September – Freshman Year
ass for dragging me to this party. It’s not even nine p.m., the keg is tapped, and the rest of the beer is room temperature.
A cheesy pop song tumbles out of the speakers in the center of the Alpha Gamma Nu living room while several scantily clad girls gyrate on a wooden coffee table dangerously close to collapsing. People clutching red plastic cups watch from the periphery, but all I see are people I either don’t know or don’t want to talk to. I’m flying solo because my teammate fucked off upstairs with some chick from the soccer team a minute ago. I can’t exactly complain, since I did the same thing to him last weekend.
My phone chimes, letting me know the rest of the team is in the basement playing beer pong. Time to school them—again—but first, I need a refill. Yanking open the glass patio door, I step outside in search of another beer because someone had the bright idea to store all the drinks outside amid a ninety-degree September heatwave. That, combined with some of the things I’ve witnessed tonight, leads me to seriously question how some of these people got into college.
When I flip open the top of the blue-and-white cooler, I discover why the last beer Vaughn gave me was piss warm—no ice. I rifle through its contents, trying to see if any cans are at least semi-cold, but it’s full of girly shit like peach-flavored spiked seltzer and light lime-flavored beer. Did a sorority do the alcohol run tonight, or what? Who drinks this crap?
Footsteps sound on the wooden deck behind me as someone approaches. I glance over my shoulder, expecting to find someone from the team, but I’m pleasantly surprised to see it’s a chick. A hot chick. Light blonde hair falls around her shoulders in loose waves, accenting one of the nicest racks I’ve ever seen. Her black tank top is slightly cropped, exposing a sliver of her creamy midriff, and her ripped jeans hug every curve of her lower half. But when I glance back up, it’s her features that pull me in: big, doe-like eyes, a full, pouty mouth, and a perfect ski-jump nose.
I’ve found the rare total package: a banging body with a gorgeous face to match.
She’s easily a ten, and I hardly ever say that. She’s also petite, probably not much taller than five-three. In her left hand is a peach-flavored spiked seltzer, which answers my previous question. Hot chicks drink that crap, that’s who.
I snatch a can at random and slam the cooler shut, pushing to stand while trying to place her face. Do I know her? Pretty sure I don’t, but I want to.
“Hi.” Her candy-pink lips tug into a tentative smile as she takes a step closer, regarding me with the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen. They’re a piercing shade of blue like . . . fuck, I don’t know. The sky? It’s a deep, endless sort of color that I’ve never seen before.
On some level, I know I’m staring, but it’s hard not to.
“Hey.” Tearing away my focus from her, I look down at the can I’m holding to see what I grabbed. Room temperature lime beer it’ll be, I guess.
She closes the distance between us and touches my upper arm, her cold fingertips landing on my bare skin. Electricity passes between us with the contact, and the intensity of the effect it has on my body catches me by surprise. I’ve been touched by plenty of girls in my time, and this interaction is downright G-rated.
“Could you do me a favor?” Her voice is so quiet, it’s nearly inaudible over the din of the partygoers outside. Between the background noise and the height differential between us, I have to duck my head closer to hear her. It puts us within intimately close range and her perfume drifts over to me; something sweet with a bit of spice. Vanilla and cinnamon, maybe. Something edible, anyway, which isn’t helping me keep my mind out of the gutter.
“For you?” I flash her a cocky grin. “Anything.”
Her eyes dart off to the left, then back over to me. “See that guy over there?”
I follow her line of sight across the deck to where a stout, ruddy-faced guy in a gray varsity athletics T-shirt is glaring at us. Not at us, actually. At me. He looks like he wants to strangle me with his meaty red hands.
When my gaze swings back to her, there’s tension across her pretty face that triggers a cascade of corresponding tension within me. My grip on the unopened can I’m holding tightens. That sweaty asshole is nearly three times her size. If he groped her, we’re about to have a chat. Fist to face.
“What about him?” I ask, fighting to keep the edge out of my voice. “Is he giving you a hard time?”
She winces, tucking a lock of golden hair behind her ear. “You could say that. He’s been following me around since I got here, and he won’t take no for an answer. I can’t find my girlfriends that I came here with, either.” Pausing, she draws in a breath, and the words that follow come out in a rush of air. “Could you pretend to be my boyfriend for a while? Because I sort of made one up, and now I’m in a bind.”
Cracking my beer, I steal another glance at the dude to assess the situation. The heathered gray cotton of his shirt is plastered to his torso, fabric straining against his broad frame. Probably a football player, if I had to guess. He’s not as tall as I am but he’s twice as thick. Built like a fucking tank, and appears equally as smart as one, too.
