“Good for Bex,” one girl says.
“Riley is going to kill her,” another says.
I race down the stairs and out into the night pissed that I have to walk home because my stupid cell phone is dead. A thought has me slamming to a halt on the sidewalk and I pat my pocket. No phone.
“Oh, come on!” I turn around and look back at the Eta Pi house questioning the pros vs cons of going back in to retrieve the device and decide against it.
Not worth it.
I’d planned on waking up in Rylie’s bed this morning, not doing the walk of shame after being in bed with a snake.
Worst. Night. Ever.
Chapter Two
Bex
Classes are a refreshing break from the sorority house. Not only do I get freedom from the fifty-four girls that I live with, but I also get a reprieve from talking about The Bachelor, Kardashians, and whatever celebrity was recently on Ellen.
The ecology department at Bear State is on the far side of campus in an older building that was untouched during the multi-million dollar campus overhaul ten years ago, so it’s mostly a ghost town. The only people found milling about are zoology students and we’re a unique bunch. Most of us prefer the company of animals and insects to our human counterparts and we’d rather drink day old black coffee from the pot than make the trek to the state of the art coffee shop across campus.
However, I have made two friends outside of the sorority and they both work at the coffee shop so I’ve been lugging myself across the campus divide to meet them for a tea every Monday.
I catch sight of Rowan’s red hair, made even fierier in the southern California sun. She waves when she sees me coming and I see she’s ordered my gigantic iced black tea. I drop my heavy book bag onto the concrete and collapse on the bench next to her. “How is it sixty degrees and I’m sweating?”
She slides the frosty drink in front of me. “Could have something to do with the fact that you’re wearing a sweatshirt and just carried a thirty pound bag of books all the way across campus?”
“Mmm.” I nod while slurping back the cold tea, attempting to quench an unquenchable thirst.
College students gather in groups around the quad and I watch as Emery emerges from the people-cluster like a bright ball of brilliant sunshine. Her blonde hair pulled up on the sides, pale pink cashmere sweater, and her cuffed carpi jeans make her look like she stepped off the cover of a J Crew catalog. She sits next to me and smiles. “Sorry I’m late.”
I study her perfect bone structure, perfectly symmetrical lips and lean in. “You got some lip gloss on your chin and cheek there.”
She blushes and taps at her mouth with a napkin, her wedding ring catching the light and nearly blinding me. “I ran into Theodore on my way here.”
Rowan sighs dreamily. “Aww, newlyweds.”
I think it’s weird that Emery got married at nineteen, but I wouldn’t dare tell her that. Honestly, she kind of scares me.
I go back to my tea, sucking back the icy beverage while the girls discuss the men in their lives, Carey and Spider, who also happen to be roommates, and I try to ignore the twinge of jealousy I feel. I remind myself that I don’t need a man in my life to make me happy. But from what I know of Rowan and Emery, neither do they. And yet, they both seem blissfully satisfied in their relationships, so I’m back to my envy.
“Yo, Ro!”
We all turn at the same time toward the male voice.
My lids fall into a hateful glare when I see him.
Loren.
I eye my trespasser and bite down on my straw. He smiles at Emery and focuses on Rowan. “I’m hitting the grocery store on the way home, Carey told me you had a list.”
“Oh, sure, I’ll text it to you.”
Did his face pale a little? I think it did.
I smirk around my straw.
“I lost my phone so if you want to just write it down…” He reaches around to his backpack and in doing so his eyes catch on me and widen. He clears his throat and drags his gaze back to his backpack to dig out a pen and paper.
Emery, clearly bored by the exchange between Rowan and Loren, turns to me. “How was your weekend?”
I choke mid gulp sending freezing cold tea into my nasal cavity. “Oh God!” I grip the sides of my head while icepicks jab my temples. “Brain freeze.” I cover my mouth and huff hot air into my palm, my eyes watering from the near drowning. “Fuck that hurt.”
Loren’s lips are rolled between his teeth, and my cheeks flame with fury and embarrassment. “Laugh it up, jock.” I tilt my head and glare. “I know where you sleep.”
His expression falls and he blinks away from me. A pity really, I never realized before that his eyes are a pretty mix of blue and green, like Caribbean water.
Rowan looks between us, and slowly hands Loren her list. “That should do it.”
“Cool. Later.” He scampers off and I have to admit scaring a six-foot-something football player away is strangely satisfying.
“Okay, dish.” Rowan says, leaning in for gossip. “What the hell was that all about?”
“What did he do to you?” Emery says with all the emotion of a serial killer.
I sigh and push away my drink, lean on my elbows and take two fists full of my sweaty, mop-like hair. “You know he’s seeing my cousin Riley, right? In a drunken stupor he stumbled into the wrong room, I found him nearly naked in my bed Saturday night.”
They both look at me like, “And?”
I shrug. “I had Monty wake him up.”
Rowan gasps and covers her mouth while Emery’s slow smile of approval is tinged with evil.
“That must’ve been the nightmare night he told Carey about on Sunday,” Rowan says.
I flinch inwardly at his description. You’re disgusting.
His words didn’t surprise me, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t hurt.
Growing up the daughter of a Thunderbird, I was draped in white lace from infancy, bred to become an educated, desirable young woman for the sole purpose of becoming a rich affluent wife. But there was some cosmic mix up in the DNA and I wasn’t born the petite, polite, silken haired debutant my parents expected. I didn’t fit in with all my cousins and siblings and my differences went well beyond my thick curls that don’t spiral, but frizz. While my sisters and cousins were sitting cross-legged drinking tea with their pinkies in the air, I was down by the river flipping over rocks and catching salamanders with my bare hands.
Disgusting was a word I heard often.
I suppose I heard it enough that I eventually became it. Why fight it, right?
Emery sniffs haughtily. “Please tell me Monty took a bite out of him? He deserved as much.”
“Sadly, no.”
Emery frowns.
“Enough about that,” Rowan says with a swipe of her hand through the air as if physically knocking all talk of Loren away. “Tell us what’s going on with the snake retreat guy.”
Evan Zanderboughten. He’s in the ecology masters degree program at University of Los Angeles and runs the LA County Herping Society. I joined the club in an attempt to meet like-minded people. The interaction is mostly online, but the monthly herping expeditions are worth it. Although, in order to look for snakes we have to be very quiet so not a lot of talking. Evan’s a couple years older than me and he looks like a young Jeff Goldblum, even has the same mullet.