Page 30 of My Brother's Roommate (Frisky Business 2)
I hop on the train and ride it past my usual stop, all the way down to my favorite stretch of bars. Nothing sounds better right now than being one of hundreds of faceless, drunken strangers in a crowd. Plus, whiskey tastes better when someone else pours it for you, and I sure as hell need a drink.
My go-to spot is more packed than it should be on a weeknight, but I slip the bouncer a twenty, and in seconds I’m inside. Money talks, and I’ve got a few more bills in my wallet that are calling out for a Jameson neat.
Shouldering through the crowd, I make my way to the bar and manage to claim a free bar stool. I’ll take it as a sign that I’m supposed to be here, drinking my problems away with some shitty club soundtrack in the background. If only I could find whoever’s pouring the drinks down here.
My gaze travels down the bar and over a dozen unfamiliar faces, each of them laughing and sipping something strong. Eventually, I find my target, a guy dressed in head-to-toe black, taking an order from a dark-haired girl in a red dress.
Wait a second. I know that girl.
Suddenly, my mouth feels like the fucking Sahara Desert.
It’s Tessa. I haven’t spoken to her since I shut her down via text during Penelope’s work retreat. Apparently, I’m staring a little too long, because her gaze meets mine and recognition flashes.
Shit. I could have looked away and played dumb, but it’s too late now.
She mutters something to the bartender that I can’t hear from this distance. Moments later, she’s sauntering my way with a glass of Jameson and the kind of smug smile that irritates the hell out of me.
“Long time, no see.” She slides the glass across the bar and straight into my palm.
Lord knows she’s the last person I want to see right now, but I’m not turning down free booze, even if it is compliments of an old hookup.
“Hey, Tessa,” I choke out. My grip on the glass tightens, and I knock back half of it in one swallow, letting the familiar punch of heat hit my stomach. It feels good in the worst way.
“You haven’t been out lately.” She props her elbows on the bar in a way that’s clearly intended to showcase her tits.
“I’ve been busy.”
“Too busy for me?” She bats her thick black lashes at me, jutting out her lower lip in a pout.
I’m not dignifying that with a response. As I stare into my whiskey, she wiggles in closer until we’re inches apart, close enough that I can smell the whiskey on her breath.
“Listen, Wolf. Let’s cut to the chase and get out of here.” She trails her fingers from my shoulder to my bicep. “To your place?”
I can’t shake her hand off me fast enough. “We’re not doing that anymore, Tess.” I look up from my glass in time to watch her lips pull into a tight frown.
“Why not? We had fun, didn’t we? Why not have fun again?”
She squeezes my thigh under the bar. I have no choice but to physically lift her hand from my leg and move it away.
“I said no, Tess.” My tone is firmer this time.
She scoffs and rolls her eyes at me. Luckily, she doesn’t have a drink in her hand, or she might have thrown it in my face. But before she walks across the bar to flirt with the next unlucky bastard, she can’t help but get in the last word.
“There’s something wrong with you.”
Her words sink into me like teeth. She’s right. But she doesn’t know the half of it.
Gulping down what’s left in my glass, I flag down the bartender and get myself another Jameson, this time on the rocks. I need to slow myself down somehow, and the ice should keep me from tossing the whole thing back. But no amount of drinking could make me forget Tessa’s words.
There’s something wrong with you.
I’ve always known that to be true, but it hurts a whole lot more hearing someone else say it out loud. Even if it is an old hookup whose opinion shouldn’t matter much.
It hasn’t always been this way, though. Once upon a time, I was a normal horny teenager eager to experience sex and pleasure. But then one night when I was sixteen, I broke.
My dad’s girlfriend came into my bedroom in the middle of the night, and I woke up to a hand that wasn’t mine gripping me inside my boxers. It was foreign and strange, mostly because no one had ever touched me before. What made it even more so was she was someone that I’d looked at like a mother figure in my life.
At first, I was so stunned, I just lay there. My body wouldn’t cooperate.