Judging by his hostile expression and even more hostile body language, there’s a decent chance I’m signing up for a brawl by agreeing to her request, but another glance at her confirms that’s a risk I’m more than willing to take. I’m not one to back down from a fight, especially not when I have an opening with the hottest chick at this party.
Her teeth sink into her lush bottom lip while she watches me, waiting for a response. I try not to let my mind go down a rabbit hole thinking about where I would like to have those lips, and only partially succeed.
“Sure.” With a wink, I slide my arm around her narrow waist, and she leans into me, nestling her small frame beneath my shoulder. Another surprise? As a rule, I hate public displays of affection, but I don’t hate this. At all.
“Thank you.” She lets out a sigh of relief, palpably relaxing. While I’m not in the habit of doing favors for people, I think I’d have said yes even if I didn’t want to hit on her. But I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t a bonus.
“I think I’ll need your name to sell this, though.”
A rosy hue tints her cheeks. “Violet.”
“Nice to meet you, Violet. I’m Nash.” I take a sip of beer, trying to figure out what to do next. I’m not overly keen to stay out here with that lurking linebacker watching our every move, but I don’t want to seem pushy like him, either. “So, Violet. What would your pretend boyfriend do next in this scenario?”
The patio door flies open, and Marcus pokes out his head, frantically scanning the crowd until he spots me. “What the hell, Richards? We’ve been waiting for you so we can begin the game.” He barrels toward us, raking a hand through his black hair in exasperation, so pressed that you’d think I was delaying a playoff game and not a basement round of beer pong.
“Little busy with other things,” I tell him, narrowly resisting the urge to trip him as he approaches. “As you can probably see.”
Way to read the fucking room, man.
He gestures at me, his silver can of beer gleaming beneath the porch light. “Don’t blame me. You said you’d kick our asses if we didn’t wait, and now Hendricks is too scared to start without you.”
Next to me, Violet stifles a giggle. I glance up at the indigo evening sky, channeling what little patience I have, then back down at Violet, giving her an apologetic look. She offers me a tiny smile in return that tells me maybe, just maybe, Marcus didn’t fuck this up completely.
“Want to play a round of beer pong with us?” I ask her. “I can introduce you to the team.”
She gives me a deer-in-headlights look that’s cuter than it should be. “I would, but I’ve never played before. I’m probably going to be awful.”
“Nah, it’s easy. I can teach you.”
VIOLET
I’m not sure how I ended up holding hands with a hockey player.
It started with trying to avoid Ted or Tad or whoever was following me around, breathing down my neck after I lost Claire and Phoebe—mental note to never pee alone again at a party, by the way. While dodging my wannabe stalker, I stumbled across a hot potential knight in shining armor and spent the last few hours learning how to play beer pong with him and his friends. Or trying to learn, because I’m about as terrible as I’d expected. Once Claire and Phoebe resurfaced, they joined the game and I resigned myself to spectator status for everyone’s sake.
Did I mention that said knight in shining armor is incredibly funny, smells like heaven and sin combined, and has a smile that could make you forget your own name? I’ve never crushed so hard, so fast.
With a final plunk of the ping-pong ball into a red Solo cup, the tournament wraps up, leaving two of Nash’s friends as victors.
“Refills!” A blond guy shouts, and the basement clears out as they stampede upstairs in a blur of drunken testosterone.
On the couch across from where Nash and I are standing, my dormmate Claire is perched with Sawyer, a senior on Nash’s team, while she eyes Nash and me uncertainly. Probably because out of our three friends, I am by far the least experienced. Claire had an older boyfriend in high school, and Phoebe already disappeared about fifteen minutes ago with one of Nash’s other teammates. Everything I know about sex, on the other hand, I learned from pages of Cosmopolitan magazine, and I suspect it may not translate perfectly.
“Want to get some air?” Sawyer asks Claire, flipping his white Grizzlies cap backward.
“You good, Violet?” Claire asks, looking torn. I can tell she wants to go with him, but she’s trying to look out for me. “Want to come upstairs with us, or . . .?”
“No, that’s okay,” I tell her. “We’ll catch up with you in a few.”
They disappear up the staircase, leaving me alone with Nash. While this was my goal, I suspect I’m in a little over my head because he is definitely way more experienced than I am. Don’t ask me how I know. I can just tell. Call it virgin’s intuition.
Nash sets down his beer and nods to the basement bar beside us, motioning to indicate our nearly comical height difference. In addition to his broad, athletic frame, he’s approximately six-foot-infinity.
“Can I set you up here so we’re more eye to eye?” he asks.
Set me up there . . . as in, he’s going to touch me? Holy mother of God.
