PART I: BEFORE

CHAPTER ONE

“A frat party? Really?”

        Evie watches as Amy rolls not just her eyes but her entire head to the ceiling in clear disapproval.

        “Yes, really. It’s our first week of college. Don’t you want to go to a party?”

        Evie scratches at a pimple blossoming on the tip of her nose in contemplation, adjusting her glasses with the same finger a moment later. She’s wearing her backup pair—the ones with the mustard yellow cat-eye frames that seemed fashionable when she selected them at the ripe age of thirteen—after an unfortunate incident with a tree branch earlier that day that left her right eye too sore for contacts.

        “I don’t know. Aren’t frat parties kind of…gross?”

        Evie is hardly the expert on parties, but every show or movie she’s watched with a frat party in it seems to suggest the main purpose of them is to get drunk and hook up with someone random, neither of which sounds particularly fun to her. Setting aside the fact that Evie has never even been on a date or had her first kiss, let alone hooked up with anyone, the one time she got drunk with her best friend Patrice in high school, she took too many shots of Jager too quickly and had a distinct lack of fun, especially as she was forced to inhale the residual scent of licorice-flavored vomit while cleaning the bathroom the next day.

        Amy bats her hand at Evie, dismissing her concern with the gesture.

        “Gross is…subjective. They’re fun. That’s the point.”

        Evie shifts in her desk chair, glancing at her twin-sized, standard-issue dorm-room bed with longing. She had already planned a night in, watching a movie with Patrice over Skype. But Patrice had also said neither of them should hesitate to cancel if something more exciting came up—particularly for Evie, given that this was her first week of college, while Patrice was still at home awaiting the start of her own college experience. This would qualify as something more exciting, wouldn’t it? Even if it doesn’t sound fun to her, Evie knows going to parties is the kind of thing that’s supposed to be exciting to a college freshman. And it wouldn’t hurt to try to develop a friendship with her roommate. Amy isn’t like any friend Evie has had before, and she’s supposed to be trying new things. She promised herself she would when she moved halfway across the country to come here, to broaden her horizons and become more than the girl from the small town in Illinois.

        “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Evie says, lifting a finger to her mouth and biting the tip of her nail.

        “So you’re coming?” Amy asks, observing Evie’s nail-biting with poorly disguised disgust.

        Evie lets her hand fall to her lap. Her mother has always told her biting her nails is a filthy habit, but she can never seem to resist the urge to gnaw on them whenever she is feeling particularly anxious, which is most of the time.

        “Yeah, I’ll come.”

        “Cool. Are you going to change before we go?”

        Evie follows Amy’s eyes as they move up and down her body, lingering on the stain—toothpaste—on her sweatpants and the school logo on the t-shirt she received during orientation.

        “I guess I should,” Evie says, suppressing a sigh of resignation as she pushes herself out of her desk chair and starts moving toward her dorm-issued wardrobe, which appears almost empty in contrast to Amy’s, which is already too packed with clothes for the doors to close all the way.

        “Let me know if you want to borrow something,” Amy says with a closed-mouth smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. They both know it’s unlikely Evie could fit into anything she owns.

        Evie glances self-consciously at her belly. Her mother has always called it baby fat—well beyond her childhood—but Evie can admit it’s just fat. Not a huge amount. But she has been the chubby girl for as long as she can remember. It doesn’t usually bother her, not really. She even likes her body some of the time, the comforting layer of fat that she pretends insulates her from the stares and chuckles and outright insults of others. But now, standing next to her tall, skinny roommate with her long blonde hair and form-fitting, size-zero black dress, she can’t help but compare their bodies and come away feeling less than.

        Evie opens the wardrobe doors and starts sifting through her limited supply of clothing. She’s never enjoyed shopping much, so anything she owns that isn’t sweatpants or pajamas was likely purchased by her mother, a self-branded fashionista who has obtained all of her fashion knowledge from old reruns of What Not to Wear and who buys almost all of her clothes exclusively from Walmart and Target. After a minute of consideration, Evie pulls out a pair of dark skinny jeans and a floral blouse, both clearly her mother’s contributions. The yellow of the flowers in the top vaguely matches the yellow of her glasses, so it seems like an appropriate option.

