A Kiss Like This
Authors: Sara Ney
A Kiss Like This
Sara Ney
Copyright © 2015 Sara Ney
All Rights Reserved
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests or comments, write to the author at:
Sara Ney, Author
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This book is dedicated to my mom.
She’s the reason I feel like I can do anything.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abby
It all started innocently enough on a Friday just like any other, classes and a coffee run, then straight to strategic planning for the evening ahead.
Now, normally, I’m not the first person to volunteer a night out, even on the weekends. The simple truth is, I would much rather stay home on a weekend, rent movies, read a book, and eat snacks on my couch.
One hundred percent of the time, hands down, no debate.
However, tonight is different. Tonight, my cousin, Tyler Darlington the Third—when I was younger, I used to call him Tyler Darlington
the Turd
—became an officer of his fraternity, and in his mind,
that
is something to celebrate.
I also want to point out that Tyler becoming an officer of
anything
is kind of a big deal—to both his parents and mine. Believe me when I say, the whole entire Darlington clan is in a
tizzy
over the fact that Tyler has been admitted to a Big 10 School. Not only that, but he’s managed not to flunk out of that same Big 10 School or cause any property damage to his fraternity house or burn it down
Naturally, these things alone are cause for celebration (that was sarcasm) and my parental units are practically
forcing
me to attend his celebratory frat party.
Okay. Maybe forcing is a strong word, although they did have to promise me a fifty-dollar pre-paid Visa credit card if I went.
To put it bluntly: Tyler is kind of a moron.
And by moron, I mean pothead.
So despite my usual penchant for staying in on the weekends like a hermit, there is definitely something to be said for the simple act of getting ready to go out with friends that is
more
fun than the actual act of going out.
For example:
1. Cramming more than one young (single) woman into
one
bathroom, then crowding around the only mirror in the apartment. Unless of course you count the cheap mirror hanging behind your bedroom door, which you do
not
.
2. Borrowing clothes that never seem to look as cute on you as they do on your friend or roommate. Damn her.
3. Getting sprayed/blinded by the hairspray because you were standing too closely behind your friend wielding the can—which we all know is a given. Someone always get sprayed in the eyes…
4. Smudging your eyeliner because you get elbowed by your friend every time you lean over the counter to draw a more precise line. We call this irony.
Sounds like funsies, right?
That’s because it is. For the most part.
There’s always tons of wild laughter, annoyed grumbling, and in the end, everyone looks stunning and ready to take on the town—or in this case, a house party.
Tonight is no exception.
It’s a short walk to the fraternity house from our crappy rental house, and even though the air is a tad too chilly for my liking, we chose to walk the short distance rather than drive, despite the heels most of us are wearing.
Having already decided that it’s going to be an early night, we spend the remainder of the evening huddled together in the corner of my cousin’s fraternity house, not because we’re wallflowers, or party poopers, or stuck up. No. We’re huddled together because the house is dirty, and falling apart, and the crowd it draws isn’t exactly “my scene.”
My scene is the library. A quaint coffee shop with an acoustic guitar player, smelling of rich coffee grounds. The campus study center with its overstuffed couches. My small but tidy bedroom in my off-campus rental.
This crowd… this crowd is collegians on academic probation. Drunks. Potheads. Girls with loose morals and even looser panties.
I brazen out the party with my friends, in the corner I’ve forced us to occupy, where we laugh, my friends drink, and we lose track of time.
Before I know it, my friends have disappeared and my cousin is at my side, half-baked (as usual) but in protection mode. Tyler actually convinces me to be responsible and
not
to walk home alone in the dark, even though the last place I want to be is here. In this fraternity house. Alone without my friends.
Before the party thins and the crowd downstairs disperses, I’m upstairs in Ty’s room, door locked, throwing clothes and books off his queen-sized bed, grateful that it’s not a twin or a simple mattress on the floor, before flinging myself on top of it in a tired heap.
The one beer Maddie and Tabitha persuaded me to drink is the sleep aid I need to close my eyes and shut out the racket below me.
Abby
When it comes to shimmying down a metal gutter pipe, it’s probably not a good idea to get much dignity involved. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of hard work goes into the task, but in order to be successful, you have to let go of your pride. As in, have none. Of course, that isn’t saying much, particularly if you’re wearing a skirt—which, thank God, I am not.
I glance back into the bedroom from my spot in the window at a slumbering Tyler Darlington, who is spread out on his queen-sized mattress, snoring peacefully. His unkempt brown hair sticks out in a million places, matted in some spots from tossing and turning, and an unsavory dark puddle of drool wets the area where his gaping mouth and pillow meet.
Ugh, gross. If only the ladies could see this ‘ladies’ man’ now…
Before sticking my first booted foot out the second-story window, I nervously twist the gold ring on my right hand and take one last look at Tyler, whose eyes are slowly blinking open. He looks around the room and catches sight of me, resting his chin on his elbow, and watches me with an amused look on his arrogant face.
