When she did, she was holding a bucket full of supplies, wearing a blush on her cheeks while a small trickle of sweat dropped from the bead on her temple.
“Did you want me to wash your, uh, towel?” she asked, holding up the washcloth I’d dried myself with.
“Sure,” I said quietly, nodding once as my eyes held hers.
Tucking it into the bucket with the rest of her things, shesped past me, pushing the bottle of whiskey into my hand, her voice quiet as she turned away to reach for the handle. “I’ll bring you some clean towels when I’m through with the laundry.”
“Ayda?” I rushed out to catch her attention one last time.
“Yeah?” she said, turning around.
“Did he win?”
“Thirty-five to seven. They kicked ass.”
A single nod was my only response as I blew out all the air in my chest and turned away from her as quickly as I could. “Tell Kenny to give you the gate codes so you can let yourself into the yard in the morning. Someone will let you in the building once they’ve seen you on the security cameras.” I paused, making my way behind the desk I’d not sat behind for far too long, before I lifted my head to look back up at her and gave her my final, quiet warning. “Do not be late.”
Chapter Seventeen
Ayda
The interior of my car felt like a safety zone when I finally climbed behind the wheel to go home. My interaction with Drew had been interesting to say the least, and in all honesty, when it came to him, I wasn’t sure whether I was coming or going anymore. Just when I thought I understood him, he would turn around and do something I would never expect him to. His question about Tate had thrown me for a loop completely.
It was hard to have a conversation with him and not come away feeling more confused than I had when we started. He never said what I expected him to, and that went in the positive and negative extremes. The questions he asked weren’t the usual kind. They were inquiries that no one else would dare to ask for fear of causing offense. Whereas Drew just shot them off as though they were bullets from a six-shooter—all hard questions but compiled in a way that didn’t give you time to think about the answer, leaving only honest responses to fall free. He was infuriating that way. The moment the words were past my lips, I wound up asking myself why I’d told him as much as I had.
Drew was a very complex guy, but the same couldn’t be said for some of the men that inhabited the space with him.Maybe it was because they were drunk and in the sanctity of their home that they felt so inclined to get totally shit faced and cast any rules of modern convention aside. When I thought about some of the things I did when I had a rare moment alone in my home, I quickly realized that I was wrong to judge what they were doing. Sure, I’d seen more tits and ass in one night than when I’d gone to Mardi Gras in New Orleans in my senior year of high school, but it was their personal space. They could do what they wanted to.
I finished the communal bathroom at midnight, my body screaming in complaint as I stood up to look over my accomplishment with a hand on the small of my back. The other wiped the sweat from my forehead, neck and cleavage, and I was pretty sure that the stink had managed to seep into my pores. I felt disgusting, gritty, and pretty foul. I’d only managed to get through half of the laundry, but I was going to be there in the morning to finish it, and if the boys wanted clean underwear, they should probably have learned to use the machines themselves. There was only so much I could do in one night.
I managed to get together a small stack of towels before I left, and on my way out I took them to Drew’s office with a quiet tap. He wasn’t there so, dropping my things, I grabbed what I could and cleaned quickly, leaving the towels in little rolls on the back of the toilet, which were in reach of the shower, before sneaking out and putting everything away.
It was the hardest I’d worked in years. I used elbow grease to spit and shine every surface. I felt like the odd man out in the place for most of the night, barely acknowledged until I asked a question. There were moments that I felt like a ghost in there, passing by people doing things normallyreserved for a quiet room and locked door. I had to remind myself several times that this place wasn’t held to the standards that the rest of the world was, because in most cases, this was a completely different world, and being a fly on the wall for an evening had been quite the enlightening experience.
The house was dark when I finally pulled up in my drive, and I sat in my car with the lights off, just staring at the porch lights. I wasn’t entirely sure how I felt about my new vocation. I wasn’t too proud to clean toilets for a living, but if I was going to be doing that on a daily basis, I was going to have to teach them to aim better. I even considered painting little targets on the urinals for them to aim at. Mom had done that with Tate when he was a kid.
The memory made me smile, and my hand reached for the radio to turn up the song as I let my mind wander. I thought about the questions Drew had asked, my arms encircling the steering wheel. Was I happy? That was the one that resonated with me the most—the one I had the most trouble answering, because I honestly wasn’t sure of the response.
I meant what I said. As long as Tate was happy, I knew I could get by. But what did that mean for me? I’d pushed most of my dreams and wishes aside to make his come true. What happened after that? When his life was in his own hands and he was old enough to make his own decisions and mistakes, I was going to be lost. I wasn’t going to know how to live without climbing into bed at the end of the night with the sole purpose of waking up the next day and making sure everything was right in the world for one person.
How the hell did parents do this?
Glancing at the clock on the dash and back up at thehouse, I turned the engine over and backed out of the drive. Just for tonight, I was going to take back an hour and make the most of it, just before I started this shit over again in the morning.
“Ayda?”
My hands grabbed for my head to stop the pounding. I felt so dirty and gritty, and yet the voice and banging continued.
“Ayda!”
“Fuck. Off.”
The door was pushed aside as Tate fell into the room, his eyes wide at my state. I’d bought a bottle of bourbon and come home with it, and other than a shower, I honestly didn’t remember all that much. I was in physical pain.
“What the hell happened to you? And where are your pants? I don’t need to see my sister in her underwear.”
“Then you shouldn’t just barge in here,” I grumbled, pulling the blankets over my head and burying my face in my pillow. I was trying to remember why I thought partying with Jack (or was it Jim?) was a good idea.
“You’re gonna be late if you stay in bed,” he said, his hands squeezing my calves and pulling me to the edge of the bed. My hands flew out to catch myself before my head bounced off the hardwood.
