KATE: Yeah, I’ll come, but only for you.
LIZA: Good. I should get back to studying or I’ll be up all night. Call me tomorrow? Love you!
KATE: Love you too.
My phone goes dark, the shadows inside the closet swallowing me whole. My chest feels tight, like my parents’ expectations are forcing rubber bands around my heart. Always their puppet. Always the straight “A” butt-kisser, but I wasn’t enough.
Always…disappointing.
At that triggering word, my walls of steel rise and clamp around me. Anger thickens my skin. Never again will I allow someone close enough to call me that.
I stand and shove open the closet door, striding out with my head held high. A few newcomers jump to the side, but I don’t spare them a glance.
An entryway mirror gleams across from me, and I step in front of it to smooth down my waist-length black hair. After combing it back into place, I check my expertly smudged eyeliner.
I drift my gaze down my body, admiring the shoulder muscles starting to peek out above my strapless white top. I’ve been tiring my mind in the gym alotlately, and I’m pleased to have something to show for it.
An edge of loneliness works its way into the periphery of my gut. I thought that pledging last-minute to a sorority would make me feel less lonely, but I’ve never felt more alone. Or broke. Without my parents’ assistance—something they agreed to help Liza and me with as long as we continued our education—my finances are laughably bleak.
I steel myself with a long breath. As long as I continue to work at the photography studio, I’ll survive. Plus, at least I have a place to live now. I picture my private room across campus, anxiety creeping over me like a blanket in the dark, and I shudder.
Thanks to Jax and Tweedle-Dee likely still making out upstairs, I’ll now be spending the night by myself.
Is this what I’ve been reduced to? Using men to distract me from my crappy life?
I digress.
Sighing, I bend close to the mirror to apply a fresh layer of strawberry lip gloss. The front door to the frat house flies open beside me.
It isn’t the giggling girls scampering across the threshold that catch my attention—it’shim.
Out in the driveway, a man—not a boy, but a freakingman—with cantaloupes for shoulder muscles swings his distressed jeans off a Harley. His white tank seems to glow against his tan torso, a beacon for a desperate woman like me. He shifts to face his friend hopping off another motorcycle, allowing my eyes to soak in the man’s rose briar tattoo sweeping across one of those massive shoulders.
Mom hates tattoos.
I stumble toward him in my six-inch heels. Goosebumps feather my shoulder blades as I cross the chilly midnight lawn. I’m unsteady, and I’m unsure if it’s due to the contents of my red plastic cup from earlier or because my pointed high heels keep sinking into the grass.
Bike Boy’s helmet swings my way, and then I’m sure I’m hallucinating.
He lifts the helmet away as inky black waves fall to his chin. Framed by thick lashes, two startling green eyes pin me in place on the grass. His rocking bod could have been featured in a Calvin Klein underwear ad. For all I know about him, itmightbe.
A cocky grin slides across his mouth. His model-worthy face is all angles, his slightly hollowed cheeks punctuated with dimpled amusement. His grin tugs further upward as he scans me from head to foot.
Something about the flash in his eye beckons me closer.
Dares me closer.
Danger seems to radiate off this man, and it’s wildly exciting.
Mom would hate him.
I think I’m in love.
I pry my stiletto out of the last twelve inches of grass when it catches on the driveway’s edge. My body catapults forward and, horrifyingly enough, bangs into the side of Bike Boy’s motorcycle. Pain shoots through my shoulder. Even though my eyes are shut, I sense the lurch of the bike falling toward him.
Devastating visions of crushing the beautiful specimen of a man dance behind my eyelids. So, in my most heroic act to date, I perform a sort of ninja-roll to the side in an effort to course-correct my fall. I only end up smacking my forehead on the handlebar and twisting the front wheel further.
I land in a puddle of limbs on the driveway and pray my miniskirt hasn’t ridden above my bright red panties as I brace for the crash.
