Page 10 of Wolf's Forbidden Curse

“Aren’t you?”

I made a face. “I’m never desperate.”

“Ah,” Matt said, shaking his head. “Spoken like a true asshole. You really haven’t had a woman turn you down before, have you? That’s why you don’t know how to react.”

I furrowed my brow in thought. “Hmm, I think you’re right, actually. Nobody has ever turned me down. Not that I can think of, at least.”

“I suppose there’s a first time for everything,” he said. “Welcome to the world the rest of us have been living in all this time.”

But Matt was being a bit hypocritical. He was handsome and had been in a number of relationships ranging in levels of seriousness, but all with beautiful women. I let him have this little ride on his high horse, however, and ordered my water without further discussion. Back at the table where Cornelius and Nic were waiting for us, we interrupted an argument the two of them were having.

“You’re completely off base!” Cornelius said. “I didn’t get fired from the fishery because I wasn’t doing the job correctly. I got fired because I wasn’t doing it the way they wanted me to.”

“Semantics.”

“No, not semantics! The way they wanted me to organize their files and invoices was totally inefficient. My system worked so much better. If they had just listened to me, I could’ve saved the company time and money. Isn’t that what every business owner wants?”

“No, business owners like to run their own business,” she said. “They like to be in charge. What they don’t like is being told that they are doing everything wrong by someone who has only been working at the company for five days!”

“It was seven days.”

Nic rolled her eyes. “Either way,” she said. “You still let your own type-A nonsense get in the way, and you lost a job that I had to pull a lot of strings to get you.”

“Are you two still fighting about this?” Matt groaned. “It’s been weeks! Just let it go already.”

“But he promised,” Nic whined.

It was true. When she convinced our manager to give Cornelius the open position in the accounting department of the fishery, Cornelius had promised her that he would do his best to actually hang onto this one. The four of us shared a rental house near the beach, and our monthly expenses were on the rise, so we needed Cornelius to pull his weight more than usual. He swore he would put his quirks aside and try to do the job without getting fired.

A week and a half later, he was boxing up his things and saying his goodbyes. Nic had been doing a piss-poor job of biting her tongue ever since.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” said Cornelius. “I really thought I was helping. I didn’t mean to cause trouble for you, though. You know that.”

Nic breathed in and exhaled audibly. “Yeah… I do. I shouldn’t have even brought it up. It’s just because I got an email from the gas company today, and we’re late on another payment. It’s stressing me out.”

I put a hand on her back and smiled. “We’ll figure it out, Nic. I’ll take an extra shift or two and it’ll all be fine.”

She smiled back. “Yeah, alright.” She glanced guiltily at Cornelius. “Sorry for snapping at you.”

“Me too,” he said.

“I think this was mostly the alcohol talking,” said Matt. “What do you say we head back to the house and call it a night?”

“I’m fine with that,” said Nic. “I need something to eat anyway, and we still have leftover pizza in the fridge.” She looked at me. “What about you? You ready to go back, or are you going to insist on hitting a fourth bar along the way?”

“Nah, I’m good.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Really? You never like to turn in this early.”

“Yeah, well, I’m just not feeling the vibe tonight.”

She shrugged and finished off her drink with one last sip, and then slid off her stool and led the way out of the bar. “Okay then. Off we go.”

Cornelius went directly to his room after we got home, which came as no surprise. Matt, however, sat on the couch and turned the TV on. He always needed to unwind a bit after we’d been to the bars. Nic grabbed the pizza from the fridge and put it on the coffee table. I grabbed a slice and sat down in the loveseat with it. The volume of the TV was on low, and only Matt was paying attention to it. He liked to watch the news and know what the weather was going to be like the next day.

“I’m glad we went out tonight,” Nic said, sitting next to Matt and tucking her legs underneath her. “It was just what I needed.”

“Same here,” Matt said.

---