“Yeah, sure.” I try to sound confident, but it comes out breathy. Probably because I suspect he’s going to kiss me, and while I want that, I’m nervous. My kissing practice to date consists of one sloppy, underwhelming encounter with Jordan Peltzer at my friend Maria’s graduation party. Which means, for all I know, I might be a sloppy, underwhelming kisser, too. I don’t have any data points to draw on for comparison’s sake. Something tells me that’s not the case for Nash.
Enormous hands wrap around my waist, interrupting my thought spiral and sending a thrill through my entire body. My feet leave the floor and I become momentarily weightless until Nash gently places me on the cool laminate counter, allowing me to take in his features up close. Square jaw, a slightly downturned mouth, and deep-set green eyes that I could lose myself in. Something about him looks serious—broody, like the bad-boy love interest in a romance novel. The one the heroine doesn’t end up with because she decides the light-haired good guy is a more sensible choice.
“So, this is what it’s like to be all the way up here. Nice view.” I set down my nearly empty cooler, sliding it out of the way. Why, I’m not sure. It seems like having my hands free might be a good idea, even though they’re trembling.
His lips tug. “You are pretty short.”
“Or you’re really tall, depending how you look at it.” There’s that stupid breathlessness again. Why do I sound like this? I don’t think I’ve ever been so nervous in my life.
“Bit of both, really.” His broad hands land on my knees and slide up to my hips, moving with a confidence that makes my breath catch. His thumbs gently caress the bare sliver of skin between my shirt and my jeans, kickstarting a flutter between my thighs. It occurs to me that this is probably the part where I should do something with my hands, too, but I don’t know what. I settle for placing them on his shoulders, which are shockingly firm and built beneath the cotton fabric of his black T-shirt.
Everything about him feels like night and day compared to all the guys I knew in high school just months ago.
Nash tilts his head. “I have to ask. Why’d you come up to me?”
Leaning over, I grab my peach cooler and take another sip, emptying the last of it. Half-hiding my face, I look at him over the rim. “What do you mean?”
“This party is packed with guys.” His expression is tinged with amusement, like he knows I’m trying to dodge the question.
“Are you fishing, Nash?”
He shrugs, playfulness shining in his forest green eyes. “Maybe a little. But when the hottest girl at the party comes up to you, it’s a fair question.”
All I know about him so far is that he plays hockey and he’s a freshman, like me. Now I can add to the list: he’s a flirt. Setting aside my empty drink, I draw in a breath and silently summon the Goddess of Flirting. Whoever she is. I could really use some divine inspiration right now.
When our gazes meet again, I get a rush of courage and opt to go with the only answer I have: the truth but make it flirty. Somehow.
I hold out a hand, ticking off my finger. “Well, you’re one of the biggest guys here.”
“Ah.”
Ticking off a second finger, I add, “I had a hunch you weren’t a creep.”
This, while fully true, is another thing I can’t explain. He arguably looks the least approachable and possibly the most dangerous out of every guy at this party, and paradoxically, that’s what made him feel like the safest choice.
“Solid reasoning.” He nods, taking a sip of his beer as he waits for me to continue.
“And I thought you were cute. Win-win.” As soon as the words leave my mouth, heat floods my face; it’s the most forward thing I’ve ever said to a guy. This night is full of firsts, apparently.
The reaction it garners me is fully worth the risk. Nash’s expression darkens and he sets aside his beer, his warm palm gently cupping my face. “Oh, it’s definitely a win for me.”
My heart drums against my chest as our noses brush, our breaths mingling. His scent envelops me from all angles, delicious spicy cologne blended with notes of lime beer and an undertone of masculinity, and my fingertips dig into his shoulders a little more, urging him on.
Finally, his lips brush against mine, gently coaxing them apart. My eyelids flutter shut as his tongue sweeps into my mouth, tasting of citrus and beer, untold risks and rewards. It’s softer than I expected at first, but as I kiss him back, he draws in a breath and dials up the intensity. Every nerve in my body comes alive, burning brighter with each passing second.
This is no sloppy high school kiss. This is everything.
Everything in the world fades out except for his mouth moving against mine. He caresses my face, angling it against his to deepen the kiss, and gently parts my knees, coming to stand between them. His other hand slides up my ribcage, stopping shy of my breasts, and my body silently cries out for him to continue. Again, it makes no sense—I’m kissing a near stranger, but he doesn’t feel like a stranger.
“We’ve been drinking,” Nash says against my lips, kissing me softly again. “I like you, Vi, and I don’t want to fuck this up.”
He’s not wrong. I’m tipsy. Not enough to regret what I’m doing, I don’t think, but enough that I have a little extra courage coursing in my veins, for sure.
“I like you, too.”
He pulls back, giving me a boyish grin. “Maybe you can come to our next game, and we can hang out after. You know, not drinking.”
“Yeah?” A smile pulls at my cheeks. “I’d like that.”