        Five minutes later, having dressed and applied a minimal amount of makeup—mascara, concealer to hide her burgeoning nose-pimple, and bright red lipstick, at Amy’s insistence and against her better judgment, to match the retro feel of her glasses—Evie slides on a pair of black ballet flats with tiny bows on them and stands in front of the full-length mirror on the back of the dorm-room door that she shares with Amy. She doesn’t think the overall effect is too bad. Her dark brown shoulder-length curls are a bit frizzy from the humidity, but the yellow in the outfit seems to bring out some of the green in her eyes, which she generously calls hazel—really they are brown with small flecks of green. Evie scratches at her exposed arms, the tops of which are bulging slightly against the elastic lining the edges of the short sleeves of her blouse. The top is a bit tighter than she remembered, although she realizes now that her mother likely bought it for her at least two years ago. She scratches again at the skin around the arm holes, leaving behind faint streaks of red on the light brown of her skin. Evie idly wonders if she’s developing hives, either in response to the stress of this ordeal or to the overpowering, candy-like scent of the perfume Amy insisted she borrow.

        “You look great!” Amy says, emphasizing the statement with a clap of her hands. “Are you ready to go?”

        Evie feels anything but ready, especially standing next to her roommate, who, although she is ninety-nine percent sure is only a couple inches taller than her, seems to somehow tower over her in stilettos, holding a chic black clutch to her hip while applying a dark red lip gloss with a handheld compact. Still, Evie nods and grabs her own slouchy fabric bag, the pins on it—her favorites are the “Anxious” one with the drawing of a shivering chihuahua and the Harry Potter one with her chosen Patronus charm, a ferret—clinking slightly against each other as she hitches it over her shoulder and opens the door.

        As Amy follows her out of the room, the electronic lock whirring as the door locks behind them, Evie sees their RA Crystal wave to them from the end of the hall where it opens into the common area for their floor.

        “Hey, Evie! Hey, Amy!” she says, clearly still in the habit of calling everyone by their names at every possible opportunity to help familiarize herself and each fledgling freshman around her with the other inhabitants of the building. “We were just about to watch a movie. Mean Girls. Want to join?”

        “No, thanks,” Amy says, making her way to the stairs, sparing barely a glance in Crystal’s direction.

        “Next time,” Evie says with a resigned smile, peeking her head around the corner to stare longingly at the small cluster of her floormates gathered in front of the communal TV, shared bowls of popcorn resting on the carpet in front of them, the smell of fake butter tempting her to join them.

        Instead, Evie hurries down the stairs to meet Amy at the front door of the dorm building, nearly tripping over every other step, even in flats. She can’t understand how Amy seems to move so effortlessly in four-inch heels.

        As they wander into the balmy night, Amy removes a miniature silver flask from her purse, which seems far too small to hold something as unnecessary as a flask. Evie stares at it in awe.

        “Want some?” Amy asks, shoving it toward her.

        “What is it?”

        “Vodka. I pregamed while you were getting dressed, but I figured it never hurts to carry a little extra.”

        Amy winks at Evie and takes a swig before offering it to her again. This behavior solidifies Amy in her mind as the kind of mythical creature she’s only seen portrayed in teen dramas.

        “No, thanks,” Evie says, her stomach turning at the thought of drinking straight vodka.

        Amy shrugs and stows the flask in her purse again before continuing in the same direction.

        The frat house is only a few blocks away from the dorm, still technically on campus, but it’s far enough that Amy’s choice of shoes finally seems to take a toll on her. Evie watches her grimace as she adjusts her left heel before seeming to regain her composure and march toward the front doors of what she assumes is their destination.

        Evie hesitates at the end of the driveway, already wincing at the too-loud music emanating from the frat house. She turns to her left and watches a girl retch into the bushes while another girl holds her hair back.

        This was a bad idea.

        Evie feels her feet start to turn, of their own accord, in the direction of the dorm when she sees Amy wave to her from the front door. Taking a deep breath, she attempts to suppress her building anxiety and moves toward the source of the bass that she can already feel reverberating through her body.

        As Evie approaches Amy, she sees that she is talking to a guy standing outside the front doors. She only catches a few words from the tailend of their conversation, but she could swear she hears the word “pity.”

        “Come on,” Amy says, grasping Evie’s hand and tugging her forward so that she nearly trips over the front steps. “Let’s go inside.”

        Evie glances at the boy standing next to them as Amy pulls her through the open doors. He smirks at her, his expression dripping with disdain. Evie feels her stomach turn again, but she follows Amy inside, feeling powerless to stop this process now that it has already begun.

        Amy pauses just inside the entrance, nodding her head to the beat of the hip hop song blaring from the speakers to their right, next to the stairs, as she scans the room. Evie wonders what, or whom, she’s looking for.

        “I’m gonna grab a drink,” Amy says, leaning down and bringing her lips close to Evie’s ear to be heard over the music. “Do you want anything?”

        Evie shrugs, and Amy rolls her eyes in response.

