My entire neck was exposed. That was something new.
Oh no, I did dress like a missionary!
I was twenty years old and had the wardrobe of a spinster.
I face palmed and then felt ridiculous because I was starting to have conversations with myself. I ran a hand through my somewhere between wavy and curly chestnut hair and growled audibly.
It didn’t matter what I wore, as long as I was happy with it. As long as I was happy with how I looked, nothing else mattered.
Fin Hunter spent twenty minutes with me and already managed to get inside my head. Gah! That was so frustrating.
Still, I resisted the urge to grab a scarf on the way out the door. I grabbed my backpack, shoved the correct books into it and made my way down the three flights of stairs and across the street to the University of La Crosse’s campus.
UW-LA sprawled out before me- a series of tall red, brick buildings nestled into spring green grass and budding trees. The landscape was surprisingly flat considering the town itself laid beneath tall, rocky cliffs. The bluffs rose up from the banks of the Mississippi river and tumbled high and rough for miles. In the winter they would ice over with thick, human-sized icicles. Now in the spring, they were taking their time melting since the weather wasn’t quite considered warm yet. They dripped from the bottoms of the cliffs in huge streams of water, leaving the side of the interstate perpetually soggy and slick.
Not that I ever walked along the side of the interstate, but I was kind of captivated by them whenever I drove by.
The early March wind whipped at my face, and I glanced back at my moderately priced apartment building with longing. Abruptly I forgot every reason for leaving my scarf at home and exactly who I was trying to impress.
Which was no one. I wasn’t trying to impress anyone.
I shivered against the wind and pulled my sweater tight around my waist. This day was not starting off well.
I ducked my head, my hair getting tangled and messy the longer I stood here doing nothing. So I marched forward, crossed the street and entered campus.
The hustle and bustle of morning classes buzzed around me, students moving from building to building, talking, laughing, doing whatever it was that students do in the cold in between space of winter changing to spring. There was some ultimate Frisbee- I mean, this was a college campus after all- happening on a square of muddy, barely green grass, but the players were still in scarves and gloves, their noses red from the biting wind.
I watched them in a kind of disgusted awe and pulled my sweater even tighter around me. And then I saw him across the courtyard. Fin Hunter was surrounded by four of his friends, tall, equally built seniors, equally intimidating men, while they lingered near a bench. The guys around him were actively checking out the female population while he laughed and joked in the middle of it all. I didn’t think he saw me, not from way over here, but I picked up my pace anyway.
No need to run into him before I absolutely had to.
Funny how he was only a myth before last night, rumors attached to a name I heard every once in a while. Now that there was a body and face attached to the urban legends I supposed I was going to have to start seeing him everywhere I went.
Annoying.
I tumbled through the student union doorway, anxious to get out of the cold and away from any remnant of the notorious Fin Hunter. A shudder slithered over my shoulders down to my wrists, and I wondered for the hundredth time in the last eight hours, what I had gotten myself into?
“Hey, you’re late!”
“Sorry, B,” I smiled apologetically at my best friend. “I’m in a war with my wardrobe.”
“Looks like you won,” her overly large mouth twisted into a grin and I felt some pride. Britte was artistically trendy and never approved of my clothing choices. Her and Fin could probably start a club. “You look hot!”
I rolled my eyes and sighed. “I don’t feel hot. I feel cold.”
Laughter bubbled out of her, loud and infectious. “Where’s your lovey?”
My grin turned tight, “Are you talking about my trademark scarf?”
“Mmm-hmmm,” her expression was innocent and condescending all at the same time. I rolled my eyes again and she batted her electric blue lined green eyes at me. “I hardly recognized you with so much skin exposed.”
My hand fluttered to my neck self-consciously. “I don’t know, I’ve just been thinking maybe it’s time for a change? Maybe I should branch out a little bit.” I finished with a little more confidence than I started with, but at least I almost believed myself by the end of it.
“Does this mean shopping?” Britte’s already supersized eyes grew larger and her dark lashes swept up so that they nearly brushed her dark eyebrows.
“No,” I shook my head quickly. “Definitely not.”
“What? Why not?”
“I’m in serious financial woes, B. I can’t afford to go shopping now, or later or anytime this decade.” I pushed forward, out of the doorway and toward a table in the corner. I couldn’t have anyone over hearing this. I loved my brothers dearly, but it honestly felt like they had spies everywhere. Once, in an emergency, I asked the girl in the stall next to me if she had a tampon I could borrow and later that night Beckett texted to congratulate me on not being pregnant.
“Oh no,” Britte gasped, following behind me. “Tara the Terror still hasn’t paid her share of the rent?”
I ducked under a campus promotional poster that swung precariously from one piece of sticky tack and plopped down into my chair. We were a bit more isolated away from the snack counter/barista station. Most of the influx of students hung out near the cash register or at the full wall length bar that faced out floor to ceiling glass windows and the courtyard I just walked through. We had privacy from any eavesdroppers but also Fin wouldn’t likely catch sight of me if he happened to walk this way either.
