Premature Evacuation (Underground Sorority #1) (11 page)

My cheeks burst with color.

Erin let out an audible gasp. “Oh my God! You did! You’re both blushing!” She tried to roll her eyes but there wasn’t much force behind the movement, like she couldn’t quite get herself to let go that much. She’d be a great candidate for Botox in the future.

Corey spun me into his arms and dropped a hard kiss onto my lips. He tilted his face, pressing his cheek against mine, and focused on our friends. “I don’t kiss and tell.”

Nate sighed. “I’m sleeping in my room tonight whether you’re there or not.”

T
HE DAY I GOT back to school after Fall Break, Bianca and I made plans to go to the gym before our weekly sorority chapter meeting. I put on my sweatpants, tank top, and a ratty old sweatshirt. A messy ponytail swung behind my head. My makeup stayed packed in my suitcase; I’d apply it later that night before I met up with Corey.

We’d Skyped every day of break, talking for hours about everything and nothing. We’d start out upright, facing the computer screens but would eventually go horizontal, both of our cheeks pressed against separate pillows, squinting to see each other in our dark rooms the webcams failed to capture. I kept waiting for him to suggest something kinky, something Ryan had never once suggested in all our Skype chats, something involving a video chat strip show maybe, but he didn’t. He only wanted to talk.

He
was
trying, just like he’d said.

I arrived at Bianca’s room and, of course, she wasn’t ready yet. No surprise there. Bianca always had to look perfect. Large chandelier earrings dangled from her ears, and her lips pouted in a delicate shade of berry. Jeans and a trendy sweater hugged her tiny frame. She probably wanted to wait until the last possible second to put on her exercise clothes. Never sweatpants, only exercise clothes.

“Corey’s coming over, I figured you wouldn’t mind.” Bianca placed the magazine she had been reading neatly on her desk.

A nervous flutter warmed my belly. “Oh no. I look horrible.” I raced to the mirror and gasped at the purple half moons hanging below my eyes. Corey and I had stayed up chatting until four last night.

“Jeez, Mackenzie, he’s seen you far worse, in the morning and shit. Don’t worry about it.”

Still, my leg shook as I waited for him to arrive. He didn’t look spectacular himself in his sweatpants, socks with sandals, and puffy orange North Face jacket, the one you could spot him in from a mile away, a moving traffic cone. He also wore glasses, plastic-rimmed ones that made him look studious.

My breath caught. Thanks to my dad being an eye doctor and constantly stopping people in the street to compliment their lenses, I had a thing for glasses. “I didn’t know you wore those.” I admired the expensive frames.

“I ran out of contacts. And
someone
never got me the colored ones I asked for.” He let out his cute, raspy laugh.

“I have them in my room. But you never mentioned a prescription.” My dad had sent me a pair of gray ones because that was the only color he had extras of.

Corey hopped up. “Let’s go. Right now. I can’t go another second without them in my eyes.”

I snorted but pulled on my jacket anyway. Maybe if I gave Corey the contacts, they would act as a seam between October and the present, sewing time together like two pieces of fabric and erasing the month between in the process.

“When we come back,” Corey said to Bianca in the doorway of her room, “You won’t recognize me!”

“I’m sure I’ll manage,” she deadpanned.

The two of us headed to my dorm room, skimming past snow packed ankle-high along the carved out sidewalks.

He’d never been in my dorm, and his head swiveled as he took in the entire space. I held my head high, stepping over the clothes dotting on the floor. Shoes spilled out of my open closet. Whenever I brought a friend over, I’d rushed to tidy up, kicking the mess inside the closet. But now I felt solidarity with him. His room was always in the same state of disarray. However, at least I’d made my bed that morning. “Wow, it’s…messier than I expected. I thought you’d be a neat freak.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m an artist. I thrive on chaos.” I gestured to one of my works in progress leaning against the windowsill where color splattered across the canvas. The image depicted a portrait of Fallon with blues and greens and purples used in place of her blond hair in thick brush strokes. My current obsession for my painting minor was using unconventional colors to display expected objects as an experiment to convey whether the viewer could still tell the hair was meant to be blond even though I hadn’t used any yellow anywhere. The motif had seeped into my animation classes too, and I’d taken to hand painting the textures for the scenes instead of choosing stock ones inside the animation program. It gave the finished renders the feeling of watching a moving painting.

“Now where the hell did I put the contacts?” I fumbled through my desk, bypassing old sketchpads and flash drives.

Corey sprawled out on my pale blue bed, hands clasped behind his head. His snowy shoes dangled off the side out of courtesy. He watched me intently as I rummaged through every drawer and crevice I could find in my room. “You haven’t checked your underwear drawer yet. I’ve been waiting for you to start throwing panties around.”

I slammed another drawer shut. “You say that as if you haven’t already seen every pair I own.”

After another ten minutes of searching, I found the contacts stuffed into my school bag. I must have thrown them in there back in October and had been carrying them around ever since.

I held them out to him, liquid sloshing in the little bubble that housed them.

He put one in his eye, blinked a few times, then held up the camera app on his phone to check it out. “Wow. It looks awesome.”

His eyes were normally hazel-brown, but the gray became a unification agent. It harmonized the color and invented a shade Photoshop couldn’t possibly replicate.

He closed the contact case.

“Aren’t you going to do the other eye?”

He shook his head and jammed his second eye shut. “I like it like this.”

I let out a laugh. But I sort of liked it like that too. Mismatched, like us.

