25. Parker
25
PARKER
It started slowly at first. I’d return to the suite after the last class of the day and find the guys Mason played tennis with hanging out, sitting on the balcony, enjoying the drinks Kylie mixed for them.
Then one night after dinner, the guys from Jude’s band came over so they could discuss some upcoming performances. That night, Jude put a glass jar on the bar labeled TIPS, but Kylie crossed it out and scribbled a note saying any money in there would go toward buying more alcohol.
Then some students from nearby rooms began coming over in the evenings. After we found out one of our fellow graduate students was a twenty-year old former child prodigy, Mason checked people’s IDs.
Kylie found some cheap bar stools at a thrift store, and we were able to put back the ones we’d moved out from under the table bisecting the wall of windows. Between that, the big table, the little fireplace lounge, and the sitting room, there was a lot of space.
We kept the door to the bedroom closed, of course, but even if someone stumbled in there, it wasn’t likely they’d know a woman had one of the bunks. It wasn’t like Kylie’s bed had flowered sheets or stuffed animals on it. We had to be careful about her closet, though, since it was in the living room of what used to be the second bedroom. Mason attached wheels to the bottom of a bookcase that slid out of the way during the day and blocked the closet door at night. He’d joked if someone found her assortment of short shorts, halter tops, and skirts, I’d have to say they were mine. That was fine by me. My masculinity was strong enough to take it—I wondered if Mason’s was.
After a few weeks, we realized the nightly crowds continued to grow, so we found a time we could all meet and talk about it. We got food from the cafeteria and brought it back to our suite to eat and talk.
I watched my friends as they settled at the table. In a way, it was hard to say why we’d done this thing with the bar. It wasn’t like any of us had a ton of spare time. But it was kind of fun. After Kylie became our roommate, we kept to ourselves out of necessity since we didn’t want anyone to know our secret. But now that we had a cover story in place, that she lived in another part of the building and had a penchant for bartending, it was nice to branch out and meet our neighbors. Except for Jude and Mason, I rarely got to talk to people studying in different fields.
But mostly, it was for Kylie. I loved seeing her face light up as she chatted with someone at the bar. Or how precisely she made each drink. She was having fun, and when she had fun, I did too. I suspected it was the same for the other two, as well.
“We really need a name for it,” Jude said. Then he shot a mock-stern glare at Kylie. ”Nothing with the word mountain in it.”
She pouted but nodded.
“How about The Lounge?” Mason suggested.
“But it’s not really a lounge. It’s like a nightclub,” I said.
“Not an authorized one,” Jude added.
Mason snapped his fingers. “It’s like a speakeasy. Isn’t that what they called those illegal nightclubs during prohibition?”
I shrugged, unsure. So did Kylie and Jude.
Mason frowned. “We need to trade in one of you MBA nerds for a history major.”
“Speakeasy seems like it fits,” Jude said. “It’s almost like a nightclub, and it’s definitely not legal.”
“But we’re not doing anything wrong,” Kylie protested, and I detected a note of unease in her voice. “We’re allowed to drink in Henderson.”
“Yeah, but you know it’s more than that,” Mason said. “So we’ve got to be discreet.” He grinned. “I’d say we have some practice at that.”
I smiled too. Everything involved with our living situation and our dealings with Kylie required discretion.
Kylie dropped her fork and rapidly swallowed the food she’d just eaten. “I know what we can call it!” she exclaimed. “It’s a speakeasy, but we shouldn’t call it that anywhere people might hear us. So let’s be sneaky and refer to it as a conversation club.”
“Why?” Mason said.
Jude rolled his eyes at his buddy. “Because it’s a speakeasy . Get it? A speakeasy definitely sounds like someplace you can talk freely—like a conversation club.”
“Okay, that’s not bad.” He picked up his hamburger. “That’s settled then.”
“That’s the least of the issues we need to discuss,” I said.
“What else?” Jude asked.
“At the risk of sounding like an MBA nerd, we can’t keep serving drinks for free. We’ll all go broke keeping the bar stocked.”
“So you’re saying we should charge for drinks?” Kylie asked, looking uncertain about the prospect.
“Unless you have a better idea,” I said.
“But we’re just doing this for fun,” Jude said.
“It’s also fun to not go broke while having fun,” I pointed out. Jude and I weren’t on as tight a budget as Kylie seemed to be, but we weren’t flush with dough like Mason.
“Instead of charging for drinks, we could institute a cover charge,” Mason said.
“That might work.”
“Might?” Mason echoed, looking a little irritated I hadn’t immediately accepted his suggestion.
“Yes, might . There’s a lot to think about. Here, I bet a first-year business student could explain it to you. Kylie?”
She gulped. I knew I’d put her on the spot, but it was the kind of thing she was here to learn. “Well… we’d have to crunch the numbers to make sure the price people pay for the drinks or the cover charge is enough to pay for the alcohol and other supplies I use to make them. At the very least, we should make sure that we break even. And if we can figure out the right price point, maybe we’ll make a profit. Then we could increase the range of drinks we offer.”
