Cora Carmack - All Lined Up

And now I’m stuck at my first frat party with the ex who broke my heart.

Yay college.

AS SOON AS Levi is out of sight, I bolt for the door. Stella wraps her arms around my waist to stop me, but she’s a foot shorter than me, and her idea of a workout is marathoning Project Runway. She clings to me, her feet slipping and sliding as I drag her forward like she weighs barely anything.

In an exasperated voice she yells, “Stamp of approval!” I hesitate, slowing, but not stopping my attempt at escape. “I said stamp. Of. Approval. Skank.”

I sigh. Crap.

We have this rule, something that’s helped us stay friends despite how completely polar opposite our personalities are. It’s a system of give and take, wherein I temper her crazy side and she forces me to live a little.

When Stella showed up to take the SATs drunk, she got the Dallas Cole Don’t-Be-A-Douche Stamp of Disapproval. It was my non-nagging way of telling her that she’d gone too far. And though there wasn’t much to do about it that Saturday, Stella signed up to take the test again, and when the next testing day rolled around, she was sober and serious and pulled off a decent score.

Alternately, there is the Stella Santos Suck-It-Up-You-Prude Stamp of Approval. That stamp has gotten me into more trouble than I care to list, including Stella’s brilliant idea to wrap a house with toilet paper and stick maxi pads to the glass front door. What her plan didn’t include was the knowledge that said house belonged to a policeman, who was not keen on being an advertisement for Kotex.

There is one and only one rule when it comes to the stamps. You have to listen.

I spin, and Stella narrowly misses getting laid out by my flailing elbow. Her exotic eyes narrow on me, and I know she’s not backing down.

“Fine. I’ll stay. But remember those stamps work both ways, sister.”

She moves closer so that she can speak quietly, pushing her short dark hair out of her eyes. “Listen, I’m sorry. I didn’t think douche-badger would be here. I heard that athletes don’t usually come to the frat stuff, so I thought we’d be in the clear. But this place is huge.” A stream of people exit out of a nearby door that I guess leads to a basement, as if to illustrate her point. “There’s nothing that says you can’t stay and have fun.”

We have different ideas of nothing. My brain has already pinpointed at least seventeen reasons to leave.

Some idiot with a backward hat lurches toward a trash can just outside the kitchen, and a jet of disgusting pours out of his mouth.

Make that eighteen reasons.

“Right. Well, I’m officially sucking it up.” And trying not to copy backward-hat’s display of stomach pyrotechnics. “What’s up, first?”

“I want you to actually enjoy this. Try to look like you’re not dying inside.” I attempt a smile. “A little less Freddy Krueger, a little more person who actually has a soul.” I flash her more teeth, more menace than mirth, but I’m mostly teasing.

I want to enjoy myself. I want so badly for college to be different that I can taste the desperation on my tongue.

Stella starts to open her mouth, but I beat her to it. “Drinks?” Maybe that will help me loosen up.

“You learn fast, grasshopper.”

On her tiptoes, she manages to loop an arm over my shoulders. She looks around and sighs happily, a this is the life kind of sigh, and I wonder what she’s seeing that I’m not. “Our first college party. Puts those high school pasture parties to shame, doesn’t it?”

I wasn’t a particularly big fan of the parties she used to drag me to out on the Beane Ranch or the abandoned church turned party grounds out on Oakcliff Road. But I don’t see how this is any better.

Finally, I manage to find a pro. “No mosquitoes. That’s a plus.” And all I’ve got.

She directs me to face the group of guys hanging out by the kegs in the kitchen and says, “I see several pluses in our future.”

As long as those pluses aren’t in conjunction with an STD test . . . I can deal.

A new song starts, one that’s been blowing up the radio, and the dancers crowded in the living room let out a cheer. Stella does, too. And as we head for the archway that opens up into the kitchen, she throws out a hand and belts the words. I bump her hip and open my mouth to sing along, but no sound comes out.

The catchy tune shrivels in my throat as I make eye contact with one of the most gorgeous guys I’ve ever seen. He’s sitting on top of the island counter in the kitchen, and even sitting I can tell he’s tall. He has messy dark blond hair, artfully sculpted in that way that makes him look like he’s jumped right off the pages of a magazine. Add to that a strong jaw and eyes that smile more than his lips, and no matter how hard I pull my gaze away, it keeps wandering back to him.

And I get caught.

Not just once.

Like four times! I should have learned my lesson after the first, maybe the second, but now I have officially crossed over into creepy territory.

It takes talent to be a gawking hot mess, and I am a gawking hot mess to the third power. I jerk my eyes away again, a billion years too late to retain my dignity. He’s sitting right next to the keg, though, so I have to look back his way a few seconds later or risk adding frat-boy face-plant to my list of special skills.

This time his lips join the smile in his eyes, and my heart picks up its tempo.

He did have to keep looking at me in order to catch me. So maybe he doesn’t mind that I’m staring.

And maybe Stella was right about this particular stamp.

While she fills up a cup, I try to look casual. I never know exactly how to hold my arms or how far to cock my hip. The dancer in me doesn’t feel comfortable unless my posture is perfect, but that makes me stick out like a sore thumb in a sea of slouchy college kids.

My hands are floppy, dead fish. Or that’s what they feel like anyway as I try to arrange them in a way that doesn’t make me look like a mental patient. While I’m still trying to figure it out, a red cup enters my vision.