His arms wrapped around me and he held me for a few moments, our hearts synchronizing. Things were different now. Even the air felt charged with electricity, like it was full of something instead of just empty.

We didn’t have sex. We didn’t even kiss. We could have, but that would have spoiled everything the moment offered. It was being there with him, so natural, so in tune with each other. This wasn’t just about sex anymore.

We went back to Bianca’s room where she shrieked and called Corey a freak for his one gray eye.

“I like it. It suits you,” Erin said from her perch on her bed.

The four of us lounged in Bianca and Erin’s room, chatting about nothing in particular—Greek life gossip on campus, who was hooked up recently, what Beta Chi planned to do to get back at their rival frat pranksters, our finals schedule, whether Corey could get Erin a date for formal. Bianca had asked Nate to go with her—as a friend, of course—and we all formulated ways she could reveal her feelings at the event or in the hotel room after. Even Corey offered suggestions without freezing up at the prospect of Bianca dating someone else. “I’m telling you, just turn on the shower, get all soapy, then poke your head out the door and invite him to join you. He’ll get the message just fine.”

Bianca rolled her eyes at that suggestion.

“How about when he’s in the bathroom brushing his teeth, you—” I said.

“So romantic,” Erin interrupted.

I threw a pillow at her. “Light a bunch of candles around the room. Play some swoony music, the score from a romantic drama or something. That way when he comes out, the mood will be all set, you’ll be standing there in your pretty dress, lit by the glow, your back turned to him. Ask him to help with your zipper. He’ll slide it down your back slowly and—”

Corey cleared his throat. “Note to self: bring candles to formal.”

Bianca slumped back on the bed. “I can’t do any of that. It’s all so forward.”

“Just talk to him then,” Eric said, the voice of reason. “Tell him how you feel.”

“Do it under the moonlight for maximum romance potential,” I added.

But I knew what Bianca really wanted: him to make the first move. I gave myself my own note to self: suggest to Corey to plant that idea in Nate’s head in advance.

Erin’s wrist step tracker vibrated with a silent alarm. “Oh crap. We have chapter in a few minutes.”

Corey stood up and shrugged on his orange jacket. “Guess that’s my cue to leave.” He winked one gray eye and swooped me into a big hug before heading downstairs.

At the chapter meeting, I settled into my spot in the back beside Bianca and Erin, laptop warming my legs.

“As you know,” our president, Layla Davies, said once everyone quieted down, “Elections for next term’s president begin when we return from winter break. I’ve decided to run for a second term.” She pushed her black bob behind her pointy ears.

Most of the girls in the room lifted their fingers into appreciated snaps. Bianca and I rolled our eyes. Layla was part of one of the cliques that steered clear of mine. She hadn’t liked me from the very first moment, because I was a legacy in this house thanks to my mom and Layla felt that meant I hadn’t earned my spot like she had. It didn’t matter to her that my mom was dead and this was the closest I ever felt to her.

“That’s because she doesn’t have anyone to live with next year,” Bianca whispered under her breath. I giggled. Presidents always got the biggest single room in the house with the en suite bathroom.

Layla’s eyes shifted to us, narrowing to slits. A few of the other girls turned their attentions our way. Blood rushed to my face. We pressed our lips together, staring straight ahead as if we did nothing wrong.

“I hope you all choose to vote for me.” It sounded more like a threat than a campaign. Layla smoothed down the front of her fitted blue sweater. “And now: formal.”

More snaps erupted from the audience.

“If you haven’t booked your room already, make sure to do so immediately. The room block ends tomorrow. And for the sophomore girls, remember seniors and juniors get first dibs on king bedrooms. I’ve been informed by some of the upper girls that there were no more kings available when they tried to reserve. So if you have one, please give it up.”

My throat tightened. Bianca had called and reserved the rooms for me, her, and Erin, even though Erin didn’t quite have a date yet. She’d booked me a king. I turned to her and bit my lip.

She shook her head. “Don’t you dare switch, this rule has always been stupid.”

It didn’t seem stupid to me though. The older girls had seniority. I would get their privileges when I paid my dues at the bottom of the ranks. Sometimes I felt my place in the sorority wavered on a flimsy foundation, like the three little pig’s house. One giant gust of wind and everything would crumble to the ground, leaving me no place to call home.

“And I must remind everyone—the Greek Organization has issued a strict formal safety policy to all fraternities and sororities. No drinking for anyone under age twenty-one.” A few snickers erupted under low breaths in the room. We all knew Layla only decreed this because our alumni officer sat next to her on the ornate couch. But the alumni officer wouldn’t be at formal. “And no one—drinking or not—is allowed to get into a car once you arrive at the hotel. We’re providing transportation to and from the venue for a reason. If you leave, there will be consequences.” She paused for dramatic effect. “Snap if you understand.”

My fingers involuntarily joined each other until the friction between them sounded off my term of agreement.

Bianca and I spent the days before formal getting ready. We raided the sorority kitchen and mixed homemade facials out of olive oil, oatmeal, and egg. We filed our nails and covered them in pattern wraps that matched our dresses. I did thousands of sit-ups that left my abs pissed off at my body. Fancy new lingerie arrived at my dorm via two-day shipping.

On the day of the actual affair, Bianca, Erin, and I took a cab to the mall to get our hair and makeup done. Erin had turned down all of Corey’s offered potential dates, claiming it was too incestuous for three Rho Sigs to be dating Beta Chi brothers. She opted instead to take a guy named Harrison Wagner, who Holly McKenna introduced her to. Holly’s name stung every time I heard it even though Corey claimed he’d only gone to her formal as a favor.