Page 8 of A Vegas Crush Collection #3

He doesn’t miss a beat. “It happened when I was a ticket booth operator at an amusement park.”

“How hard can it be to sell tickets, dude?” I give him a lopsided, dubious grin.

“Hear me out.” He holds up a hand. “I was a teenager when I got this summer job at an amusement park on a big lake. I had hoped to run one of the roller coasters, but I got assigned to this out-of-the-way ticket booth near the marina. It was, like, a five-minute walk to the main part of the park. I worked with this eighty-year-old woman who had been ripping ticket stubs every summer since she was a teenager, and I had this hot, college-student boss. Every day, it was just the three of us and we saw maybe twenty people come through each day. Really boring.”

“So far? Still not that bad. Hot boss, old lady, sit on your duff and watch the boats pass by? Wah. Poor baby.”

Grant shakes his head. “I’m not to the bad part yet.”

“Well, please continue, then.”

“So each day, my boss, Kari, would have to go do boss stuff for an hour or two and she’d leave me and Theresa, the old lady, to do our thing.

No big deal. But one day, Kari was gone for longer than usual.

I was due for a break, and I really needed to use the restroom, but Theresa was on her break for lunch and she was very serious about taking her lunch break on time each day so I’m like, Oh, I can hold it, but the more time passed, the more I had to go.

I was sixteen, right, and I didn’t know what to do, and the closest bathroom is in the boathouse, which would have meant leaving the ticket booth unmanned for however long it took me to run over and get back. ”

Cringing, I say, “I can see where this is going.”

He nods earnestly. “Yeah. So I decide I’m just going to go.

I’ll run out into the bushes by the ticket booth and let it rip.

But, of course, the minute I whip it out is the minute I hear my boss ask what the hell I’m doing, and I turn around, still peeing, dick in my hand.

Well, you can imagine how the rest goes. ”

I’m cracking up, shoulders shaking as I fill in the end of the story. “Got fired?”

“Yup. I tried to plead my case but to no avail. Totally mortifying.”

The thought of this suave, handsome man as a lanky teenager, getting caught literally with his pants down in front of his pretty boss still has me howling. “Agreed. Yikes.”

“What about you?” He tilts his head to one side, eyes sparkling with amusement.

“Mine also has to do with a job situation when I was younger. I was working in a bookstore on my college campus. It was buy-back season and people were in and out all day trying to recoup some of the cost of their overpriced textbooks. So this guy comes in and he’s a little cute and he’s kind of flirty while I’m scanning his books, and when I finish, he says he’s got to run out to his car because he forgot one.

So I’m like, Yeah, cool, and then he leans in and says, You’re fly as hell. ”

“He called you fly?” Grant asks with a laugh. “What year was this? How old was this guy?”

“It’s a terrible line, right? So I tell him thanks, I’m flattered, but I have a boyfriend and he’s like, okay, yeah, I just thought I’d let you know.

But he has this weird look on his face. I chalk it up to rejection and move on to the next customer, but I see him walk over and say something to my coworker, who’s shelving books a couple of aisles over, before he goes out to get the book he forgot.

A few moments later, my coworker comes over and says, that guy told me to tell you your fly is down. ”

“Oh, geesh,” Grant groans. “That’s harsh.”

“Yeah,” I say, cracking up at the memory. “I look down and I’m in black pants, but my fly is wide open, red underwear showing. Humiliation at def-con ten. I ran to the bathroom and hid out until my coworker came to tell me the guy was gone.”

Shoulders shaking with laughter, Grant shakes his head. “That’s a good one. Holy moly.”

It’s nearly three in the morning when I look at the clock, surprised at how fast the time has gone.

We’ve long finished our drunk-snacks, and we’ve just been talking for hours, sharing stories, laughing.

It’s like we’ve known each other for months or years, not hours.

And when Grant reluctantly says he should get some shut-eye before an early flight in the morning, a pit in my stomach reminds me that I’ll probably never see him again.

Rallying, I nod. “Yeah, I’ve got an early conference session, too. It’s probably best if we say good night.” I hope I don’t sound too forlorn about it, though I probably do.

Grant goes about the task of finding his random clothing items, now wrinkled from lying in heaps all over the floor.

He dresses, still looking like a model even in his rumpled, post-sex state.

If anything, I find him even sexier that way, because I know it’s because of me.

Because of what we experienced together.

And I wish I could experience it again, but I suppose it’s just not meant to be.