Next Man Up (Making the Score #2) - Tawdra Kandle Page 0,11

person sitting in it leaned forward, the light illuminating his face. It was Eli, and a smile of relief began to curl my lips.

But before I could tug on my shoes and get to him, I realized that he wasn’t alone in that chair. Someone else leaned forward, too—and this someone had long, dark hair that Eli swept away from her face before he lowered his head to kiss her.

In that moment, watching him with her, something cracked inside me. Reality and realization hit me hard, as truth swept over me like a cold wave. I’d just given my virginity to a guy who was even now, not two hours later, kissing another girl. I’d had sex for the first time without meaning to do it, without thinking about it and without really knowing the boy who I’d allowed to invade my body. I’d gotten slightly drunk, and I’d let his flattery, his sweet words and his touch tear down my defenses like they were nothing at all.

And standing there, I knew I was never going to let it happen again.

Chapter One

Tuck

I think it’s important to establish one fact right from the beginning. Much later, Zelda would claim that on the day we met again, I didn’t remember her. That’s absolutely not true. I knew who she was.

Well . . . maybe that’s not completely accurate. That day we met in my dorm at Birch College, I was aware that I had probably known her. In the biblical sense, that is.

Unfortunately, that didn’t narrow it down much.

Yeah, I’d been a dog back in the day. I’d gotten my share of tail, and about ten other guys’ share, too. I loved every minute of it.

But that was before November 18th of my senior year. Before Homecoming. Before the hit that took my legs and nearly claimed my life, as well.

Before everything changed.

Anyway, the day she came sashaying into my dorm room freshman year at Birch, I knew she was familiar. And even if I hadn’t known that, I could tell by the look in her eyes when she looked at me that we’d hooked up. It was the challenge there: Are you going to remember? Are you going to acknowledge me? Most of the time, it was accompanied by a hint of desperation, too. Remember me! Tell me what we did was important.

But not Zelda. In her, it was all attitude. Remember me or don’t. I couldn’t care less.

She was there to visit my new roommate, Nate, tagging along with his friends, Quinn and Gia. The four of them looked tentative as only college freshmen could. I was a freshman, too, of course, but I was a year older than the rest of them, and after all the shit I’d been through since that November night? Starting college was the least of my worries.

Nate greeted them all enthusiastically. As far as I could tell, he was pretty cool. I knew from messaging back and forth over the summer that he’d had some kind of disease since birth that made too much walking hard on him. It affected both his lungs and his large muscles, and it came along with the fun prize of a shortened life span.

I also knew that Quinn was Nate’s best friend. He talked about her a lot, and at first, I’d thought she was his girlfriend. But apparently not, since Nate later told me she was dating their other best friend, Leo Taylor, a name I remembered from high school when I played football. They were all from Eatonboro, one of our county rivals. According to Nate, Taylor had gotten a full ride to Carolina, lucky bastard.

The way Nate went on about Quinn, I’d expected someone drop-dead gorgeous. And Quinn was pretty, sure, but she didn’t strike me as beautiful. She had dark hair that was tied up on the back of her head, and she was dressed in worn-looking denim shorts and a T-shirt. The chick who trailed behind her was okay-looking, too, in an ordinary way—she had a cap of short black hair and wide brown eyes. That was Gia, a friend of Quinn’s, and of Nate’s by way of Quinn.

They came into our room, and Nate introduced everyone to me. He was just finishing when the door opened a little more. The girl who strutted in was anything but ordinary, and this one? Yeah, she was fucking breathtaking.

Her pale blonde hair was loose around her shoulders, and her eyes were huge and vivid blue.