Code of Ethics

Just like Marie had threatened, at three thirty AM, she roused me from my sleep and demanded that I proofread her paper. It was fairly well-written, though not quite up to the standards of my own papers, and I could only find a couple of homonym and comma errors, as well as a few awkwardly worded sentences, throughout the three-and-a-half page paper. “Now can I sleep?” I grumbled, struggling not to yawn in her face.

“Sure. Thanks again. And if you can, before you go to your class in the morning, do you think you can just run your eyes over it one more time to make sure you didn’t miss anything?”

“Whatever,” I muttered, turning away from her and pulling my comforter over my head. “I’ll do whatever you want if you leave me alone.”

A light chuckle escaped her mouth as she got to her feet, but she didn’t say another word before disappearing back out into the living room and pulling my door shut behind her.

And I was finally allowed to fall back to sleep.



The following day was pretty uneventful. In the morning, I went over Marie’s paper again and found that one of her corrections was still wrong, and I noticed that a couple of the points she tried to make weren’t backed by enough evidence. “That’s kind of what you get for writing a paper in the wee hours of the morning,” I told her, trying not to sound too condescending.

She grimaced at me as she took back the small packet of papers. “I guess. Thanks again.”

The rest of the day passed in a fog of class and a workout, and soon, I was making my way toward the strip club, my bag hanging over my shoulder and hitting against my side with every step I took.

When I made it to the changing room in the back of the building, all the girls that were hovering around, putting on makeup and adjusting their costumes, turned and stared at me. Somehow, the truth had gotten out about the identity of my new almost-boyfriend, but I wasn’t sure who had told everyone.

Instead of being excited for me, the eyes of the girls looked wary. Almost like they thought I was betraying them somehow by having the nerve to date someone that had more money than the lot of us combined.

Finally, one of them spoke. “You have a visitor,” Sabrina told me in her soft, sweet voice. “We made him go into the shower room so he couldn’t see any of us getting ready.”

I struggled to keep from apologizing profusely as I made my way out back, pretending that my face wasn’t filling with a massive blush. Having visitors come into the back room wasn’t typically a massive deal, but when that many girls were getting ready for the rush of people about to pile in, it was incredibly discouraged. Especially when that visitor was male.

Harry was standing there, a small smile on his face, his hands shoved into his pockets. He was clearly doing everything he could to look innocent, like he hadn’t totally invaded the privacy of nearly ten girls that were trying to get ready for their shows. Like he hadn’t overstepped his bounds and intruded somewhere he shouldn’t have been.

“What are you doing, Harry?” I asked with a sigh. “You could have just texted me.”

“But I knew you were working tonight,” he replied sheepishly. “So I figured I’d surprise you by coming see you.”

I let out a long breath and dropped my bag on the floor, crossing my arms in front of my chest. “You pissed off a whole lot of girls,” I informed him.

“It’s worth it to see you.” He brought his gorgeous eyes up to me, his full lips turned up in the corner.

Although that was up there with one of the cheesiest things I’d ever heard, my mind still went crazy. The thought that had occurred to me after our first date visited again in my mind’s eye, what it would feel like to close the distance between us, go up on my tiptoes, and connect my mouth with his. And it took about all my willpower to keep from going through with it.

“Okay, suck up,” I said instead. “Was there something you wanted?”

“First, I wanted to ask if you’d go out with me Wednesday night.”

I went over my schedule in my mind and concluded that I didn’t have a shift on Wednesday. “Yeah, sure.”

“Cool.” He grinned at me, and I couldn’t help but smile myself, even though I was trying to seem irritated that he found a way to sneak into the back of the club and alerted everyone that worked there that I was going out with him. “Oh, one more thing.”

I opened my mouth to ask what the one more thing was when he closed the distance between us, put a hand on the side of my cheek, and kissed me.

As our lips and tongues moved together, his hands slipped down to my waist, pressing me tightly up against his body, and I hooked my arms around the back of his neck to try to pull him down to my level.

In that moment, I wanted nothing more than to freeze time. I’d thought that I’d have to wait forever for Harry to kiss me after I rejected him, but once he’d taken the risk by trying again so soon after his ego was bruised, I couldn’t have been any more thrilled. Kissing him felt right, as strange as that sounded, and I knew that our relationship was not going to be a sweet, slow-moving one at all.

After what seemed like five minutes, Harry finally pulled away, blinking the lust out of his eyes slowly. “And you said you’re no sex expert,” he joked, smirking as he pushed some of my curly hair out of my face.

“That was kissing,” I reminded him. “Sex is entirely different than kissing.”

“Only a little different,” he said in a low, slightly gravelly voice. “So I guess you have to get ready for your set now.”

“I guess I do.” But I didn’t want to. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to see Harry for a few days after we broke away from that moment, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to initiate that separation.

Harry didn’t seem to want it, either. And before I could say anything else, he pressed his lips against mine again, this kiss sweeter and softer, like a real first kiss should have been.

And from the way my heart pattered unevenly in my chest, my stomach twisted in on itself, and how I wanted nothing more than for him to stay, I knew I was a goner. When I thought of what this would mean for his career, my career, and our reputations, I felt like none of it mattered anymore. We were going to have to find a way to make it work, just like they did in every chick flick in the history of movies.

Part of me felt like I would start to regret that decision, but in that moment, with Harry’s green eyes boring into my light ones, I didn’t give a single shit.