Page 73 of Vacancy

“A commis chef…” he started smoothly. Slipping his arm around my shoulders as if he’d always done so, he turned us toward the table so he could focus on the pizza as he talked. “...Is just a fancy-schmancy way of saying junior chef.” And as he spoke, he flipped open the lid to one of the boxes. When he found only unfinished pieces of crust left, he turned to the second box.

“So basically I’ve moved up frompeelingpotatoes….” He opened up the second box to find only crust remains in there as well. “Tocookingthe potato.” He picked up the biggest piece of crust and took a big bite.

“Well, that’s cool,” I told him. “How long did it take you to get here?”

“Only, like, four months, when it can take upwards of two years for the average person.” He motioned toward me with his half-eaten piece of crust as he chewed. “And this is at Gusanos, which is pretty much the swankiest high-end place in town.Allthe food snobs rave about it. But at this rate, I’m thinking I can makechef de parte, also known as station chef, within the year.”

“Wow.” I lifted my eyebrows and nodded once. “Impressive.”

“Right?” He paused from stuffing the last bit of crust into his mouth so he could dust his fingers off on his hip before sticking it out for me to shake. “I’m Hudson, by the way.”

“I suspected you might be,” I answered as I took his hand. “You actually paid for my groceries tonight. So…thank you.”

“Did I?” His eyebrows lifted with interest, then his gaze warmed. “Well worth the money, I’d say.”

“We picked her up at the grocery store,” Alec announced proudly.

Hudson glanced at him sideways before wrinkling his nose and countering, “No, you didn’t.”

“Hey!” Keene jumped in to back up his best friend. “Yes, we did.”

But Hudson lifted one eyebrow and shook his head before pointing between them. “Neither of you two bozos are talented enough to land somethingthisclassy. Which leaves…” He veered his attention to Damien, who said nothing, just gazed back steadily.

Hudson’s eyes widened, and he spun to me. “Oh shit. Are you Oaklynn?”

“Wow,” I said, impressed by everyone’s powers of deduction before it struck me that there was probably a very good reason why they already knew who I was.

Becausesomeonehad a big mouth.

I swerved my attention to Damien and arched my eyebrows severely as if scolding him, even though I wasn’t really upset about it at all. “You just toldeveryonewe hooked up, didn’t you?”

I only wanted to see him squirm uncomfortably in reaction, but honestly, I kind of liked the fact that he’d wanted to brag about little ol’ me.

And initially, he did freeze in a startled,caughtkind of way as if trying to quickly come up with some kind of excuse for his actions.

But it was his friends’ responses that totally caught me off guard. They froze as well, gaping at me as if I’d just taken my shirt off in front of them. The second piece of crust Hudson had just picked up slipped unnoticed from his hand and landed back in the box, while Keene’s mouth fell open.

Alec was the first to recover as he shook his head and glanced at Damien. “You didwhat?”

Feeling all the heat drain from my face, I gaped back at the others before swiveling around toward Damien and wincing. “I just outed myself, didn’t I?”

He cringed back apologetically.

Behind me, Keene cried, “Dude, there’s no way. You fucked her? No... Archer wouldn’t…”

Curious to hear what Archer wouldn’t do, I turned back. But Keene blinked at me in confusion before waving his hands and insisting, “Well, he’d at leasttellus if he had.”

“That’s true,” Alec murmured, nodding as if to convince himself his friend was right. Then he held up a finger. “But more importantly, he doesn’t even do casual hookups. He’s got to date a girl formonthsbefore…”

But the longer he looked at me while talking, the slower his words came until he just stopped as if he no longer believed his own claim.

Keene smacked his arm encouragingly, though. “Yeah,” he spat. “Archer’s too uptight and straight-laced to screw anyone on a first date.”

When he glanced at Hudson to back him up, however, Damien’s third roommate merely lifted his eyebrows. “I don’t know,” he murmured, sending me an atta-girl smile. “With her dimples, he would’ve been absolute putty.”

Starting to feel the very discomfort I’d been hoping to stir inside Damien, I backed toward him uneasily. He caught my waist in a comforting grip and pulled me safely to his side as I tilted my head his way and asked from the side of my mouth, “What’s wrong with my dimples?”

This was the second time one of his friends had brought them up.

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