        “I’ll get you something,” she says. “Just wait here.”

        Evie watches Amy totter through a doorway, presumably in the direction of the kitchen, swaying slightly on her heels, as if they’re stilts. Glancing around the room, anxiety begins to tighten her chest as she faces the prospect of being left alone at a party where she knows exactly one person. The pins on her bag click together with a metallic noise as she fiddles with them, examining the crowds of people around her, some dancing, some talking. They all seem to have red cups in their hands.

        Following the sound of a loud cheer from another room, Evie takes a few steps to her left and peeks through a doorway to find a group of people playing beer pong. She watches them for a minute, amazed by the intensity of the competition. Each team acts as if every missed shot is the equivalent of a failed test to her, their loud groans of disappointment and reproachful cries of “Oh, come on!” only matched in volume by their whoops of excitement when one of them finally scores.

        Evie notices one of the boys playing the game glance at her, his gaze remaining fixed on her for a moment before he smiles at her. It’s not like the smile of the boy at the front door. It looks genuine and…nice. She can’t help but notice he’s cute, too, with his floppy light brown hair and bright blue eyes, the color of which she can appreciate even at this distance and in the dim lighting of the room. He even has dimples.

        Feeling her face begin to heat, Evie drops his gaze and turns around, shuffling back to her spot by the front doors, next to a collection of shoes and jackets. As she waits for Amy to return, she continues to half-heartedly people-watch, glancing around the room every few seconds before dropping her eyes to her feet. She refuses to stare at any one person for too long, fearful of the looks of disdain she might see, like that of the boy outside, that tell her she doesn’t belong here. Or worse, looks like the other boy just gave her, ones entirely foreign and scary to her, which she can’t even begin to comprehend.

        “There you are,” Amy says as Evie watches her wobble toward her, a red cup in each hand, as if Evie isn’t exactly where she left her. “Take this.”

        Amy pushes one of the cups into Evie’s hand, splashing a small amount of bright red liquid onto her blouse.

        “Oops, sorry.”

        Evie reluctantly accepts the drink while surreptitiously wiping at her top.

        “What is it?” she asks.

        “Jungle juice.”

        Evie stares at her uncomprehendingly. Amy rolls her eyes.

        “It’s just fruit punch and vodka. You can’t even taste the liquor.”

        Evie takes a sip of the drink and grimaces. She can definitely taste it.

        “Sorry,” Amy says, taking a long gulp of her own drink. “Maybe I put too much in yours.”

        “No, it’s fine,” Evie says, taking another small sip to be polite, even though the burn of the liquor makes her eyes water. “Thanks.”

        Amy nods and turns to scan the room again. Evie watches her eyes meet those of a boy standing next to the staircase, only a few feet away from them. To call him a boy seems inaccurate, since he must be at least six-and-a-half feet tall. He towers over everyone around him. He smiles at Amy, the white of his teeth blinding against his dark skin.

        “I’ll be right back,” Amy says, already moving in his direction.

        Evie can tell this is a lie. Assuming the guy isn’t a total jerk, she feels certain Amy won’t be returning any time soon. Within ten seconds of meeting him, she’s already laughing at something he’s said, flipping her long blonde hair behind her shoulders as she leans closer to him and brushes against his arm.

        Evie releases a long breath through her nose and leans back against the wall behind her, taking another sip of the disgusting concoction in her hand. She feels a pang of something in her chest. Not jealousy, exactly. More like a longing, to possess the kind of power Amy does, to have the confidence to go up to a stranger who smiles at you, to know there are good intentions—or at least a shared desire—behind it.

        With another sip of her drink, Evie turns and starts walking back toward the room where she watched the group playing beer pong, where the cute boy smiled at her. She told herself when she went away to college that she was going to try new things, that she was going to become a new person. Maybe this is the first step, even if it involves making herself incredibly uncomfortable and potentially embarrassing herself.

        As she approaches the doorway, another person appears on the other side, and they collide. More jungle juice splashes onto Evie’s chest, the liquid quickly soaking through her top, but she hardly notices, because the cute boy is standing in front of her, grabbing her arms to steady her, and the heat of his hands touching her skin sends shivers down her spine.

        “Whoa. Sorry.”

        He grins at her as recognition crosses his face. His teeth are perfect, bright white and incredibly straight. His eyes are even bluer at this distance, and Evie feels like she could fall right into them. She notices herself leaning forward slightly and blushes as she corrects her posture, forcing herself to lean back.

        “Sorry,” she echoes, attempting to return his smile, even as she feels her blush deepen. “I think I spilled some on you.”

