of the hall.
Three raps to the thick wood of his door and his voice fills my ears, “Come on in!”
I open the door to the vision of him on his metaphorical throne—the current literary king of the NYU English Department, behind the massive desk in his office.
“Ty, son, it’s good to see you,” he greets, and I don’t hesitate to close the distance between us and shake his hand across the desk. Signs of respect for this man aren’t hard, though. Professor Nathaniel Rose has been a mentor of mine for the past decade. He’s a man I admire. Look up to. He’s the man I worked under as a TA, and he’s the man who helped guide me into a career as a successful, tenured English professor at NYU. He’s like the father I never had.
“Good to see you too, Nate.”
If I help one student the way Professor Rose helped me, my career will be made.
“Make yourself comfortable, please,” he says, gesturing toward a leather chair across from his desk.
I sit down, but I also flash him a wry grin. “Should I be worried? I mean, it’s not every day you ask me to come into your office with an appointment scheduled through Alison.”
He chuckles and leans forward, resting both of his elbows on the desk. “You have tenure, son. You’d have to commit a murder for me to get rid of you.”
I laugh at that. “That’s true, Professor.”
“Not to mention, you’re the only professor I have on staff who can actually invigorate our undergrads,” he adds with a raise of his brow.
“But you could always see if Kip could handle the job,” I tease, and Nate guffaws.
“We’d lose enrollment.”
“Or what about Adele? She’s aces with the Renaissance.”
He shakes his head on another laugh and runs his fingers along the edges of his beard. “Again, we’d lose enrollment. And I’d probably end up with several freshmen sobbing in my office.”