My stomach twists into a knot.
“Are you sure you don’t want to exit out the, oh, I don’t know, perfectly good door?” His head jerks toward the opposite side of the room, to his sturdy, solid door. With perfectly functioning hinges.
“Um, yeah, I think I’ll pass.
They
are still out there. Waiting. No freaking way am I getting caught up in that… that…” I wave my hand around airily, at a loss for words. “I can’t face them. It’s humiliating; I couldn’t bare it.”
I will not go out in that hallway
.
No matter how badly I have to use the bathroom to pee.
I’m too reserved. Most people, especially those who don’t know me well, might even call me shy—and I’m sometimes so easily embarrassed it borders on absurd.
My ears perk up, and I can still hear the chanting from my spot in the narrow window frame, the loud, boisterous voices filling the small space that is my cousin’s bedroom. Somewhere within the long corridor, another door opens and closes, setting off a chorus of cheering, laughing, and shouting.
“Those guys are such fucking morons,” Tyler says as he rolls his eyes, checking the clock on his nightstand and sitting up straighter to fish for his glasses.
“Yeah, and those morons are your fraternity brothers,” I mutter, staring out the window, nervously plotting my best course of action. “You
choose
to live with them. On purpose.”
“I’ll just stick my head out the door and tell them not to shout at you.”
I shake my head vigorously. “And you think they’re going to listen to you? Please. Those guys have zero boundaries.” I glance down at the gutter, mentally calculating its distance from Tyler’s window, estimating it to be approximately three feet away. Close enough that I could make it, and, if I can safely grab on to the awning, I just might be able to drop down without breaking my neck. “Listen, don’t think for one second they won’t sing that song to me. In fact, they’d have a field day if they knew it was me in here with you.”
“Abby, stop being so damn dramatic.” Tyler sits up and shrugs into a ratty tee shirt randomly plucked from the ground. “It’s just a song. It hardly means anything.”
I stare at him, my mouth agape. “Just a song? Ugh, have you heard the lyrics? They’re foul. Why any girl with self-respect would purposely set foot out in that hall is beyond me. No, I like my chances better.”
I would rather change my name, appearance, and join the Witness Protection Program than walk out into that hallway.
“It beats going out the fucking window.” He stands in his boxers and stretches. “Whatever, man, just hurry up. I’m starving and need to take a leak.”
I shoot him a few daggers. “Wow. Are you this charming with all the ladies?”
“No. Usually I tell them to grab their shit and get out of my room,” he says with a laugh.
Raucous laughter from the hallway fills the room, and someone begins banging on Tyler’s door. “Darlington, get your boney ass out here. Two skanks just came out of Ackermann’s suite.”
My lip curls and I brace myself for the lyrics. Loud singing fills the corridor outside my cousin’s room, and I shake my head, giving him the
See? I told you so
look.
The girl was fair who went upstairs with her fav-o-rite
KOC.
She knocked around and came back down,
and now she takes the walk!
The walk of shame, she’s not to blame!
Who could resist the KOC?
The walk of shame, she found her fame,
and now she takes the walk!
Wow. Aren’t they charming?
After the brothers of Kappa Omega Chi are done shouting at what I assume are innocent, albeit slutty, collegians, Tyler looks at me and shrugs his shoulders. “What?
We
didn’t write it. It’s from the movie
Sorority Boys
.”
I hold out one of the hands I had been using to brace myself with to stop him from talking. “Please. There’s no need to explain, but that was all the motivation I needed. Tell Aunt Monica I say hello.”
And with that, I ease myself out his window.
~ Caleb ~
If you thought that at seven o’clock in the morning on a Saturday, I would have peace and quiet, sitting outside on the front porch of my house—on any other day you would be absolutely correct. On any other Saturday, in fact, except this one.
And this isn’t just any other Saturday.
Other than the chick trying to shimmy out a second-story window next door, then yeah, it’s been a relatively uneventful morning.
Just as I’m about to take the first sip of iced orange juice from the perspiring water bottle in my large hand, a slight movement catches my eye from an upper window of the crumbling piece-of-shit fraternity house next door. My ears perk up immediately, my head tilting with interest, when the first denim-clad leg emerges. All of my senses are instantly on high alert.
I watch—wide-eyed and mesmerized—as a single slim leg emerges from the window at the same time a sheer white curtain billows out into the open air and momentarily wraps itself around the face of the leg’s owner. I can hear her spitting at it as she pulls it out of her mouth, slapping it away. Meanwhile, her boot-covered toe begins feeling around blindly in the air to gain footing underneath the windowsill.
My trim torso inches forward on the swing, bottle of orange juiced poised just at the tip of my parched lips. The ice clanks together and a few beads of perspiration fall from the bottle onto my shirt when I jiggle it.
I shake my head in disbelief.
“What the fuck…” I can’t stop the curse from escaping, muttering out loud when the second leg appears, straightens, then strains toward the gutter guard. “That crazy bitch is gonna get herself killed.”