        Together, they glance down at his chest. His plain white t-shirt is stained with spots of red now, the liquid seeping through the thin fabric and offering glimpses of the tanned skin underneath it. Evie doesn’t think it’s possible for her face to get any redder than it must already be, yet the flames in her cheeks burn even brighter as she notices him noticing her staring too long at his chest. He grins again.

        “No worries. I never liked this shirt anyway.”

        As if to demonstrate this, she watches in horror and amazement as he releases her arms and steps back just enough to pull the shirt over his head, exposing his entire upper body. He tosses the shirt toward the staircase, and someone in the crowd of people behind them whoops in appreciation. Evie tries to force her eyes to remain on his, but she can’t help glancing down at his bare chest, admiring it. He doesn’t quite have a six-pack, but he’s big—at least six feet tall and 180 pounds, if she had to guess—and his muscles are visible. Her eyes catch on a small dusting of hairs on his pecs, so light she can barely see them in the dim light of the frat house. Her gaze flows from his chest to his arms, which are definitely sizable. He might even be able to pick her up. She notices a tattoo of a sun on his inner bicep, the lines of it bold and black, and fights the sudden urge to run her hand across it.

        “I’m Alex,” he says, offering her his hand, pulling her gaze away from his arm.

        She struggles to meet his eyes again after her obvious ogling, but she manages to do it as she grabs his hand and shakes it quickly before dropping it, sure he can feel the wetness of her palm.

        “Evie,” she says, cringing as the word leaves her mouth. The nickname suddenly feels too childish for an eighteen-year-old woman, reminiscent of a fictional cartoon creature.

        “Nice to meet you, Evie,” he says, his smile still effervescent.

“Evie,” he repeats a moment later, as if tasting her name. Her heart rate quickens. “Is that short for something?”

        “It’s…just call me Evie,” she says, dropping her eyes to the floor and tucking a slightly sweat-damp lock of hair behind her ear. Somehow Evelyn seems even worse than Evie at this moment, as if the name belongs solely to the grandmother she was named after.

        Alex nods and rests a hand on her arm again, gently guiding her out of the doorway and toward a couch in the beer-pong room. She’s awed by his confidence, at the way he seems to instinctively know she won’t object to his touch, to his taking charge like this. As if he knows with certainty that no woman in her right mind would say no to him.

        “You’re a freshman?” he asks once they’re seated, drawing her eyes to his once again.

        “You can tell?” she asks, disappointed but unsurprised. Evie knows she doesn’t project the image of the most mature or put-together woman, but a small part of her had hoped it would take more than ten seconds for him to realize she only graduated high school three months ago.

        Alex shrugs and reaches behind him to grab a seemingly unclaimed red cup sitting on an end table.

        “Kind of,” he says, taking a sip of the drink. “It’s not a bad thing, though. You just have this look, like you’ve never been to a frat party before.”

        “Well, I haven’t.”

        “Well, welcome,” he says, grinning at her again. His smile must be the most flawless one she’s ever seen. His teeth are like neat white fence posts. Evie suppresses a giggle at this thought, coughing and taking a sip of her drink to regain her composure.

        “Well, thanks,” she says, shifting in her seat to face him, resting one of her arms on the back of the couch. He gives her what she imagines is a pity chuckle before raising his cup to his lips again. She watches the movement, fascinated by each new thing he does. As he lowers the cup, he shifts in his own seat to face her more fully.

        Evie can feel the alcohol starting to flow through her veins now, loosening the tightness in her chest.

        Maybe coming to this party wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

        “So, what made you want to come out tonight?” he asks, genuine curiosity in his voice.

        “Oh, my roommate dragged me here.”

        He raises an eyebrow at her.

        “Dragged you here, huh?”

        Evie feels her cheeks flush again, after only a minute’s reprieve. Everything she does tonight seems to be some kind of social faux pas.

        “Not dragged, I guess. Just…I’m not much of a party person usually.”

        “Why not?” he asks, moving his hand to rest on hers for a moment before rubbing his fingers across the tops of her knuckles. The sensation of it sends a flush of warmth through her body. She wonders if it should feel strange for him to be touching her like this so quickly, but in the moment, it doesn’t. It feels nice.

        Evie shrugs and takes another sip of her drink to give herself time to come up with an answer that won’t make her sound like a total dork.

        “Being around this many people just makes me nervous,” she finally says with honesty, giving him another shrug. She knows it may sound lame, but it’s the truth.

        “Oh,” he says, glancing around the room as if suddenly aware of just how many people are crammed into the relatively small space. “Do you want to go somewhere quieter?”

        Evie feels her heart start to race. She wonders if he’s trying to get her alone or if he’s just being polite, trying to accommodate the anxious freshman at his frat’s party.

