Page 86 of Night Shift

“I thought you said you’d behave.”

“Yeah, but it’s really not fair, is it?” I sit back. “You’ve had your fun. I’m dying over here.”

He offers me a mock-sympathetic pout. “Poor thing.”

My only comeback is to shove my hand into his jeans and beneath the waistband of his boxers. He’s already hard, but when I wrap my hand around him, he twitches and swells in my palm.

“All right, joke’s over,” Vincent croaks. “I need to be inside you.”

“Thank you.” About fucking time.

Vincent steps back to push his jeans and black boxers down his hips. His phone tumbles out of his pocket and lands on my carpeted floor with a muted thud, followed by the second, softer thud of a slim black leather wallet. Vincent sighs, bends down to retrieve his fallen phone, and sets it on my bedside table. Then he reaches for his wallet.

His face suddenly falls. “Shit.”

“What?”

Vincent shakes his head in disbelief and devastation. “I don’t have a condom. Please tell me you have one somewhere in this apartment, Kendall, because I can’t walk into CVS like this. I mean, I will if I have to, but—shit. I really didn’t expect this. I had no idea I’d even see you today—”

Later, I’ll let myself laugh at the mental image of Vincent Knight sporting the most glaringly obvious erection that the CVS on the corner of campus has ever seen while he shoots death glares at everyone else using self-checkout. But right now, my brain is a little too preoccupied with the realization that Nina is the greatest whore best friend a girl could ask for.

“My bookshelf. Check my bookshelf. There’s a paperback on the second shelf from the top. Black spine with the red cursive. No, to the right—that one!”

Vincent plucks the book off the shelf and examines the cover.

“Bedding His Secretary?” he reads in a monotone.

“Don’t. Say. Anything.”

Vincent looks back and forth between me and my porn.

“Do you want me to read it to you?” His smile is teasing, but there’s an acceptance in his eyes that tells me he’s very much down.

I tuck the idea away for later.

“Just toss it to me,” I say, clapping my hands out in front of me.

Vincent lobs the book to me underhanded. It soars across my bedroom in the gentlest and most graceful arc, perfectly aimed into my waiting hands. I somehow manage to let it slip through my fingers. It lands hard against the side of my knee.

“Ow. Jesus.”

“You going out for the softball team?”

“Fuck off,” I grumble, gripping the paperback by its spine and shaking it over my duvet.

Out tumbles the “bookmark” that Nina gave me for my birthday last year: a row of condoms in leopard print foil. I pluck them up and examine the back of the packets.

“We’re good,” I announce, holding them aloft like I’ve got a winning lottery ticket. “We’re fine. They don’t expire for another two years.”

Vincent snatches them out of my hand, rips one off the end of the row, and tears open the corner of the packet with his teeth.

“We’ll be lucky if these last us two days,” he says. “You want me to put this on myself?”

It’s less of a challenge and more of an open invitation. I hold out a hand, and he passes me the opened packet and sits back on his heels so I can demonstrate how much I remember from high school sex ed. The condom is neon pink, because of course Nina would give me neon pink condoms in leopard print foil. I pinch the tip. Roll it down. Make absolutely certain my fingernails don’t puncture the ultrathin latex.

“Ta-da,” I announce with a proud flourish.

“Nicely done, Holiday.”

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