“You’re getting ahead of yourself.” I was in full teacher mode now. “We’d have to do a lot more number-crunching to see if it’d make sense to re-invest in the business.”
“The business?” she repeated.
“Yeah. And then there’s also labor costs.”
“Huh?” Kylie looked confused, but Jude followed my thoughts.
“He’s right,” he said. “If we can actually turn a profit, it’d be nice to pay the bartender for her time.”
“Really?” Kylie asked.
“That’s how businesses work,” I reminded her.
Mason had finished eating. “All right, I retract the part about calling you two nerds. This stuff is important. Can you guys work on the math?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Jude and I will work on the club rules.”
“What rules?” I asked.
“For starters, I think we should set certain days of the week people can come,” Jude said. “We’ve all got to study, too.”
Mason nodded. “Plus, if extra people are here every night, it means I actually have to wear a shirt.”
Kylie giggled. “No shoes, no shirt, no service.”
“You love watching me walk around without a shirt on, sweet cheeks.”
Her lovely face flushed. “No comment.”
“And we’ll talk to people about calling it a conversation club and keeping it on the down low,” Jude continued. “Oh, and we should put a sign on the balcony as to its capacity. We don’t want thirty people out there.”
“Yeah, that could get dangerous fast,” Mason said.
“Plus it might make people ask questions,” Kylie added.
“All right, we’ll leave you to two that,” I said to Mason and Jude. Mason liked telling people what to do, so he’d be good at it.
“So, I guess we’ve all got our assignments,” Jude said. “Is there anything else we should talk about?”
“I think we’d make more money if Kylie wore a French maid costume behind the bar,” Mason said, earning an elbow from the woman in question. Mason could be crass at times, but I couldn’t help visualizing what he’d just proposed. Maybe we’d work that into a bedtime story at some point.
Kylie turned to Jude. “Nope, I definitely didn’t hear anything else we need to discuss.”
“Meeting adjourned,” he said.
A day or two after, I couldn’t stop thinking about the speakeasy, or the conversation club, if that’s what we were supposed to call it. It had been something of a teaching moment for Kylie, and it occurred to me, perhaps it could for the first-year students in my cohort.
Consequently, I did something I should’ve done a month ago—I set a meeting for our group. I called in a few favors and got us a good conference room with a nice view. I did it because when people are comfortable, they relax, allowing their minds to come up with more ideas than— Oh hell, who was I kidding? I got the good conference room because I loved the way Kylie’s face lit up when she saw mountains.
The first to arrive at the meeting was a tall redheaded dude. I welcomed him, taking a peek at the cheat sheet Kylie had made me. Male, red-haired, w/freckles = Darren . Kylie was the next to arrive, and sure enough, she took a seat on the side of the room allowing her to look out the window. Go figure.
The last to arrive was, according to Kylie’s notes, female, frizzy brown hair = Paige . I recognized her as the young woman who’d talked shit about me to Kylie by the dolphin statue the other day. I decided not to hold it against her since she’d been mean, but not actually wrong—and also because of the very enjoyable way that day had ended. Hmm, maybe after the meeting was over, I’d take Kylie up to that little room in the tower and do it all again.
But right now, it was time for business. Literally.
“As first-year students, you’re learning a lot. You’re gathering all the pieces you need. Information about finances. Managing employees. Organizational systems. The ethics of capitalism, etcetera. But one thing you don’t usually get to do in your first year is putting all those pieces together. So, our cohort will engage in a thought exercise. We’ll go over every kind aspect of building a business from the ground up. It’ll involve everything you’ve learned so far, and probably a few things you haven’t.”
“What kind of business is it?” Paige asked.
“A bar,” I said. My gaze fell on Kylie as her cute lower lip dropped. When she looked up, I gave her a quick wink, and she smiled back.
An hour later, we were still debating. The six students in my cohort asked the right questions and took a hell of a lot of notes. A young woman named Hannah frowned and raised her hand.
“You don’t have to do that,” I reminded her for at least the fifth time.
“Okay,” she said. “From what you’ve told us, it looks like this bar only serves beer and mixed drinks. Maybe they should add wine?”
“Good point, but what information do we need first?”
“How much the wine costs versus how much you could charge,” Hannah replied.
“Exactly. Anything else?”
“What kind of glassware you’d need,” Kylie said. “And we’d probably need to estimate how many will break each month and what it will cost to replace them.”
“Excellent.” As a bartender, it figured she’d think of that. “Why don’t you work on that estimate.”
“Okay.” She smiled to herself, no doubt amused that for everyone else, it was theoretical, but for us, it was real. But it was still a damn good exercise for these students who didn’t seem to have much real-world business experience.
“What about overhead?”
“What about it, Scott?”
“Well, we’d need to calculate the cost of buying or renting a building plus cleaning and maintenance, right?”
“Right. Why don’t you work on that?”
“For what size place?”
I hesitated. I couldn’t exactly say it was for a dormitory suite. “For a bar the size of the Dancing Horse downtown.”
“That place is a dump,” Paige muttered.
“Right—so that means lower overhead.”
“What about licensing?” Darren asked.
