Page 3 of Love.V2
“Oh, um…thank you.” Her neck flushed. Cute.
“Let me get you something else. What do you want?” She surveyed our offerings before settling on a rum and Coke. I let her open the mini herself.
“Very fancy with the individual cocktails,” she observed while I poured. I popped a straw in the cup before handing it over.
“We take our reputation seriously. We want everyone to know they’re safe with us. No communal hunch punch, no roofies.”
She choked on her first sip. “Roofies? Does that actually happen at WTU?”
“I won’t lie, sometimes, yeah. It’s awful. But Eps don’t get into stuff like that.”
“Well, that’s good to hear. Guess I picked the right party to come to alone.” She smiled into her drink, but her words locked me up.
“You’re here alone? Where’s Vanna?”
“Sick,” Tess replied, looking around the room casually, like she hadn’t just dropped a bomb in my kitchen. I scratched my neck.
“She let you come alone?” I wasn’t close with Vanna, but she and I would have words the next time our paths crossed. My brothers and I might have been on the up and up, but a frat party was no place for Bambi to be by herself.
“Oh, she freaked when she found out I was coming. But, you know…” Tess trailed off, straightening when she finally met my eyes. She could probably see the alarm coursing through me.
“Do I know?” I had no clue what could have possessed her to do something so reckless. I could only thank my lucky stars I was the one she’d ended up with tonight. Sure, I was interested as hell in her, but only under the most consensual circumstances.
“Well, it’s one of the first parties of the semester, and you invited me…” Her eyes darted around my face like she was trying to read me. She took another gulp of her drink. “It was on my list!” she blurted, sounding overwhelmed.
“Your list?”
She cursed, eyes dropping again. “Um, yeah. I made a list of experiences to accomplish in college. Oh, God, this sounds so stupid now that I say it out loud.”
“No, no.” I couldn’t help the smile that stretched across my mouth. I tugged her hand away from where it shielded her face. “Now you have to tell me about this list.”
I also couldn’t help the slow circle my thumb made over her wrist. The movement drew her eyes. Was she feeling this, too? The same crazy pull I felt towards her? I was a magnet, and she was pure iron ore.
“It’s stupid,” she insisted.
“It’s not stupid,” I insisted back, using my grip to pull her a little closer, away from the crowd. I didn’t want to share a single word that came out of her mouth.
“I, well, I grew up in this teeny town, right? And there are a lot of experiences you miss out on. So, when I came to college I…made a list.”
“Of things you want to do?” I prompted when she stalled out, her gaze flickering away from mine. I wanted it back. I wanted that lightning hit in my bloodstream.
“Yes.”
“Tell me some of them,” I pleaded, completely ignoring the party around us. Tess and her list, and the hint of her bra strap peeking out of her lace tank top, had captured every ounce of my attention.
“They’re stupid,” she said again, glaring at me now. I just kept smiling, waiting. Finally, she rolled her eyes and took another drink. “So, alright. Go to a college party.”
“Check that one off.” I toasted her, and she rewarded me with a reluctant smile.
“Eat sushi. Get really, really drunk, but without being stupid about it. Make friends I wouldn’t have made in my hometown. Ask a guy out. Enter one of my drawings in an art competition.” She ticked them off her fingers, but I fixated on one.
“Ask a guy out?”
She grimaced before straightening her shoulders. “Yes. I’ve never done it before, and it seems like it’d be liberating.” Her eyebrows arched, like she was preemptively scolding me for making fun of her list. “It’s perfectly acceptable for women to ask men out.”
I held up my hands. “I never said it wasn’t. I’m just admiring the set of brass balls you got over there.”
“Excuse me?”
