Jasmine
Hours later, the door swings open, and Heidi comes stumbling in. I turn toward the wall, so I can pretend to be asleep, in case she dragged someone back to our room.
“Jasmine,” she says in a loud whisper. “Jasmine, are you asleep?” She hiccups then giggles.
Of course, she’s drunk. What does she call it, Thirsty Thursday? She’s probably trying to figure out if she has to be quiet.
“Jasmine. OMG, did you really have dirty monkey sex with some hot guy this afternoon?” Heidi asks, her words floating on a sea of alcohol.
The question is so off point, I swing around to face her. “What?”
She plops down on her bed, folding her arm under her head. “It’s all over campus. Piper and Jennifer K said you were here with some h-hot guy—” She burps, sending a wave of cheap-beer breath straight at me. “Ugh.” She wrinkles her nose and waves a hand in front of her face. “They said you were in here, getting it on.” Her eyes are wide with anticipation. “Is it true?”
I sit up, pulling my glasses from the corner of the desk. They must mean the guy who was waiting on Nina. “No.”
Her enthusiasm wavers. “No, of course not,” she says, the corners of her mouth pulled down like a sad clown.
I give her a sidelong glance. “So, you suddenly believe me?”
“Yeah.” She shrugs then looks me up and down. “You’re wearing the same clothes you had on the last time I saw you.
I glance down at the college logo stretched across my chest and press my lips together in annoyance. Yeah, of course she would assume that it could never happen. Why would anybody think it could? They just see plain old me.
Heidi sits up. “Well, anyway, I’ve got packing to do.” She puts her hands on her thighs and pushes herself up off the bed and heads for the closet, reaching out a hand to hold herself steady.
“Packing?” It’s the middle of the week. Where would she be going?
“Yeah, we were having farewell drinks.” She brings over the large suitcase she keeps on my side of the closet. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve stubbed my toe on the darn thing.
“You’re leaving?” I push my glasses up on my nose again. What could she have done to have to leave a week before finals?
“Yeeees. Everyone is.” She twirls her hand in the air, keeping a precarious hold on her balance. “Didn’t you see the email? They’re shutting everything down.”
“No, I must have missed it.” I pull my laptop over.
“We need to be out of here by Friday night.”
Friday? I check the lower right corner of the screen. The calendar says today’s Thursday, at least for the next twelve or thirteen minutes.
I scroll through all the emails with announcement in the title, in all caps. Sure enough, I totally missed the email. How could I not. Everything is an announcement now: curfew, classes, outage warnings, shots, medical appointments. This one says they need to empty the dorms and disinfect after an entire floor ended up getting sick after some party. The emails blurred together once I began studying for finals. They start a week from Monday, and I’m nowhere near ready.
“My dad’s waiting for me at a hotel.” Heidi rolls her eyes. “Ugh. He brought his girlfriend with him. Can you believe it?” She wobbles back from the closet with an armload of clothes still on their hangers. “I blew off his call, so he had to get a room. He’s pissed.” She snickers, folds the stack of clothes in half then drops them into the suitcase. “I mean really, who brings a girlfriend to pick up their kid from college?” She braces herself on the doorway as she stares at me. “I don’t even know this one’s name.”
I could only wish my father would show up for me. But I’d have to know where he is to even hope that could ever happen.
My mother, on the other hand, is on the road with her biker boyfriend. There’s no room for a third person on the back of a bike. Either way, neither of them wants anything to do with me.
What am I supposed to do? I have nowhere to go. I lost my on-campus job when the university went to skeleton crews in each building, and I have next-to-no money thanks to an issue with my financial aid. If they close the dorms, I won’t have a place to sleep and I have no idea where my next meal will come from.
“Laaater.” Heidi goes out the door, knocking her suitcase against the frame. “Damn it.”
I chew on my bottom lip as my gaze takes a cliff dive off the edge of the bed, straight to the wastebasket. The corner of that elegant business card is all but curling a finger, calling for me to come closer. No, I can’t. I shake my head, as if I’m facing fate.
The harsh reality is I’m a few pennies short of being able to hit an ATM. I can’t even buy a drink from the vending machine. And, in a few short hours, I’m going to be homeless—again. Only this time I have no lifeline to keep myself afloat.
I swallow hard, huddling into the covers as the quiet closes in around me.
3
Chase
Jasmine Rocha’s problems are between a comma and a decimal. Something I can easily solve while keeping myself at a distance. But as I glance at my watch for what must be the millionth time today, I know it’s not going to happen. In two minutes and thirty-seven seconds, it’ll be midnight, which means Jasmine didn’t take the offer. If she had, I would have heard from Nina by now.
Nina seems intrigued I’d bring her the woman I want to bid on in the auction. Any man in his right mind would approach her himself. But then I never said I was in my right mind.
I can’t explain why I’ve been so damn anxious over this. It’s not like I can’t get a woman on my own. There’s one sitting next to me now. Tight dress, low neckline, cleavage spilling out. Two years ago, there wouldn’t be enough room between us to tell where one of us ended and another began. But a year can change a guy, when he figures out he’s being played for a fool.
Right now, I’m trying to remember what name this woman gave? Tracie? Tammy? Mindy? She’s been going on about something or another for the past hour. Despite having her tits pressed against my biceps, I’m not interested in the least. But if I leave now, I’ll be sitting at my desk, angry at something intangible. At least this way I can focus on what annoys me.
It isn’t hard to figure out she’s fishing, trying to find a way in. So far, she’s tried talking about basketball, golf, the stock market, camping, and now travel.
“And after all that, it ruined my plans.” She pouts, running a manicured nail around the rim of her glass. “My sister and I had been planning the trip for…”
I’ve purposely avoided offering her another drink in hopes she’ll leave. Hell, I’d buy her the entire bar if she’d just shut up.
I tighten my jaw. It’s not her fault I’m pissed. I should be in my suite, trying to sleep, or to figure out where my little flower disappeared to. Instead, I’m sitting in the hotel bar because the fucking clock won’t move any faster, and the trap I set for Jasmine didn’t work.
My mind keeps going back to the nerdy college student with crooked glasses and an old laptop she slapped together herself. The only time I saw fire in her was when she argued about the ethics in teaching the intrusion detecting portion of the syllabus. The little innocent was horrified to realize at the basic level we call it hacking. And not everyone in the class has her ethics.