“In some cases, that falls under the purview of the manager or business consultant, but in others, it’s something the lawyers deal with. Are you from here?”
“Yep,” he said. “I was born a few miles from here.”
“Okay, then you look into that. Who knows, maybe you’ll need the info someday.”
We discussed it a while longer, and I was surprised at how much the students got into it. But then I remembered how much of what I learned last year was hypothetical. It was good for them to apply what they’d learned to a real-world situation.
After everyone had their assignments, we set another meeting time for a week out. And as the students filed past me, Paige, who’d been so against me before, told me how excited she was to work on the profit margins. Huh. Who knew I’d actually inspired students? It was certainly news to me.
Kylie lingered until everyone else was gone and then we walked out of the building together. “That was brilliant,” she said once we were outside.
“It was better than doing nothing.” Which is what I’d done for the rest of the semester except for a few group chats.
“No, I’m serious. You really got them interested in the project.” She grinned. “Though they think it’s pretend.”
“It is, for them.”
“It really got me thinking. There’s a lot more to running a bar or club than just mixing the drinks. As a business student, I need to think about those kinds of things. Some of the issues the others brought up had never even crossed my mind.”
“They came up with quite a lot, I’ll admit.” I lowered my voice. “Of course, we don’t have to worry about licensing, since we’re running a speakeasy.”
“I think you mean a conversation club.” The smile she aimed at me made my day brighter. An urge to hold her hand overcame me, but I knew it wasn’t wise while we were so near the business building. Still, my fingers ached to touch hers. I was just about to give in when a voice came from behind us.
“Do you guys live in Henderson, too?” It was the redheaded dude from the cohort.
“Hi, Darren,” Kylie said, probably just to remind me of his name. She was my right-hand woman in the group. “Yeah, we’re headed to Henderson.”
“Cool,” he said, catching up to us. “I’m on the second floor. What about you all?”
“The sixth,” I said. Darren looked at Kylie.
“Um, the third,” she said. Uh-oh, she needed to get better at lying if we were going to run a speakeasy.
“Cool,” Darren said again. Didn’t he know any other responses? “What room?”
Kylie’s dual-colored eyes widened. It was clear she didn’t know what to say—but I did.
“Dude, are you seriously asking for her room number? She’s in your cohort.”
The kid’s cheeks flushed, making his many freckles look connected. “Right, sorry,” he said to Kylie who shot me a grateful look. I was pretty pleased with myself for the rest of the walk. I’d saved Kylie and shot down a dude who liked her at the same time. Score two for me.
No one else was around when we entered the suite. I expected Kylie to make a beeline for her favorite study spot at the table, but instead, she dropped her things on the sofa, taking my hand. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
She grabbed my other hand, too, and then stood on her tiptoes to kiss my lips. Suddenly, I didn’t care what the answer to my question was anymore.
I wanted to wrap my arms around her, but she kept hold of my hands. It was kind of hot that way. The only parts of us touching were our hands and our lips. Oh, and the way she leaned forward on her toes, making her breasts brush against my chest. I certainly didn’t mind that.
All tension drained out of my body as I moved my mouth over hers. She tasted so sweet. It didn’t matter if she’d just woken up or had tended bar for hours, her mouth always tasted good. And felt good. Finally, I couldn’t stand it any longer, and I jerked my hands free so I could lean in, cup her face, and kiss her properly.
“Mm, that was nice,” she said minutes—or possibly hours—when we finally broke apart. Her eyes were shut, and her lips looked swollen.
“It makes me a hypocrite, though,” I said.
That made her look up. “Why?”
“Because I told Darren he couldn’t pursue you because you’re in the same cohort.”
She smiled up at me. “That doesn’t make you a hypocrite, and even if it did, I wouldn’t care. Not when you kiss me like that.” She shivered. “It does things to me.”
“Me too,” I said softly.
“Thank you for stepping up today. With the cohort and everything,” she said. “You’re a good teacher.”
My mind was still on naughtier topics. “There are a few things I’d like to teach you.”
The glint in her eye made my cock stir. “I think I’d like that.” She grinned, reaching up to trace her finger over my lower lip. “I like this mouth. It teaches me the best business practices by day and makes me scream at night.”
I grinned. “I’d be happy to make you scream right now.”
She looked tempted, but shook her head. “We’ve got the conversation club tonight. I should hit the books a little before I need to prep the bar.”
“Another time, then.” Kylie picked up her backpack, but I caught her arm, stopping her. “Thank you.”
“What for?” she asked.
The answer was very clear in my mind, but it was hard to put into words. “For helping me get to this point. The point where I’m working with the cohort and doing things with you, Mason, and Jude. Not just X-rated things, but normal things, and the speakeasy, too. A month ago, I felt like a ghost. Now I feel like I’m a part of something again.”
Her smile was genuine and breathtakingly beautiful. “I’m so glad you do.”
“Because of you.” I kissed her on the forehead.
“Because of us,” she clarified, reaching for me again.
Smiling, I took her into my arms and lowered my head to hers.
Again.
I doubted it’d ever get old.