I follow a muscular arm up to that pair of smiling eyes.

“Pretty girls shouldn’t have to wait in line.”

I eye the half-full cup, then manage a casual shrug.

“I’ll wait. Thanks.”

Nothing about Stella’s stamp says I have to do something as stupid as take a drink from a stranger, no matter how good looking he is.

Stella moves aside, but not before waggling her perfectly sculpted eyebrows at me. Gawk-worthy guy slides down off the counter as I step up to the keg.

“You don’t trust me?” he asks.

This time I catch him staring at my legs, and how not covered they are by the outrageously short skirt Stella picked out for me.

“I don’t know you,” I reply, trying to sound at least a little stern and failing.

He smiles unabashedly and glances one more time at my legs. I only agreed to the stupid skirt because it has pockets, and I cannot resist a skirt with pockets.

Now I wish I had tried a little harder.

“So get to know me,” he replies.

God, do they make WD-40 for flirting? Because I am rusty. Not enough practice thanks to four years of high school with an overbearing dad as the football coach. Then again, this guy is scary gorgeous, so he would make me nervous no matter how much practice I had.

I hold out my hand and say, “I’m Dallas.”

He eyes my proffered hand, and I know I’ve made a mistake. Laughing, he takes my hand and bends to kiss it in a princely bow, and I can’t tell if he’s making fun of me or not.

“Dallas and Silas,” he murmurs, his lips still close enough to my hand that I feel his breath skate across my skin. “Sounds like fate to me.”

No one has ever been so audaciously flirtatious with me in my entire life, and it muddles my brain.

“Nice to meet you, Silas.”

I am thinking about how it will be impossible for us to have a couple nickname if we get together because every combination ends up just being one of our names when he laughs.

He moves closer to me, and instinctively I take a tiny step back.

“You’re never going to get to know me like that. Come on.”

He lays an arm across my shoulder, hooking me closer to his side, and starts leading me out of the kitchen.

“Wait. My friend.”

“She’ll be fine.”

I’m not worried about her.

“He’s right!” Stella calls behind me. “I am fine,” she announces to a group of three guys that she’s already managed to ensnare. Good God, it’s like she’s found her natural habitat. I envy her confidence.

I envy a lot of things about Stella.

He pulls me toward the living room, and I automatically fall into step with the rhythm of the music. But when I see the room packed full of grinding bodies and decorated with wandering hands, I panic. It’s not that I’m incapable of dancing like that. My tastes run more toward ballet, lyrical, and jazz, but I’ve taken a few years of hip-hop.

It’s not the movement that intimidates me. I can roll my hips with the best of them. It’s the intimacy I can’t handle. There are no secrets when your body is that close to another. Hell, it took me close to a year before I could comfortably press up against Levi that way.

Fat lot of good all that caution did me.

As much as I get annoyed with the way my father affects my love life, a really small part of me is glad to have him as an excuse to not get too close. As an excuse not to get hurt again.

“Bathroom,” I blurt out, grasping for another excuse. “I, uh, need to use the ladies’ room.” I thought ladies’ room might sound less embarrassing.

Wrong on all counts.

He gives me that look again like I’m behaving like the grandma who I apparently stole my personality from.

I cough and add, “Bathroom,” once more, like that somehow might clear the air of all the terrible, but yeah . . . this place is officially polluted. He raises an eyebrow, and I wait for him to ditch me because I am clearly the least cool person in this house, counting the dude asleep underneath the table in the foyer currently sucking his thumb.

But my weird doesn’t phase him. It’s a miracle. “Sure, there’s one upstairs, I think. Maybe we can find a quiet place up there to talk, too.”

Oh my Jesus. Make that miraculously scary.

His finger draws little circles on my shoulder, and I concentrate on swallowing down all the irrational excuses that I want to make to run away.

Claiming flesh-eating bacteria to get out of a private conversation might be overkill. Malaria might work, though.

As we climb the stairs together, my heart climbs higher and higher into my throat until it throbs on the back of my tongue. The two girls who’d been all over Levi earlier are still on the stairs, and when they see us coming, they sit up straighter. One fluffs her hair, her gaze darting between Silas and me, and I can see her confusion in her glossy-lipped frown. She stands as we near, petite to the point that she would look twelve years old were it not for the giant rack that has to completely throw off her balance.

“Hey, Silas,” she breathes.

He only nods back, but he smiles while he does it, and she looks grateful for even that little bit of attention.

Dear God, please tell me I don’t look that pathetic. Because I will not be that girl, begging for scraps, no matter how gorgeous the guy is.

Upstairs is surprisingly deserted. Or at least it appears to be. The long hallway of closed doors is probably hiding plenty of things I don’t want to be party to. Discomfort sweeps through me, and I’m grateful when he stops outside a closed door that I hope (oh please, please) is the bathroom.

He gives me another mock bow and says, “All yours, pretty girl.”

I cannot escape into that bathroom fast enough. And maybe (okay, definitely) it’s overkill, but I lock the door as soon as it’s closed.

Get a grip, Dallas.

I suck at the whole meeting new people thing. I’ve had plenty of practice, what with Dad’s propensity to up and move us every few years, but it never gets any easier.

All in all, I just really blow at being a normal human being.