“The, being different, part is,” Austin adds.
“You’re getting snow everywhere.” Tek drops a towel at my feet, and I feel two inches tall. I quickly step onto it and shuffle back towards the door, doing my best to wipe up the footprints.
“Jesus Christ.” I can hear the roll of Anaise’s eyes in the tone of her voice. “He just nagged on us, too. It’s not our fault there’s no mat to wipe our feet on.”
“It is his fault, actually.”
My jaw slackens and I look straight at Tek. “Why? Because I wasn’t here this morning to set it up like I always do?”
Anaise turns towards Tek as if to say;and what do you have to say about that?
“You didn’t wash it yesterday.”
“Because it was being used… Plus, I left at five. You were here until at least nine, remember?"”
Tek pauses, I’m assuming because he’s caught off guard that I’m talking to him this way in front of his friends, and he’s all hell bent on me respecting my elders. But if he expected me to actually abide by that, then he employed the wrong twenty-one year old.
“It’s after lunch,” I say as I bend down to pick up the corner of the towel. “You could have used the short cycle and had it dried hours ago.” Placing my package on the desk as I walk past, I toss the towel straight into the washer. “Are you fucking kidding me?” I call out. “The dirty ones are just out here on the floor.”
I can hear Austin laughing as I pick up the wet towels and door mat and put them in the washer too.
“You’re a child,” I mutter when I reemerge. “The machine is on. That took me thirty seconds. Do you think you can put them in the dryer when the cycle is done?”
“I’ve been busy.”
“Yet you’re always here, like, an hour before your first client.”
“Are you not sleeping again?” Anaise puts her hand on Tek’s bicep, and I hate that I don't know what their relationship is.
He crosses his arms. “I’m fine.”
“Are the early mornings when you’ve been redecorating?” Austin’s smartass tone makes me smile. “It’s very gray in here.”
“Why are you here?” Tek asks me with a deadpan stare.
“I had a favor to ask, but now I’m thinking the universe dragged me here because I need to be working more than three days a week.”
“I’d kill you.”
“Not if I killed you first.”
“I love this,” Austin heckles from the sidelines.
“Shut up,” Tek says without looking at him, his eyes still on me. “As if I haven’t already done enough. What else could you possibly need.”
“The keys to your van?” I ask with a cute inflection at the end.
Tek’s lips form a tight-lipped smirk out of—what I can only assume—is his utter disbelief at the boldness of my inquiry.
“Sooo?” I ask with a sweet smile as I slide closer.
“Sooo…” he mimics my tone. “You can fuck right off.”
My top lip curls. “Not even for half an hour?”
“Not even if my legs fell off and I needed you to drive me to the hospital.”
I huff out my nose.
