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My coffee almost comes up through my nose. “Excuse me?”
She somehow misreads my look of abject shock for interest. “Oh, no, Evie. You’re way too innocent for the likes of him.” She digs a finger into my arm. “Promise me, if you ever see him, you’ll run the other way.”
“Don’t know what he looks like,” I mutter into my coffee.
She nods studiously for a moment. “True, true.” She holds up a finger. “I think I have a picture.”
Her glittery purse emerges, and she rummages around inside for her phone. “This guy, Evie. Oh, my God, thisguy.” She pauses with her hand in her purse, sending me a wide-eyed look over the rim of her sunglasses. “He’s not a gentleman. He’s not even nice. No sense of humor. No sense of decency, either.” She lets out a low whistle. “But, girl, the things I’ve heard?” She glances at the Royals over her shoulder before leaning in closer to me. “He makes up for all of it in bed.”
I let out a nervous laugh. “He sounds awful.”
“He is. Awful, I mean… and hung like a horse.” She clicks her tongue as she pulls out her phone. “I have a photo of him at a fundraiser, all dressed up and shit. You’d swear you were looking at Satan himself, that’s how fucking beautiful he is. And you can look all you want, looking’s free, but don’t youdareso much as speak to him, hear me?”
I wait for the picture, my chest growing tighter with every word. Why does it sound like she’s describing the guy I slapped?
It can’t be.
Lady Luck can’t bethatbig of a bitch.
Kat’s nails tap against the phone screen for a second, then she sits bolt upright. “Shit!”
My heart leaps into my throat. “What?”
“Fuck.” She pushes her sunglasses up. “Am I hallucinating?” Judging from her massively dilated pupils, it’s possible. “What does that message say?”
I take her phone, hunching over so my shadow keeps off the sun’s glare as I read the message out loud. “There’s a problem with your dorm room. Please contact me as soon as you get this.” I hand her back the phone. “It’s from Willow.”
As soon as our eyes meet, the reality of what I read sinks in. “Wait…ourdorm room?”
“Shit, shit, shit.” Kat taps on her phone and puts it to her ear. “IthoughtI left the hair iron on.”
“Youburned downour dorm room?” My shrill voice makes everyone in the vicinity turn to look at me. I cup a hand against my face, shielding myself from those inquisitive eyes.
“Willow?” Kat swings her legs over the side of the lounger, but doesn’t stand. “What the hell’s going on?”
A shadow falls over me. I turn, squinting up at the outline of a tall, thin girl wearing a dazzling white cut-out one-piece and a disdainful smirk. “Who the fuck are you?” she drawls.
“Uh.” I briefly forget my name. “Evie. Evie Larsen.”
“I don’t know you,” she says, turning the statement into a dry condemnation. “What are you doing with Oakes?”
Thankfully, enough of my brain cells are in operation for me to remember that Oakes is Kat’s last name. “She’s my roommate.”
“That’s okay, I guess.” The girl’s drone is as flat as her black hair. “Oakes.Oakes!”
Kat turns to squint up at the leggy brunette. “Yo, Ada, can’t you see I’m on the fucking phone, you miserly cunt?”
“That Willow?” Ada tilts her head to the side like she’s tired of carrying it around. “Because she was trying to get hold of you likeallnight.”
“Fuck, yes, it’s Willow. Now can you—” Kat turns away. “Flooded?”
I rush to my feet. “Our dorm room flooded?”
The girl—I assume Ada—steps back like I’m a plague victim that might breathe in her direction.
Her glasses are bigger than Kat’s, shielding most of her face. The part I can see is a smooth alabaster mask with perfectly lined nude lips and a tiny beauty mark beside her mouth.
“Yeah.” Ada sighs and takes out a rose-gold cigarette case from the purse hanging at her side, lighting a slim black cigarette. At least, it looks like a cigarette, but when that smoke reaches me, all I smell is weed.
