Prologue
Lucky
In a horroronly the universe could dole out, my best friend died just minutes before I was born. I know how that sounds—morbid and wholly impossible, but for the most part it’s true. She was my twin, my other half, and she arrived blue and cold as stone. I was born three minutes later, ruddy and fully alive with the lusty cry of a newborn. My mother placed the millstone of my sister’s death around my neck at the vulnerable age of five. It was to be our little secret. She confessed this to me so that I would know there was a very special angel looking after me. She wanted me to know that she would have been more than my sister. She would have been my very best friend. My sister had perished, but I was the lucky one.
My father died when I was six, my mother when I was fourteen. I have felt many things in my short life, and lucky has yet to be one of them.
Growing up, I have never been close to other girls. And simply speaking to a boy was a crime of the highest order, according to my severely overprotective brother. Out of the few friends I had, I’ve always been the least reliable, the least likable, the least likely to tell the truth. And I’ve never been too hard on myself for any of those sins. Sometimes when life’s cup is so achingly bitter, you beg the light to wear out the darkness, and when it doesn’t, you find that a dead deception on your tongue is far sweeter than the living truth can ever be.
But I’m no longer a child looking to amuse those around me with half-truths. I’m a woman looking to amuse myself with half-wits parading around as frat boys. Yes, I’m all grown up now, and my brother has no say in what gender I may speak to.
And now that I’m here at Whitney Briggs University, I’ve set out to navigate my path through these unchartered sexual waters. I’m no longer intimidated by my big brother’s menacing shadow, no longer bound by what other people might think or say. I’m ready to step into the skin of the woman I’m destined to become. Life has molded me, deformed my soul. I’m not sorry about who I am or how I came to be this way. I am here, and I am ready to become the woman I’m destined for without shame or mercy.
My brother had better get out of my way.
My friends couldn’t stop me if they tried.
I am fully prepared to embrace this evolution, thisrevolutionwhile testing out unchartered sexual waters of the university’s lusty shores.
Yes, my time has come, and there’s not a damn thing that anyone can do about it.
Lucky,luckyme.
Getting Lucky
Lucky
The Black Bear Saloonsits directly across the street from Whitney Briggs University. It holds far too much liquor and far too many bodies for my liking, but tonight the bodies happen to belong to the entire Greek system as the bar unwittingly hosts its first global mixer.
“They’re just sickening.” Harper pretends to vomit in her virgin piña colada while we ogle our best friend, Ava, and her boyfriend, Grant. Harper is an exotic beauty with impossibly glossy dark hair and skin that glows as if she had been kissed by the sun the moment she was born. She somehow manages to make the act of faux-vomiting look like a thing of beauty. Her father is part Black Foot Indian, and if you look into her hazel eyes you’d swear you can see the secrets of the universe. But I’m not one to hold a girl’s outward perfection against her. “Justin and I were never like that.”
Justin this, Justin that. If I hear that boy’s name one more time, I’m going to glue my lips to Harper’s ear and scream until I blow out every last bit of gray matter. Justin is Harper’s on-again, off-again walking dildo, who thankfully happens to be tucked clear across the country at some state college in California. He’s safe for now. God help him if I ever meet the douchebag. All he seems to do is rip Harper’s beating heart out over and over. Sure, Harper and I just met at the beginning of the year, but you hang around someone as much as we have and you start to care about how often mascara runs down her face. I know one thing for sure—Justin the Pig is trouble. What Harper needs is a real man. Not that I believe real men exist outside of my own brother, who seems to be the only decent guy on the planet. Nope. What Harper needs is an entire bevy of guys. I’ve never believed that a woman needed just one man to complete her. I never did buy any of thatyou had me at hellobullshit. The one man/one woman equation is simply outdated mathematics as far as I’m concerned. I’m far more interested in the new math—me plus serial relationships equals a very satisfied body and a very independent mind. As soon as my Mr. Right Now pisses me off, I’m off to Mr. Next. It’s a lifelong pattern I plan on repeating no matter what my tatted up brother thinks about it. I’m done playing the role of helpless little sister. If he wants someone to boss around, he can have at that blonde twerp he’s leashed himself to. I’m not Daisy Pembrooke’s biggest fan. Never was, never will be. But as long as she puts that goofy grin on my brother’s face, she can hang out in the meantime.
“Here they come,” Harper muses as Ava and Grant head this way, hand in hand, equally goofy grins plastered to their faces, and ten bucks says they’re not even inebriated.