“Tara the Traitor has done a lot more than refuse to come up with the last two months of rent,” I growled.
Britte sucked her bottom lip into her mouth and chomped down on it. She brushed her full dark mane of hair over her shoulder and reached out a super-tanned-for-Wisconsin-at-the-end-of-winter hand to pat mine comfortingly. “Tell me.”
And so I did.
Britte’s mouth kind of hung unhinged during and after my story. She didn’t make a sound for several minutes; she just kept staring at me. I eventually dropped my head into my hands and groaned. This was as bad as I thought it was. Somehow I convinced myself that this wasn’t so bad, that I wasn’t in too much trouble.
But the look on Britte’s face proved otherwise.
“Ellie!” she finally shrieked. “What are you going to do?”
I winced, “I don’t know!”
“You have to go to the cops, you have to!”
“Britte, I can’t,” I quickly shook my head, my more-wild-than-usual hair flying around my face. “I mean, I can. And I’ve thought about it. But do you know what my family will do to me if this comes out? My parents will freak. My brothers will go insane. They’ll probably make me move in with Grayson and then I’ll have no social life, no love life and no freedom whatsoever!” I laid it out for her, ticking it off with raised fingers.
Her huge moss green eyes grew impossibly bigger and understanding dawned on her. Britte and I met last year at spring orientation when we were both transfers. We became almost inseparable from day one, so she had plenty of opportunity to get to know the Harris family. Although it wouldn’t have taken a genius to figure out how overprotective they were of me, their darling baby girl.
And with two older brothers roaming the campus constantly, she had also seen their domineering behavior in action on more than one occasion.
Especially after Colton dumped me.
Part of my two week seclusion was embarrassment, not only for being cheated on, but for what they did to the poor guy afterwards.
Ok, not poor guy. I had to stop feeling sorry for him!
“So you’re just going to let Tara the Terrible get away with this?” Britte demanded, folding her arms across her chest.
“No!” I immediately responded. “Well, maybe. I mean I plan on hunting her down and tearing her hair out, but probably that won’t happen. Plus, she has a real problem, B, a real problem.”
Britte rolled her eyes. “Well, if you won’t tear her hair out, I will. Even if I have to check myself into rehab!”
“Where does one go for a gambling addiction?” I asked pensively.
Britte thought about that for a moment but shook her head dismissively in the end. “I don’t know, but come on, we’re going to be late. We can brainstorm later. And if nothing else, we’ll steal a couple of Becket’s baseball bats and get your money back the old fashioned way.”
“The old fashioned way?” I laughed and she smirked at me.
We stood up, gathered our bags and left the union. We huddled together in the chilly wind and walked toward class. We weren’t in the same major, but we had two of the same gen-eds together this semester. And probably if I didn’t think an undergrad in Bio-Chem was insane, I would have switched majors just so we could have all our classes together.
Britte had aspirations to be a surgeon.
I had aspirations to join the peace corp. Or become a teacher. Or a guidance counselor. Or a psychologist. Or something. I wasn’t really sure yet, but surgeon was not in the what-I-want-to-do-with-my-life running.
“Oh, no,” Britte whispered and then tried to steer my body into the grass.
“What are you doing?” I demanded, skipping forward so she couldn’t push me into the mud puddles lining the sidewalk.
She made a high pitched squeaky sound and whispered harshly, “Colton.”
She was right. Oh no.
I told myself to keep my head down, to focus on the sidewalk and not even look his way, but obviously I couldn’t stop myself. My eyes flickered up and met his almost immediately. Ick.
Britte grabbed my arm with two hands and squeezed tightly. I absently swatted her away while keeping my eyes locked on Colton. Good grief, he was annoyingly good looking with his inky black hair, styled into a short faux hawk, and his startling blue eyes that didn’t seem to match the rest of his tanned skin.
“Hey Ellie-belly,” he greeted as soon as we were close enough. Was there ever a more annoying nickname? His voice was all concerned compassion and it only made my fingers itch to smack him. “How are you?”
How are you? As in, if he was my therapist and I was about to divulge all of my traumatic-post-breakup-secrets. Psht.
“I’m great,” I forced out a smile, feeling how fake it was by how my cheeks nearly cracked.
“Mmm,” he answered thoughtfully. “I heard you skipped the last couple weeks of classes, Els. Is something going on?”
“Are you kidding?” Britte screeched at him.
“Hey come on, Britte,” Colton put his hands up and backed up a step. “That’s not fair.”
I snorted before I could stop myself. “Yes, Colton, something is going on.”
“Is it because of me?” his voice dropped to a troubled whisper, it was his signature move. It was how he got me in the first place. Junior year, Lennox stopped by my high school to do this career day thing as a “favor” to me, more like a favor for my parents so they could show off just how big and successful he had become. He utterly embarrassed me by talking to my history teacher about what I could do to improve my grade in front of my class.