CHAPTER 1
Amy
Writing Jane Austen erotic fan-fiction is the best way to spend a Friday night. It’s not a universally acknowledged truth, but it should be.
The bass from the party pounds through the walls of my dorm room. I sigh before clicking save and closing my laptop. This damn noise makes it impossible to write. I’m constantly taken out of the world inside my head.
I was just getting to the good part, too. Mr. Darcy was about to pin Elizabeth against the wall in the Netherfield library. My readers are going to eat it up when I finally get to posting it on AO3.
Another night alone in my bed with my laptop for company. My bestie, Cody, constantly makes fun of me for my hermit ways, especially given the fact that I write unhinged erotic Pride and Prejudice fanfic in secret. It doesn’t bother me in the slightest. I’m a nerd, and I embrace it with fervor. I’ve even adopted the aesthetic—the purple hair and the largeround glasses—as a signal to people that I’m socially awkward. Approach at your own risk.
I twist and stretch my neck, jerking back when a knock rattles my door. I groan as I get off my bed. It’s probably someone from the party looking for more alcohol. Or a partner to do shots with.
They’ve come to the wrong place.
When I open the door, RA Gigi is standing in the hall with an envelope in hand and a large grin on her face. “Did you hear?” she asks.
I frown. “Hear what?”
She pauses, as if to increase my suspense. “You were chosen.”
My incredulity must be all over my face, because Gigi bursts into laughter. “The game! You’re one of the girls chosen.”
I don’t have to ask her what game she’s talking about. Everyone at Pacific Crest knows what “the game” is. Every November, ten female students are entered into a reality show-esque competition to vie for a special night with the homecoming king. After four weeks of group dates and stupid competitions like relay races, the homecoming king chooses his favorite of the ten women to escort to the winter ball.
And by homecoming king, I mean Tristan Wolfe.
For the last two years, the student body has nominated the same homecoming king. Arrogant, brainless, cruel Tristan Wolfe.
The game is silly and antiquated. Why is it always the homecoming king who gets to choose? Why doesn’t the queen get her own competition?
Because my small private university is misogynistic, that’s why. The winner gets a ten-thousand-dollar scholarship all because some brainless frat boy thinks they’re the hottest of ten contestants.
It should be fucking illegal.
I’d never apply, even though the scholarship money would be nice. I couldn’t win, so it wouldn’t even be worth trying.
“That’s impossible,” I say.
She smiles. “No mistake. Someone must have filled out an application for you. I was sent here to deliver this.” She hands me a thick manila envelope. “It tells you everything you need to know. There’s a dress code…” Her gaze slips down from my Pemberly T-shirt all the way to my kitten-face slippers. “If you don’t have the money for nice clothes, you can apply for a sponsor.”
I grit my teeth as I take the envelope from her hands. “Thanks.”
After Gigi leaves, I sink back down on my bed, unable to take my eyes off the manila envelope in my hand. This is a joke. Someone is fucking with me.
But who? Not a single one of my friends would play a prank this mean. They all know how tedious I find the whole game process, even just as an observer. The film students are constantly around campus, following the contestants with their phones in the air, trying to catch every ounce of drama for Pacific Crest’s YouTube channel.
One year, I wolfed down a bacon avocado burger right in the background of one of the game dates. Anyone who watched that video saw me with chipmunk cheeks and green sludge dripping down my chin. Cody made fun of me for months after that incident. He even printed a large close-up picture of my face that he taped to his wall. But even he’d never dare enter me as a joke. He knows how much I hate Trist?—
Holy shit.
Did Tristan do this?
He must’ve. No one else would take the time for such an elaborate and creative humiliation. Tristan with the sly smirkand the deceitful blue eyes. Tristan who never resists an opportunity to antagonize me.
Tristan Wolfe who told his ex—my former best friend, Harper—about my fanfic pseudonym after he lured me into confiding in him.
Tristan Wolfe who stood in the center of the Pacific Crest quad while Harper read a sex scene from myPride and Prejudicefanfic aloud to a group of their asshole friends. They laughed like jackals while Tristan smirked, his eyes locked on mine.