Ava is my roommate, and thus my insta best friend right along with Harper. It’s strange having two girls in my life that I’m suddenly close to after spending my entire scholastic career honing the art of avoiding people in general. It’s not that I have anything against other people. It’s just that I usually don’t get along with them. I don’t usually get along with any living creature, and quite honestly, that’s the way I like it.
“Get out there, girls.” Ava bumps her hip into both Harper and me. Ava is Katy Perry gorgeous—same dark hair, same day-glow blue eyes, and as sweet as the girl next door, a perfect dichotomy that every boy at WB finds charming. But she doesn’t require the attention of every boy at the university. Ava has already found The One. “You don’t need a man to dance with. Kick off those heels and shake what your mommas gave you.” She winks up at Grant, her tall, rather studly basketball star of a boy toy. Ava and Grant had a hell of a time last semester when they found out the truth of who they were in one another’s lives, but they seem to have overcome what ailed them. And I’m glad about it. I really do care for Ava as if she were my own sister. Of course, I want her to be happy. And if Grant ever breaks her heart, he’s going to have more than one pissed-off girl to deal with. I’m coming at him with a vengeance. And considering that I have a natural inclination to be unusually cruel to the opposite sex, this would not bode well for him.
Ava leans in. “Why are you glaring at my boyfriend?”
“No reason.” I’m quick to look the other way and spot the tools from Beta Kappa Phi congregating around a group of my own sorority sisters. Harper, Ava, and I rushed Kappa Gamma Gamma last fall. We won’t get beds until next year, so, for now, we’re sequestered at Cutler Tower along with the other plebs at WB.
“Get out there.” Ava gives both Harper and me a shove in their direction. “It’s a mixer. You’re supposed to mix.”
Harper is the first to huff at this male-centric thinking. “I don’t need to mix with the opposite gender just to have a good—” She stops short at the sight of a group of fresh meat that just walked through the door and gasps. “Never mind—I think I see someone I suddenly want to mix with.” She speeds in that male-centric direction as if Zeus himself descended from Mount Olympus. Truly, he would be the only Greek, living or dead, to garner my attention.
Grant laughs right along with Ava. “They’re falling like dominos.”
“You’re next.” Ava gives my shoulder a tweak. “What about Rush?” She offers up the first Beta boy she sees on an unappetizing penis platter.
“Rush is my big unofficial brother.” I openly frown at the two of them. “Some of us still adhere to the brother/sister rules the Greeks have piled on us.” Ava and Grant were also a part of the big brother/little sister mentorship program, but since they’ve broken the one and only cardinal—carnal—rule, they’ve since been unceremoniously dumped from the program.
I glance over at Rush, my own big brother who coerced me into signing up for the Greeks’ community interaction project earlier today. That’s where Greeks bleed their goodness into the heart of the community and we all walk away with the warm fuzzies afterward—not to mention that it will look stellar on my grad school app. Sure, Rush is cute and well-built, not to mention bulging in all the right places—God knows those basketball shorts don’t hide how the cucumber lies, or how large that veggie is for the picking. But no, Rushford Knight is most certainly not the boy for me. None of them are when you get right down to the bulging brass tacks. Every boy in this room is interchangeable with one another as far as I’m concerned. Whomever I happen to haul into my life will simply be a means to a sexual end. Sure, we might have a laugh or two—mostly it will be me doing the laughing—oh hell, all of it, but I plan on keeping my relationships, if you can call them that, short and sweet—read nonexistent.
“Forget Rush,” Grant offers while dipping a kiss to Ava’s neck. Both Ava and I do a quick nervous sweep of the vicinity for her brother, Owen. Yes, he approves of Ava dating Grant, but just barely by the skin of his overprotective teeth. Ava’s brother, Owen, and my brother, Jet, are close friends. I suppose like-minded sexual tyrants have a tendency to magnetize. But as far as Ava goes, it’s nice to have someone in the same miserable shoes when it comes to our Delta Force Big Brother Brigade. Although, in all truth, Jet would never approve of me having a boyfriend. In that respect, Ava is the lucky one—not me by a long shot.
“There are tons of decent guys in Beta house.” Now it’s Grant offering up his fraternity brothers on the penis-shaped platter. His hands creep up Ava’s sweater until they’re no longer visible, and now I’m slightly fearing for both of their necks.