        “No, that’s okay. I’m okay now. It just takes a while for me to get used to it. To being around this many people, I mean.”

        Alex nods, the motion causing strands of hair to fall in his face. She gulps as she watches him blow the hair out of his eyes. Nothing about the motion should make her lust for him like this, but somehow everything he does…does. She wants to believe he could actually be interested in her, too, but her insecurities tell her he must have an ulterior motive for talking to her. She tries to quiet the voices in her head that tell her he’s way out of her league, tries to focus on existing in this moment, on being wanted, even if only for conversation.

        “So, what’s your major?” Alex asks.

        Evie is a history major planning to minor in Spanish to appease her Mexican dad who mocks her for not speaking Spanish despite never having taught it to her. Alex is a political science major with a passion for making speeches and a desire to either follow in his congressman father’s footsteps and become a politician, or to forge his own path and become a lawyer. Despite the vast differences between the lives they’ve led until this point—Evie, a scholarship student who grew up in a lower-middle class family with too many mouths to feed, and Alex, a purebred WASP who grew up in Massachusetts and spent every summer of his life vacationing in places like Cape Cod and the Hamptons, or Europe—the conversation somehow flows between them, until they’re both past tipsy, Alex has his hand on her thigh, and they’re discussing the socio-political climate of post-Revolutionary War society.

        “...and don’t even get me started on Thomas Jefferson,” Alex says, finishing a train of thought that Evie is having an increasingly difficult time following, her head feeling fuzzy. She can admit to herself that the jungle juice might be hitting her harder than she would like, although Alex’s brain is also clearly a thing of beauty.

        “Right,” she says, glancing around the room in search of Amy. Evie doesn’t want to leave Alex yet, but she’s starting to feel like she needs to go before the alcohol causes her to do or say something to embarrass herself more than she already has this evening.

        “Looking for someone?” he asks.

        “Just my roommate. It’s getting pretty late. We should probably start heading back to our dorm soon.”

        She says these last words with an air of regret that she wonders if he can sense. He must be achingly aware of her feelings for him by this point, but she can’t help but worry she’s disappointing him by leaving. It feels strange for her to have this concern, given the male gender’s distinct lack of interest in her prior to this night.

        “Do you want me to walk you home?” he asks, sending flutters through her stomach, and other parts of her body, as she envisions what the two of them might do if they were alone in her dorm room. Of course, he hasn’t even kissed her yet, and that would still be her first kiss, ever. She knows she’s getting too far ahead of herself, and she wonders if it’s a result of the alcohol, or if this is just the effect he has on her.

        “Thanks, but I should probably find my roommate. I don’t want her to think I ditched her.”

        “Well, you have to give me your number at least,” Alex says, a slightly mischievous gleam in his eyes as he smiles at her, holding his phone out to her expectantly.

        Evie’s heart begins to race as she nods and accepts his phone, her fingers fumbling over the digits on the screen as she enters her number in a new contact, triple-checking it’s correct before returning the phone to him. She watches as he adds something after her name in the contact, but she can’t see what it is.

        “Here, I’ll text you so you have my number, too.”

        Evie feels her heart beat faster as her phone pings with an incoming text, giving her his number and cementing their connection in a tangible, provable way.

        “I should go,” she says, looking up from her phone with a smile on her face. She starts to turn and push herself off the couch, but Alex grabs her hand, pulling her back down and closer to him, almost onto his lap. She feels her cheeks heat again.

        “Wait, before you go…”

        Evie swears her heart stops beating for a second as Alex leans toward her, brushing a curl behind her ear before pulling her chin toward his face.

This is it. Her first kiss. When she agreed to come to this party, she never would have imagined this was how the night would end. It’s better than anything she could have possibly dreamed. Every nerve in her body is singing, and she’s never felt more alive, or more like a normal human girl, than she does in this moment.

When Alex’s lips touch hers, she stops breathing. The kiss—her first kiss—is fleeting, just a quick brush of contact, and it leaves her hungry for more.

“I’ll call you,” he says, and she hopes he means it.

“Okay,” she says, grinning at him, still half-breathless.

        Evie stumbles away from the couch, pausing in the doorway to glance back at him. He’s still watching her, a smile on his face to match hers. She waves and ducks into the next room, biting her lip to suppress the grin that threatens to continue growing.

        “Who was that?” Amy asks as Evie finds her in a corner of the foyer. Her eyes are focused on the room Evie just left.

        “Just a guy,” Evie says with an air of forced nonchalance, knowing it’s not true.

        He’s much more than that.