Page 1 of College Boy

Chapter One

Emma

“Am I the asshole here, seriously?”

Emma Hastings stood in front of the rectangular picture window of her sunken patio, peeking out from behind rattan curtains at the noisy revelers just next door.

Hooligans, the whole entire lot of them!

“Is that a rhetorical question?” Her coworker, Sasha Sinclair, snickered gaily, thoroughly enjoying Emma’s distress despite the late hour and last-minute phone call.

“What, so you mean Iam?” Emma was babbling on autopilot, watching in horror as another scantily clad coed was tipped on her predictably bottle-blonde head to do a keg stand in the neighbor’s backyard. Her sunglasses fell off, to say nothing of the temptation her barely-there bikini bottoms must surely have felt to do the same.

Keg stands? After midnight? In bikinis? If Emma had owned a pearl necklace, she might have clutched it around her neck at the indignity.

“No, girl,” Sasha smoothed in her effortlessly mature manner. And why not? She was safe at home with her hubby of twelve years, curled up in bed watching sweet, innocent romcoms, probably. “I’d be all up in arms if some college shenanigans were happening right next door to my domicile, I can tell you that much.”

“So why do I hear so much snickering over there?” Emma winced as the coed was set back on her heels, fake boobs in the same position as they were upside down—pointy, perfect and standing at attention beneath the beer foam-splattered neon crop top she wore. “Wore” being a loosely applied term, after all, since it barely concealed her cosmetically enhanced badoobies.

“Sorry, it’s just, the last time I heard you this upset was when that one customer tried using a stolen credit card last week.”

“Can you blame me?”

“No, girl, honestly, but there’s a simple solution, you realize?”

“I’m not calling the cops on poor little Reggie,” Emma insisted, though the thought had crossed her mind since the party had started over three long, noisy, arduous hours earlier. To think that the same boy who had mowed her lawn every summer growing up could be hosting some late-night, fake-boobied, keg standing bacchanal while his parents were out of town sent shivers down Emma’s spine.

Sasha made a clucking noise, like she did so often when the kids at work showed up late for their shift at one of the six food trucks they ran as part of their Snack Street operation. “Sounds like poor little Reggie’s getting his freak flag on and having a good old time while you’re standing there in your nightie pacing the floors thin worrying about how you’re going to get a lick of sleep tonight.”

“And?” Emma huffed. “Your point being?”

“And ... he’s not caring a hoot about your sleep schedule, girl.”

“I mean, what’s a little sleep, right?”

Sasha snickered as Emma winced anew, a trio of burly frat bros hoisting yet another coed aloft only to lap at a shot of tequila out of her belly button. “Oh, god!” Emma gasped despite her best intentions not to sound prudish.

“What now?” Sasha tried, and failed, not to sound unimpressed.

“How much bacteria do you think lives in the average college freshman’s belly button?”

Sasha’s bellowing laughter threatened to wake up Rich, the husband sleeping in bed next to her. “I doubt they’re worrying much about germs right now, Em.”

“How can they not?” Emma literally shuddered at the thought. “I mean, do you think the tequila kills them all?”

“Tequila?” Finally, Sasha’s voice registered the same judgy tone Emma had been shooting for ever since she’d called her in complete distress some ten minutes earlier. “At this hour? I thought you said it was just a keg party.”

“That’s what I’m saying!” Emma fumed, pacing in quiet little circles between the unruly keg stands and unsanitary body shots next door. “Tequila. Rum. Gin. Absinthe, probably. Coke, meth, you name it! It’s pure anarchy over there, I wouldn’t have called you otherwise.”

They bantered for a few moments more, Emma’s distress rising with every new keg stand, body shot, cannonball, and belly flop she witnessed through her perch along the windowsill in her sprawling day room out back.

“Didn’t your neighbor leave her number while she was away?” Sasha asked, the first note of impatience creeping into her voice.

Emma couldn’t blame her. This wasn’therproblem, after all. “So what, I’m either a cop caller or a narc? I’m not comfortable being either at the moment. And, besides, his parents are on some second honeymoon cruise in the Pacific—that’s why the little shit has free reign of the house for the next six days!”

“Well, you know, there’s another option...” Sasha suggested patiently, Emma nodding to herself as she sighed and slid the curtains closed, stomach taut with resignation.

“I know,” she said, drifting back into the house.

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